The Original Series Season Two Remastered

The second season of tweaked and remastered original Trek contains more than its fair share of goodies; for many people this season – in which the show had found its feet and was presenting an increasingly coherent view of the 23rd century – is the standout of the original run. There were moves into comedy (A Piece of the Action, The Trouble with Tribbles) and more in the way of direct social comment in ‘parallel world’ stories like Bread and Circuses and Patterns of Force. There were personnel changes too, with Gene L Coon hanging up his producing hat (but still turning in great scripts like Metamorphosis), Dorothy Fontana becoming script consultant and, in front of the cameras, the arrival of Walter Koenig as Chekhov, providing a bit of Cold War thaw and mop-topped eye-candy for any teenagers watching.

This remastered season offers some real improvements and neat additions to beloved episodes like Amok Time – with some subtly effective opening out of the Vulcan landscape that references both the animated episode Yesteryear and the later movies like The Search for Spock. The Doomsday Machine still (and quite rightly, if you ask me) resembles a rampaging interstellar Cornish pasty, albeit an undeniably better looking one; but the trashed USS Constitution now really does look like a starship that’s come off worse from a bout with this planet-killing monster rather than the model kit Enterprise you set fire to as a kid.

Other exterior effects shots remain delightfully true to the originals, never stepping outside the 1960s visual style but adding extra life and movement – we get to see Deep Space Station K-7 in Tribbles from all sorts of new angles, the multiple starship exercise in The Ultimate Computer is a lot more convincing, and The Immunity Syndrome’s giant amoeba looks, well, less like a magnified little amoeba.

Plenty of enjoyable bonus stuff is provided too, including more of extra Billy Blackburn’s home movies and memories – great footage from the shooting of Friday’s Child (silliest costumes in all of Star Trek?) at the legendary Vazquez Rocks – and the ever-charming Leonard Nimoy’s reflections on playing Spock (as immortalised in those conflicted autobiographical works I Am Not Spock and its eventual sequel I Am Spock). The lovely Nichelle Nichols gets a lengthy segment looking at Uhura, and there are some fascinating interviews, too, with designer Matt Jefferies (whose name shall live forever in the Jefferies Tubes of every starship), a slightly cantankerous gentleman of the old school who offers a glimpse of a long-vanished Hollywood (as well as useful advice on how to create some of the best SF designs ever committed to film on a zero-budget).

Tribble fans are particularly well catered for; we get the animated episode (written by original Tribbles creator David Gerrold, who provides a commentary) More Tribbles, More Troubles (intended as a third season show but never made) and the wonderful Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations, in which Sisko and co find themselves on K-7 100 years in the past, sharing scenes – through Forrest Gump-like digital magic – with the original series crew in scenes from The Trouble with Tribbles. There are some featurettes on this DS9 classic (not new, just cribbed from the DS9 DVDs) and others on the Kirk-Spock-McCoy troika and much more, but – Billy Blackburn aside – nothing new to this set as far as I can tell. All in all, though, it’s an essential release, and the Blu-ray version gives you both the old and new effects to choose from.

Star Trek: The Original Series Season Two Remastered, Paramount Home Entertainment DVD £39.99