Enterprise Trekking To Blu-ray; Fans Helped Pick Covers

Star Trek: Enterprise will make its Blu-ray debut on March 26 with Star Trek: Enterprise -- The Complete First Season, with a cover conceived utilizing fan input. The six-disc set, from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Media Distribution, will include all 25 first-season Enterprise episodes and several new audio commentaries (featuring Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Dan Curry, Mike Sussman, David Livingston, Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating and more). Also included are several new bonus features, notably "To Boldly Go: Launching Enterprise," a three-part retrospective documentary.

"Part One: Countdown" explores the challenges of creating a Trek prequel series (and includes interviews with Berman, Braga, Herman Zimmerman, Michael and Denise Okuda, etc). "Part Two: Boarding the NX-01" chronicles the casting process and keys in on the production of the "Broken Bow" pilot (with Scott Bakula, director James Conway, Trinneer and Keating among the interviewees). "Part Three: First Flight" examines the rest of season one and offers interviews with production and post-production personnel. Also included in The Complete First Season are previously released special features, among them outtakes, deleted scenes and Archival Mission Logs

Back in November, StarTrek.com and CBS Home Entertainment invited Star Trek fans to weigh in on potential cover options for the upcoming release on Blu-ray of The Complete First Seasonof Star Trek: Enterprise. Option #1 included images of the show’s cast and of the Enterprise, while Option #2 featured sleek shots of the Enterprise in motion, and Option #3 depicted a bold Enterprise series logo with shots of Scott Bakula as Captain Archer in the background. Intriguingly, since no option dominated the voting, the team at CBS Home Entertainment created covers incorporating the array of comments from fans who voted. So check out the covers, and see what Ken Ross, Executive Vice President and General Manager, CBS Home Entertainment had to say about the voting results and the cover.

You opened up the Enterprise Blu-ray cover question to fans. Give us a feel for how many people responded. And what kind of responses/feedback did you get to the cover options presented?Ross: Almost 4,000 people responded and although #2 has the most “likes,” there was no clear-cut winner. You see, I read every single fan response, and the comments were all over the place. It was so interesting and helpful. Different people were passionate about different covers. The same cover that was absolutely loved by some was hated by others… However, the one chord that kept getting struck was that this series was about the people; it was more about the human beings and not the technology or the ships. These characters were explorers.And the suggested covers didn’t capture that?Ross: I didn’t feel that any of the three proposed covers really nailed it and represented that, so we listened to the fans and changed course.  We dug deeper and found an old UPN promo poster utilized during the launch campaign for the series which introduces the cast in a strong, heroic pose in their EVA suits as the pioneers of space exploration in the Star Trek universe. It harkens back to that sense of discovery, heroism and exploration that served as the basis for the Star Trek concept. The image conveys the same spirit of adventure as The Right Stuff and other iconic stories of pioneers exploring a new frontier. We felt there was no better way to show who those characters really were and their significant role in the Trek mythos. That art became the basis for the new Blu-ray cover design. And for those lovers of the ship, we’re going to feature it on the back cover. We also read that many fans thought images representative of key scenes/episodes from the respective seasons should be used, and we are going to include such images on the backs as well.How satisfied are you with the current cover?Ross: Something in my gut told me that none of the proposed covers were right, and that was confirmed by everyone in the office picking a different one. Usually one stands out as the unanimous favorite. So I decided to go to the best source possible… the fans at Startrek.com. And I’m quite happy we did so. By going through this process, I think we came up with an even better cover than the three we had originally proposed and hope we are really capturing the essence of how fans regard the series with the new design.  What’s great is that even though we didn’t go with any one of the three polled choices, the fans influenced the direction of the cover art for the Blu-ray release – personally, I think that’s a more interesting and cooperative outcome. Some fans will be surprised to learn that Enterprise will be out next, and not DS9 or Voyager. How/why was that decision was made?Ross: It’s a massive undertaking to go to in and meticulously rebuild DS9 or Voyager from scratch in high definition with the same process being employed on TNG. Enterprise was finished and broadcast in HD, so practically speaking, it is much easier for us to turn it around quickly and release it into the market, while we are still releasing seasons of The Next Generation. The fact that the show was HD-ready allows us to give fans an opportunity to revisit the series and also offer an in-depth exploration on the making of the series and its significance in the Star Trek canon by producing all-new special features along the lines of the material we've been producing for the TNG Blu-ray releases.Star Trek: Enterprise -- The Complete First Season will feature 19-plus hours of material and will cost $130. Keep an eye on StarTrek.com for additional details.