Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS have detailed the Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3. Like previous seasons, the 6-disc set will feature a newly remastered 1080p video presentation, DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround and numerous extras. The seminal 26-episode season of The Next Generation is available for pre-order now, and streets on April 30, 2013.
High definition extras include:
Star Trek The Next Generation: Inside The Writer's Room
Resistance is Futile: Assimilating The Next Generation
A Tribute to Michael Piller
Bloopers: Gag Reel
Additional extras include:
Audio Commentary on Selected Episodes
(with Rene Echevarria, Jonathan Frakes, Ron Moore, Ira Steven Behr, David Carson and others)
Archival Mission Logs
Selected Crew Analysis Year Three
Mission Overview Year Three
Departmental Briefing Year Three: Production
Departmental Briefing Year Three: Memorable Missions
So this is going to be a good transfer right? Something like seasons 1, 3, 5, etc. were being handled in house and the even seasons were being farmed out and turning out not as good?
Yes! Ronald Moore commentaries!!! I love the Okudas, but they were so intrusive on the Season 2 commentaries that I felt like they should have had their own track. I hope that Ron Moore gives us the unfettered, gritty details like he did on his BattleStar Galactica commentaries.
Listening very closely to Season 2, I'm not sure what the point of the 7.1 audio is on all episodes. For many of the episodes, 6.1 would be more than needed and that extra bits could be put toward the video quality to eliminate some of the smearing/blurring present in many of the episodes. The Twilight Zone bluray shows have notable higher bitrates than the last Trek seasons have. Adding another disc to spread the episodes would also be acceptable, of course
I have the first two seasons, TNG has been given new life for me. "Tin Man" was one of my favourites of season 3 as was "Yesterday's Enterprise". That is an episode I look forward to in HD.
This might be the first of these I pick up. There weren't many mega-episodes in the first two seasons, but between "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Best of Both Worlds"...
Hopefully the people who did the transfer for season 1 are doing the transfer for season 3. Season 2 wasn't quite up to par, especially with the planets.
Seasons one and two were $60 and $65 at Best Buy on release day, higher than most TV on BD, to be sure, but considering how much work went into this series, as well as how much material is there (26 and 22 45-minute episodes respectively, compared with most 13-episode seasons today), I don't think the price is that bad.
@dulcimer47: Star Trek has been traditionally high priced on video right back to the days of videocassettes. I shuuder to think about what I paid for the VCR tapes ($50 per episode I think?). Paramount and now CBS know that they've got a captive audience who love every episode, will watch them all many many times, and not only know every episode by name but even know the names of the actors in minor roles. I think you'll find very few other long term series where that is so. Right from when the original series went into syndication its fans have been among the most knoweledgeable and avid of any film/TV franchise. That translates into a willingness to pay more for Trek than just about any other series (of course there was The Prisoner which started out in the hundreds of dollars for just seventeen episodes but that was an exception). We just keep buying Trek so they just keep the products coming. I don't doubt that DS9, Voyager and even the underestimated animated series will eventually come to BD. There's a ready market even at such high price points.
Nothing to do with Trek but I just tried to fix a couple of spelling errors in my posting above. How come you can't edit a posting if it is over 1 hour old? What's the rationale?
