Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a frustrating release. Since it is aimed squarely at the most hardcore fans, I expected better. There is some cool stuff here to be sure, but it could have been so much better with minimal effort. The set contains 12 episodes we all already own many times over, some with new commentaries. 11 of the 12 have isolated scores, which is great. However one of the most popular, City on the Edge of Forever, does not, for no apparent reason. The real attraction is the rare outtakes and deleted footage. It is presented in three 30 minute documentaries and a 20 minute collection of footage spread across 3 discs. The first documentary shows us rows of shelving with hundreds of film cans full of rare, unseen footage. This really serves to whet your appetite. You would think that in 90 minutes of documentary we would get to see a LOT of this footage. But unfortunately the majority of time is spent on people talking about the episodes. In 90 minutes there are MAYBE 10 minutes total of the rare footage that we really want to see. Most of this is shown in short clips, often with people talking over it. It is very, very frustrating. There is no way to just watch the footage without slogging through the documentaries. Add to that the 20 minutes of additional clips on disc 3 (mercifully with no talking heads) and we probably get to see 30 minutes of vault footage in total. On a 3 disc, expensive release, that just doesn't cut it. You can get the entire 3 seasons of the original series in HD for the same price. The footage itself is a treat. However, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, it is all presented in low quality, standard definition. NONE of the documentaries are in HD, they are all standard definition, even on the blu-ray! This is just plain bizarre. Why would they transfer this rare, valuable footage in standard definition? It makes no sense at all. It's not even much of a cost savings these days. Even though color has faded, the high resolution of the 35mm film is still there and a good HD transfer and very basic color correction would have looked 1000% better than what we get. I'm just mystified as to why it was done this way. And severely disappointed. Paramount has done a pretty terrible, disappointing job with the 50th anniversary. This was the one release which promised to be really exciting. But they botched it. It could have been so much better, and without much additional effort or expense. Use HD transfers, include far more footage and less talking heads. Save the cost of filming the documentaries and invest in HD transfers of the vault footage. Hard core fans would be happy to sit through hours of raw takes, we don't need talking heads to keep us interested. And casual fans aren't going to be interested no matter how it's presented. So cater to your audience. I think we can expect to see several more of these Vault releases in the future (this one only covers 12 episodes). I can only hope they do better if they want my money again.