I watched the WNMHGB pilot after receiving my S3 set last night. I certainly enjoyed seeing this alternate version, but one thing that really stood out for me was the music and some of the sound effects.

Even though the music for this episode is presented in DTS 2.0 only, it really packed a punch :) ! The bass was rumbling out of my subwoofer, and there were many instances where I think they “punched up” the overall volume. The music for the scene where Mitchell negates the force field and gives Dr. Dehner powers really sent chills down my spine and practically knocked me out off of my seat (even though I’ve seen it I don’t know how many times before)…as did the sound effects when Mitchell was causing the giant rock to come down on Kirk’s head and the subsequent battle between the two.

Don’t get me wrong…I love the surround sound/effects used to enhance all of the other episodes on all of the season sets, but there is still something to be said for the original way the sounds/music was done…

Can’t wait to start delving into the S3 episodes in HD :) …

Jon

Those are some things I also found disconcerting about the re-do of it all. There was a sound those musicians of the ’60’s had that wasn’t quite the same as the recent recording. And the original vocalist wasn’t as polished as the newer singer. I kind of liked her rawness. It’s all the aesthetic, the personal sensibilities of it all. Stuff that I’ve found through the years, doesn’t bother, or isn’t noticed by others. My wife says I have issues. Maybe so….my ears are always open (and I’ve abosorbed a lot through the years), and I just know what I like.

The third season arrangement is somewhat different, as are the first two seasons and it’s uniqueness is somewhat lost in the new release. Allthough I find in my 5 speaker surround system, it isn’t as bad as listening on my computer.

Also, yes it would have been great if they had done further restoration to many of the film elements. I suspect the budget didn’t allow for the extra time to do so as Toshiba had pulled back from the project.

All in all, however it’s a big improvement over the past releases on DVD.

What is up with the small case compared to the larger case for season 1 and 2? Looks silly on the shelf….

Also, it is anoying to have to take a disk out to read the episode list.

But over all the blueray was worth the money. My Trek collection is now complete….(until the 3D holgram version somes out in 2035! )

main theme: since the addition of the female-singer to the arrangement during the 2nd season, i’d felt the 5.1 recreation of the theme presented the vocalist far to forward in the mix (to my tastes). this 3rd season theme was even more distracting. to begin with, shatner’s “space the final frontier” intro used to have some audio-effect (reverb, perhaps) applied until he utters the word “Enterprise”. i always found that unique and effective. it appears to be completely dispensed with. and even the arrangement seems to do little to emulate the original. very odd.

and as with previous seasons, there are often some shots having so much debris in them that it’s difficult to believe any human-eye was applied to the restoration. it’s evenpredictable during any layered-shot (such as “beaming-in” shots and especially during viewscreen shots). because there are several film layers overlapping for these FX, it frequently increases the dust in the shots and it’s so obvious to the viewer.

in fact, a superior clean-up of the end-credits and, especially, the original-FX should have been accomplished.

also, with the wonderfully sharp, bright, colorful imagery in the episodes restored, scenes that fading from one to the other look totally washed-out. perhaps additional color restoration and sharpening should have been individually applied to help improve their appearance (relative to the superior footage surrounding the edit).

finally, i can’t caution boxed-set collectors enough. when you’ve purchased one, it can be months or years before you discover that one of the discs is defective. then, it’s obviously too late to return the thing and this is extremely likely to happen – as i found in my STTNG 7season-box set (49discs) and Stargate SG-1 (10seasons).

a bit surprised none of these criticisms have been mentioned at all on the reviews on this site (with advance-apologies if i’ve simply missed them).

engage…

That’s wonderful accidentail foreahadowing to Star Trek The Motion Picture!

I read two or three books about Abe Lincoln after I saw that episode in 3rd grade.

Can you imagine Captain Picard or Janeway or Archer fighting to the death with George Washington or Ben Franklin against a Klingon and Ghangis Khan?