Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault…
The difference between a visionary and a normal, everyday Joe is that a visionary will always see that an insignificant something as actually “Something!”. The visionary in the discussion here is Gene Roddenberry and it’s thanks to him seeing the insignificant as important that we have in our hands Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault .
It’s easy for those out there, the glib, the cynical, to push Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault away as another way to snatch cash out of our hands. This isn’t that. This isn’t three discs with Gene’s “Best Episodes Ever!” slapped on them with a new sheen added to them. This is something rather splendid.
To realise how wonderful and how brilliant this is, all Trek fans have heard the whispers that Lt. Carolyn Palamas pregnancy scene was supposedly filmed in Who Mourns For Adonais but it was cut and will never be seen or heard from again, then here on these discs we discover that Gene Roddenberry – decades back – thought, ‘This piece of film is history’ and squirrelled it away. For it to be delivered to us over fifty years later is – for a fan – mind-blowing. Granted in this example we get a brief clip of the recording and some of McCoy’s dialogue, but there it is. There it is!
Star Trek back in the 1960’s was one of a number of science fiction shows amongst the cop/family/soap series that were being dished out by the numerous television stations across America. There is no reason why Mr. Roddenberry in truth should have saved these slivers of film from his three seasons of the show, but he knew it was that special and for this you’ll be thankful for it.
Across three-discs not only does this deliver twelve classic episodes which include The Corbomite Maneuver, Space Seed, The Devil in the Dark, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror, Mirror and The Trouble with Tribbles, all in 1080p with both DTS 7.1 Master Audio and for those purists amongst us they have also restored original Mono. The cleaned up image is outstanding (though granted the scar on Sulu’s face now may not look as convincing in Mirror, Mirror as it once did) and the quality of sound is unbelievable; even in the opening credits listening to the Enterprise finish its flyby, details have been found and not left out.
Also for each episode they’ve isolated the music track and This Side of Paradise, The City on the Edge of Forever and The Trouble with Tribbles all have a brand new audio commentaries attached to them. You can easily get lost it the treasures on this disc before you turn to the special features.
On each disc you’ll find two specials, one continuing from the first disc and the second taking you behind the scenes of creating Star Trek: The Original Series. The running special is a documentary spread across three discs and is titled, “Inside the Roddenberry Vault” which takes you on the journey from the film canisters being discovered, which were in Gene Roddenberry’s possession for decades. Throughout this documentary numerous Trek luminaries & fans including William Shatner, D.C. Fontana, Bobby Clark, Leslie Parrish, Bill Prady, David Mirkin, Bill Nye & NASA’s Bobak Ferdowsi give the words, thoughts and memories on Trek.
The other specials include Revisiting a Classic, Visualising the Fantastic and Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor show the amount of work that went on in the background to make Star Trek that bit more special than anything else that was on the television at the time. Still to this day it puts to shame a large number of television programmes currently in production.
Gene Roddenberry was a visionary and his legacy still to this day amazes myself and millions of people around the planet. Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault shows that this one man saw something wonderful and important in everything. Make room on your shelf for you need to buy this.
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Originally published December 7, 2016. Updated January 23, 2020.
