The Captains Collection: Explorations by William Shatner (Blu-ray)

The Captains Collection: Explorations by William Shatner is Blu-ray Disc documentary set, released in North America by Shout! Factory in October 2020. The set collects four older, William Shatner-as director/(co-)producer/host/star-centered documentaries, previously released as individual standalone DVDs and which had been remastered into Blu-ray HD standards,
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*The Captains Close Up
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*William Shatner's Get A Life!
Shout! Factory released the set in three variant editions, a regular retail edition, a to 2,000 copies limited "Special Edition" which included an extra, fifth special features disc, and a to 1,000 copies limited "Exclusive Special Edition" which came additionally with Shatner's Has Been vinyl music LP. The latter two editions were only available through Shout!'s own webstore. 
Actually, a similar by New KSM produced Region B German set had already preceded the American one by four years in July 2016 under the title Unendliche Weiten - Die William Shatner Edition für alle Star Trek Fans, released on the occasion of Star Treks 50th anniversary. It was from this German set from that the Australian/UK DVD counterpart set was derived a few months later, though a Blu-ray version was not. A DVD counterpart set was released in Germany, but not in North American as it would turn out four years later.
The German set featured each of its four discs mounted in their own individual slimline plastic snapcases, all of them stored in a hardboard slipcase. A postcard was inserted with each snapcase as a bonus. The North American set(s) on the other hand, consisted of a four/five-disc holding single plastic snapcase packaged within a cardboard slipcover.
In Germany, New KSM decided to concurrently release two of their set discs, The Captains and William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge, as standalone Blu-ray and DVD retail issues as well, but keep the other two as set exclusives only. In the North American no such decision was made by Shout! Factory in regard to the Blu-rays, whereas customers so interested had to make do with the older, originating individual DVD releases.
File:The Captains Collection Shout! Special Edition Blu-ray cover.jpg|Shout! Factory "Special Edition" webstore-exclusive cover
File:The Captains Collection German Region B Blu-ray back cover.jpg|German box back cover
File:The Captains German Blu-ray cover.jpg|German The Captains case cover, also as standalone retail issue
File:The Captains German Blu-ray back cover.jpg|German The Captains case back cover
File:German The Captains Closeup Captains Collection set-exclusive Blu-ray cover.jpg|German The Captains Close Up case cover (note grey set-exclusive band indication)
File:William Shatner's Chaos on the Bridge German Blu-ray cover.jpg|German Chaos on the Bridge case cover, also as standalone retail issue
File:German Get A Life! The Captains Collection set-exclusive Blu-ray cover.jpg|German Get A Life! case cover (note grey set-exclusive band indication)
==Contents==
While the US and German sets were different from each other in regard to set execution, the pertinent differences concerned the special features included on the discs, the fifth disc in Shout!'s Special Edition(s) in particular. New KSM had actually not even bothered to have the features from the originating DVDs included at all, instead having contented itself with merely including the DVD trailer and a still gallery on each respective disc. Not so with the Shout! release where they were all included remastered in 1080i HD no less, and then some. Shout! went the extra mile to have a separate fifth disc produced, with previously never-before-seen and likewise remastered features specifically intended for inclusion in the "Special Edition" variant(s) of the set.
Disc 	Contents regular Shout! Factory edition
1 	
: The Captains
::Special Features
:*The Making of The Captains (11:02)
:*Trailer (1:01)
2 	
: The Captains Close Up
::Special Features
:*Still Kicking (47:03) †
:*Shatner the Firefighter (1:15)
:*When the Wall Came Down (1:41)
:*Music Video (3:37), "Ponder the Mystery" with William Shatner †
:*Captains Close-Up Trailer (1:16)
:*Still Kicking Trailer (0:56) †
3 	
: William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge
::Special Features
:*Trailer (1:49)
4 	
: William Shatner's Get A Life!
::Special Features
:*Shatner & The Fans (3:03)
:*The Jue Family (4:34)
:*Conversation with Robert Walter (6:04)
:*Fanaddicts Sizzle (15:05)
:*Peter and Charlotte (1:31)
:*Dr. Scott Richards (3:03)
:*Trailer (1:25)
Shout! Factory's "(Exclusive) Special Edition"	Shout! Factory's "(Exclusive) Special Edition"
5 	
:Special Features †
:*William Shatner's "Gonzo Ballet" Documentary (50:44)
:**"Gonzo Ballet" Trailer (2:54)
:*Extended Interviews
:**Walter Koenig (10:56)
:**Grace Lee Whitney (14:56)
:**Gary Lockwood (16:38)
:**Sally Kellerman (3:59)
:**Patrick Stewart (18:13)
:**Maurice Hurley (34:30)
:**Ira Steven Behr (12:53)
:**Melinda Snodgrass (22:02)
:**Jeffrey Katzenberg (14:25)
:**Les Moonves (9:09)
:† new for this release; all the others are legacy features albeit remastered in 1080i
==Background information==
*New KSM became the very first company anywhere in the world to embark on the remastering of older non- documentaries. Since then only a handful have followed suit, with three of them, (the one included in this set), and , having already been produced to the requirements of the High Definition age as the more recent newly made productions.
*The decision of New KSM to release The Captains as a standalone retail issue, instead of The Captains Close Up, did frustrate some German customers, as the latter was in effect the extended version of the former. 
*The extended interviews with production staff (the last five listed) on the fifth disc, contained substantial parts, over 45 minutes worth, that were excised from the Chaos on the Bridge documentary.
*While it has 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, and quite possibly by New KSM as well as is implied on its box back cover with its "Nur für ("only for") Region B Player" notification. Oddly enough, no such indication is present on its DVD counterpart box set, most likely because all the originating DVD releases had already been region-free to begin with.
==External links==
* (in German)
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