Debuting with hardly any fanfare during Wednesday’s Star Trek Day festivities was our first look at the long-awaited 4K remastering of Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition, the secretive project working to bring Robert Wise’s 2001 version of the first Trek film to the modern presentation format.
Announced in July with great fanfare, the definitive edition of Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture is finally getting the long-needed upgrade from its present DVD-only, standard definition format to a new 4K UHD presentation — which will debut on the Paramount+ streaming service sometime in 2022.
During one of the intermissions in the live Star Trek Day event, Paramount+ unveiled the first clip from the updated Motion Picture cut, showing off a full-HD version of the Enterprise’s journey into V’Ger — new visual effects work updated for the planned 4K release.
The Director's Edition of #StarTrek: The Motion Picture is coming exclusively to @ParamountPlus. The restoration is being undertaken by David C. Fein, Mike Matessino, and Daren R. Dochterman, all of whom worked previously with director Robert Wise. pic.twitter.com/qyWwg3vBsf
— Star Trek on Paramount+ (@StarTrekOnPPlus) September 9, 2021
A comparison of the new images to a screencap from the 2001 Director’s Edition DVD:
It’s only a few seconds of new footage, but even this tease shows the great potential for the updated Director’s Edition to bring Robert Wise’s true vision for that first Trek film to a modern archival quality.
The film will debut on Paramount+ in 2022, but we have no doubt it will eventually come to 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray disc formats after the P+ exclusivity window closes; currently, only the theatrical edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is available on 4K Blu-ray in the new four-film set as well as in a standalone release, which features the remastered presentation on standard 1080p HD Blu-ray.