Star trek - books, movies, games, figures, collectibles

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series and media franchise. The Star Trek fictional universe created by Gene Roddenberry is the setting of six television series including the original 1966 Star Trek, in addition to ten feature films with an eleventh completed to be released on May 8, 2009. The franchise also extends to dozens of computer and video games, hundreds of novels and instances of fan fiction, several fan-created video productions, as well as a themed attraction in Las Vegas. Beginning with the original TV series and continuing with the subsequent films and series, the franchise has created a cult phenomenon and has spawned many pop culture references.

Television series

Star Trek originated as a television series in 1966, although it had been in the planning stages for at least six years prior to that. It was canceled after its third television season due to low ratings. It was, however, highly popular with science-fiction fans and engineering students, in spite of generally low Nielsen ratings. During its original run, it was nominated several times for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and won twice : for the two-parter "The Menagerie" and the Harlan Ellison-written episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". It has served as the foundation for four additional live-action television series, one animated television series and ten theatrical films. An 11th film, simply titled Star Trek, has completed production and will be released on May 8th, 2009. The six television series comprise a total of 716 episodes - 10 of which are feature-length - across 23 seasons (30 when counting seasons that aired concurrently). See Lengths of science fiction film and television series for more on comparative series lengths.

The Original Series (1966–1969)

Star Trek (Also known as "TOS", The Original Series) debuted in the United States on NBC on September 8, 1966.[7] The show tells the tale of the crew of the starship Enterprise and its crew's five-year mission "to boldly go where no man has gone before." The original 1966-1969 television series featured William Shatner as Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James Doohan as Montgomery Scott, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, George Takei as Hikaru Sulu, and Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov. In its first two seasons it was nominated for awards as Best Dramatic Series. After three seasons, however, the show was canceled and the last original episode aired on June 3, 1969.[8] The series subsequently became popular in reruns and a cult following developed, complete with fan conventions. Originally presented under the title Star Trek, it has in recent years become known as Star Trek: The Original Series or as "Classic Star Trek" — retronyms that distinguish it from its sequels and the franchise as a whole. All subsequent films and television series, except the animated series of the 1970s and the earlier seasons of Enterprise, have had secondary titles included as part of their official names. A re-release of the series began in September 2006 with computer-generated imagery "enhancements" as a high-definition "Remastered" edition. The entire series has been remastered. The remastered episodes currently air in syndication while the originals appear on many countries' channels although these broadcasts are infrequent and irregular.

Star Trek on DVD

The history of the release of Star Trek on DVD does not follow the overall history of Star Trek. Most of the films were released on DVD prior to any of the television series, starting with First Contact. Following that ST:TOS came out in a series of separate discs with two episodes per disc.
In 2001 there was an enormously successful release of a re-edited director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture along with remastered CGI special effects, all supervised by the film's director Robert Wise. Its success motivated Paramount to release special editions of all the other films in two disc sets, loaded between two to three hours of special features.
Subsequently, boxed sets of complete seasons of Star Trek, with the first to be released in this format being ST:TNG in 2002 followed by ST:DS9 in 2003 and Voyager the last of which coincided with a season boxed set of ST:TOS in 2004. Extended special features were included for the first time on the subsequent release of Enterprise in 2005. Features included were bloopers and extended or deleted scenes. The last series to be released on DVD was The Animated Series in 2006.
In the late 1990s, there was a series of boxed videotape sets presenting episodes following a particular theme or story arc. In 2003, similar but much larger compilations of thematically-related episodes from multiple Star Trek series were released on DVD, initially only in Region 2. For example, the DVD set Star Trek: Klingon contains Klingon-themed episodes from all five of the non-animated series in a "Fan Collective" set, episodes chosen by fans for the fans. A DVD collection of all two-part episodes of ST:TNG has only been released in Region 2 called "Star Trek: The Next Generation- The Complete TV Movies." This set is unique to that region, editing all the two-part episodes into television movies (with the exception of the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things..." which were already in that format). The only episode from that set that has appeared in Region 1 is the sixth season two-parter "Chain of Command," which was included in the 2007 "Captain's Log" Fan Collective DVD set.
Interest has been generated with the project to remaster ST:TOS, with slightly modernized CGI special effects which attempt to retain the basic look-and-feel of the original series' effects but with a smoother look to them. These new versions have been broadcast in some television markets and all three seasons are out on DVD. The remastered episodes of the series will be released on Blu Ray disc, along with the first six films featuring the original cast, in 2009. In addition, Paramount will also be releasing a "Best of" DVD for both The Original Series and The Next Generation. This has apparently been done for newcomers to the franchise, who might enjoy Star Trek following the release of the 2009 feature film.
All of Star Trek before 2001 was released on VHS videotape, though late seasons of Voyager were issued by a different distributor overseas when VHS interest lagged in the United States. However, the last three out of four seasons of Enterprise were never on videotape at all.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Star Trek".