Remastered Star Trek: the Next Generation Blu-ray a Huge Leap Forward 470
MojoKid writes "There's been no new Star Trek TV series since Enterprise limped off screens in 2005, but the huge success of the 2009 Star Trek movie and the gradual growth of Blu-ray has caught CBS' attention (CBS acquired ownership of the Star Trek franchise in 2006). The broadcast company is preparing to release Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-ray with substantial improvements (article contains comparison image shots). The DVD boxed sets that exist today were created from the taped broadcasts that were shown in the early 90s. Rather than repackaging that material, CBS has gone back to the original film stock and started from scratch. The difference is enormous. CBS has released a preview Blu-ray titled Star Trek: The Next Generation — The Next Level with three updated episodes; the show's pilot (Encounter at Farpoint), Sins of the Father and The Inner Light."
Close but no cigar for the moment... (Score:1, Insightful)
TNG meh, only a few episodes are salvageable for modern viewing. :-)
Now how about putting ST : DSN on blu-ray ?
Re:Yeah... So... (Score:3, Insightful)
The three episodes are a teaser; they're remastering the whole series. Season 1 in full is supposed to be released later this year, I think.
And while the visuals aren't the draw of the show, the DVD version really doesn't look very good a lot of places. I'm not even much of a video snob most of the time, and that was something I was a bit disappointed in years ago.
Assuming that they maintain the quality of the demo footage, I'm definitely looking forward to the Blu-Rays. I may or may not get the series as a whole, but there's a very good chance I'll pick up at least a couple seasons. 3-6? 4-6? We'll see. I'll want to check out a couple discs before I buy them first though.
Re:Wide Screen (Score:5, Insightful)
cropping the top and bottom a tad, and stretching a tad to end up with 16:9.
I sure hope you are kidding. This is the kind of BS that studios do because someone complains that it doesn't fill their entire TV. As though all recorded video must be modified to fit whatever particular TV the person bought. It was recorded for 4:3! I don't need to see Picard's head cropped-off and his butt widened just because someone doesn't understand the concept of an aspect ratio. I would love to see someone do that to their family photos. "Dad, why is Mom's head cut out of the picture? And why is everyone fat?"
Re:torrents (Score:5, Insightful)
One reason to have hard-earned money is to buy things that entertain you... which also means more entertaining things will appear.
Money is a resource, not a score.
Re:Rather something else (Score:5, Insightful)
As I grow older, I find TNG to formulaic and not so watchable. I more likely to watch DS9 or Voyager. They tend to rely less on magic
Voyager is all magic, I have no idea what you're talking about. I can't count the number of episodes that were solved by the damn deflector dish, or some other arbitrary solutions, nor the amount of screen time devoted to technobabbling. The problems encountered were almost all caused by magic, the situations were crazy and nonsensical, the solutions were insane, and it was all riddled with inconsistencies with itself and other treks. When it wasn't magical technology, it was magical humanity (characters who made no sense whatsoever).
Macro viruses! The Omega Directive! Cooperative Borg! Insane Janeway! Tuvix! Uggggh.
I remember watching the first episode of TNG. The studio shooting was as dreadful as TOS, but when the music came up, and the Patrick Stewart voiceover came up, there was a great confort that along with the bad there was going to be a lot of good. Of course, one the quest for rating took hold and the overwhelming militaristic mission took over, it was pretty much over. TNG and the Borg. DSP and the dominion. Enterprise and the confusing and arbitrary Xindi. Peaceful explorations simply does not sell laundry detergent.
The later Borg plot in TNG that it sounds like you're talking about (Picard assimilated, etc.) was two episodes long, and there were only a handful of others. The Mission didn't become militaristic, unlike in Enterprise. TNG was kind of magical and more TOS-like for the first season or two. After that it was quite soapy and character-centric.
You are just more cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference isn't the magic, it is the style. TNG like TOS is a Rodenberry creation and is a Utopia. He had a bright vision of the future and Star Trek is that committed to film. Things aren't perfect, but they are better, humans are better, life is better.
DS9 and Voyager are Dystopias. They are future imperfect, things turning bad. War, strife, death, etc. They aren't hardcore dystopias (Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Equilibrium would be some hardcore dystopia explamles) but still.
Now the dystopias are probably a bit more realistic visions of the future. I've always bought in to the Firefly theory of "technology changes, people don't" but that is neither here nor there. That is the big difference, and is probably the reason for you liking the new ones more. When Rodenberry died, the ST universe went in a different direction.
Re:Or a Blu-Ray drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? I'd be more inclined to pay something that restores my rights than something that takes them away.
Re:Rather something else (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the writers decided to bring them back, but they decided to anthropomorphise them. So they took Picard, who at the time wasn't sure if he was going to continue playing the part of Picard, and borgify him, leaving the viewers hanging. Would Picard be saved or would he leave the show and become a recurring bad guy?
Then we got Hugh. That's when the Borg began their downward spiral into pussydome. The moment Hugh said "Geordi is my friend" I knew it was all over.
Then we got Lore with the Borg renegades, who all had cool names similar to Locutus. Apparently a single Borg discovering individuality was enough to completely cripple an entire cube's population. No security on that network I guess.
Then we got First Contact, where they basically rebooted the Borg into a technological space vampire bug species. Pretty much everything we learned about them from the episode Q, Who? was ditched so they could play a bigger role. We got the Queen, which was completely opposite to the idea of a collective consciousness! She is the big bad, the drones are just vampiric zombies to be blasted apart by holographic tommy guns.
From there we went to Voyager, which completely ignored the Borg until their ratings started to sag, then they decided to ditch one cast member and replace her with a borg drone with big tits and a nice ass. From there on out, the Borg became a running joke. Voyager disproved that resistance was futile. They disproved that the Borg were even a serious threat. By the end of Voyager the Borg had been relegated to "major annoyance".
But this wasn't the end. Oh no! They had to bring the Borg back for Enterprise! Cause, you know, Enterprise took place in an alternate universe created when the Borg went back in time in First Contact and changed the past. So they had some Borg survive their sphere exploding in orbit and making it down to the arctic where they would be found by some scientists in the 2150's. Now, this could have been done really well, but they still had all the props and costumes left over from Voyager, as well as the same lame-brained producers and writers, so we just got more of the same, ultimately ending in a signal being broadcast alerting the borg to the existence of Earth, thus allowing them to find their way there in the future, around the 2360's...
I have a love-hate relationship with Star Trek. And it's mostly Berman/Braga's fault. Had they had some producers with a minute amount of balls, the Borg could have been awesome. Instead they turned them into B-grade movie bad guys for the ratings, and it is still going on today. In the MMORPG Star Trek Online, you can take out entire cube ships by yourself without much hassle. They've even gone so far as to link V'Ger with the Borg... cause everything in Star Trek has to be related to everything else.
So much potential, wasted by crappy writers and producers...
Re:FUCK YES (Score:5, Insightful)
Make that because it has Wil Wheaton in it!
Wil's character may have been annoying during the show, but he's a pretty cool guy. I can probably tolerate Wesley a bit better the second time around with that perspective.
Re:torrents (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything shot on good old fashioned "analog" film, and remastered can be brought up to HD, even 1080P (assuming the film was high enough quality which isn't a high bar).
Like these STTNG remasters.
The problem in this case is not getting high enough resolution, but in finding a way to fix all the problems they relied on not being visible in TV broadcasts.
Cheap sets (woodgrain in the "metals" will be visible in 1080P, cardboard props that are supposed to be advanced handheld computers, etc.), makeup jobs (caking on the makeup to make aging stars look as sexy as possible), inside jokes (Mike Okuda probably get's at least 10 drunken death threats a week from the crew working on these remasters)
Character vs. actor (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that it has Wil Wheaton in it.
By every account I have ever heard, Wil Wheaton [wikipedia.org] is a good guy who deserves your respect. Wesley Crusher, on the other hand, was a Marty Stu [tvtropes.org] character[1] who alienated many fans, and if you want to hate Wesley, go right ahead.
Just keep the two separate. Wil Wheaton didn't write the stories, didn't write his dialog, and in general should be held blameless. I know if I had the chance to be part of a Star Trek series, working with Gene Roddenberry, I would do it even if my character wasn't popular.
There were some episodes with Wesley that many fans accept. I never saw "The First Duty" but I heard good things about it, for example.
And finally... Wil Wheaton has been known to post on Slashdot, and might be reading this thread. Did you write those words with the idea that Wil Wheaton might read them? Remember, he's a real person.
[1] A while ago I went to a lecture in Seattle, featuring a writer who had written scripts for Star Trek TNG. They announced that first they would show an episode he had written, and then he would talk about it. My heart sank when I saw that the episode was one I had seen before, and it was a Wesley episode and it was annoying. When the writer began to talk, I began to feel more sympathy toward him. He told us that the basic idea of this episode came direct from Gene Roddenberry, and it was just his job to flesh it out. He also told us that Gene Roddenberry's middle name was "Wesley" and he made it clear that Roddenberry was the one pushing for Wesley to be this super guy who is constantly saving the ship. So I'm not just claiming this "Marty Stu" thing, I have evidence.
steveha
Wil Wheaton answers questions on slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FUCK YES (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a little buggy (Linux after all)
Nice troll. I put it to you that Sony avoided anything with a copyleft license* like the plague when they wrote their BluRay player software, which accounts for it's bugginess since they had to implement so much from scratch. Linux is just the kernel - anything on top that plays media is Sony's product.
* The kernel is GPL2 but GPL permits you to link code that ordinarily comes with your operating system without creating a derivative work.
Re:torrents (Score:4, Insightful)
You're also forgetting that if the source material is interesting enough after 5 minutes you don't notice the difference between a 400M avi file and a 1080p blu-ray. If you do then either you are intentionally looking for differences thus keeping you from being absorbed or whatever you are watching is not that interesting.