Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (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, not in Australasian releases)
Run time:	105 minutes
Director:	Leonard Nimoy
Release date:	5 September 2022 (UK)
Other release date(s):	6 September 2022 (North America) 8 September 2022 (Germany) 14 September 2022 (Australasia) 7 October 2022 (Japan)
Rating(s):
Language:	English (Dolby 7.1 TrueHD)
Subtitles:	Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Croatian, English, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanes, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
Dubbed:	French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish (DD 5.1 Surround)
Reference:	ASIN B0B781R3J4 (UK) ASIN B0B465L1GJ (North America) ASIN B0B5R7C5SX (Germany) ASIN B0B2TBMY2F (Australia) ASIN B0B6FFXXJ4 (Japan)
Year:	2022
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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a two-disc 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray Disc/Digital set, released on 5 September 2022, featuring the 4K UHD release version of the Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. As is currently usual with UHD/Blu-ray double releases of older productions, all special features (excepting the audio commentaries and isolated music score tracks, which are present on the 4K UHD disc as well) are only included on the Blu-ray disc of the release. The two discs are mounted in a standard plastic snapcase, which itself was for the North American release issued within a matching softboard slipover sleeve. The other releases came without the sleeve.

The 4K UHD standalone version of the film 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, and was simultaneously released as part of the Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection 4K UHD set. The remastering of The Search for Spock had actually already been completed a year earlier along with the other first three original crew films, and the 4K UHD version was then released as part of the preceding 55th anniversary Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection. And while an individual downscaled standalone Blu-ray version was, it was decided to wait with the individual releases of the standalone 4K UHD versions until the remastering of the last two original crew films was completed a year later.

As usual with these releases (geo-restricted to North America only, as the – former Blu-ray Region B^[2] – European/Australasian releases do not have these) a redeemable code is included to download the film in 4K resolution digitally.

As is increasingly becoming commonplace, no DVD counterpart was issued for this particular release. Those dwindling number of DVD customers still wanting one, had to make do with the original Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Special Edition) DVD release from 2003.

Special features[]

As well as the extras originally featured on the prior Special Edition DVD, excepting the text commentary by Mike and Denise Okuda and the Easter egg, the release also included the special features in high definition, as originally done for the 2009 Blu-ray release.

Commentary by Leonard Nimoy, Harve Bennett, Charles Correll and Robin Curtis
Commentary by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor
Captain's Log (26:13)
Terraforming and the Prime Directive (25:53)
Industrial Light & Magic: The Visual Effects of Star Trek (13:50) †
Spock: The Early Years (6:22) †
Space Docks and Bird of Prey (27:49)
Speaking Klingon (21:04)
Klingon and Vulcan Costumes (12:16)
Star Trek and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (16:52) †
Starfleet Academy SciSec Brief 003: Mystery Behind the Vulcan Katra Transfer (2:42) †
Photo Gallery: Pre-Production, The Movie
Storyboards: Main Titles, The Klingon Attack, Entering Spacedock, Searching for Life, Finding Spock, The Destruction of the Grissom, Stealing the Enterprise, Self Destruct, Kirk Fights Kruge, The Katra Ritual
Theatrical Trailer (1:12) †

† - in HD (others in standard definition)

Background information[]

Contrary to the Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition and last two original crew films, Scandinavia waived the standalone version release of The Search for Spock, as it had already seen a release a year earlier, albeit as part of their Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection only, but that was not much of an issue for the customer base over there as any import would do.
In similar fashion, the two Australasian (Australia and New Zealand) releases had dispensed with the separate Blu-ray disc in the set, but which was not that much of an issue either as Blu-ray versions had all become region-free as well by this time, meaning that any import would also do in the territory.

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.
↑ 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.