Audience Rating: Parental Guidance Binding: DVD EAN: 5014437841834 Format: PAL Label: Paramount Home Entertainment Manufacturer: Paramount Home Entertainment Number Of Items: 7 Publisher: Paramount Home Entertainment Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2004-12-06 Running Time: 999 Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
Saved from the brink of cancellation by its loyal fanbase, Star Trek's third and final season rewarded them with a number of memorable episodes. Tight budgets and slipping creative control, however, made it the most uneven, though it did have some of the coolest episode titles ("For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", "Is There in Truth No Beauty", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"). Some of the best moments involved a gunfight at the OK Corral ("Spectre of the Gun"), a knock-down drag-out sword battle with the Klingons aboard the Enterprise ("Day of the Dove"), the ship getting caught in an ever-tightening spacial net ("The Tholian Web"), TV's first interracial kiss ("Plato's Stepchildren"), Sulu taking command ("The Savage Curtain"), and Kirk's switching bodies with an ex-love interest ("Turnabout Intruder").
Also appearing in the set as a coda are two versions of the series pilot, "The Cage", a restored color version and the original, never-aired version that alternates between color and black and white. Starring Jeffery Hunter as Captain Pike, Leonard Nimoy as a relatively emotional Spock, and Majel Barrett (the future Nurse Chapel and Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) as a frosty Number One, this pilot was rejected, but a second was commissioned, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", now considered the "official" beginning of the series. But "The Cage" is very recognizably Star Trek with its far-out concepts (telepathic aliens collecting species samples), sexy humanoid women, character development, and of course cheesy costumes and special effects. Footage was later reused in the season 1 two-parter, "The Menagerie".
The best of the 63 minutes of bonus material focuses on three of the actors: Walter Koenig, George Takei, and James Doohan. Koenig discusses how he was cast and shows off his various collections, one consisting of Chekov figurines. Takei speaks movingly about the Japanese American internment and, in what is probably his last Star Trek appearance, Doohan, slowed by Alzheimer's but still with a twinkle in his eye, recalls his voiceover roles and his favorite episodes. The Easter eggs are amusingly called "Red Shirt Files" in tribute to those poor saps who everyone knew were only in the landing party so they could die. --David Horiuchi
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: worse season of star trek Comment: What people have failed to review here is what a poor season no 3 actually was. The show was in big trouble when it's 3rd season came around.Creator gene roddenberry had left the show after being promised that star treks 3rd season would have the top tv slot of the week,7pm on a mon night,the execs at nbc changed their minds and bumped trek to fri nights at 10pm when its core audience kids n teenagers would be either in bed or out partying. Rodenberry left in disgust and most of the briliant writers who had worked on season 1 and 2 left also, along with the brillaint D.C fontana who by no coincidence produced 1 last script for the show which ends up one of seasson 3's best eps! NBC brought in freddy frieberger a staple of western shows in the 60;s who had a different vision than roddenberry,also nbc made huge budget cuts in the last season as it wasnt a prime time show anymore,it definately shows too,only 1 ep had location filming this season and all the other eps were in the studio or enterprised based.
There are 3 or 4 good eps like "all our yesterdays" "the enterprise incident" and a couple of others but it was not a patch on season 1 and 2..get those dvd sets if your new to trek but leave this to last as its not that great Customer Rating: Summary: Trek official alternatives Comment: If it is Star Trek fix you are looking for, then you really ought to browsers and look for the high fan series that have been created.
Star Trek Hidden Frontier has recently finished a 7 season run,
Star Trek Odyessy looks set to take over, taking Trek to Andromeda
Helena Chronicles another spin off from Hidden Frontier set aboard the USS Helena featured in the latter episodes of HF.
Trinity a UK post production looks to be taking a darker look for a 4 part mini series at the post Nemesis era.
If you are a fan of the Original series Check out the Star New Voyages which are the continuing adventures of the Enterprise from the end of The Original Series, George Takei and Walter Koenig have both featured in recent episodes.
Starship Farragut takes Trek aboard the USS Farragut set in TOS era.
Star Trek Intrepid another UK production of high quality. with a cross over with Hidden Frontier special coming shortly.
Star Trek Of Gods and Men a by the stars of trek from the fans movie directed by Tim Russ (tuvok) featuring many of the cast of various Treks.
For all things truly Trek, look across the vastness of the internet to discover what is really going on. Customer Rating: Summary: Star Trek -Season Three - neither a big bang nor a whimper. Comment: By season three big changes were at hand within the world of Star Trek -these stem from the introduction of a new producer Fred Freiberger after Star Trek's timeslot had been moved and its budget cut. It's difficult to believe these days that at the time of Star Trek's original airing it really wasn't a popular show and it was only due to protests by its core fans that it managed to last on air as long as it did. Fred Freiberger and his staff strongly believed Star Trek should be primarily a serious science fiction show and he went about cutting out much of the humour and warmth which had been building successfully in the previous two seasons and in doing so the characters also began to lose their identities a little too. This resulted in a certain 'coldness' which seems apparent at this point in Star Trek's history.
However, despite this, and despite its notoriously bad reputation season three still has plenty to offer. Freiberger dropped two mainstay storylines from the first two seasons - mad computers which jeapodise the safety of the enterprise (that Kirk talks to death) and the parallel earth theory which had both been done to death. With what little budget he had left his Star Trek would predominantly involve 'alien' planets and on occasions more elaborate special effects.
The quality of season three is certainly a lot more uneven than series one and two and the worst episodes do represent Star Trek reaching its lowest point - 'That Which Survives', 'Spock's Brain', 'Whom Gods Destroy', 'The Way To Eden' - yet that's only part of the story, i do believe there still are predominantly more good to great Star Trek stories
on offer here including 'The Tholian Web', 'The Paradise Syndrome', 'The Enterprise Incident', 'The Day Of The Dove' and 'All Our Yesterdays' and Star Trek also effectively continued to incorporate moral issues into its storylines.
I think it's fair to say Star Trek's third and final season didn't go out with a big bang, however this series in terms of quality (for those that were watching at the time) hardly went out on a whimper, either.
I may be biased being a diehard Star Trek fan, perhaps, but it's still worth five stars to me especially when compared with some of the other Star Trek related series's and films that have come much later.
Not forgetting there is also the highly desirable first Star Trek pilot 'The Cage' starring Jeffrey Hunter included in this package. Customer Rating: Summary: THE ORIGINAL AND BEST Comment: Fantastic to be able to watch all the episodes, I never realised that they made so many, they only ever seem to show the same few episodes over and over again on tv. There is something surreal and magical about these episodes. Ok the special effects look a little dated, but this was the 60's don't forget. I really like the 'minimalistic' approach to the set design and props anyway, leaves more to the imagination.
The 3 main characters are just superb together, a perfect mixture, Kirk, Spock and 'Bones'. I highly recommend that you buy at least one of the series, if like me, you will have to buy them all. The next generation, etc. may have better effects, but the storylines, actors and characters are 'dull' compared to the original crew. Customer Rating: Summary: Remarkable for their age but an OPPORTUNITY missed. Comment: Who would have thought that in six days after writing this review Star Trek received its first ever televised showing way back on the 8th September 1966 in America.
Gene Roddenberrys remarkably timeless series has stood the test of time extreamly well and because of production costs and believe it or not poor viewing figures it never reached a forth series.It took a new audience me included to realise back in 1974 that Star Trek was a brilliant idea with clever and often funny scripts and storylines.There was nothing else on television back in the seventies to compare it with and this was the main reason for its new found popularity.
For it to take so long to release these episodes onto dvd was extreamly annoying and equally annoying was that the extras you were given in each series box set were pretty poor considering the amount written over the years on the subject.
A profile of William Shatner spends the majority of its time showing his skills as a horseman hardly anything about his memories as Cpt Kirk.What should have been included is interviews with all the surviving members of the cast.
Leonard Nimoy talked at length about his love of photography,hardly anything about playing Spock.
These box sets were so eagerly anticipated that it took a fair while to sink in that the extras didnot match up to the beautifully remastered episodes.I would in hindsight have paid even more for a episode by episode analysis by the relevant experts,even the important pilot episode The Cage was tucked away on the final disc in the series as if it was placed there to fill up disc space.
How many of you out there are annoyed that all the episodes seemed to be jumbled up as if taken randomly from a hat,and the delicate pull out production notes for every episode in each box almost fall apart after each handling.
Here then was a beautifull dvd transfer let down by annoying inexcusable notes,having to play a disc everytime to find what episode number you are after and no background history to each episode such as when was it first televised etc.
You end up feeling that Paramount rushed these dvds onto the market to satisfie waiting fans,the money was clearly spent on the remastering of the episodes which really shows,it would have been better if there were no extras atall just a clearly defined order for every episode,and remember two years ago we were being asked to fork out almost £80 for the pleasure of watching Star Trek once again.
