In August 2004, Universal Studios released a three-DVD set of Rod Serling's Night Gallery that included the 1969 pilot film, the six first-season episodes, and, as a bonus, one second-season episode and two third-season episodes.

Universal has announced the DVD release of Season 2, with a street date of November 18, 2008. All 22 episodes, all 61 stories from Season 2 will be included, along with some interesting bonus items:

A 30-minute documentary on the history of the show, "Revisiting the Gallery: A Look Back," featuring interviews with NG directors Jeannot Szwarc, John Badham, and William Hale, artist Tom Wright, composer Gil Melle, art director Joseph Alves Jr., makeup artist Leonard Engelman, actors Pat Boone, Joseph Campanella, James Metropole, Laurie Prange, and Lindsay Wagner, and NG historians Jim Benson and Scott Skelton (the gentlemen who run this page).

A menu featuring close inspection of 33 of the second-season paintings, with commentary by Tom Wright.

Audio commentary on three episodes by NG fan Guillermo del Toro (director of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Devil's Backbone): "The Phantom Farmhouse"/"Silent Snow, Secret Snow," "The Messiah on Mott Street"/"The Painted Mirror," and "The Caterpillar"/"Little Girl Lost."

Podcast commentary on three episodes by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson (authors of Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour): "A Fear of Spiders"/"Junior"/"Marmalade Wine"/"The Academy," "Cool Air"/"Camera Obscura"/"Quoth the Raven," and "Lindemann's Catch"/"The Late Mr. Peddington"/"A Feast of Blood."

Plus some NBC commercials, promo material, and act-break bumpers.

Good things come to those who wait.

For those interested in preordering online, here are a few retailer links:

www.amazon.com/Night-Gallery-Season-Two/dp/B001DXS4DI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1218719645&sr=1-2

www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=49463071

www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?item_id=1420841&partner_id=11367434

WHAT'S ON THE SET, WHAT ISN'T ...

Confusion has already risen over a pair of reportedly missing second-season vignettes, claimed by Universal in a September 19 news release and then reported on the www.tvshowsondvd.com website: "Despite a long and intensive search, Universal was not able to locate portions of the 40-year-old episode 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' and the story 'Witches' Feast' to include on the upcoming Night Gallery Season Two DVD set."

This is only partially true. First, a little background is needed to explain the reason for this confusion.

When the second episode of season two was first broadcast on September 22, 1971, it ran with the following lineup of stories: "A Death in the Family," "The Merciful," "Class of '99," and "Witches' Feast" (the final segment was a five-minute vignette). When the second episode was rebroadcast in its first rerun showing on March 22, 1972, "Witches' Feast" had been replaced by a different vignette, the five-minute "Satisfaction Guaranteed," and the main titles and end credits had been altered to reflect the change in cast and crew members.

When the butchered, half-hour syndication version of Night Gallery was prepared by Universal in 1973, both "Witches' Feast" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed" were included in the run (the former was padded with a seven-second stock shot of a castle). In addition, two other vignettes were included that were filmed during the production of the second season but never broadcast: the brief vignette "Room for One Less" and the somewhat longer "Die Now, Pay Later," which was expanded with a great deal of superfluous footage.

Fast-forward seventeen years. In 1990, Universal prepared new masters for the original broadcast version of Night Gallery. When studio minions mastered the second episode of season two, they used the March 22, 1972, rebroadcast of that episode, the one with "Satisfaction Guaranteed" in place of "Witches' Feast." When they finished, the three relatively minor vignettes - "Witches' Feast," "Room for One Less," and "Die Now, Pay Later" - were omitted from that mastering.

Fast-forward another eighteen years. In the spring and summer of 2008, Universal prepared the second season of Night Gallery for a DVD release. They contacted Jim and me to help with some of the bonus features, and we suggested they try to locate original cuts for the three "lost" vignettes (and unknown to us, Universal's master of the second episode was listed as including "Witches' Feast," not "Satisfaction Guaranteed," so they assumed they already had the former). In the end, the folks at Universal had searched and searched, finding no original cuts of the vignettes, then discovered that "Witches' Feast" was not on their mislabeled master and that an episode segment titled "Satisfaction Guaranteed" (which Jim and I had never mentioned to them) was in its place. Clocking in at five minutes and three seconds, no one at Universal was sure whether it was even complete (it was).

Intending to be as truthful and up-front as possible, Universal minions changed the front of the DVD box from reading "The Complete Second Season" to, simply, "Season Two" and composed liner notes for the back of the box that included an admission that they could not find "Witches' Feast" and portions of "Satisfaction Guaranteed." Unfortunately, the truth of the situation was not discovered until after the liner notes were printed, so this error will remain in the text on the DVD set.

If Season Two sells well and a release for Season Three is scheduled, perhaps these second-season vignette omissions can be redressed (and Season Three is going to need all the help it can get, since it contains only 15 half-hour episodes - roughly six-and-a-half hours of content).