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J.J. Abrams' bold reboot of "Star Trek" takes the original
characters into uncharted waters. Paramount has chosen to
reissue the original cast films on Blu-ray taking us on
a tour of more familiar waters that might have been over
fished. That doesn't mean the fishing here can't be rewarding.
The "Trek" films have always been a mixed bag; partially
out of a desire to keep this bankable project on a tight
leash with smaller budgets than the ponderous "Star Trek:
The Motion Picture". While that film was a success at the
box office it didn't bring in "Star Wars" type of numbers
which disappointed Paramount and shook their faith in The
Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry. Paramount turned
to TV producer/writer Harve Bennett who revived "Star Trek"
by returning to the formula that worked best for the series.
***
Bennett recognized that the value in "Star Trek" was
the relationship between the three central characters Kirk,
Spock and McCoy. He returned to the strength of the series--character
focuses stories. ***
As far as the quality of the films themselves even
with the small budgets for the films all three are well
written with strong performances and direction. Unfortuntely
we don't get the "Director's Special Edition" of "The Wrath
of Khan" which has been digitally restored (the film was
in fairly bad shape) and remastered. Grain is quite noticable
throughout and it appears that DNR wasn't used quite as
heavily here as on the other two films (which were remastered
first). ***
The script by Jack Soward (based on a story by Soward
and writer/producer Harve Bennett) for "Khan", by Bennett
for "Spock" and with Nicholas Meyer for "Voyage Home" are
all strong and feature the humor/action that was characteristic
of some of the best episodes of the original series. Bennett
never really got the credit (or the thank you from Roddenberry)for
reviving the show and giving it a production that captured
the best of Trek. ***
"Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" scripted by Jack Soward
and directed by Nicholas Meyer focuses on an aging crew
very much aware of their mortality. Captain Kirk (William
Shatner) must stop his nemesis Khan (Richardo Montalban)
from finding the Genesis device. To protect the Federation
and his crew he ends up putting those he cares about at
risk. ***
"Star Trek: The Search for Spock" continues the story
with Kirk trying to help a deeply disturbed Dr. McCoy (the
late DeForest Kelley) who has had Spock's "spirit" planted
inside his head. Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Grissom with Kirk's
son David (the late Merritt Butrick) and Lt. Savik (Robin
Curtis takingon the role originated by Kirstie Alley in
the "Khan"). It seems that a renegade Klingon Commander
(Christopher Lloyd) has taken an interest in the Genesis
project and wants all information on it seeing it as the
ultimate weapon. ***
"Star Trek: The Voyage Home" features a demoted Kirk
going into Earth's past to bring back a pair of whales to
save future Earth. It seems a mysterious probe has shown
up destroying the planet and waiting for the response from
whales which could stop the probe from turning the Earth
into a giant sauna depleting our atmosphere and water. ---
Image & Sound:
The "Star Trek" films with the original cast gets a
Blu-ray release with mixed results. I sprung for the trilogy
because, frankly, outside of "Star Trek: The Undiscovered
Country" these are the best films from the series of films
produced with the original cast. "The Wrath of Khan", "The
Search for Spock" and "The Voyage Home" are ALL in high
definition contrary to a misinformation on the web. ***
Paramount has used too much Digital Noise Reduction
to eliminate film grain which "softens" the image and eliminates
much of the detail that Blu-ray is famous for. The first
film which has been restored and remastered doesn't suffer
as badly as some of the others in the series because it
was transferred last when Paramount began to move away from
overusing DNR. It still could look much better with a much
stronger, sharper looking transfer. ***
In the case of "Spock" and "Home" the result is that
skin textures look waxy lacking detail. Edge enchancement
has been used to "refocus" the image a bit (DNR is a technique
used to manage film grain and video "noise" but when over
used it robs the image of the very qualities that make Blu-ray
outstanding. This is often done by digitally throwing the
image out of foucs if I recall correctly and then using
edge enhancement to refocus the image). I also suspect that
an earlier high def transfer perhaps for the 2002 two disc
DVDs might have been used here. It would certainly explain
the high level of DNR used to "smooth" over the images and
that wouldn't be quite as noticable ona much more forgiving
DVD. ***
You probably won't notice the difference unless you're
watching this on a monitor above 40 inches (and if you watch
it with a projection system it will be REALLY noticeable).
That said, all three films could look better but they still
look better than the DVDs. Audio sounds terrific. ***
Audio sounds terrific throughout the set with a nice,
robust 7.1 mix for "Khan" and although the mix isn't as
dramatic sounding as a more recent film, Paramount has done
a nice job in the remix department. I just wish this much
attention had been paid to making sure that visual portion
of the film looked as good as possible. ---
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