Star Trek: The Original Series - The Complete Second Season (1967)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Fascinating

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

So you bought the "Star Trek" Season Two box set already, back in 2004. Should you swap it out for this new one? Well, it depends. This new set is pretty much the same, aside from some assorted bonuses, but with one major difference: The special effects have been cleaned up and sometimes replaced with digital updates. The best way to see the difference is to look at the original trailers, which have the cheesy, 1967 effects intact. Look at Who Mourns for Adonais?, for example. In that one, a giant hand, superimposed over the picture, grabs the Enterprise in space. Later, the villain enlarges himself to giant proportions in front of the crew. Now the hand is very clearly made of green CGI gas, while the giant-sequence now looks quite a bit sharper; there are no green-screen lines around his body. Even the opening titles appear to have been spruced up. I have mixed feelings on this. The new effects look great, but are the shows really good enough to deserve them? Wouldn't the older, cheaper effects make some of the lamer shows a lot more fun? The answer is up to each individual fan. For me, I checked out half a dozen of the season's best: Mirror, Mirror; Amok Time, The Changeling, Journey to Babel, The Doomsday Machine and The Trouble with Tribbles, and found them quite dazzling. However, to really enjoy the likes of Who Mourns for Adonais?, I think I would have preferred the old, big hand.

DVD Details: Many of the extras are from the 2004 box set, and there are various fun featurettes, home movies, and commentary tracks. The Trouble with Tribbles now comes on its own disc with two bonus episodes, More Tribbles, More Troubles (1973), from the animated "Star Trek" series, and Trials and Tribble-ations (1996), from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." The plastic box looks nice, but it's even more cumbersome than the one for the 2004 release.