I'm not quiet sure what to do with myself these days having now written three very positive Star Trek reviews in a row. The new movie which I was sure was going to be the death of Trek turned out to be shockingly good, the re-release of the first season of the original series on Blu-ray was basically the perfect gift for the Trekkie who had everything and now the Blu-ray presentation of the first Six Motion Pictures has all but left me speechless.

Some people may wonder how you can watch certain movies time and again and never be bored by them. Or how a simple thing like presenting the same material on DVD vs. VHS and then later on Blu-ray vs. DVD could make that much of a difference to warrant the re-buying the same titles over and over again. These people are not Star Trek fans.

I can't describe how great it was to watch these films again in all their hi-def Blu-ray glory. You really do experience it all over again with a picture sharper than ever before and a sound quality we have never experienced before. There are a lot of scenes that stand out in my mind from the six movies that really benefit from these enhanced graphics but for the sake of brevity I'm going to limit myself to mentioning but a few.

The first that jumps to mind is the battle between the Enterprise and the Klingon Bird of Prey Captained by Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The sharpness of the colors of the torpedoes and the subsequent explosions and of course the historic and tragic eventual destruction of the Enterprise herself were all brilliantly realized in these effects; Not to mention the scenes of the Genesis planet set in flames as it tears itself apart. You can't truly appreciate those scenes until you've witnessed them in hi-def.

The same goes for the battles in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and in my personal favorite, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. William Shatner's best delivery of a line ever (and believe me that's saying a lot) takes place towards the end of the final battle in VI with the Bird of Prey who can fire while cloaked. When he's finally able to give the order to "Fire!!!" it's delivered with such passion that still to this day each time gives me goose-bumps.

In the case of good old Star Trek V: The Final Frontier I think the enhanced visual effects actually hurt the film. Now, keep in mind this is generally considered to be the worst of the films, or at least tied with The Motion Picture for the title of worst Original Star Trek movie. So the fact that these sharper images reveal even more flaws in the film isn't really

a surprise. For example, there's a scene in the shuttle bay after they have crashed back on board the Enterprise where Spock's evil brother Sybok fights with Captain Kirk. At one point as Kirk is being thrown up against the side of a Shuttlecraft, you can clearly see the wire that was holding him up. Nitpicking? Perhaps. It's just poor filmmaking to leave such an obvious thing in there to be seen by all. And that wasn't the only instance of it in the film, but it's the only one I'll mention now.

The film least affected by the Blu-ray transfer is ironically the most successful of the lot, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. It's definitely the least special effects heavy film and as a result plays very much the same now as it did when it first came out. It's such a great film that there really weren't any areas that needed improvement.

I do have one major complaint here (big surprise right?) but there are longer versions of both The Wrath of Kahn and The Undiscovered Country floating around out there somewhere but I have no idea where to find them. Why the studio didn't want the longer cuts of those films in this collection is a mystery to me. You'll notice in Wrath of Kahn the scenes with Scotty's nephew Peter Preston have been completely cut out along with a handful of other scenes, and in Undiscovered Country they actually took out some scenes that were in the previous DVD release of the film. For example at the end of the movie the Klingon assassin is revealed to be Colonel West, a human played by Rene Auberjonois of Deep Space Nine fame… but in this version that reveal is never made. That's just weird. No idea why that decision was made or if it was just a careless oversight.

Aside from that point, however, when it came to the previous versions and presentations of these movies I've always been impressed but also felt that the effects were slightly lacking of course because of the technology of the time. But now, I'd now have to say that the full-on 'as-good-as-it-could-possibly-get' versions of these films have finally been achieved. So, on the technical front this set is worth the purchase price just because of that alone.

Thankfully Paramount did NOT stop there. They loaded this set with tons of extras and special features that every fan is going to want to see. Some of these extras have been carried over from previous releases of the films but each movie has at least a few new ones added in. There are so many of these extra features that I can't go into all of them, but standing out in my mind are interviews with Robin Curtis, Christopher Lloyd and the actor who played 17 year old Spock,

Stephen Manly from Star Trek III, an interview with Walter Koenig about Chekov's On Screen Moments and Tributes to Ricardo Montalban, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley. They were all fantastic to watch. Other stand outs are the original interviews that were done with cast members before each film came out those are fantastic! Pay particular attention to the Star Trek: V Press Conference where Shatner forgets Walter Koenig's name, it's hysterical.

The BEST ever special feature comes in the form of a seventh disc containing a brand new 70 minute long roundtable style discussion between William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes moderated by Whoopi Goldberg. This is hands down the best thing they could have done at this point. They've been re-cutting and re-editing the same old interviews over and over again for these releases over the years. So it's wonderful to see them put the time and the money into doing something fresh and new that I'm sure will be source material now for tons of releases to come! This is yet another thing about this set that all by itself is worth the purchase price.

I can't say it loudly or clearly enough folks – GO BUY THIS SET! You'll LOVE IT!

Collection Grade: A

Blu-ray Special Features Grade: A+

Overall Grade: A