Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (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:	1 (4K UHD) 1 (Blu-ray, North America/Australasia) 2 (Blu-ray, Europe)
Run time:	136 minutes
Director:	Robert Wise
Release date:	5 September 2022 (UK)
Other release date(s):	6 September 2022 (North America) 8 September 2022 (Germany) 14 September 2022 (Australasia) 26 September 2022 (Scandinavia) 7 October 2022 (Japan)
Rating(s):
Language:	English (Dolby Atmos 7.1)
Subtitles:	English, English SDH, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Dubbed:	French, German, Spanish (DD 5.1)
Reference:	ASIN B0B5Y3TJD8 (UK) ASIN B0B45SYKRJ (Nort America) ASIN B0B5Y3TJD8 (UK) ASIN B0B5KQVDYR (Germany) ASIN B0B2TL29RR (Australia) ASIN B0B6F8MYJ6 (Japan)
Year:	2022
Alt cover Alt cover
Main menu from Disc 2 Main menu from Disc 2

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition is a two-disc (three-disc for Europe) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray Disc/Digital boxset, released on 6 September 2022, featuring the 4K UHD release version of the Director's Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 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] and was simultaneously released as part of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition Complete Adventure and Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection 4K UHD sets. As usual with these releases (geo-restricted to North-America only, as the – former Blu-ray Region B^[3] – European/Australian releases do not have these) a redeemable code is included to download the Director's Edition version of the film in 4K resolution digitally.

The two discs are mounted in a standard plastic snapcase, which itself was issued within a matching softboard slipover cover.

As is increasingly becoming commonplace, no DVD counterpart was issued for this release, but an individual downscaled concurrent Blu-ray standalone release was on the same date(s). Those dwindling number of DVD customers still wanting one, had to make do with the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition) DVD release from 2001.

The European releases differed in this respect that the extra disc included in the set actually concerned the downscaled Blu-ray counterpart version, featuring the exact same special features as its concurrent standalone Blu-ray release counterpart. This Blu-ray discs was not included in the North American set, but the third Blu-ray disc in the European was the same bonus disc as included in the American release. [2]

Contents[]

Blurb: Director Robert Wise’s definitive vision – eagerly anticipated by STAR TREK fans for over two decades – is now meticulously restored and remastered in 4K Ultra HD with HDR-10 and Dolby Vision for optimal picture and Dolby Atmos for immersive sound. This must-have release features a Blu-ray disc with hours of new and legacy special features, including extensive behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, and more. The adventure begins when an unidentified alien intruder destroys three powerful Klingon cruisers. Captain James T. Kirk boldly returns to the helm of a newly transformed USS Enterprise to take command. This bold adventure launched one of the longest running movie franchises of all time and features the cast of the original STAR TREK series, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan.

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

Note: Disc contents as included in the North American release.

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
- Special features in Blu-ray – see here (Disc Two) for content breakdown.

For the contents of the extra Blue-ray counterpart disc contained in the European sets, please refer to the identical individual disc entry of Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (Disc One).

Background information[]

Poster 4K UHD The Motion Picture Director's Edition theatrical screening — Theatrical screening poster

The 4K UHD version premiered on 4 April 2022 as a special theatrical screening event at the Paramount Theatre, with the producers present to take questions from the audience afterwards. [3] The following day, "First Contact Day", it made its general debut on the streaming service Paramount+, [4] only to be followed by the home video releases six months later.
Aside from the picture remastering to 4K UHD standards, the film has also undergone a soundtrack remastering from Dolby TrueHD 7.1 to Dolby Atmos 7.1.
Of the three versions of the film, only the Director's Edition was also issued in a standalone 4K UHD release; neither the Theatrical, nor the Special Longer Versions saw a standalone 4K UHD release, and remained UHD exclusives in the two aforementioned simultaneously released boxsets. The theatrical version at least did see a newly remastered Blu-ray counterpart in 2021, whereas the Longer Version did not.

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.