I've seen the Star Trek movies (w/ the original cast) numerous times, both in theaters and on home video. They are definitely not reference quality. But, the even-numbered movies are among the favorites in my collection, so when Best Buy put the Trek Genesis trilogy (II, III, and IV) on sale this week for $30 on Blu-ray, I did the double dip. The entire six-movie set is also on sale for $65 this week.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is probably the only Trek movie I considered for Blu-ray purchase, because that was the only one where Paramount did a full restoration, and it's easily the most rewatchable of the Trek movies. Watching Trek II last night, I did not expect to be wowed by the picture and sound quality, because frankly the original film stock and sound elements were not great to begin with.

But, I did expect a nice improvement in the picture and sound quality over the previous DVD releases, and to that end, the Blu-ray succeeds. The Blu-ray of Trek II brings the home viewing experience that much closer what I saw the multiple times I've seen the movie in theaters (including a 70mm screening).

Generally, I think that Blu-ray releases should aim for emulating the theatrical film-look as much as possible, and that means preserving as much of the fine detail as possible, and not overly filtering the film grain. DVDs had to resort to a lot of noise reduction and edge enhancement due to the format's lack of resolution.

For the trilogy as a whole, this is a mixed bag.

With Trek II, I think that Paramount did a good job with preserving the look of the original film presentation. It probably leaned a little bit towards the "clean" look, but a very good amount of the film grain and fine detail remains intact. This is probably as good as Trek II is going to look.

Unfortunately, Trek IV (haven't seen Trek III yet) seems like got a heavier application of noise reduction. The movie still shows the limitations of the original source, but it also looks more two-dimensional. Basically, it looks more like a very good DVD upconversion than something done at native Blu-ray resolution. Yes, it's a big improvement over the DVD version, but it does not seem like it benefited from the remastering as much as Trek II did.

Soundwise, it seems that Trek II also got a nice reworking with the new 7.1 mix. I can only get the 640k DD track (which includes the EX flag), but that mix has a noticeably more immersive and directional surround effect than the original 5.1 DVD mix that seemed to come straight from the theatrical soundtrack.

At $30, the Trek Trilogy is a nice addition to the BD collection, but I get the impression that something more definitive might be in the works (for one thing, the BD releases only include the theatrical cuts, and not the "director's" cuts that came with the previous special edition DVDs). For anyone who wants to see Trek II in its best shape in decades, this is at least worth a good look (and definitely a buy at $30 this week).