Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition Complete Adventure (4K Ultra HD)

Real world article

(written from a production point of view)

Cover
4K Ultra HD release
Series:	Star Trek films
No. of discs:	2 (4K UHD) 1 (Blu-ray, North America) 3 (Blu-ray, Europe)
Run time:	131 minutes (Theatrical Version) 136 minutes (Director's Edition) 144 minutes (Special Longer Version)
Director:	Robert Wise
Release date:	5 September 2022 (UK)
Other release date(s):	6 September 2022 (North America) 8 September 2022 (Germany)
Rating(s):
Language:	English (Dolby Atmos 7.1, Theatrical Version and Director's Edition, DD 2.0, Special Longer Version)
Subtitles:	English, English SDH, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese (Theatrical Version only), Norwegian, Swedish
Dubbed:	French, German, Spanish (DD 5.1, Director's Edition, DD 2.0, other versions), Japanese (DD 2.0, Theatrical Version only)
Reference:	ASIN B0B5Y3JXYS (UK) ASIN B0B45BZZCH (North America) ASIN B0B5VNYQ7J (Germany)
Year:	2270s
Alt cover Alt cover

Star Trek The Motion Picture 4K Blu-ray The Director's Edition Complete Adventure — North American set contents

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition Complete Adventure is a three-disc (five-disc for Europe) "Limited Collector's Edition" 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray Disc/Digital boxset, released on 6 September 2022, collecting the 4K UHD releases of all three versions of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, to wit the Theatrical Version/Cut, the Director's Edition, and the "Special Longer Version" aka [ABC] Television Cut. As is currently usual with UHD/Blu-ray double releases, all special features (excepting the audio commentaries and isolated music score tracks) are only included on the Blu-ray disc of the release.

The set was released on the occasion of the completion of the long awaited^[1] in 4K HD 2160p resolution remastered version of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition) in 2022.^[2] As usual with these releases (geo-restricted to North-America only, as the – former Blu-ray Region B^[3] – European releases do not have these) redeemable codes are included to download the theatrical and Director's Edition (but not the Special Longer Version) versions of the film in 4K resolution digitally.

The set is executed as a book-style three-panel foldout, of which two are used for mounting the discs. The third panel holds the physical bonus collectibles that come with the set. The foldout itself comes within a thinly embossed cardboard slip-over box measuring 10.6" wide, 6.9" high, and 0.5" deep.

As is increasingly becoming commonplace, no DVD counterpart was issued for this release, nor had an exact Blu-ray counterpart of this set for that matter. The Director's Edition though, did see an individual release in both a downscaled concurrent Blu-ray, and a 4K UHD (without special features) format version. The Theatrical Cut had already seen a downscaled 2021 Blu-ray release, whereas an individual 4K UHD release was now issued as well along with that of the Director's Edition. The "Special Longer Version" though, did not receive the same treatment as the others and remained a 4K UHD-only release, exclusive to this set alone.

Neither has the 4K UHD Theatrical Version for that matter, which remained an exclusive for this, and the concurrently released Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection (in which the "Special Longer Version" was not included), as well as its 4-Movie predecessor 4K UHD sets, though the theatrical cut at least had seen its own downscaled standalone Blu-ray release a year earlier.

The European releases differed in this respect that two extra discs were included in the set containing the downscaled Blu-ray versions of both the Theatrical Version and The Director's Edition, featuring the exact same special features as their respective 2021/22 individual Blu-ray release counterparts. These two Blu-ray discs were not included in the American set. But as the third Blu-ray disc in the European set did concern the same as the North American one, this meant that several of the special features were included twice in the European sets. [2] Another difference was that the UK cardboard packaging was much sturdier that its North American counterpart. [3]

Contents[]

Blurb,: This must-have, limited collector’s edition—THE COMPLETE ADVENTURE—exclusively contains the “Special Longer Version” of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, alongside the original 1979 theatrical cut, in 4K UHD in deluxe packaging with unique collectibles. Additionally, a disc has been included with hours of new and legacy special features, including extensive behind the scenes footage, never-before-scenes deleted scenes, and more.

Excerpts of copyrighted sources are included for review purposes only, without any intention of infringement.

Note: Disc contents as included in the North American boxset issue. Foldouts numbered from left to right.

Foldout panels 2 and 3 (the latter featuring a note from Director Robert Wise on the reverse side when closed)
- Disc 1
  - 4K UHD feature presentation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition)
  - Special Features
    - Audio commentary by David C. Fein, Mike Matessino, and Daren R. Dochterman (New)
    - Audio commentary by Robert Wise, Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, Jerry Goldsmith, and Stephen Collins
    - Text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
    - Isolated Score Track (Dolby Digital 2.0).
- Disc 2
  - 4K UHD feature presentations of Star Trek: The Motion Picture Theatrical, and Special Longer Versions
  - Special Features
    - Audio Commentary: Michael and Denise Okuda, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Daren R. Dochterman. (Theatrical version only)
    - Isolated Score Track (Dolby Digital 2.0, Theatrical version only)
    - Original unfinished "Kirk Follows Spock" scene in 4K UHD (1:46, Special Longer Version)
- Disc 3
  - Special features in Blu-ray – see here (Disc Two) for content breakdown.
Foldout panel 1
- Bonus collectibles
  - Four contemporary bumper sticker reproductions.
  - Four contemporary lobby card reproductions.
  - Sticker sheet with six stickers.
  - Folded mini poster featuring the new Director’s Edition artwork.
  - Star Trek: The Motion Picture Archives softcover booklet, featuring behind-the-scenes production photos, production design artwork, and vintage product shots.
  - The digital copy code on a paper insert (Not present in the European sets).

For the contents of the extra two discs contained in the European sets, please refer to the identical individual Blu-ray disc entries of

Background information[]

While the Special Longer Version has except for the picture remastering remained unaltered, there was one noticeable exception. The Longer Version featured a scene that was never included in any of the other two versions. It concerned the, what TrekMovie.com had called "rather infamous scene" in which Kirk decides to follow Spock aka the "Kirk Follows Spock" scene as it was called on all home video formats were it was included as a deleted scene special feature. That shot was intended for the "Memory Wall" sequence, which was scrapped for severe time constraints and therefore never completed. However, it was decided by the ABC executives to have the scene as extension for another sequence included in their TV version after all, regardless of its unfinished state, and so the shot with the exposed primary hull studio set scaffolding was not only seen in the television version as aired, but also on all the contemporary Longer Version Betamax, VHS, and Laserdisc home video releases.
For this release though, the producers decided to complete the shot by digitally adding Enterprise hull plating in order to obscure the set scaffolding, an effect that was originally intended to be done by matte painting, and insert this completed shot into the 4K UHD version. The original unfinished shot was included on the disc as a special feature, and is in effect the only moving footage included as such on either of the two 4K UHD discs.
This release is the first time that the Special Longer Version can be seen in its original theatrical widescreen aspect ratio. All previous home video releases feature that film version in the (left and right cropped) Pan & Scan format, an aspect ratio specifically adopted for the then-current screen dimensions of television sets.
Aside from the picture remastering to 4K UHD standards, two versions of the film have also undergone a soundtrack remastering from Dolby TrueHD 7.1 to Dolby Atmos 7.1. The Special Longer Version, which has kept its original DD Stereo soundtrack, is the exception.
Panels 2 & 3 of the foldout onto which the discs are mounted, feature as background a cutaway illustration of the refit-USS Enterprise when opened. That illustration actually concerns David A. Kimble's cutaway poster he had created for the 1980 release by The Mind's Eye Press.

Footnotes[]

↑ Talks of a High Definition release of the Director's Edition had been floating around since April 2013, but various reasons conspired against such a release for nearly a decade. For further background information on this subject matter, see main article.
↑ Essentially the High Definition (HD) upgrade of the original 2001 DVD release, the same David C. Fein, Michael Matessino and Daren Dochterman production team responsible for that release was re-assembled again for the HD upgrade oversight, and who on that occasion took on the other two film versions as well. According to Star Trek.com, the upgrade took over six months to complete.
↑ The Region geo-restricting encoding had, for all intent and purposes, been dispensed with all together by the industry upon the advent of the UHD format, even though that policy change has never been made public officially. This incidentally, has also applied for the Blu-ray disc format, whose region encoding was since late 2009 silently, but gradually, abandoned as well – which in Star Trek's case started with the Blu-ray releases of TOS Season 2 and Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection [1]^(X) – , only to pick up speed from the mid-2010s onward.