The Episodes

The original Star Trek series lasted only three years. It would be wonderful to say that it went out with a bang, but, alas, this was not to be. Between Season 2 and Season 3 (during which time an amazing letter-writing campaign saved the show from cancellation), creator Gene Roddenberry effectively gave up creative control of the show. Without the direct input of "The Great Bird of the Galaxy" and with an unfortunate time slot of late Friday nights, the superior writing and thought that made Star Trek special suffered. While the show never became terrible and was always entertaining, it nevertheless was not the show it once had been.

The drop in quality can be seen in the season's first installment, "Spock's Brain." Where once we would have had Captain James T. Kirk eloquently delivering speeches about human freedom, here we see him stomping around an underground city demanding "What have you done with Spock's brain?" to women in ridiculous clothes and vacant smiles. This silliness is surpassed in "The Way to Eden," in which space hippies take over the Enterprise in a search for a planet called Eden, which just happens to be in Romulan space and has poison fruit. The characters are sometimes bent out of shape in this season as well. Mr. Spock, who could barely bring himself to tell his best friend about the Vulcan seven-year mating cycle back in Season 2's "Amok Time," here casually chats about that very cycle with a woman he has known for only a few days (in "The Cloud Minders"). There are many such poor episodes in this season. It occasionally seemed as though the show was parodying itself.

However, despite many unfortunate installments, Season 3 also contains several gems that remind one of just how good Star Trek can be. The season's best episode may be "The Tholian Web," in which the Enterprise is caught in a strange sector of space while at the same time confronting the mysterious Tholians. Captain Kirk is gone for much of the episode, and we witness Spock's difficulties with command. We also see his relationship with Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) strained almost to the breaking point. Season 3 also offers "The Day of the Dove," a Klingon episode that is one of Trek's best anti-war statements. There is "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," which is a simple yet moving tale about the destructiveness of racism. Then there's "The Empath," which provides one of the best examples of the intense loyalty and friendship that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy share. Finally, one must not overlook "Plato's Stepchildren," which, while not a particularly good episode on the whole, featured television's first interracial kiss. Even though Season 3 of Star Trek had more than its share of clunkers, it also contains a few of the series' best efforts.

Ultimately, though, Season 3 of Star Trek sent the series out with a whimper. It has many poor episodes and one or two that are almost embarrassments. Nevertheless, it does contain some magnificent episodes, and throughout each of them, the idea of a peaceful future in which we work to help and not hurt each other is always present.

The Extras

• Enhanced Visual Effects (optional)
• Life Beyond Trek: Walter Koenig
• Chief Engineer's Log
• Memoir from Mr. Sulu
• Captain's Log: Bob Justman
• David Gerrold Hosts "2009 Convention Coverage"
• "The Anthropology of Star Trek" Comic-Con Panel 2009
• "The World of Rod Roddenberry" Comic-Con Panel 2009
• Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest, Part 3
• "To Boldly Go..." Season Three
• Collectible Trek
• Star Trek's Impact
• "The Cape" pilot episode
• "The Cape" extended version
• "Where No Man has Gone Before" unaired, alternate pilot episode
• Mobile Blu
• BD-Live
• Hidden Extras

This release once again features enhanced visual effects on all of the episodes, and, once again, you have the option to also watch the episodes with the original effects. The enhanced scenes for the most part look good. There is a sub-par enhancement, for instance, of the Enterprise at 00:01:00 of "The Way to Eden," and there are some shots that lack enhancement where you would most expect it, as in the red glow of the approaching Abe Lincoln at the beginning of "The Savage Curtain." You can't expect a project like this to go perfectly, though. Overall, the effects' modernizations are a pleasing touch.

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"Life Beyond Trek: Walter Koenig," "Chief Engineer's Log," "Memoir from Mr. Sulu," and "Captain's Log: Bob Justman" are featurettes around ten minutes long each, and they are all fun to watch. Koenig discusses his career for a bit and then goes into showing off his awesome collection of Chekov toys and other Star Trek-related items, "Big Little" books, and pin-back buttons. Watching an ailing Doohan talk about his Star Trek memories -- particularly about helping a young fan who was considering suicide -- is without a doubt the most heartwarming segment here. "Memoir from Mr. Sulu" gives us George Takei discussing Japanese-American history and his devotion to American ideals, and "Captain's Log" features the last recorded interview with Bob Justman as well as cast and crew discussing their memories of him. There's a lot of good stuff on these particular extras.

The Comic-Con and other convention footage is fun, though not exactly enlightening. David Gerrold talks to some fans and former cast and crew, which is at times amusing. "The Anthropology of Star Trek," unfortunately, is slightly lame, as it consists of a panel in which one guy tries to legitimize Trek by explaining what it can teach our culture -- a somewhat baffling thing to do when you're already preaching to devoted fans. "The World of Rod Roddenberry" covers a panel with Rod, the son of Gene Roddenberry, discussing the comic Days Missing.

"Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest" is the third entry in a featurette pseudo-series that has appeared on all of these season releases, documenting Billy Blackburn, who was an extra on the show. This one focuses on the amateur footage he shot on the set, and it highlights the casts' frequent goofing around. Blackburn also talks briefly about makeup, costume design, some of his roles, and the overall love he had for his job.

"To Boldly Go ..." features actors discussing the show's near-cancellation, its fan-fueled resurrection, its placement in the Friday night death slot, and, finally, its cancellation. There are also a few fun anecdotes here, especially Nichelle Nichols' story about her kiss scene with Shatner on "Plato's Children."

"Collectible Trek" is about -- you guessed it -- the collecting of Star Trek memorabilia, be they old, hard-to-find toys or actual set pieces. We learn just how valuable some of this stuff is (an original Klingon ship -- of which there are only one or two -- has sold for over a million bucks), and we hear from a few collectors themselves.

"Star Trek's Impact" is a brief rundown by Rod Roddenberry of his favorite aspects of the show. Mostly, it all comes down to the show's intelligence and his father's vision that humankind is in its infancy -- not surprising, but still good to hear from Rod himself.

The two pilot episodes are historical Trek artifacts, and any fan of the show will want to see them. "The Cape," which has been released before, was the first pilot (yes, Star Trek had more than one pilot episode) and was rejected for being "too cerebral." It is available in both its original cut and an extended cut, the latter with an intro and outro by Gene Roddenberry. "Where No Man has Gone Before," however, is a little piece of gold. An edited version of this (second) pilot appeared as the third episode of Season 1, but this version, the true pilot, was just recently unearthed. Its notable for a act breaks, a different prologue, and an alternate title sequence. Any Trek fan with a Blu-ray player will at least want to rent this disc for this pilot alone.

Mobile Blu allows you to use your iPhone as a remote for the Blu-ray set (granted your system is connected to a wireless network) as well as download video content to your phone. The Season 2 release had this as well, and a lot of people had problems getting it to work (including us). Unfortunately, those problems still exist, so we were unable to test it out. But you know what? We already have a remote. The likely limited downloadable video content we can do without.

The BD-Live capability for this disc is a bit more functional than that of a lot of Blu-rays. You can access cast, crew, and character bios as well as a Star Trek database of alien species, planets, ships, technologies, etc. There is also a somewhat clumsy BD-Live section with short videos that you can download and/or stream (all for free). However, these seem to take too long to download considering how brief they are (and even streaming forces you, oddly, to wait a download-length of time before playing the video), and a number of the videos here are available on the already-included convention-related featurettes. So, it's better that we get more than a lame forum and some barely useful functionality, but it seems Paramount is still trying to find a way to make BD-Live content practical and engaging.

The Easter eggs (accessed by highlighting the unlabeled red light on the menu) are just short plugs for the Blu-ray's visual enhancement.

All in all, there are once again a lot of extra features on these discs. Some of them we probably would have done fine without, but most of them are enjoyable in some way. If you're one for peripheral content, you won't walk away from these extras disappointed.

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Video/Audio

The picture is the most problematic aspect of this release. Whereas the Season 2 Blu-ray looked spectacular, this one looks intermittently great, good, so-so, and bad. The quality can vary from shot-to-shot, and the flaws consist of everything from fuzz to speckles to scratches to dullness. In "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky," Spock's face appears clear at 00:00:14. Then, we cut to a better-quality shot of Chekov and Sulu. Then, however, we cut back to Spock, not five seconds after we first saw him, and we get a picture you'd expect from VHS. Looks like the third season got the shaft both in 1968 and 2009.

Thankfully, the audio did not get the same treatment. We get a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. While 7.1 may be a little overkill for this show, it still sounds great. There is, naturally, little dynamism, but everything is crystal clear, Kirk's voice and bridge whirs alike.

Packaging/Menus

All six discs are contained efficiently in a typical Blu-ray case with two front/back disc pages. The first disc is hidden behind a promo insert in the inside cover, so you might miss it at first. This is pretty easy to notice, though, and the insert, containing no real information, can safely be discarded. The case comes in a glossy, slightly-textured cardboard cover.

The menus are simple: pick an episode, pick an extra feature, or pick your audio. The "real" special features are contained on the last two discs. Other discs have only the Mobile-Blu and BD-Live access. Speaking of which, BD-Live can tend to be a clumsy feature on any release, but, while it certainly has its unwieldy moments here, it's a slight improvement over that of previous Blu-rays. Signing in is quick (once you've registered, that is), and the bios and database information load fast. The aforementioned wait time for the downloadable videos is a pain (we waited three or four minutes at one point to get a fifteen-second clip of Dave Ross saying "Do it!" in HD), but, for what we're accustomed to, this set streamlines the process fairly well.

Conclusion

Despite a wealth of supplementary content, this set is disappointing overall. Not only is the season overwhelmingly sub-par and occasionally downright bad, but the video quality has not been given the treatment due a Blu-ray release. There are certainly many people who will pay seventy or eighty dollars for hours of poorly-written Star Trek episodes, roughly only half of which is presented with a Blu-ray-quality picture, but for the non-die-hards, this is a definite pass.