Six months after its conclusion, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 has landed on Blu-ray, complete with over two hours of special features rounding out the strongest — albeit delayed — year of Discovery to date. Despite COVID setbacks that complicated post-production efforts, Season 3 is a re-invention of the show that has launched it far into Star Trek’s future, providing new worlds to explore, and old worlds to revisit.

While it all ended with Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) finally taking the center seat, Discovery’s Season 3 adventures brought them hurtling into the new future, making new friends like Book (David Ajala) and Adira (Blu del Barrio) along the way, and reuniting with Starfleet as Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) and the Federation leadership worked to stay together after an unexplained disaster spanned the galaxy.

This new Blu-ray set features English and French as the only audio and subtitle languages, as the collection seems authored specifically for the US and Canadian audiences; it would have been nice to at least see subtitles offered in additional languages.

While the set is region-free and can be imported without fear of incompatibility, those seeking additional language choices may want to wait until the (eventual) global release of the Blu-ray collection comes along.

As for the special features, there are more than two hours of additional content included, which really does help make this a worthwhile purchase for those of you looking to get behind the scenes — let’s get into all the good stuff!

Kenneth Mitchell – To Boldly Go (18:03)

While the other features may give more insight into Discovery’s third season as a whole, the most engrossing segment on this Blu-ray collection is a touching tribute to series guest star Kenneth Mitchell, who revealed his ALS diagnosis last year after four appearances on the show.

This raw, deeply emotional feature gives him space to talk about how Star Trek has helped him — and his family — through his diagnosis, for the series cast and crew to share their thoughts, and details the process behind crafting his special 32nd century wheelchair for Mitchell’s guest role in Season 3.

The Voyage of Season Three (28:31)

The main documentary feature on the set, this feature provides a lengthy walk through of the season, its inception, its story, and completion. While there is interesting stuff here, if you’ve watched the weekly ‘The Ready Room’ companion show during the season, there is not much here you did not already know.

And, as discussed above, a lot of that ‘Ready Room’ content is missing — along with anything about the post-production challenges, or the task of revisiting the Guardian of Forever — making this feel woefully incomplete.

Writer’s Log – Michelle Paradise (13:48)

Series showrunner Michelle Paradise chronicles the show’s trip to Iceland in a delightful behind-the-scenes video diary, where Discovery filmed for several days in 2019.

Michelle is warm and engaging in this feature, explaining and contextualizing what we’re seeing of behind the scenes on location shooting, and she clearly has a good relationship with the Discovery cast from the jovial attitudes of everyone who pops up on camera.

The feature also gives you a much better look at the alien thugs, including the Lurian and Cardassian, from the season three opener “That Hope is You, Part 1.”

Being Michael Burnham (24:19)

The the second of two self-filmed video diaries, this one shot by Sonequa Martin-Green largely in Iceland on the shoot for “That Hope is You, Part 1.” We get a great look behind the scenes at Sonequa’s experiences as the series’ lead character, as well as a glimpse into her process of preparing to play Michael Burnham.

In addition, we also follow Sonequa to San Diego Comic Con — which occurred right after her return to the United States! — and through the fall 2019 promotional tour, then back to set.

Bridge Building (25:36)

A bonus feature that looks in more detail at each of the recurring bridge characters, including Detmer, Owosekun, Rhys, Bryce, and Nillson. There are some fun revelations here, such as how the Detmer and Owo relationship was developed.

We also learn from Detmer actress Emily Coutts that the original plan for the character was to be killed off “The Battle of the Binary Stars” — but that it was decided on the last day of shooting that she would return and also be aboard Discovery.

While the actors enthusiasm for their roles is certainly felt in their interviews, unfortunately there’s still a lack of much substance as none of their characters have gotten that much to really do on-screen.

Stunted (14:32)

This feature focuses on the stunt department for Star Trek: Discovery, providing an opportunity for stunt coordinator Chris McGuire to go into more detail about the show’s process for doing stunts. There is much praise for both Sonequa Martin-Green’s work ethic in portraying her stunts, and also a big focus on Michelle Yeoh, the reigning queen of Hollywood martial arts.

The feature also dives into Yeoh’s departure from the series, and includes a moment from her last day on set as she gives a farewell speech to the cast and crew.

Gag Reel (4:32)

Gag reels are always funny and joyful, because it’s fun to watch people have a good time. This particular one does make me think that not only does the Discovery set have something of a housefly problem, though, but that these particular flies have it out for Sonequa Martin-Green!

15 Claps (2:24)

A fun hidden extra about a ritual on set called “the 15 claps,” invented by members of the crew’s camera department, used by the entire company pump up the cast and crew each day ahead of filming — as the name suggests — by clapping 15 times. Peeking behind the camera to the everyday lives of cast and crew on set is always fun.

To access this clip, located on Disc 4, simply press ‘up’ at the main menu to highlight the Starfleet delta in the center of the main menu’s screen.

Deleted Scenes (15:00)

This season brings with it an impressive quantity of deleted and extended scenes, from eight of the year’s thirteen episodes: “That Hope is You, Part 1,” “Forget Me Not,” “Unification III,” “Terra Firma, Part 1,” “Terra Firma, Part 2,” “Su’Kal,” “There Is A Tide…,” and “That Hope is You, Part 2.”

Mostly, these scenes add very little to the episodes they were excised from, though there are two it would have been nice to see in the episode. The clip from “Forget Me Not” includes a nice discussion of Adira’s symbiont, which goes into more detail about how unprecedented it is for a symbiont to have bonded with a non-Trill.

The other scene that stands out is a moment from “Su’Kal,” as — after they’ve been holographically turned into aliens — Saru, Burnham, and Culber reflect on how their sensations have changed as a result.

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While the Blu-ray set is fairly stacked with special features and deleted scenes, Discovery Season 3 does NOT include several of the behind-the-scenes featurettes which debuted online — or as part of The Ready Room post-episode shows — like Gersha Phillips’ feature on the costumes of the 32nd century, or Mario Moreira’s lengthy overview of Season 3 props,… or even the introduction to Grudge the cat.

In fact, the set barely even mentions the brand-new elements of the 32nd century, giving almost no time at all to the design and creation of the new Star Trek: Discovery setting — a complete surprise after the creators put in so much work to overhaul the show for Season 3.

This is fascinating, already-produced stuff that should have absolutely been part of the physical home media release, instead of living exclusively on YouTube in a format that may one day vanish into the ether — this is the kind of thing fans love to see in their permeant collections.

A few features that are only available online:

Perhaps the biggest exclusion from the set, however, is the complete exclusion of the  remarkable work the show’s post production team did from home to complete the season during the height of the pandemic.

A huge amount of effort and talent was required to create entirely new ways of doing post-production for this show — like composer Jeff Russo conducting his live orchestra remotely and then stitching each musicians’ recordings together, or all of the editors and visual effects artists forced to work from home and cast members having to film motion-capture recording in their living rooms.

While it’s perhaps understandable to not want to focus on the pandemic itself, the massive challenges that a show like Discovery was forced to overcome to get this season ready for air — as the pandemic shut down North America just days after cameras wrapped on set — is a tremendous achievement that deserves to be celebrated.

Finally, we have to lament the lack of audio commentary tracks for Discovery Season 3, the second release in a row (following Lower Decks Season 1) to arrive commentary-free.

We’re hoping that the pandemic is the only reason that these two sets haven’t had the often-interesting audio tracks as part of the included features, as it may not be prudent to have cast gathering in professional recording booths — though while the Picard Season 1 set did manage to make a commentary for “Remembrance” work through the magic of video calling, the results weren’t exactly archival quality.

Fingers crossed that this is only a temporary interruption and future seasons will have commentaries once more.

While there’s a lot to enjoy on the Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Blu-ray set — between the content the bonus features DO cover, along with the always-better-than-streaming video and audio quality — there’s some pretty big holes in the Season 3 story that deserve a place in the permanent collection.

The set still earns our recommendation, as fans of Discovery will definitely enjoy the glimpses into the Iceland trip, what life is like on set for series lead Sonequa Martin-Green, and the lengthy collection of deleted scenes; we’re just hoping that the Season 4 collection expands upon the work that goes into Discovery’s behind-the-camera efforts next year.

Star Trek: Discovery — Season Three is available on Blu-ray and DVD now in the United States; the Blu-ray collection also comes in a special Steelbook package for collectors.