Real world article
(written from a production point of view)
Star Trek: Short Treks is a DVD release featuring the complete first and second seasons of Star Trek: Short Treks, except for "Children of Mars". The set was released in North America on 2 June 2020. The single-disc holding standard plastic snapcase came within a slipover carton cover.
Discounting the audio commentaries, the special features total up to a runtime of one hour. [1]
Disc contents[]
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Background information[]
- "Runaway" and "The Brightest Star" were previously already included on the 2019 DIS Season 2 DVD release, as these two episodes pertained to events featured in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery.
- Similarly, "Children of Mars" is not included in this set as it is a prelude to Star Trek: Picard and was included as a special feature on the subsequent DVD and Blu-ray home video releases of that series, endowed with an audio commentary.
- Like the prior Discovery Blu-ray releases, this release sports the same number 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 either been an intentional franchise attempt to avoid the 2014 second "VAM controversy" that had followed in the wake of the home video format releases of the first two alternate reality films, a cost-price saving measure by streamlining disc production as much as possible, or both.
- The second season of Short Treks was not picked up for streaming by Netflix, making the region 2 and 4 releases the first opportunity for viewers outside the USA to (officially) watch the second season episodes.
- 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 & Canada) home video format sales are known; The Numbers has reported that by November 2021 domestic sales had been realized of US$91,700 for both this and its Blu-ray counterpart releases, after which sales came to a virtual stand-still. [2] While these disappointing sales could be explained by the sharply divided fan reception Kurtzman-era Star Trek had engendered, there were by this time also generic societal trend issues in play, which had nothing to do with Star Trek, additionally explaining the diminishing sales of physical home video formats. (see: main article) Nonetheless, the very low domestic sales (less than 4600 units sold in North-America at an average DVD/Blu-ray retail price of US$20.00) can not hide the fact that the Short Treks home video release had become an unmitigated flop one year into its release.
- As if to underscore the preceding point, this has by 2023 been the only Kurtman-era Star Trek home video release, not to see a corresponding "Limited SteelBook® Edition" release (strictly speaking the DIS Seasons 1-3 Collection release has not seen one either, but this does not count as the individual season releases had).
Previous release: DIS L'intégrale des saisons 1 & 2 |
Star Trek: Short Treks DVD |
Next release: PIC Season 1 DVD |
Previous series release: First DVD in series |
DVD • Blu-ray • Digital |