Star Trek: The Original Series: 60th Anniversary Blu-Ray - William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, James Doohan, Walter Koenig

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

(aka "Star Trek" or "Star Trek: The Original Series" or "Star Trek: TOS")

Created by Gene Roddenberry
USA 1966 - 1969

Star Trek ran on NBC for three seasons, from September 8th 1966 to June 3rd 1969, seventy-nine episodes conceived by Gene Roddenberry as, in his famous pitch, a wagon train to the stars. It was simply Star Trek then; the retronym The Original Series arrived only once there were sequels to distinguish it from, and the franchise that grew out of it has since made the qualifier necessary in a way nobody in 1966 could have imagined. The premise was elegantly simple and endlessly extensible: in the 23rd century, the starship Enterprise and her crew — Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), his Vulcan first officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) — travel the galaxy on a five-year mission of exploration. Shatner's voice-over stated it weekly over the opening titles: "Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

That it survived to become the most durable property in American television is close to miraculous, because almost nothing about its network life suggested it would. Ratings were soft from the start and advertisers were unenthusiastic; cancellation was being discussed inside NBC before the first season had even finished. Desilu's Lucille Ball is generally credited with keeping it alive at that point — Bay Area horror host John Stanley, in I Was a TV Horror Host, writes that she "single-handedly kept Star Trek from being dumped from the NBC-TV lineup" — a fact worth sitting with, given that the show's continued existence came down to one studio head's conviction rather than any commercial logic.

The reprieve was temporary. When cancellation loomed again at the end of the second season, the series' fans mounted a letter-writing campaign of a scale and organization television had never seen, orchestrated largely by Bjo and John Trimble, and NBC relented. What it granted with one hand it took back with the other: a third season, but banished to Friday nights at ten — the timeslot that has killed more genre series than any executive ever has — and with a substantially reduced budget. Roddenberry withdrew from day-to-day producing in response, handing the line-producer role to Fred Freiberger, and the drop in ambition across much of the third season is visible on screen. The series that had been arguing about racism, war and colonialism in its best hours spent too much of its final year on cheaper sets with thinner scripts.

Posters

September 4th, 1966 - June 3rd 1969

Review: Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray

Box Cover		CLICK to order from: BONUS CAPTURES:
Distribution	Paramount - Region FREE - Blu-ray
Runtime	0:50:42.205
Video (sample)	1.33:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 47,686,086,397 bytes Episode: 8,140,627,968 bytes Video Bitrate: 22.44 Mbps Codec: VC-1 Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Sample Blu-ray:
Audio	DTS-HD Master Audio English 4687 kbps 7.1 / 48 kHz / 4687 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit) Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB DUBs: Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB Dolby Digital Audio French 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps / DN -27dB
Subtitles	English (SDH), Spanish, French, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Paramount Edition Details: • see below Blu-ray Release Date: September 8th, 2026 Custom Blu-ray Cases Chapters 7 each

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Paramount Blu-ray (September 2026):

The package

Paramount's 60th anniversary reissue of Star Trek: The Original Series arrives in three configurations, all dated September 8th 2026: a DVD set, a standard Blu-ray set at, and the Amazon exclusive reviewed here. The exclusive is listed as a twenty-one-disc set - which sounds impressive until you notice that the twenty-first disc is a four-inch vinyl record of the main title theme and a selection of series sound effects. The actual program content occupies twenty BD-50s, which is precisely the configuration of the 2009 season releases: seven discs for Season One, seven for Season Two, six for Season Three. Packaging is a slipbox, and the collector's premium consists of a set of lobby cards reproducing episode stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.

There is no delicate way to put this: the discs inside are the 2009 discs. The M2TS stream files carry a modification date of 18 February 2009

- consistent with the authoring of the Season One set that reached retail that April - and spot-checked bitrates and file sizes match our measurements from the original release exactly. Nothing has been re-encoded, re-authored or re-mastered. This is the third time these encodes have gone to press: the individual season sets in 2009, the 50th anniversary Complete Series box, and now this.

Video

1080p, VC-1, in the original 1.33:1. Season One episodes run 7.5–12 GB apiece, averaging in the neighborhood of 24 Mbps, on dual-layer discs filled to 42–47 GB. Those are our 2009 figures, and they are also our 2026 figures. The "enhanced" option remains. Anyone hoping the sixtieth anniversary might prompt a fresh 4K pass at the original camera negatives - which CBS scanned in HD during the 2006-08 remastering project, and which by any reasonable estimate could support a considerably better result today - will be disappointed. VC-1 is itself the giveaway; nobody authors a catalogue title in VC-1 since 2020.

NOTE: We have added 52 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE.

Taken on their own terms, though, these remain good-looking discs. The transfers were a genuine revelation in 2009 - color separation on the uniforms and set lighting, the texture of Theiss's costume fabrics, grain that behaves like grain - and they hold up better than the codec choice would suggest. The seamless-branching implementation is intact: every episode can be viewed with the original 1966-69 optical effects or with the CGI enhancements produced for the 2006 remastering, with the player flagging the transition as each enhanced sequence begins. The enhancements remain confined to space shots, planetary surfaces and the Enterprise herself; nothing involving the actors has been touched. Whether you regard that work as respectful restoration or unnecessary meddling, the point is that the choice is still yours, on every episode, and it costs nothing to ignore.

Audio

Unchanged as well: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 at 24-bit as the default, with the original mono preserved as Dolby Digital 2.0, plus French and Spanish mono dubs. Subtitles are offered in English SDH, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

The 7.1 remix is the aspect of these discs that has aged least gracefully - it is a genuinely lossless presentation of a rechannelled mix, with Alexander Courage's theme and the Fred Steiner/Sol Kaplan cues spread wide and the effects given surround placement they never had. Some viewers love it. Purists will go straight to the mono, and there the compression stings: lossy Dolby for the original track was a defensible 2009 compromise and is an indefensible 2026 one. A lossless mono option is the single cheapest improvement Paramount could have made to this reissue, and they did not make it.

Extras

Everything from 2009 is present, disc for disc, and nothing has been added. Season One's seven discs break down as follows, and it's worth laying out in full because the distribution is uneven and readers hunting a particular feature will want to know where it lives.

Season One - seven discs

Disc One opens the series with "The Man Trap," "Charlie X," "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Naked Time," plus preview trailers for each episode, the remastering documentary Spacelift: Transporting Trek Into the 21st Century, and the first of the Starfleet Access picture-in-picture tracks, on "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

Disc Two carries "The Enemy Within," "Mudd's Women," "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," "Miri" and "Dagger of the Mind." Preview trailers only - the one bare disc in the season.

Disc Three holds "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Menagerie, Part 1," "The Menagerie, Part 2" and "The Conscience of the King," with preview trailers, Reflections on Spock, and a Starfleet Access track spanning both parts of "The Menagerie."

Disc Four carries "Balance of Terror," "Shore Leave," "The Galileo Seven" and "The Squire of Gothos," with preview trailers, Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner, and Starfleet Access on "Balance of Terror."

Disc Five holds "Arena," "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Court Martial" and "The Return of the Archons," with preview trailers and two retrospectives, To Boldly Go… Season One and The Birth of a Timeless Legacy.

Disc Six is the most heavily loaded of the season: "Space Seed," "A Taste of Armageddon," "This Side of Paradise" and "The Devil in the Dark," alongside preview trailers, the BD-Java Interactive Enterprise Inspection, the writers' featurette Sci-Fi Visionaries, and Starfleet Access on "Space Seed."

Disc Seven closes the season with "Errand of Mercy," "The Alternative Factor," "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Operation: Annihilate!," plus preview trailers, Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories, Kiss 'N' Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century, and a final Starfleet Access track on "Errand of Mercy."

The Starfleet Access tracks - six episodes' worth across the season, assembled by Michael and Denise Okuda with David Rossi and Daren Dochterman - remain the standout supplement of the entire box, layering production history, technical annotation and archival material over the episode as it plays. The Blackburn home movies are the other real treasure: 8mm color footage shot on set by a background performer, and about as close as anyone will get to standing on Stage 9 in 1967.

Season Two — seven discs

Disc One opens with "Amok Time," "Who Mourns for Adonais?," "The Changeling" and "Mirror, Mirror," alongside preview trailers, the second installment of Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest (12 min., HD) and a Starfleet Access track on "Amok Time" - a good one, given how much production lore attaches to Theodore Sturgeon's script and the first trip to Vulcan.

Disc Two carries "The Apple," "The Doomsday Machine," "Catspaw," "I, Mudd" and "Metamorphosis," with preview trailers and a short featurette on the creation of Chekov.

Disc Three holds "Journey to Babel," "Friday's Child," "The Deadly Years," "Obsession" and "Wolf in the Fold," with preview trailers and a companion featurette on working with the actors.

Disc Four is the anomaly of the set and the centerpiece of the season's supplements: a single episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles," surrounded by the largest extras package on any disc in the entire twenty. There's an audio commentary by writer David Gerrold; the Animated Series sequel More Tribbles, More Troubles (24 min., HD); the Deep Space Nine crossover Trials and Tribble-ations (46 min., upscaled SD) with its two accompanying documentaries, Uniting Two Legends (17 min.) and An Historic Endeavor (17 min.); and a Starfleet Access track. Devoting a full BD-50 to one half-hour episode and four hours of tribble-related material is either indulgent or exactly right, depending on your disposition.

Disc Five returns to normal service with "The Gamesters of Triskelion," "A Piece of the Action," "The Immunity Syndrome" and "A Private Little War," plus preview trailers and the season retrospective To Boldly Go… Season Two (20 min.).

Disc Six holds "Return to Tomorrow," "Patterns of Force," "By Any Other Name" and "The Omega Glory," with preview trailers and Designing the Final Frontier (22 min.), on Matt Jefferies and the series' production design - one of the more genuinely informative featurettes across the three seasons.

Disc Seven closes the season with "The Ultimate Computer," "Bread and Circuses" and "Assignment: Earth," and gathers the remaining documentaries: Star Trek's Favorite Moments (17 min.), Writer's Notebook: D.C. Fontana (8 min.), Life Beyond Trek: Leonard Nimoy (12 min.), Kirk, Spock & Bones: Star Trek's Great Trio (7 min.) and Star Trek's Divine Diva: Nichelle Nichols (13 min.). The Fontana piece is short but valuable - she shaped more of this season than her credits suggest.

Scattered through the set are five two-minute Easter-egg featurettes, plus the long-defunct BD-Live functionality, which in 2026 does precisely nothing.

Season Three - six discs

Season Three is the leanest of the three sets in every sense, and its disc structure reflects that: the first four discs carry five episodes each with nothing but preview trailers attached, and virtually every supplement is concentrated on the final two.

Disc One opens with "Spock's Brain," "The Enterprise Incident," "The Paradise Syndrome," "And the Children Shall Lead" and "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" - a run containing both the season's most-mocked episode and one of its genuinely strong ones, back to back. Preview trailers only.

Disc Two holds "Spectre of the Gun," "Day of the Dove," "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," "The Tholian Web" and "Plato's Stepchildren." Preview trailers only.

Disc Three carries "Wink of an Eye," "The Empath," "Elaan of Troyius," "Whom Gods Destroy" and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Preview trailers only.

Disc Four holds "The Mark of Gideon," "That Which Survives," "The Lights of Zetar," "Requiem for Methuselah" and "The Way to Eden." Preview trailers only.

Disc Five closes out the series with "The Cloud Minders," "The Savage Curtain," "All Our Yesterdays" and "Turnabout Intruder," and is where the supplements begin: preview trailers plus four featurettes - Life Beyond Trek: Walter Koenig (11 min.), Chief Engineer's Log (6 min.) on James Doohan, Memoir from Mr. Sulu (9 min.) with George Takei, and Captain's Log: Bob Justman (10 min., HD). The Justman piece is the standout of the four and arguably of the whole box; the associate producer had a clearer view of how the series actually got made than almost anyone, and he is candid about it.

Disc Six is the bonus disc, and the reason Season Three's supplements outclass the other two sets despite the thin distribution elsewhere. It carries The Cage in both its broadcast and extended forms, plus the restored, unaired alternate version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" — the second pilot as originally assembled, with different titles, music and effects. Having the series' formative versions gathered in one place is the genuine archival value here, and it makes disc six the one an interested viewer should reach for first rather than last. Alongside them: David Gerrold Hosts "2009 Convention Coverage" (20 min., HD), "The Anthropology of Star Trek" Comic-Con Panel 2009 (4 min., HD), "The World of Rod Roddenberry" Comic-Con Panel 2009 (7 min., HD), the third installment of Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest (11 min., HD), "To Boldly Go…" Season Three (22 min.), Collectible Trek (14 min.) and Star Trek's Impact (9 min.).

Two things stand out. The Starfleet Access tracks - the best supplement the format offered - stop after Season Two; there are none in Season Three at all. And three of the seven items on disc six are 2009 convention panels, which were topical when these discs were pressed and are now seventeen-year-old footage of people discussing a fortieth anniversary, presented here as part of a sixtieth anniversary release. That, more than anything else in the box, is the tell.

Summation:

If you own the 2009 season sets or the 50th anniversary box, you own this. The discs are identical - same encodes, same bitrates, same menu, same 2009 file dates, same extras - and the new Paramount adds an awkward case, a handful of lobby cards and a four-inch record.

If you own nothing, the calculus changes entirely, because what's inside is still very good. The 2009 transfers were excellent work, the branching effects option is a model of how to serve two audiences at once, and the supplement package - particularly the Starfleet Access tracks and the Blackburn footage - is substantial in a way that modern television reissues rarely are. Seventy-nine episodes and roughly sixty hours of programming at less than $100 for the standard Blu-ray set works out to something very reasonable per disc / episode.

The disappointment is what this release says about Paramount's intentions. A sixtieth anniversary is exactly the occasion for a 4K restoration of one of the most valuable television properties ever made, and instead the studio has reprinted seventeen-year-old discs and charged a premium for new case, art cards and a tiny vinyl. Star Trek deserves better than a repackage, imo, and so do the people being asked to buy it a third time. Recommended for newcomers although for existing owners, an obvious pass.