In 2016 Star Trek reached it’s 50th Anniversary. To celebrate, Paramount and CBS joined forces to release a box set of all the on-screen original series expliots on bluray.
The packaging
The set comes in a heavy duty cardboard box, which is it self within a plastic sleeve.
The sleeve has a beaming effect, which is appropriate with the crew being in the transporter room!
Underneath the sleeve, the crew appear whole and in silhouette on the front, with a top down view of the Enterprise underneath.
The visual theme of the set is clearly matt black (which is a fingerprint magnet), with the detail picked out in foil. The 50th anniversary delta is also plasted over pretty much every surface!
Within the box, there is another box (Russian doll style), which contains the goodies…more on them shortly.
The art style is consistent throughout, and carries onto the cardboard sleeves containing the discs.
What’s in the box
In total you get 30 blu rays containing The Original Series, The Animated Series and the 6 movies, as well as a documentary covering the movies.
The discs are presented in two amaray cases, one for TV and the other for the movies.
In addition to the discs, the set also contains 6 art cards with Juan Ortiz’s poster interpretations of posters for the movies, and a 50th anniversary enamel pin badge.
The discs
There are a total of 30 discs in this collection. 20 for the original series, three for the animates, 6 for the movies and a final disc for the documentary.
Apart from the documentary, these are the same discs you would get in the standard bluray releases, so you get both the original and remastered versions of TOS, as well as all the extras. Movie wise, that means you get plenty of commentaries and both directors and theatrical cut of The Wrath of Khan.
Sadly, the Motion Picture is theatrical only (so keep hold of your DVD).
The discs are in two amaray cases and each has unique artwork covering one of the episodes on the disc or the movie.
This is a really nice touch as far too often we get plain discs these days.
Conclusion
This is a really nice set, but if you own any of the Original Series bluray sets already it’s probably not worth the cost.
I picked this up at the end of 2016, and it was about £80. For me, well worth the cost – I only owned the DVDs of the series and movies, so the chance to get them all on bluray was a no brainer for me.
To be honest, the art cards and badge are a nice to have rather than a must have. Juan Ortiz’s art is unique – I like it, but I do understand that art is in the eye of the beholder.
If you don’t already own the blurays for The Original Series and Movies, and can get this set at a reasonable price, this is a must have.
Manchester Trekkie 