A week before the official release of Star Trek Enterprise: The Complete Third Season on DVD, the first reviews have begun to appear while the official site has announced another podcast to celebrate.

StarTrek.com will offer exclusive commentary on the episode "Twilight" by writer Mike Sussman and the official site's editorial director Tim Gaskill, available for download beginning Tuesday, September 27th to coincide with the release of season 3 DVD set. The commentary track will be available in MP3, QuickTime and Windows Media format. Previous podcasts have also been made available to iTunes listeners.

UGO.com rates the third season set an A- overall, giving the show a B+ for content but rating the look, sound and extras on the DVD more highly. "Interviews with everyone involved, and great featurettes, particularly 'A Day in the Life of a Director,' which take 20 minutes to follow one director around the set, creating the show," win praise, as do the "crystal clear picture and a fantastic Dolby Digital 5.1 transfer." Reviewer Brian Tallerico states that "despite a hefty price tag, Trekkies of all shapes and sizes should be satisfied."

Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits isn't quite so impressed, rating the program a B and the video/audio/extras a B average as well. "My biggest problem with Season Three on DVD is that while the extras are good, there's a little less of everything this time around," he states. "You get 2 fewer episodes, 1 less behind-the-scenes featurette, 2 fewer deleted scenes, 5 fewer minutes of outtakes, etc. Given the fact that there are only 24 episodes, but still 7 discs in the set, one would think that Paramount would have taken advantage of the extra space on Disc Seven to include a little more. No such luck." In fact, he complains, a pair of featurettes have been reserved for "yet another Best Buy/Media Play/Musicland-exclusive bonus disc." But the quality of programming "is a marked improvement dramatically" over the previous two seasons, he notes.

"We have the bloodiest Trek to hit the DVD shelves. Welcome to the Xindi war!" writes Andy McKeague of Monsters and Critics, who rates the set three stars out of five yet mostly has praise for the content and extras in the writeup. "Again Paramount has pulled out the stops on the transfers and the packaging...plenty of extras, great animated menus and the excellent Dobly Digital 5.1 sound booming away every swish, zap and boom of thundering engines." For him the standout episodes are "Chosen Realm" and "Similitude".

Star Trek Enterprise: The Complete Third Season will be released on DVD next Tuesday in Region 1. The set may be preordered from Amazon.com.

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