Theatrical release vs. "Extended" disk release?

[Rev. Rye]

Rather like the "Uncut" edition of Stranger in  a Strange Land, which replaced a few hundred words that were deleted to make the hardcover book meet the "magic" $9.99 price back in the day. (Less than one page, I think.)

If by "few hundred," you mean 60,000. To be fair, if there's a reason it doesn't seem too radically different, and that's because most of the cutting involved ruthless line editing. Apparently, RAH and his wife Virginia were worried that the book might be too controversial to make it to print in 1961 (seriously, a few years later, TV execs were convinced that the American public wasn't ready to know that women had navels and in that year, it was still common to have married couples sleeping in separate beds. It's not that hard to see why they'd wonder if the free-love and deeply anti-clerical Stranger was even publishable.) Eventually, they found a publisher, but they insisted that it be shorter. He obliged, but at the expense of his authorial voice. Eventually, Virginia got the original manuscript published, with those missing 60,000 words and the authorial voice restored.