Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault

Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault is a Blu-ray Disc release showcasing newly-located original footage cut from Star Trek: The Original Series, taken from film located in Gene Roddenberry's personal archives, or rather those of Lincoln Enterprises. A co-production of CBS Consumer Products (as "CBS Home Entertainment") and Roddenberry Productions (as "Roddenberry Entertainment"), it was released in December 2016.

The set features twelve episodes, both the original as well as the remastered versions, from the first and second seasons of The Original Series, chosen for their connection to the recovered footage as featured in the accompanying newly conceived documentaries. The episodes include their original mono soundtrack, newly restored for this release for the original episodes, in addition to the DTS 7.1 audio produced for the original Blu-ray release of the remastered versions. With the exception of "The City on the Edge of Forever", the episodes also include isolated music tracks.

The new documentaries and audio commentaries featured in the release are produced by franchise mainstay specialists for these kind of productions, Roger Lay, Jr., Michael Okuda, and Denise Okuda.

Disc contents[]

Disc	Content
1	"The Corbomite Maneuver" "Arena" "Space Seed" "This Side of Paradise" Audio commentary by D.C. Fontana and Gabrielle Stanton Special Features Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 1) – a three-part "Making-of" documentary, featuring various Star Trek commentators including production staffers of the show itself, old and new, looking in detail at the recovered footage and their places in the respective episodes Star Trek: Revisiting a Classic – a look back at the origins of the series, including on-set footage
2	"The Devil in the Dark" "The City on the Edge of Forever" Audio commentary by Roger Lay, Jr., Scott Mantz and Mark A. Altman "Operation -- Annihilate!" "Metamorphosis" Special Features Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 2) Strange New Worlds: Visualizing the Fantastic – focusing on the visual effects of the series, and including original film elements
3	"Who Mourns for Adonais?" "Mirror, Mirror" "The Trouble with Tribbles" Audio commentary by David Gerrold and David A. Goodman "Return to Tomorrow" Special Features Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 3) Swept Up: Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor – a selection of additional footage

Background information[]

• The cut footage consisted of outtakes, alternate and deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage and visual effects footage, Roddenberry had removed from the vaults of the former Desilu Studios in the summer of 1968 with the intent of selling spliced up clippings of these through his merchandise company Lincoln Enterprises during the late 1960s, early 1970s. As a result the official franchise has never been able to showcase any contemporary behind-the-scenes footage (with the exception of William Blackburn's privately shot – therefore outside the purview of Roddenberry's scavenging hunt – behind-the-scenes footage) on any of their hitherto released home media formats for the very simple fact that they did not have any. (see main article for further particulars) The Roddenberry Vault constitutes the very first time that this footage has been available to a general audience, previously having been limited to bootleg copies sold at conventions.
• The Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 1) documentary relates how the Okudas were left slack-jawed when they became aware of the existence of the archive in 2007 thanks to Roddenberry's son Rod, and how the plan ripened to somehow have it released to the general public. At the time too busy themselves with the production of the Original Series remastered project and its Next Generation follow-up, aside from the huge amount of work it entailed of sifting through the huge amount of available footage, it was decided to have the eventual home media release slated to coincide with the 50th anniversary of The Original Series in 2016. Brought into the project was special feature specialist Roger Lay, Jr., for the express purpose of determining the format in which the footage was to be presented to the public. [1]
• In a pre-release interview, Lay has stated that fans would not want for anything, elaborating, "That's the commitment CBS, the Roddenberry team, and everyone involved has to this project – so that the fans buying the Blu-ray set will feel that they got everything there is to see. Because that's something that comes up a lot at these convention panels: are we using everything? The answer is 'Yes.'" [2] Considering that Lay himself has concurrently conceded in the same interview that not everything was used, that statement appeared to have been a commercial "exaggeration", especially since none of the featured episodes come from the third season. Furthermore, Rod Roddenberry has stated in an announcement video, posted on YouTube on 10 November 2016, that the archive consisted of over 1000 cans of outtake reels, or, put in other words, thirteen reels per episode on average. Nevertheless, this release finally afforded the fans the behind-the-scenes footage which was hitherto only reserved for a privileged precious few.
• The extra, additional footage in "Swept Up: Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor" originates from the following seventeen episodes, including four from season 3, which was otherwise not covered in any detail in the other documentaries:
  • "The Conscience of the King"
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
  • "The Return of the Archons"
  • "A Taste of Armageddon"
  • "This Side of Paradise"
  • "Errand of Mercy"
  • "The City on the Edge of Forever"
  • "The Doomsday Machine"
  • "Wolf in the Fold"
  • "The Changeling"
  • "I, Mudd"
  • "A Private Little War"
  • "Return to Tomorrow"
  • "Elaan of Troyius"
  • "The Paradise Syndrome"
  • "And the Children Shall Lead"
  • "Requiem for Methuselah"
• The German edition, which was actually the first to be released, has concurrently seen a limited Amazon.de exclusive "SteelBook^® Edition" variant, featured above, as a fan/customer gimmick to reinforce the "vault" impression of the set.
• The Dutch subtitle track is absent from the US and UK editions, but present on the German and Italian ones.
• While marketed as region-restricted, the releases are in actuality region-free as this has increasingly become commonplace for the Blu-ray format.
• This Blu-ray release has become the first substantial new Star Trek title not to have seen a concurrent DVD format release – even though, strictly speaking, the "honor" should go to the earlier 2013 Star Trek: The Original Series - Origins release, but that one was merely a simple rehashing of already previously released editions that had seen DVD counterparts.
• This particular release is one of the few individual Star Trek releases followed by the professional industry site The Numbers and for which domestic (US & Canada) home video format sales are known; The Numbers has reported that by December 2023, seven years into its release, domestic sales had been realized of a mere US$431,000, [3] translating to a roughly 13,300 units sold at the average 2020 retail price of US$32.50^(X) – in light of the production (especially those for the special features), marketing and distribution costs incurred for this release, a commercial failure by any industry standard despite its critical acclaim.

External links[]

• Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault at the Internet Movie Database
• Rod Roddenberry Opens The Roddenberry Vault at StarTrek.com
• Cracking Open THE RODDENBERRY VAULT With Roger Lay at TrekCore
• INTERVIEW: Mike and Denise Okuda Talk "The Roddenberry Vault" at TrekMovie.com
• Review at TrekMovie.com
• Review at Blu-Ray.com

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