There is so much Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection

Like many people here at Polygon, I’m a bit of a physical media nerd. I won’t extol its virtues here (we have a regular roundup on it), but I’ve recently improved my media library, become obsessed with the quality of a particular publication, and have learned more about the work that goes into a good restoration, an advocate of Packaging and extras. It’s a fun way to engage with art more consciously, like a pop culture archaeologist.

So I recently learned what an incredible achievement this is Star Trek: The Next Generation Remaster was. Released from 2012 to 2014 to mark the series’ 25th anniversary, the remaster brought the 1987 series into high definition through incredibly painstaking work. The short version is that due to production optimization that was common at the time, the team working on the remasters had to essentially recreate the episodes from scratch. Locating the original negatives and then re-editing them, rebuilding all the special effects, composing everything again, striving to stay true to the original intent, flaws and all.

The remaster was a fascinating and incredibly expensive labor of love will almost certainly not happen again for Deep Space Nine or Star Trek: Voyager. So it’s worth checking out each version of the release and thinking about picking it up. For example: this fall Picard Legacy Collection.

An absurdly comprehensive collection of just about everything Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard has to offer (bar a cameo or two). Deep Space Nine‘s pilot), the box set contains all seven seasons of The next generation remastered, all four Star Trek films with the Next Generation Cast and all three seasons of Picardall in a nicely uniform design.

There’s just one catch: the packaging sucks. Although everything comes in a nice, large, sturdy box, the Next Generation The discs are housed in two large clamshell cases made of cheap plastic with thin disc trays bound into them, something you may be familiar with if you’ve bought other TV boxes such as the complete series collections Mr. Robot or The good fight.

Image: CBS Studios/Paramount Pictures

The Blu-rays of the film are also collected in one volume, as are all three seasons Picard, but they are less disruptive simply because they have far fewer discs. They still lack a premium feel, which is a disappointment considering this is a limited edition collector’s item. I also hate the decision to print the disc’s contents on the inside of each case’s packaging, where it’s basically impossible to read. Since almost every CD in The next generation The set has some special features, but not having a handy booklet to refer to is quite annoying. A few trinkets like a themed deck of cards and a book of Picard aphorisms are nice, but do little to alleviate the problem.

However, if you have none or very little of the media collected here, The Picard Legacy collection is still worth considering. It brings together a legendary remaster of an incredible series with all subsequent films (although not the new 4K versions) and Picard, a controversial show that still managed to have a good send-off in its final season. Add to that a huge library of special features, and The Picard Legacy collection feels less like a boxed set of a TV series and more like a massive archive full of everything you’d want to know about a popular series. You could dig through it forever – just think about finding a better storage solution first.