Latest "Ultimate DVD Set": The X-Files

Evidently it's the year of the Ultimate Box Set. Thanks to huge sales of full-season DVD compilations of recent hits and classic favorites, the TV-on-DVD market has become saturated with every show that has available rerelease rights, from Acapulco H.E.A.T. to The Young Riders. How to get the attention of easily distracted shoppers looking for something new and unexpected? Box up the box sets in ultimate fan collections and release them with a few extra goodies in time for holiday gift-giving. (It still counts as gift-giving if you buy it for yourself.)

So far this year we've seen compendiums of the entire ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 (a simple bundling of the individual SG-1 full-season DVD sets, which were not terribly heavy on extras), all five seasons of Angel (complete with a signed letter from Joss Whedon!), and all eight seasons of Charmed (another bundling of full-season releases, which were also light on features), not to mention the remastered season 1 of Star Trek. Ahead of the pack were last year's complete Buffy and Andromeda collections, which in turn followed pioneering full-series repackagings of the various Star Trek franchises.

The latest entry is the X-Files Complete Collector's Edition, a massive 61-disc set including all nine seasons, the X-Files feature film, and "over nine hours" of bonus materials. The individual full-season sets are already awash with extras: the usual featurettes and select commentary tracks are supplemented with half-hour documentaries aligning each season with the mythology, and the season 9 set has even more extensive documentary material exploring the making and meaning of the last season and the finale. Beyond this, disc 61 in the new collection contains "Threads of the Mythology" featurettes culled from 2005's four-volume The X-Files Mythology DVD series.

The big box will be released Nov. 6, with a suggested retail price of $329.98 ($419.98 Canada). That's $5.40 a disc, in case you're wondering.

Those interested in comparing prices on any of the products I mentioned can follow these links to shop around for the full-series sets of The X-Files, Stargate SG-1, Angel, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, as well as for the remastered Star Trek season 1.