‘Star Trek’ Offerings Featured in the Register DVD ‘Picks’

Home Video Picks & Passes 09.12.21

‘Star Trek’ is a classic show that lives on.
‘Star Trek’ is a classic show that lives on. (photo: Unsplash)

Rear Window (1954) — PICK

Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969) — PICK

Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection (1979-1986) — PICK

Vertigo (1958) — PICK

Two of Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated films and nearly all of the original Star Trek crew’s adventures are available in new Blu-ray editions. 

Jimmy Stewart stars in both Rear Window and Vertigo, with Hitchcock trading on and by degrees subverting Stewart’s aura of likability and decency. Set almost entirely in an apartment overlooking a Manhattan courtyard where a wheelchair-bound Stewart and his fiancée (Grace Kelly) follow the neighbors’ lives at a distance, Rear Window explores the uneasy lines between the private and the public, observation and voyeurism, curiosity and obsession. 

Vertigo revisits some of these themes, but in a darker, more disturbing mode, with Stewart’s character caught in a deadly web of deceit and manipulation, revealing the darkness in his own soul. 

“79 episodes, about 30 good ones” (Futurama) is a decent summary of Star Trek: The Original Series — a mixed bag, but also an enduring mythology that remains potent today.

Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection includes films 1-4: the unpopular first film; The Wrath of Khan (universally acclaimed); The Search for Spock (uneven but essential) and The Voyage Home (a popular favorite).

Missing are films 5 and 6, The Final Frontier (justly derided) and The Undiscovered Country (a decent last hurrah). All six are available for individual purchase.

 

CAVEAT SPECTATOR: Rear Window: Menace and mature themes; brief violence; mildly suggestive content; brief cursing. Star Trek: The Original Series: Stylized violence and suggestive content; mixed religious themes. Star Trek 4-Movie Collection: Stylized violence, menace and disturbing images; muddled religious themes (film 1); mostly humorous (mis)use of cursing and crude language (film 4). Vertigo: Disturbing themes including suicide and murder; sensuality and innuendo. All teens and up.