Star Trek: The Motion Pictures DVD Collection (Motion Picture/ Wrath of Khan/ Search for Spock/ Voyage Home/ Final Frontier/ Undiscovered Country/ Generations/ First Contact/ Insurrection/ Nemesis)
Amazon.com Spanning two decades and countless light years of interstellar adventure, Star Trek: The Motion Pictures Collection is a testament to the enduring goodwill of Gene Roddenberry's optimistic sci-fi concept. Long before Star Wars sparked an explosion of big-screen science fiction, Roddenberry had planned a second Star Trek TV series; the project fizzled, but its pilot script evolved into the first film in Paramount's most lucrative movie franchise. Despite its sluggish pace and bland "pajama" costuming, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) offered a welcomed reunion of the "Classic Trek" cast, packed with Douglas Trumbull's still-dazzling special effects. Trekkers were even more ecstatic when The Wrath of Khan (1982) revived the spirit of the original series, even though director Nicholas Meyer was a Trek neophyte. With Leonard Nimoy directing, The Search for Spock (1984) began where Khan left off, with a thrilling (albeit contrived) obligation to resurrect the formerly ill-fated Mr. Spock.
A box-office smash, Nimoy's The Voyage Home (1986) is the franchise's most accessible adventure--a high point offset by William Shatner's comparatively dreadful Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Meyer (and his penchant for quoting Shakespeare) returned for The Undiscovered Country (1991), a conspiracy thriller that put the series back on track, inspiring fans to invoke the "even number" rule in rating their franchise favorites. Generations (1994) gracefully passed the torch to TV's The Next Generation, bidding farewell to Captain Kirk with honor and integrity intact. Highlighted by the evolving humanity of Brent Spiner's android Lt. Cmdr. Data, First Contact (1996) explored Star Trek history with a logical (hint) surprise encounter, and Insurrection (1998) provided an adequate expansion of the successful NextGen series. Taken as a whole, these ten films demonstrate the consistent vitality of Roddenberry's original vision, stoking any Trekker's appetite for "ongoing missions" in Nemesis and beyond. --Jeff Shannon Most of the feature films were released early in the DVD era, but are represented here in their vastly improved two-disc special editions, which boast widescreen anamorphic pictures, director's cuts of the first two films, numerous commentary tracks by cast and crew, humorous and informative trivia subtitle tracks by Michael and Denise Okuda, and a wide variety of new and vintage documentaries and galleries.
Great setJune 24, 2010 Eric Aderhold(Seattle, WA USA) This is the ultimate Star Trek movie DVD set. Its 20 discs contain all ten films in the original (pre-reboot) Star Trek timeline, as well as one disc of special features for each film. Obviously, not all movies in this set are masterpieces. Some fans will say that Star Trek: The Motion Picture is too long and drawn out, Star Trek V was bad all around, and that Insurrection seems more like a long TV episode than a movie. These criticisms are more or less accurate. However, no Star Trek collection can be complete with only a couple of the movies. This particular set may be showing its age a little bit now that many of the films have been re-released on Blu-Ray, but it's still quite a collection nonetheless.
Simple review for a great collection.June 18, 2010 Andrew J. Gray(Loveland, CO USA) Owning all of the original Star Trek films on VHS is great, but with the transition to newer, digital formats, this is a must-have for Star Trek fans. Watching Star Trek II on DVD is completely awesome. If you don't feel like purchasing every DVD individually, this is a great, neat looking set with each film (except for the 2009 Star Trek).
Don't Order From Them!!!!!June 7, 2010 C. Sanchez 2 out of 3 found this review helpful
They are horrible. They screwed up the shipping label & then took over 3 weeks to get the package back & could not offer tracking on the reshipment. I asked for a refund & their reply was that I provide better shipping info. My info was PERFECT & I had placed more than 3 other orders with other vendors & received my order with NO issues.
They have TERRIBLE customer service!
Great set, though with some minor problemsMay 17, 2010 Daniel Dawson(Spokane, WA USA) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First things first. I see a lot of reviews here actually seem to be about the movies themselves. This is not the place. For that, go to IMDb. Instead, I'm going to review this product, which is the box set of the first ten Star Trek movies on DVD. Well, I'm also going to review the DVDs themselves collectively, but not as movies.
First impressions: Nice and simple. Basically, they just took all of the special edition DVD releases and packaged them into a paperboard box. The box lists all of the movies on the top and side, a picture of Kirk on the front end, and a picture of Picard on the back end. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) looks a little out of place in the set; all the rest of the DVD covers have more or less the same design with a brushed-metal background, but ST:TMP is totally different and has a yellow background.
On closer inspection, there are a few issues. Most noticeable is that the individual DVD packaging is rather shoddy. On some cases, the jacket (which holds the cover sleeve in place) is not fully attached and can end up folded back when the case inserted back into the box, probably leading to eventual complete detachment, so that the sleeve might get separated. The casing itself on a couple of cases is poorly fabricated, with numerous extra incompletely cut bits of plastic (especially around the closing snaps), and one case doesn't even join properly at the top when closed. Also, the retaining hubs look flimsy, though they do seem to be easy to use.
Moving on to the discs themselves, my fairly new (good quality) DVD+RW drive has trouble even recognizing most of the discs for some reason; however, after installing an ancient 12-year-old DVD-ROM drive I happen to still have and testing with it, they work just fine. It might be the copy protection, or it might be something with the newer drive, but they're not compatible.
On the plus side, the content is pretty good, technically speaking. The first two movies are Director's Editions, which means they've been recut according to their respective directors' wishes, a definite improvement for ST:TMP, which originally was missing many important special effects. I'm not familiar with the changes in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but no doubt it was remastered, as the picture looks a lot better than the previous release. The rest of the DVDs are Special Collector's Editions; I don't know what that means, aside from the presence of an audio commentary, a text commentary, and lots of featurettes. But wait--I and II have those too; I guess the only difference is, the rest of the movies are largely unchanged (are they?).
All of the movies include 5.1 sound mixes, preferable IMO to the matrix-encoded Dolby Surround if you have the equipment. Dolby Surround is available in all cases, but go for 5.1 if you can, as all the original series movies (except the first) were released in 70 mm format with 6-track sound (3 front, 1 mono surround, 2 LFE channels, if I understand correctly), so even purists can believe they're more or less faithful to the original mixes. The TNG movies all include DTS mixes, which may or may not sound audibly better; in any case, I always choose DTS when and where available.
Overall, a pretty good box set if you want all ten of these movies together. I would give 5 stars, but I'm taking one off due to all the annoyances mentioned above.
The Worst of the NextGen MoviesJanuary 21, 2010 Joshua Cohen(Boston, MA) 1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Though its production values are excellent, this is easily the worst of the Star Trek Next Generation movies. The story is stupid, even by liberal Star Trek standards, and it contradicts other established story lines. It took four or five novels to fill in the blanks just to make the movie fit into Star Trek lore. It is no wonder the producers and writers of the latest Star Trek movie chose to re-start the entire series' story after this.
If you just want to see cool space battles, this is the movie for you. If you are a Star Trek fan, you will be unhappy.
