Designed for infants and toddlers (one to 36 months), Baby Bach is a nicely produced video that features familiar toys and colourful objects, moving to the complex beautiful music of Johann Sebastian Bach. According to the video producers, "Bach's music has shown to enhance creativity, improve academic achievement, reduce anxiety and heighten mental awareness". Any parent will embrace this theory. Not only did this video completely captivate a 22-month-old for its entire 30-minute run-time but it's easy on the parents, too. The images are lively, clean and sharp and producers The Baby Einstein Company have a firm handle on what interests babies and toddlers. The extraneous segments with two pretty little blonde girls is silly but forgivable. Given that most children elect to watch a video repeatedly, this is one that parents won't mind in the slightest. The music, available on CD, is simply lovely. -N F Mendoza.

The title is a quote from Laurence the Cuffs himself, and Changing Rooms: Trust Me, I'm a Designer is a "best of" compilation, celebrating more than 100 editions of the popular home makeover show. Although it might imply that the focus is on the designers themselves, despite their larger-than-life personalities what comes through most strongly here is the practicality of actually getting the work done. The question whether anyone other than the designers themselves actually like the results is as cheerfully up-in-the-air as ever, of course. This compilation scores highly-perhaps higher than the show itself for anyone who's not a fan-because, with so many episodes to choose from and with the opportunity to use some snappy editing, we're spared all the finger-drumming, pacing up and down and general faffing about which inevitably takes up a certain amount of time in any individual edition. Instead, we move neatly and quickly between ideas, discussions and practical considerations in a very un-boring fashion. Of course, there's plenty of fun along the way, such as the absolutely priceless moment when Llewelyn-Bowen nearly convinces "Handy" Andy Kane that he has to board over a swimming pool and create two rooms from the resulting space using only the inevitable MDF. It's instructive, great fun and a very neat package of material. -Roger Thomas.

One of the most popular and influential shows in the history of television, for many viewers the original Star Trek (1966-9) defines good science fiction: however much it tries to be about the future, it cannot help but reflect the values of its own time, and Star Trek's vision was very much a product of creator Gene Roddenberry's 1960s liberal-humanist idealism. Conceived at the height of the Cold War and during the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, his was a radical vision of a world where national and racial differences have been put aside and all people work together. With a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of other civilisations, and violence only as a last resort, Star Trek embodied a lost dream, a fantasy of what America could have been had John F Kennedy not been assassinated in 1963. Captain James Tiberius Kirk (William Shatner) had the middle name of a Roman emperor, but otherwise shared his initials with the late president, and both were young, good-looking, womanising, charismatic popular heroes. If Kirk didn't uphold truth, justice and the American way from the White House, a big white starship was the next best thing. There was even a Russian, Mr Chekov (Walter Koenig), on the bridge, and the show delivered network TV's first inter-racial kiss between Kirk and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Even though there was a white American male in control, it was still all a bit much for 1960s mainstream TV, hence the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, boldly going on its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, only lasted three seasons and 72 episodes before being cancelled in 1969, the year man first walked on the moon. While the once-ground-breaking special effects now look routine, and the then-radical politics have now become part of the politically correct global mainstream, Star Trek retains an enduring popularity due to its strong storytelling-the show employed such top science fiction writers as Robert Bloch, Harlan Elllison, Richard Matheson, Norman Spinrad and Theodore Sturgeon-and admirable characters. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Scotty (James Doohan), Sulu (George Takei), Kirk, Chekov and Uhura remain icons for a world short of real heroes: loyal to the end, honest and utterly dedicated, these were the friends and colleagues who week after week trusted each other with their lives. Devoid of cynicism and self-interest the crew of the USS Enterprise never, ever let anyone down, and ultimately that is a very big reason for Star Trek's enduring popularity. [+]