Star Trek: The Compendium

Hardcore "Star Trek" fans are notoriously nit-picky and completist, a fact Paramount Pictures evidently overlooked when the home release for the latest film in the franchise, "Star Trek Into Darkness," was put out there with a raft of special features that were scattered to Hell and beyond on numerous editions and formats such that curious viewers could only see and hear everything by tracking down at least three separate versions.

It's both a marketing opportunity and an apology to fans, then, that Paramount has rounded up most of those special features for inclusion in "Star Trek: The Compendium," a four-disc set that presents both films (so far) in the J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise in Blu-ray. Both movies get their own disc, and each movie also gets a separate disc dedicated to special features.

For "Into Darkness" especially, this is necessary, given the sheer multitude of extras, which peek behind the camera at virtually very element of the film's production. (There are also two featurettes that have not been released before now, on costumes and props, along with an expanded "gag reel.")

The plethora of extras are pretty much self-explanatory.

The extras disc for 2009's "Star Trek" includes:

Casting
A New Vision
Starships
Aliens
Planets
Props and Costumes
Ben Burtt and the Sounds of Star Trek
Score
Gene Roddenberry's Vision
Deleted Scenes
Starfleet Vessel Simulator
Gag Reel
Trailers

But the real reason for buying this set lies with the extras disc for 2013's "Into Darkness," which includes:

THEATRICAL TRAILERS

DELETED SCENES

FEATURETTES:

The Voyage Begins...Again
Creating the Red Planet
Introducing the Villain
Rebuilding the Enterprise
National Ignition Facility: Home of the Core
Attack on Starfleet
Aliens Encountered
The Klingon Home World
The Enemy of My Enemy
Vengeance is Coming
Ship to Ship
Mr. Spock and Mr. Spock
Down With the Ship
Kirk and Spock
Brawl by the Bay
Fitting the Future
Property of Starfleet
Unlocking the Cut
Visual Affection
The Sound of Music (and FX)
Safety First
Continuing the Mission
Gag Reel

The gag reels are better by far than the standard collection of bloopers, with some clever editing and music enhancing their entertainment value. Almost as funny is the "Safety First" featurette, which revisits a fusion energy facility used as a real-life hi-tech film location (more on that can be found in the "National Ignition Facility: Home of the Core" featurette). There's also a commentary track that previously had been available only on the iTunes release.

If you're upgrading to Blu-ray -- of if you want a master's course in the production of a cutting-edge big-budget movie -- then this is an irresistible addition to your film horde. Those hard-core Trek fans mentioned earlier will also want to snap this up, though they will no doubt grumble about the omissions, which include the 3D IMAX edition of "Into Darkness" and some extras that were included on the XBOX release but are left out here.