CBS Home Entertainment has released the full details of the much anticipated The Roddenberry Vault on Blu-ray. We first found out about the existence of this exciting 3-disc collection at the San Diego Comic Con. The set is due out on December 13. CBS has shared two video clips from the Vault set, along with the full press release. Read on for the details.
UPDATE:
At this weekend’s Mission New York convention there was a Roddenberry Vault panel. During it, they confirmed that the episodes included on the discs are from the high quality HD film scans done in 2006 for the remastering project, but with the original VFX only, it wouldn’t fit with the spirit of the Vault project to include the CGI VFX versions. They also spoke about how much new content was on the discs. Each disc will have about an hour of interviews with clips, plus a catch all ‘loose clips’ feature. Plus there’s the new 90-min documentary made for this set (broken into three parts across the discs).
Inside the Roddenberry Vault:
Star Trek: Revisiting A Classic:
Press release is below:
STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES – THE RODDENBERRY VAULT
ARRIVES DECEMBER 13
FROM CBS HOME ENTERTAINMENT AND PARAMOUNT HOME MEDIA DISTRIBUTION
Blu-ray™ Collection In Limited Edition Packaging To Include Twelve Classic Episodes, Three Exclusive Special Feature Documentaries Presenting Unseen Footage
And New Interviews With Notable Star Trek Figures
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (September 1, 2016) – Fans can dive into the making of pop culture history when STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES – THE RODDENBERRY VAULT is released on Blu-ray December 13. In honor of the show’s 50th Anniversary, and just in time for holiday gift giving, the three-disc collector’s edition Blu-ray set from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Media Distribution gives fans unprecedented access to never-before-seen footage from the production of Star Trek: The Original Series.
During the shooting of Star Trek, bits and pieces of episodic footage were left on the cutting room floor and later preserved in film canisters by The Roddenberry Estate. Recognizing the value of the footage, CBS painstakingly catalogued, transferred, analyzed, and pieced together these Vault materials, which include alternate takes, deleted scenes, omitted dialogue, outtakes, and original visual FX elements.
STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES – THE RODDENBERRY VAULT includes twelve classic episodes chosen for their relevance to the Vault materials, and presented in 1080p High Definition with both DTS 7.1 Master Audio as well as newly restored original Mono. Eleven of these episodes contain isolated music tracks. Newly recorded audio commentaries appear on three fan-favorite episodes.
Each of the set’s three discs features documentaries that weave together the previously unseen Vault materials with all-new interviews by key creative and production personnel and famous fans. The three new documentaries exploring the “making of” the celebrated series and its enduring legacy are:
- Inside The Roddenberry Vault Rod Roddenberry introduces viewers to the discovery of his father’s long-lost Star Trek film reels. With footage from each of the 12 episodes, this three-part special feature offers a guided exploration into the historical significance of the newly discovered material through new interviews with dozens of Star Trek alumni and historians
- Star Trek: Revisiting A Classic offers a look back at the origins of the iconic series, including glimpses of life on the set with new interviews featuring guest stars, directors and production personnel.
- Strange New Worlds: Visualizing the Fantastic dives into the creation of spaceships, transporters, and the classic Star Trek visuals. The in-depth feature combines newly found original visual effects elements photography along with interviews with effects masters and Star Trek veterans such as Industrial Light & Magic founding member Richard Edlund, Doug Drexler, Dan Curry and Gary Hutzel.
Star Trek figures interviewed for these exclusive documentaries include William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk); writers Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana, David Gerrold and John D.F. Black; director Ralph Senensky; casting director Joseph D’Agosta; visual effects artist Richard Edlund; and actors from the 12 featured episodes such as: Clint Howard (“The Corbomite Maneuver”), BarBara Luna (“Mirror, Mirror”), Leslie Parrish (“Who Mourns for Adonais?”), Charlie Brill (“The Trouble with Tribbles”), Michael Forest (“Who Mourns for Adonais?”), Bobby Clark (“Arena”) and Elinor Donahue (“Metamorphosis”). Plus, the collection features new interviews with an impressive array of some of Star Trek’s biggest fans including The Big Bang Theory co-creator Bill Prady, The Simpsons writer/producer David Mirkin, Family Guy writer/producer David A. Goodman, NASA’s Bobak Ferdowsi, Bill Nye (The Science Guy), and more.
Giving fans access to even more fragments of unseen footage and omitted dialogue from the groundbreaking series is a collection of Vault materials entitled Swept Up: Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor.
- The Corbomite Maneuver
- Isolated Music Track
- Arena
- Isolated Music Track
- Space Seed
- Isolated Music Track
- This Side of Paradise
- Isolated Music Track
- NEW! Audio Commentary by Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana and Gabrielle Stanton
- Special Features
- NEW! Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 1)
- NEW! Star Trek: Revisiting a Classic
- The Devil in the Dark
- Isolated Music Track
- The City on the Edge of Forever
- NEW! Audio Commentary by Roger Lay Jr., Scott Mantz and Mark A. Altman
- Operation – Annihilate!
- Isolated Music Track
- Metamorphosis
- Isolated Music Track
- Special Features
- NEW! Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 2)
- NEW! Strange New Worlds: Visualizing the Fantastic
- Who Mourns for Adonais?
- Isolated Music Track
- Mirror, Mirror
- Isolated Music Track
- The Trouble With Tribbles
- Isolated Music Track
- NEW! Audio Commentary by David Gerrold and David A. Goodman
- Return to Tomorrow
- Isolated Music Track
- Special Features
- NEW! Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 3)
- NEW! Swept Up: Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor
I will have one.
Now we’re talking! Any hint of extra footage from TOS would be amazing. Like finding the Dead Sea scrolls.
It’s from this origin that every other aspect of Trek has developed. Lets feast on every detail we discover with this never before seen footage.
Aye ladd. Deeply.
Price? Are the eps remastered versions or not? Or both?
Since this is archival/historical in nature, using the dumb cartoon CG ‘improvements wouldn’t be at all appropriate.
“Episodes” to difficult to type out?
Spelling “too” correctly too difficult to do?
Well these use the new 1080p scans done in 2006, since this is a Blu-ray. However, as kmart said, it’s probably the original VFX, or the option to choose between original and new VFX just like the season Blu-ray sets. A tweet from Scott Mantz about recording his commentary track shows the original VFX.
https://twitter.com/MovieMantz/status/771527745457094660
FYI: They held a Roddenberry Vault panel at Mission NY, where they confirmed, yes it’s just the original VFX in this set, which of course is fitting.
Article states they are in the original filmed/aired episodes.
Listed on Amazon at $76.99! For three Blu-ray discs?
That’s MSRP, nothing to get too worried about. Street-price will be lower.
This smells like a cash-grab. Should sell for $24.99 tops.
This a out of the gate suggested price. Anyone who has been on Amazon since heir inception fully knows the street date week the price will drop. If we show our support for this title….future titles will more gems will be unearthed w/ other episodes.
Glad to see that there’s new commentaries on the episodes as well – takes the edge off buying them on Blu-ray a second time.
Two things I’m concerned about: firstly startrek.com says the total running time of this set is 10 hours 5 mins. With 12 original episodes, that leaves just 29 minutes for the new documentaries and footage. Anyone in the know care to comment on that?
Also, no word yet about a UK release. Never mind the brave new worlds – don’t forget about the rest of this one-! ;-)
Your math is off (I assume you’re used to the old SD versions that have PAL speedup, so they’re shorter than the original running time?), the 10hr 5mins is actually what the 12 episodes take up. Each episode is ~51mins long, which adds up to ~10 hours.
Either way, there’s nothing to worry about, since all the rest of the content on the discs is considered bonus content, it doesn’t count towards the running time on the back of the label. The official running time on a home video label is about the main content (i.e. the feature film or the TV episodes).
Of course to us Trekkies, the “real” content is all the new bonus stuff :-)
Thanks Matt – yes, I believe I was thinking of the PAL running time at 25fps. I did think it would be just too much of a ripoff after all the hype but delighted to have my conclusion debunked.
Good news, at the big MissionNY convention, they held a Roddenberry Vault session, where they told people how much extra content to expect. Each of the three discs has an hour of extra interviews and clips. Plus there’s the new 90-minute documentary.
That’s great – thanks Matt. Now I just have to worry about the price dropping to an affordable level, and hopefully this will be Region 0 so I can play it over here.
Hmmm…. I’d like to see this. Trying to decide if I want to fork out the money for it….
Great to see them laugh.
All this looking backward. So depressing. Why don’t we have new SF shows? And don’t tell me about ‘STD’. A politically correct prequel behind a paywall?
Homophobic mysogynists don’t deserve New Star Trek.
AGREED!
^
That AGREED! was for Trekboi.
Using content-free regurgitate like “politically correct” is actually the most PC thing I can think of. Ironic, isn’t it?
Well Bob, you dare insinuated something negative about PC; therefore, you have now been permanently labeled as a homophobe and mysogynist. Nice to see the land of IDIC is alive and well in these replies.
This will be mine. Oh yes. It will.
So if you don’t have a Blu-ray player you’re screwed?
navamske,
As Blu-ray player owner, I can assure you that you are screwed either way.
I own two Blu-ray players and while carefully purchasing discs for it can be rewarding, I regret it every time I need to play the latest FOX release that’s required an update since 2014 to play that the manufaturers “no longer support” or the odd Universal [I FRANKENSTEIN, CONTRABAND] that neither will play to completion.
Start saving your pennies, homeboy. Then buy a player and join the 21st century. You’ll be happy you did.
I have a blu-ray player. Actually I have 2. One on my PS$ (I rarely use the PS4 though I’m a PC gamer at heart, but I go back to it every so often to play some The Last of Us and I still want to finish the uncharted series of games I foolishly started then never finished) and the other one is on my PC. So yeah, no problem there! But yeah, get yourself a blu-ray player, either one for your PC, or a stand-alone player. Trust me and others who’ve already said it, you won’t regret it!
No “Doomsday Machine” isolated audio, featuring the ingeniously tense musical accompaniment by Sol Kaplan? No “Elaan of Troyius”, the one and only time the Enterprise fought head-to-head with a Klingon battlecruiser, featuring Fred Steiner’s gorgeously rousing soundtrack? And never mind the fact that these deleted scenes aren’t being woven into the original episodes as an optional viewing experience.
I mean, COME ON. Color me extremely disappointed. Pass.
Honey, I know what you can get me for Christmas this year!!!
*Sigh* Couple hours’ worth of ‘previously undiscovered’ flubs and outtakes bulked-out with episodes I’ve seen two hundred times before, dimly-remembered anecdotes, and ‘commentary’ by people who never got within a light-year of the TOS sets. Just another ploy to pry dollars from my cold, aging Trekkie fingers.
(Of course I’m totally in! 😊)
Very nice. I’m hoping there is more.
We haven’t even gotten to the TOS movies, yet. As one of the few who enjoyed TMP, I’m looking forward to anything new from that and the movie era. While Endlund is a good catch, where is Doug Trumbull and Dykstra? I’d like to hear Trumbull talk about how they underbid ILM for STII and lost. I think the superior VFX set up in TMP would have continued and the Enterprise would not have been ruined as it stands today from the ILM changes to their filming needs. There supposedly is a TMP blooper reel Roddenberry had put together but Robert Wise didn’t want publicly shown as it would’ve made him look bad as the Director.
$60 Canadian, plus postage to the UK, plus the cost of a region 1 player? Very disappointing. I thought I’d be first in the queue for this, but no. I hope they’ll release a UK version and that the price will drop but I won’t hold my breath.
I have absolutely NO need for any of the TOS episodes AGAIN in any form. Have them in DVD/Blu ray, classic and re-mastered. However……The extras/commentaries/features fascinate me to no end! The 50th anniversary boxed set has only 1 lame featurette. And the TAS shows will come out as a stand alone edition shortly after the $200.00+ TOS boxed offering. So this offering for me is THE ONLY 50th anniversary title to lay down real $ on! But no links to buy it? Amazon????
FYI: Pre-order link on Amazon has been added to the bottom of the article.
I wonder if Rod Roddenberry stumbled across Gene & Majel’s old Lincoln Enterprises trims they used to sell for fans of their club for a few bucks back in the hey day of the series? It was a few frames from outtakes. But, maybe Gene snuck duplicate negatives of said footage out from under Desilu/Paramount’s eyes right off the lot and stock-piled it hidden for ages. Were these soon to be released, CBS now owned reels, just sitting in a room or someone’s home considered lost or mislabeled or deemed useless and never thought to be released till now 50 years later?????????????? DETAILS!!!!!!
I’ve got a cigar box full of those Lincoln Enterprises clips and trims. Egad.
This looks awesome!!! I think I will have to buy this set.
Any news yet on whether this is Region A Region 0, or whether there will be a European release? Very frustrating for this to be announced with no thought of letting fans in the rest of the world know whether or not they’ll be able to watch it.