William Shatner's The Captains (Blu-ray)

Blu-ray Disc release
No. of discs:	1
Run time:	96 minutes
Director:	William Shatner
Region B release date:	18 July 2016 (Germany)
Rating(s):
Language:	English (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
Subtitles:	English SDH, German
Dubbed:	German (DTS-HD MA 2.0)
Reference:	ASIN B01C5NRAZC (Germany)
Year:	2011

William Shatner's The Captains is a single disc Blu-ray version of the 2011 The Captains documentary, released in Germany by New KSM in July 2016 on the occasion of Star Trek's 50th anniversary. As of 2024, it has remained the only standalone Blu-ray Disc release version of the documentary available at retailers.

Back cover German release

It was initially intended by New KSM to have this documentary become part of their limited Unendliche Weiten - Die William Shatner Edition für alle Star Trek Fans anniversary set, which collected the four older, William Shatner-centered as director/co-producer/host/star, documentaries. The company decided however, to concurrently release two of them, William Shatner's The Captains and William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge, as standalone Blu-ray and DVD retail issues as well, while keeping the other two as set exclusives only. The discs of the standalone retail issues came mounted in the standard plastic snapcase without the customary cardboard slipcover however – unlike its German DVD counterpart.

The German edition contains, besides the documentary proper, two additional special features, the documentary Trailer (1:01) and a still gallery, but lacks the "The Making of The Captains" (11:01) special that had been present on the prior DVD releases. A postcard was included as an added bonus.

Four years after the German release, in 2020, Shout! Factory did release a retail Blu-ray version in North America as well (with "The Making of The Captains" special), but that issue was only available as a set-exclusive of their The Captains Collection: Explorations by William Shatner Blu-ray gift set, and not as an individual standalone retail release.

Background information[]

• New KSM became the very first company anywhere in the world to embark on the remastering of older non-Star Trek franchise documentaries.
• While it had by 2020 become commonplace for most Blu-ray Disc manufactures to dispense with region encoding as an obsolete, outdated and irrelevant security measure, the ones for the official franchise included, it has for unknown reasons been maintained by Shout! Factory as confirmed on Blu-ray.com, [1] and quite possibly by New KSM as well as is implied on its case back cover with its "Nur für (="only for") Region B Player" notification. Oddly enough, no such indication is present on its DVD counterpart case.
• The decision of New KSM to release The Captains as a standalone retail issue, instead of The Captains Close Up as included in their anniversary set, did frustrate some German customers, as the latter was in effect the extended version of the former. [2] [3]