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 Dolby Surround if you have the equipment. Dolby Surround is available in all cases; I have no idea how faithful it is to the original mixes, though it's important to note that II-VI were released in 70 mm format with 6-track sound, so 5.1 may be more faithful anyway. Even better, the TNG movies all include DTS mixes, which carry much better dynamic contrast than Dolby Digital; loud sounds actually have punch instead of being merely a little louder (and it's said that DTS is also clearer). Well, that's how it works out on my setup anyway.
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.Get more detail about Star Trek: Nemesis.
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