That J.J. Abrams is everywhere you look these days. His biggest personal triumph at this point has got to be the Star Trek reboot, but he’s also had his fingerprints all over Lost, Cloverfield, Alias and the largely slept-on Mission: Impossible 3. I’m generally a fan of his stuff—as a storyteller, he has a great ability to craft big “WTF” moments that keep you coming back.

So despite it looking like one of those generic, shot-in-Vancouver sci-fi series that always pop up on late-night cable, I was willing to give Fringe a shot. The series, the first season of which is now out on DVD, seems like one of those made-in-the-lab creations that attempts to alchemically combine the elements of other successful shows; it’s like the paranormal stuff from The X-Files meets the procedural cop show stuff from CSI with a bit of the inter-government-agency intrigue of Alias. While I’ll cop to not having watched all seven discs of the set yet (why are American TV seasons so long? U.S. networks could learn a lesson from the Brits and their tight six-episode runs), the episodes I’ve sampled have been quite watchable and have kept me coming back. Maybe I just miss The X-Files, but the whole science-vs.-supernatural thing always seems to add up to engaging entertainment for me.

Speaking of Star Trek, Paramount is continuing its rollout of the original series on Blu-Ray, and you can now get the second season of the genre-defining, iconic and always intelligent show in a nice little box. Like season one, you have the option of watching it with the original optical effects intact or with the newly enhanced and surprisingly inoffensive digital versions. Season two features classic episodes like “Amok Time,” where Spock gets all hot and horny, the parallel-universe-visiting “Mirror, Mirror” and the yuk-filled “The Trouble With Tribbles.” That last one gets a disc of its own, which also features Tribble-themed episodes of the animated series and Deep Space Nine, as well as newly recorded commentaries.