Real world article
(written from a production point of view)
Star Trek: Discovery - Season Three is a DVD release featuring the complete third season of Star Trek: Discovery. The set was released in North America on 19 July 2021. An European version followed suit six months later.
This release was later in the year also included as an otherwise unaltered part of the DVD DIS Seasons 1-3 Collection.
Disc contents (Region 1 version)[]
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Background information[]
- As with the previous two DVD releases, this release features the same amount of special features as its Blu-ray counterpart, constituting something of a break in release policies as the Star Trek franchise had up to that point in time favored the Blu-ray format with the inclusion of more special features. Quite conceivably this had been an intentional franchise attempt to avoid the 2014 "The VAM controversy" that had followed in the wake of the home video format releases of the first two alternate reality films. However, It has yet to be ascertained whether or not the Blu-ray "15 Claps" Easter egg, located on its fourth disc, is also included on the DVD counterpart.
- Like with the preceding release, the Region 2 release had the special features split off on its own, 5th disc.
- Remarkably, and very much unlike the two previous, and next season releases of the series, this release experienced a five-month release delay for the other regions, constituting a break in the near simultaneous all regions release tradition. This became commonplace when it was introduced a little while into the Blu-ray era, but the delaying tactics harkens back to the home video release practices of the pre-Blu-ray era. The partial (and temporary) return to the practice is almost certainly conceived as an appeasing compromise between the franchise and Netflix, first-time series streamer for the rest of the world outside North America, as the franchise had pulled the series from the streaming service (on the home market – the rest of the world was to follow in 2023, though season four would never be streamed by Netflix anywhere) around the same time. Similar to the compromise the franchise struck with Amazon Prime for the first season home video releases of Star Trek: Picard, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have very strong commercial incentives for delaying a home video format release for as long as possible. (see main article)
- This particular release is one of the few individual Star Trek releases followed by the professional industry site The Numbers and for which domestic US home video format sales are known; The Numbers has reported that by November 2021 domestic sales had been realized of a mere US$2.5 million for both this and its Blu-ray counterpart releases, with sales virtually coming to a complete standstill thereafter. [1] The for a Star Trek production seemingly disappointing sales could be explained by the sharply divided fan reception the series had originally engendered. However, there were by this time also generic societal trend issues at play, which had nothing to do with the fan's perception of Discovery, additionally explaining the continuing diminishing trend of physical home video format sales (see: main article), which for this particular release was actually only less than half of what the previous series home video format sales had achieved and less than a third of the release preceding that one, despite the better reception of the series' third season.
| Previous release: LD Season 1 DVD |
Star Trek: Discovery DVD |
Next release: DIS Seasons 1-3 Collection (DVD) |
| Previous series release: DIS L'intégrale des saisons 1 & 2 |
| DVD • Blu-ray • Digital |