Star Trek: Alternate Realities
Oct/095
Amazon.com
Available for the first time on DVD is a collection featuring the bizarre and strange of episodes of Star Trek! See your favorite characters behaving contrary to type in familiar but odd circumstances in Star Trek: Alternate Realities, a 5-disc fan-collective that includes 20 episodes selected from all five Star Trek television series plus exclusive special features.Amazon.com
Star Trek Collective: Alternate Realities is the sixth entry in the Star Trek: Fan Collective series (but not named as such, presumably because these episodes weren’t selected by fan vote), and it’s a good one. The categorization can be a bit random and anyone could argue about the selections, but it’s a good all-around sampler collection from all five live-action series with some all-time-classic episodes (sorry, no Animated Series here, though “Yesteryear” or “The Counter-Clock Incident” would have fit). It starts with six episodes from the “Mirror Universe,” in which crew members become their psychological opposites and Spock has a beard in “Mirror, Mirror,” and in which Deep Space 9 (”Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror”) then Enterprise (”In a Mirror Darkly, Parts 1 and 2,” melding the Original Series‘ “Mirror, Mirror” and Tholian Web episodes) made memorable visits. The next category is “Parallel Dimensions,” and in the Original Series episode “The Alternative Factor,” Kirk meets two different versions of Lazarus. That’s followed by the final-season Next Generation episode “Parallels,” in which Worf bounces back and forth among various crew scenarios. The third category, “Twisted Realities,” finds two contrasting-personality versions of Kirk in “The Enemy Within” and then his body is taken over by Janice Lester in the final episode of the Original Series, “Turnabout Intruder.” That’s followed by TNG’s “Frame of Mind,” in which Riker seems to jump between the ship and a mental hospital, and “Shattered,” in which Chakotay experiences numerous stages of Voyager’s past.
The final category, “Alternate Lives,” has the most episodes (though, oddly, none from the Original Series). It starts with two TNG episodes, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (the highly regarded journey to a militarized Enterprise) and “The Inner Light” (Picard imagining himself leading a “normal” life) and “The Visitor” (also very highly regarded) from DS9 in which a grown-up version of Sisko’s son, Jake, grew up without his father. In Voyager’s “Before and After,” Kes appears to be jumping backward through time, in “Timeless” Chakotay and Paris go back in history to try to repair a past mistake, and all the crew discovers they’re duplicates in “Course: Oblivion.” Enterprise closes the set with two episodes: “E2,” in which Archer is confronted by descendants of the ship’s crew, and “Twilight,” in which Archer finds himself 12 years in the future with the human-Xindi conflict now over. Extra material includes a 5- to 15-minute featurette on each theme (two each for the “Mirror Universe” and “Alternate Realities”) of new interviews with the producers and writers of the episodes plus some archival interviews (indicated by the footage appearing in a different frame) and one new commentary track per disc. –David Horiuchi
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9:52 am on October 6th, 2009
The original series episodes in this set are the remastered versions. I believe this is historic, since this is the first Star Trek DVD set to include remastered episodes with being a season set of just the remastered original show.
I gave it an early five star rating because I love the concept of these sets: a sampling from several series, all around one theme for people who like episodes of a theme. So, already, the set rocks.
Rating: 5 / 5
12:51 pm on October 6th, 2009
NOT BAD BUT NOT GREAT EITHER.
I BLAME CBS OR PARAMOUNT PRODUCTS.
THERE WERE AT LEAST TWO OR THREE MORE MIRROR UNIVERSE EPISODES FROM DEEP SPACE NINE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED!!!!!!
THERE WAS ALSO THE VOYAGER TWO PARTER THE YEAR OF HELL AGAIN IT WAS AN ALTERNATE REALITY AND SHOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN INCLUDED.
ITS A SAD CASE WHEN THE CONSUMER IS ONLY PARTIALY SATISFIED.
THIS PRODUCT IS A C+. COULD HAVE BEEN A A+ WITH THOSE EPISODES.
Rating: 3 / 5
2:42 pm on October 6th, 2009
Do you like weirdness? Do you like Star Trek? Do you like watching William Shatner “act” in the most entertaining ways possible? Then you should enjoy Star Trek Alternate Realities. One of the real jewels in this set however are the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes “Through a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II,” two episodes of Enterprise set entirely in the Mirror Universe. One of the best things about this “Fan Collective” however, is the lack of repeats in comparison with other collections, only one “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” appears, and that episode is good enough that it is forgivable.
All in all, purchase it, the Next Gen. Episodes are ok, Voyager as usual is pithy, and the DS9 Episodes are forgettable. The Enterprise and Original Series episodes are really the best parts.
Rating: 5 / 5
3:16 pm on October 6th, 2009
If you have all of the fan collection dvds of the Star Trek television shows then you will also want this one as well to add to your collection so go and get you an copy of Star Trek: Alternate Realities and sit back and enjoy form the orginal star trek all the up to Enterprise.
Rondall Banks
Rating: 5 / 5
3:19 pm on October 6th, 2009
One of my Biggest complaints about these collections is the number of episodes that are duplicated on the other collections, on this one I think its only Inner lightthat I have on the JLP collection. This Set has to be for me the best Collection so far. I didn’t watch DS9 to conclusion and I thing I only saw a Handfull of Enterprise episodes, so every one of these is new to me and I have to say I was very impressed with the Enterprise Mirror epsiodes, even the DS9 episodes kept me enagaged. This Collection is also Noteable for the fact that TOS episodes are remastered and they look fantastic. Overall These are a good way of getting a cross section of some of the best Episodes from the Star Trek Universe.
Rating: 5 / 5