Remastered versions of first season of the original Star Trek series are now available from Apple’s iTunes Store. The series Season Pass is the deal to get: it grants access to all the remastered first season episodes in the Store, both in the Store now and in future.
Plus, the remastered episodes are the original, 50-minute episodes, not the versions re-cut for syndication that are currently appearing on television! After watching a couple of the episodes available on iTunes, the cut-for-TV versions seem to suffer from a significantly shortened attention span, and the rhythm of the original teleplay is lost. Now, I just need to get Apple TV to watch them on my television…
The remastered versions of the show have reinvigorated my love of The Original Series. So many of the episodes are just as relevant today than they were back then (if not more so), and make for fascinating viewing.
I’ve bought a few favorites from iTunes, but the reason for the remastering is to prep the show for an eventual release in HD format, so I’ll probably wait until the DVD-HD/Blu-Ray sets go on sale to make my season purchases.
Good point, Dave. HD will be the way to go… eventually. I’m just not sure that I want to wait that long (and buy the necessary equipment) when I can watch what I want right now for a relatively modest price (about the same as three DVD movies).
Just wondering if anyone knows if the ST:TOS eps available on Xbox Live are remastered or the syndicated versions. I’m assuming the latter, but hope springs eternal!
Slayve: Did some digging and as far as I can gather, only one release-type of downloadable HD Star Trek:TOS remasters exist.
Star Trek.com states:
and, TrekMovie.com (which stylizes itself as the source for Trek remastered) says:
Since neither website specifically cite the Xbox release as the ‘uncut’ versions, we’re left assuming that they’re the same as the iTunes releases. Using the powers of science and logic acquired from decades of watching Trek, I checked into the running-time of Balance of Terror, Miri, and The Naked Time on both iTunes and Xbox Live Marketplace, and they each matched up at 50 minutes, which Dr. Geek assures me is the proper runtime for pure, uncut episode of TOS.