Star Trek: The Original Series - Why buy the whole set?
 

I recently went to a few used DVD stores and saw most of the two-episode DVDs going for about $5 to $8 bucks a piece now. I had been planning on getting the Third Season just for the episodes of "The Cage". Today I was able to pick up the DVD with those episodes for just $4.99.

I think the advantage of buying these 2-episode discs (if you can find them in that price range) is that you can choose the episodes you like and avoid some of the clunker ones.

Another advantage, in my opinion, is that the 2-ep keep cases look much nicer than that weird plastic thing the season sets are packaged in.

And, apparently, the transfers for the 2-ep sets are exactly the same as the season sets.

I'm not buying any of them until they do a better job cleaning them up.

I had the entire 40 disc set, but sold in on Ebay once I was fairly confident that box sets would be available -- cleared over $500 after ebay's percentage. The individual discs are good if you want to cherry pick particular eps, but if you're looking to collect entire seasons it's not so great because it takes up a lot of space and it lacks the extras of the boxsets.

I was able to get season 1 box for $50 used at a CDexchange in Georgia. For that much money you can't loose but I would never pay $100 for a season. I'm also not the kind of person who only buys 'the best of' anything, it's all or nothing.

I had been picking up the single disc releases a few at a time, but stopped when I heard about the season sets. When I read the extras weren't that much, and that they weren't in production order like the single discs, I resumed buying. I've been able to find a bunch of them for 6.99 at used stores, and am quickly filling up my collection.

I don't care about the space, and I do care that they are in production order.

I'm not really sure how you expect them to accomplish this. The material is almost 40 years old and has already been "remasterd" twice to my knowledge.

Is it really that big of a deal? I mean, you can watch them in any order you like.

For me, the space issue was the main reason I sold my original episodes and bought the new (making a little extra money along the way). The new sets take up literally 1/5th as much shelf space.

Space is one big reason.

I like almost all the eps in S1 & S2, so why not get the sets. Who knows - maybe for S3, I'll go for individual discs (like for The Enterprise Incident).

I also think they look great, not perfect, but great for a 35 year old show. It will never look as good as Enterprise on DVD.

It is time for everyone to just be happy.

I already had a bunch of the single disc ones, and if you'll look at my collection, you'll understand that I look for any reason not to buy a DVD.

I'm still holding off from buying the season set because of the horror stories I've heard (disks being scatched etc). I assume they're still having problems with this?

Then I doubt you'll ever buy them. Frankly, I think the only way you'd see a better transfer is if you invent a time machine and zip back to when they were shooting, and nab the originals.

In my opinion, the TOS episodes look amazingly good. Paramount may not handle everything exactly the way I"d like (like their ^*%@! desire to re-invent the packaging for every show, or their fascination with "hidden files") but in my experience they've done a bang-up job on the transfers of every single Star Trek show.

Anyway, I think the whole point of buying the set would be if you like the show enough to want to watch most (even if not all) the episodes. I can see why some people might just want to check out the famous episodes (like "Space Seed") but if you are a fan of the whole show, it's cool to have the full season to watch.

The packaging for TOS is really lame (why can't they just use the DS9 style for them all? It was so stylish and practical. Sniff) but it doesn't take up as much space on the shelf as you might think from looking at the picture, at least - not much more than a large-ish boxed set.

FWIW, my TOS set that I got to review wasn't scratched at all.

Personally I think the cases look pretty cool. It's about time the the US Star Trek releases are like the Eurpoean releases. The NG & Voyager packaging was much cooler for R2.

I never picked up the original DVDs since 2 episodes a disc was absolutely insane for a 79 episode series.

I'm not going to run out and buy TOS sets, but I'd like to get them eventually. Any word if there will be a set with all three seasons packaged together?

I'm not buying any of the TOS until the day Paramount releases them with their original mono soundtracks.

Re: I gro
 

There will, yes. There's a picture floating around somewhere, basically the lower half of a box and you top-load the sets in and out. It's nice to actually have a spine of sorts, if you're the sort who likes that on your shelves. (I am, but I might buy them seperately because I want the Best Buy discs.)

A few comments:

I do wish they would have put the DVD set in production order, but it's easy enough to watch them in that order, you just might have to do some more disc swapping than normal.

I'm a completist and I want every episode, so I would never go back to the 2-disc episodes. Although, I'm glad I kept my volume 40 that has the 2 versions of the cage, I don't know why they didn't include that on volume 1.

I like the text commentaries, those definitey are a great reason to buy the set. I haven't watched any of the other special features, but I'm sure they're at least mildly interesting.

I actually like the packaging, myself.

So, what am I saying? I suppose if you don't care about special features and only want certain episodes, go for the 2-disc versions. However, I prefer the whole set and it takes up a lot less room than the 2-disc versions, as well as the extras.

Going by air-date order, 'The Cage' aired years later than any other episode of 'Star Trek'. And I can understand not wanting to put it in the same set as 'The Menagerie'.

I mean, I wish it were, but it will be in set 3, so it doesn't bother me. If I had my druthers, the whole set would be in production order anyway.

Yes, I totally agree it should have been put together in production order. It just seems that since 'The Cage' is the pilot, it would be in the first set. I suppose for those who have not seen 'The Menagerie', though, it might ruin those two episodes.

Either way, as long as it's in vol. 3, it's all right with me.

I've watched this series for years and years in production order. It's actually kinda fun to finally see broadcast order.

The beauty of DVD is you can easily create your own order, so I don't see the big deal. :)

I definitely prefer TV sets to use broadcast order. That's how I'll watch this set when I get around to picking it up.

The Prisoner is a great example of a DVD release gone bad because they didn't use broadcast order. They a used a "fan preferred" order. They even explained each episode's position in the order. Most of the explanations made perfect sense in terms of continuity, but the series didn't feel the same. It got too weird, too fast. The producers knew what they were doing when they picked the broadcast order. The more straightforward spy stuff was put in the beginning to ease people into the show's style. Of course I'm not sure they knew what they were doing when they made the last couple of episodes, but that's another story :-)

The only reason I didn't watch the episodes in broadcast order was that I was buying the discs as they were released. For this Star Trek set, the order of episodes is less significant since you get the whole season at once. You can watch it in any order you like.

That is my first and only thought on this 'issue.'

Re: Re: I gro
 

If that's the case, hopefully there won't be any scatches on the disks. I'm still holding out, the scatches are the only thing stopping me from picking this up.

Re: Star Trek: The Original Series - Why buy the whole set?
 

I like the new collection cases. "looks" have never bothered me when it comes to dvds....to me it's not important. they could wrap the damn discs in newspaper and I'd still be buying them like hotcakes.

I only had about 5 of the previous discs so buying the sets are a no-brainer.....for me.

I was under the assumption that they looked pretty damn good already being that they came from the original film, unlike the new Trek series which were transfered from video tape sources.

which place is selling the old ones 2-ones cheap?