It’s been a busy year for Star Trek home media releases, with both the Original Series and The Next Generation re-released in new full-series packaging designs back in June.

In addition, we got an HD release of Nick Meyer’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut a few months back, bringing the special edition of that second Trek film to Blu-ray for the first time.

Now, the Trek home media releases continue with Star Trek: 50th Anniversary Collection, a massive 30-disc package containing all three seasons of the Original Series, the first Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Animated Series, all six TOS films with a movie-centric bonus disc, and some exclusive Star Trek swag.

We’ll say up front, though, that much of the material in this box set has been released in other sets over the last few years.

The twenty Original Series Blu-ray discs are the same first issued in 2009, and the Trek movie discs here were also put out that same year, though the Wrath of Khan disc has been thankfully swapped out for 2016’s Directors Cut – and yes, it is the corrected version of the TWOK:DC release, so if you were waiting on that one, this box has the ‘good’ encode of the film.

The first new addition in this box set is the high-definition debut of Star Trek: The Animated Series, which takes up three discs in this big set, packaged with the Original Series in one big disc case.

This set carries over all the text and audio commentaries from the 2006 DVD release of The Animated Series, as well as the interview features – but aside from the 1080p presentation of the animated episodes, there is no new bonus material on the TAS discs at all, a somewhat disappointing discovery.

If you’ve seen the HD version of “More Tribbles, More Troubles” on the TOS Season 2 Blu-ray, it’s a solid indicator of the quality of this set’s TAS presentation. Things are a little sharper, and film grain is more prominent, but to be honest, there’s really not much improvement that can be made from Filmation’s somewhat under-detailed animation (see our sample screencaps below).

We were hoping for perhaps a new interview documentary feature, a new commentary or two, or at least a nicer copy of the 1970’s environmental awareness TV spot featuring the animated crew, but alas, none of that is included here.

We’re expecting a standalone Blu-ray edition of The Animated Series to be available later this year, so if TAS was your big draw for this box set, it may be worth saving some money to wait for that separate release.

In terms of collectibles, the box set contains a beautiful black-and-gold Starfleet delta badge emblazoned with the “Trek 50” logo – a lovely inversion of the QMx gold-and-black design – exclusive to this release.

The other themed material is a set of six vector-graphic movie prints, one for each Trek film, by longtime Trek artist Juan Ortiz. These are printed in glossy color on heavyweight paperboard, and packaged in their own black-and-gold envelope inside the box.

All thirty Blu-rays in this collection feature disc artwork for the first time – and thankfully, TV episode titles are now included on the disc labels – and the back of each case showcases all the new vector disc art in their bright colors. Aside from that, as mentioned above, there’s no new content on the TV series discs.

As for the movies, however, there’s a brand-new bonus disc featuring nearly two-and-a-half hours of new material.

Star Trek: The Journey to the Silver Screen is a new, five-part documentary feature focusing on the transition of the Original Series into a feature-film franchise, from the resurrection of the show for The Motion Picture to the final outing in The Undiscovered Country.

While the third chapter in this feature (“The Genesis Effect”) is duplicated from the Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut disc first put out in June, the other four parts of Journey to the Silver Screen are brand new, and exclusive to this bonus disc.

• TOS writers Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold, Trek historian Mark Altman, Larry Nemecek, and several others are interviewed in The New Frontier, discussing the earliest efforts to bring Star Trek back to life in the mid-1970’s – from the very first New York City fan convention, to the launch of Starlog magazine, as well as the various failed development projects including The God Thing, a dark time-travel epic featuring Klingons conquering Earth and Kirk facing off with John F. Kennedy, Planet of the Titans, and the proposed Star Trek: Phase II television series.

• Full of archival photographs from on the set and behind the scenes (as well as some archival interview footage from the TMP Director’s Edition DVD), Maiden Voyage spends half an hour inside the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with a collection of new interviews covering the rocky launch of the Star Trek film franchise, the script battles between Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston during the midst of filming, and the challenges of technical work on the movie – as well as reaction from fans after the film’s release.

• While The Genesis Effect goes deep into The Wrath of Khan, The Dream is Alive spends the most of its time on the 1980’s run of Trek films. Trek historian Mark Altman continues to provide insight into early script ideas and dropped concepts – including Sulu leading the charge to steal the Enterprise in Trek III and the HMS Bounty appearing over the 1986 Super Bowl in Trek IV – with Nick Meyer, Ralph Winter, and other knowledgeable people weighing in throughout the thirty-minute feature.

• The final chapter on the bonus disc, End of an Era, centers on 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and the conclusion of the Original Series run of films. Altman weighs in once more on early script ideas – including a version with a Kirk/Saavik romance, one where the Enterprise crew had to be recruited for ‘one last mission’ from various jobs on Earth, and an early try at including the Next Generation cast as a crossover film, years ahead of Star Trek: Generations.In addition, Nick Meyer offers some regrets as to the outcome of antagonistic meetings with Gene Roddenberry during the film’s development, and the writer/director also reveals that the film was at one point cancelled due to budgetary negotiations.

This is display-worthy, beautiful box set which is a lovely 50th Anniversary release – but is once again undercut by the absence of some notable classic Star Trek content. While the packaging indicates this is “the biggest, most comprehensive Star Trek collection ever released” – and we can’t argue with that statement – the DVD-only Director’s Editions of The Motion Picture and The Undiscovered Country are once again left to gather dust in the Paramount archives.

In addition, the Judith and Gar Reeves-Stevens’ audio commentary on “The Enemy Within” – exclusive to the 2008 Alternate Realities Fan Collection DVD set – has not been ported to this release. Luckily, all of these DVD releases are now relatively inexpensive purchase for you bonus-feature completists.

One other inclusion we would have liked to see is the various TOS actors’ appearances in later iterations of Star Trek – McCoy, Spock, and Scotty on The Next Generation; Captain Sulu on Voyager – not to mention James T. Kirk’s final adventure in Star Trek: Generations. This being a TOS-specific collection, however, we can understand the exclusion of this content.

It’s great to finally get the HD scans for all of The Animated Series, and the packaging here earns high marks on its own – but for those fans who already own TOS and all the films on Blu-ray, you’ll need to decide if the movie bonus disc and pin/poster material is enough to justify an expensive re-purchase with a standalone Animated Series release expected to arrive later in 2016.

The Star Trek: 50th Anniversary Collection beams down next week – if it’s on your shopping list, you can use our order links below.

Order the Star Trek 50th Anniversary Collection today!

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