Saved from the brink of cancellation by its loyal fanbase, Star Trek's third and final season rewarded them with a number of memorable episodes. Tight budgets and slipping creative control, however, made it the series' most uneven season, though it did have some of the coolest episode titles ("For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," "Is There in Truth No Beauty," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"). Some of the best moments involved a gunfight at the OK Corral ("Spectre of the Gun"), a knock-down drag-out sword battle with the Klingons aboard the Enterprise ("Day of the Dove"), the ship getting caught in an ever-tightening spacial net ("The Tholian Web"), TV's first interracial kiss ("Plato's Stepchildren," and it should be easy to guess who participated), Sulu taking command ("The Savage Curtain"), and Kirk's switching bodies with an ex-love interest ("Turnabout Intruder").

Also appearing in the set as a coda are two versions of the series pilot, "The Cage," a restored color version and the original, never-aired version that alternates between color and black and white. Starring Jeffery Hunter as Captain Pike, Leonard Nimoy as a relatively emotional Spock, and Majel Barrett (the future Nurse Chapel and Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) as a frosty Number One, this pilot was rejected, but a second was commissioned, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," now considered the "official" beginning of the series. But "The Cage" is very recognizably Star Trek with its far-out concepts (telepathic aliens collecting species samples), sexy humanoid women, character development, and of course cheesy costumes and special effects. Footage was later reused in the season 1 two-parter, "The Menagerie."

TOS III - Kirk kisses all the ladies

The Star Trek Collection is a worthy hobby and certainly the largest of the television series DVD Collections (The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise). At around 1400 minutes per box, you are looking at approx 30 boxes with 700 hours of viewing. That is 1 month of non-stop Star Trek. No DVD series comes remotely close to that. The TOS series ends with series III. The total number of TOS episodes from season I to season III is 80. Running time for TOS is approx 60 hours. Get going collecting right now and build up on each succession over the years. By the end you will have a very serious anthology that defines the word awe. This is the kind of item that requires 1 hour a day of your time for the next few years. It is a cherished memory that served your fathers and will serve your children also. Our very planet, Earth, has advanced because of Gene Roddenberry's admirable concept. Roddenberry nailed the premise of the series when he said that he wanted to create a show with characters that we could look up too. `The Bridge' members are like our family. Watch what they do. Then go and spend your life striving for the same on Earth. What engineer, medic, scientist, teacher, worker can not say that Star Trek has not influenced them? The show is this significant in the development of our species. Even Christians respect and quote its authority and it is not hard to see why. The DVD case is beautiful. Make sure to retain the cardboard holder that it sits into as this helps stability on the shelf (although the box can still stand alone the bottom is a little narrow). The shell cracks open down the centre to reveal a box. Sliding out of the box is a small booklet insert with discs in a well designed plastic holder that flip from disc to disc. There are 4 episodes per disc, and 8 discs in total. However the last disc, disc 8, only has two episodes, for a grand total of 30 episodes. The rest of disc 8 is devoted to Star Trek interviews and trailers with the usual expected extras...and then some more. Several of the shows come with a commentary. All the episodes have been remastered to the point that scratches and artefacts are hardly visible. The special effects have been touched up slightly (no strings), however they still retain an overall early look and feel, especially the initial episodes that have budget restrictions. The episodes are ordered not in the sequence they where filmed, but in the sequence that they aired, however each episode has been numbered according to the order they where filmed in. This means on one disc you have shows 4, 2, 12 and 1, in that order. The sound has also been remastered to 5:1 Dolby Digital! Since the show was shot in full frame, these dimensions are retained.

Star Trek, The Original Series (TOS), Season Three, continues to improve on visual effects and camera work, based on the big budget of Season Two's success. Although the bridge and the Enterprise model have not undergone much of a revamp since Season II the characters are beefed up and the acting is more refined. Kirk looses his green sweater that attracted some debate in Season Two. The credits are now in blue and the music no longer has the irritating *ding* sound every few seconds. There are themes of body organ theft, genetic manipulation, memory loss, alien possession, insanity, time travel, apocalypses, dimensions, psychic powers, empathy, love potions, discrimination, alien abduction, over population, immortality and the sixties. Scotty undergoes several different hairdos. This series is also the one where Kirk kisses Uhura, in "Plato's Stepchildren", the first interracial kiss on American television. In fact Kirk goes on to kiss all the women in Season Three! It is worth it for the episodes "The Cloud Minders", "The Tholian Web", "Spectre of the Gun", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" along with being an important instalment for any collector's series. The final disc contains the pilot episodes "The Cage" in two different versions. The `original version' is in fact a copy of a black and white broadcast even though it was shot in color. The color edition can be found in the "restored version". Anyway both pilot versions are here in Season III. "The Cage" was eventually remade into an episode and aired. This aired version can be found in TOS Season One. The main thing you will like about Season Three is how it genuinely makes attempts to expand on science-fiction concepts. Additionally there are quite a few story twists that will surprise. At the same time this was to be the final season for TOS, cancelled in the middle of the height of the 60s (summer of 1969) due to low ratings. It is sad when you come to the end of Series III knowing that you have spent the last few months enjoying being beside Kirk, Spock, Bones and Scotty but this did not stop Gene Roddenberry from pitching the idea to turn Star Trek into motion picture films. Thanks to that we have these box office successes to keep us going. Now boldly onto Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) Series I!!!!!!!

The Third and last season of the series.

Like all TV series Star trek has its good and bad episodes.But
if you like Star Trek and you have the first two seasons then
this is a must buy.

I Might Be Crazy, But This Is My Favorite Season

Yes, the often-reviled third season of Star Trek is in fact my favorite season. Why, you may ask? In the third season Roddenberry basically left the show for all intents and purposes, with Fred Friedberger pinch-hitting as the new producer, and the already tight budget getting cut further by the powers that be.

I suppose that I feel that some of the best art comes from tribulations and limitations. I will readily admit that episodes like "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden" are pretty terrible (although thry are a lot of fun with a drink or five in hand). But some of the more wild ideas worked in a way that never appeared in the relatively more stable first two seasons.

"The Enterprise Incident," "The Tholian Web," "All Our Yesterdays" and "Day of the Dove" are classic well-constructed episode that would have stood out at any time of the show's run. But I have a soft spot for some of the stranger stuff. "The Paradise Syndrome" take a strange Frontierland approach that stands out and explores an emotional dimension of Kirk that rarely appeared in the series. Budget constraints actually turned what would have been the already good "Spectre of the Gun" into a surreal masterpiece. Unable to afford full western sets, the producers simply made it a plot point and managed to provide the episode with an unsettling tone that it would not have had otherwise. Although "Wink of the Eye" and "The Mark of Gideon" both have initially interesting concepts that do not hold up to intellectual scruitiny, they remain so much fun that I really don't care. "The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" has a really cool concept that can withstand a little bit of thinking; plus the oracle is super cool. And strange as it may seem, I really love the floating blob of the week that is a hallmark of the season and appears in episodes like "The Lights of Zetar" and "Spectre of the Gun."

Yes, this season is a little on the campy side, but the whole original series is to a certain degree. It's one of the reasons I still love watching this show and for me the Third Season does not disappoint.