Comments

1. Eddie Brock says:

   January 7, 2010 at 12:43 am

   Like many review­ers, when Best of Star Trek TOS came out this past sum­mer, I was con­fused why SPACE SEED didn’t make the cut, but TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, AMOK TIME, CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, and BALANCE OF TERROR defi­nately rank as top episodes. So when it was announced a sec­ond Best of vol­ume was being released, I crossed my fin­gers yet again and this time, it worked.

   Vol­ume 2 does include SPACE SEED, the first appear­ance of Khan, as well as WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, A PIECE OF THE ACTION, and BABEL. This is where I dis­agree with the selec­tions. I’d have gone for MIRROR, MIRROR and ARENA instead of BABEL and A PIECE OF THE ACTION, but then again, who knows — maybe there’ll be a Vol­ume 3. Then they could include the two part MENAGIRE or THE GALILEO SEVEN.

   From the back of the case:

   WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE — Warp speed goes wild when a Starfleet propul­sion expert and his alien assis­tant come aboard the Enter­prise to increase efficiency.

   SPACE SEED — Kirk dis­cov­ers a ship car­ry­ing cryo­geni­cally frozen sur­vivors of the 1990s Earth war known as the Eugenic Wars.

   A PIECE OF THE ACTION — Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet run like 1920s gang­ster America.

   JOURNEY TO BABEL — The USS Enter­prise is trans­port­ing a del­e­ga­tion of diplo­mats, includ­ing Spock’s par­ents, to a con­fer­ence on Babel when Kirk is stabbed and the ship attacked.

   As a fan of Next Gen­er­a­tion and Deep Space Nine more than the TOS, these vol­umes are great for me and any­one else who just wants a sam­ple. But I begin to won­der if it’s more prac­ti­cal to sug­gest buy­ing the entire sea­sons if they con­tinue to issue best ofs.
   Rat­ing: 3 / 5
2. Señor Spook says:

   January 7, 2010 at 3:06 am

   This is a good — but not great — single-disc com­pi­la­tion for Star Trek new­bies and cheap­skates (such as myself) but not nearly as essen­tial as its com­pan­ion vol­ume, The Best of Star Trek: The Orig­i­nal Series. That first vol­ume con­tained four of the Orig­i­nal Series’ most vital entries, includ­ing the Vul­can adven­ture, “Amok Time,” the amus­ing “The Trou­ble With Trib­bles” and the immor­tal “The City on the Edge of For­ever.” This time around we’re given two bona fide clas­sics, a jolly adven­ture story (on a mob-run planet, no less) and the sec­ond pilot episode com­mis­sioned by NBC which, while his­tor­i­cally impor­tant, is a bit of a snoozer in the adventure-and-suspense depart­ment. Regret­tably, the space (no pun intended… well, maybe just a lit­tle) taken up by these two lat­ter episodes could’ve been occu­pied by other, bet­ter exam­ples (the two-parter, “The Menagerie,” comes imme­di­ately to mind).

   Should you decide to buy this, get it for the tightly paced, well acted “Space Seed” and for “Jour­ney to Babel,” which will give you the quick-and-dirty tour of Gene Roddenberry’s impres­sively diverse uni­verse. Beyond that, you may wish to con­sider pur­chas­ing the series boxed sets as any fur­ther Best Of col­lec­tions would only be super­flu­ous to your intro­duc­tion to — and enjoy­ment of — one of the most inno­v­a­tive and impor­tant Sci­ence Fic­tion shows in tele­vi­sion his­tory.
   Rat­ing: 3 / 5

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