Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

A Taste of Armageddon could be remade nicely in the drone era

https://youtu.be/xd904wRUxcA

been watching season 2 of DS9. there's one episode ("Shadowplay") where they find a village where people keep disappearing. eventually they figure out that the entire village is a hologram, multiple generations of AI living out entire lifespans. they shut it down to reboot it and everyone disappears except for one person - the man who created it. rather than take him away or get him help they end up turning the hologram back on and just saying bye and leaving!

it was weird. it almost felt like they were enabling him. Trek is usually pretty adept at exploring "What does it mean to be human?" but not sure in this case it works very well.

would it really have been more satisfying for them to take him away, where he'd never be heard of again? recently saw 'future imperfect' (similar plot + riker is tricked into thinking he's 16 years in the future) where that indeed happens

idk, the entire franchise is kind of terrible at writing endings. there are obvious exceptions, but for the most part things just go back to the way they were 45 minutes earlier, with no ramifications

To play devil's advocate, I think that the episode is asserting that the old dude created sentient AI (which had the ability to reproduce and propagate itself), and that that community was a real community. Also, he was old, let him keep his quality of life!

i haven't seen that one but it sounds like a rework of tng's "the survivors" where they leave the magical old guy with his fake wife.

a rework of tng's "the survivors" where they leave the magical old guy with his fake wife

which sounds suspiciously like a rework of a TSOL episode

To play devil's advocate, I think that the episode is asserting that the old dude created sentient AI (which had the ability to reproduce and propagate itself), and that that community was a real community. Also, he was old, let him keep his quality of life!

oh yeah, i think Dax actually says all of that. and Odo even formed a strong friendship w that girl. maybe the prime directive now includes AI due to TNG's Exocomps incident.

maybe the prime directive now includes AI due to TNG's Exocomps incident.

TNG also broached AI sentience with Data in season 2's "Measure of a Man".

which sounds suspiciously like a rework of a TSOL episode

I watched the DS9 episode. It varied the formula up by having the creator not caring about the AI people, and having a series regular speak on the AI's behalf.

Odo spinning into a top at the end was a great moment!

Star Trek writers must really love that trope, I'm watching Enterprise for the first time, and I just saw an episode where they did the same plot once again, this time with Odo's actor playing a guy who lives with artificial versions of his old friends. It was a bit distracting to see him do another ST character than Odo... They also had the guy who played Weyoun do two different aliens within three episodes.

He was two different aliens in a single episode, too!

the more jeffrey combs the better i say

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dogs_of_War_(episode)

Weyoun is in my top 5 ST characters of all time.

which one?

I am fully on board with this:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-look-back-at-star-trek-nemesis-the-film-that-killed-1791577962

I hated Insurrection way more than Nemesis, which was merely boring.

otm, I think Insurrection was bad enough that people didn't want to give another movie a shot

Nemesis was still ehhh

Insurrection was merely a mediocore 2-part TNG episode with a bigger budget and some goofy stuff
Nemesis killed TNG with how bad it was

Yeah, Insurrection is pretty much the only ST movie that tries to do what it's parent series did instead of being an action movie or a space opera with ST characters. Whether or not that's a good idea is debatable, and it has some glaring flaws, but at least it's kinda charming and gives the actors room to do their thing. Whereas Nemesis has Picard and Data doing car chase scenes in the desert, fuck that shit!

for some reason my brain relocated the car chase to Insurrection

Insurrection includes Troi talking about her boobs firming up on the reverse-aging planet and Riker steering the Enterprise with a joystick

Riker steering the Enterprise with a joystick

How I loathed that.

A Gravis PC joystick, at that. Pretty sure I had the same joystick, and it wasn't even a good one!

watched the one where riker (presumably) gets it on with bebe neuwirth

really weird

lol which one is that, would watch

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/First_Contact_(episode)

http://www.treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/

fascinating look at how ST spans the film/video divide and the problems that arise due to that

great super nerdy (and sadly disappointing) article, thanks
had no idea that amount of work went into the TNG remasters

I was eagerly awaiting for Deep Space Nine Blurays after TNG ones were finished, and was disappointed to learn the TNG ones sold too little, because it was made clear they couldn't afford to do the same kind of restoration for DS9 them. Especially considering that DS9 isn't quite as popular as TNG, so it'd sell even less. But it is sad to rewatch that series on Netflix and compare it to how good the TNG remastering looks. Hopefully one day the price of recreating/remastering all those special effects shots will become so low they can afford to do it, though apparently it's such a labour-intensive job I'm not sure if it'll ever happen.

I can't imagine Netflix or some other streaming service will provide the cash to remaster them either, unless they get exclusive rights to the series, and obviously Paramount ain't gonna give them those.

did you read the article? it'd be insanely expensive to do so for DS9, it was shot on a much lower resolution medium so it's not just the special effects -- they'd have to do upscaling on most of it because it was shot at a resolution not much different from what it was broadcast in

I mean, it was probably a net good because many of these shows were able to continue on at lower budget levels and editing was much easier, but the flip side is that the show is never going to look overall better than it did when originally broadcast. they could recreate all of the purely-animated scenes in high resolution, but then it'd cut to Sisko and the team looking like an upscaled DVD

Though I guess with DS9 they'd also run into the dilemma of how much they want to update the effects... With TNG, it was easier, because most of the stuff they updated were space phenomenon, stars, planets, Enterprise flying through space, etc. Scenes with actors, such as when aliens appear, still retain the original practical effects, so the discrepancy isn't so obvious, because the new effects are mostly separated into non-actor shots, so it's easier for the viewer's brain to compartmentalise it.

But with DS9 they'd have to figure out whether they just want to, for example, remaster the scenes where Odo and other changelings morph onto HD level, or whether they want to change the morphing so that it'd look more "realistic". Obviously the tempation to do the latter with modern effect technology would be great, but I wonder whether the discrepancy between "realistic" morphing and the rubber-face practical effects would start to feel too jarring.

(xpost)

can you imagine how ridiculous it'd look with Odo turning in a puddle of HD goo while the rest of the scene looks like the DVD presentation?

did you read the article? it'd be insanely expensive to do so for DS9, it was shot on a much lower resolution medium so it's not just the special effects -- they'd have to do upscaling on most of it because it was shot at a resolution not much different from what it was broadcast in

I didn't read that article cos I've other ones where they address the same issue... AFAIK the problem isn't that DS9 as a whole was shot in lower resolution; I think all the live action scenes in it were still shot on film, not on videotape. The problem is that DS9, being a newer series, has a lot more computer effects than TNG, and those were created straight on video. So with TNG, most of the time they could simply use the film stock they had and remaster it, because most of the special effects were practical effects shot on film too. Whereas with DS9 they could do the same with all the scenes that merely feature actors acting, or aliens in practical rubber masks, but with any shot with CGI, they'd need to recreate the CGI in HD, because the done-on-video original CGI simply can't be upscaled without it looking incredibly crappy.

read the fucking article

But TNG, DS9 and Voyager could not be rescanned and released in Full HD, as the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution.

Speaking of, while still slogging my way through seasons 1-2 of TNG, I watched the first two episodes of DS9 (which I had never watched before) and it was INSTANTLY a better show than TNG from the very first scene. I'm gonna try to watch both series still, but TNG is so hard to get through right now.

Whereas with DS9 they could do the same with all the scenes that merely feature actors acting

they can't do this, because no film negative was ever cut - it doesn't exist

xp

xxxp let me backtrack a little since I overstated -- all of the editing was done on video, not 35mm, although 35mm or comparable material existed at some point

so it wouldn't just be the effects that would need to be redone, but the entire editing process

best case scenario is that they kept all the 35mm originals, and that after they digitize it all, some software exists to determine which takes were actually in the episode and it kind of puts together a rough layout from original footage

but even then, any audio overdubs, etc are going to have to be extracted from edited footage and... oh god

read the fucking article

But TNG, DS9 and Voyager could not be rescanned and released in Full HD, as the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution.

No, you read the article. The sentence you quote says "the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution". That's why they couldn't simply upscale TNG, they had to (as is explained in the article) go back to the original films stock and recut it so it looks just like the original NTCS videotapes, plus recreate the CGI in some places. It's the same they'd have to with DS9, except that it has way more CGI shots, which only exist in NTSC resolution, so they'd have to a lot more recreating.

If the raw footage (not the edited final episodes) would only exist as NTCS tapes, they could never update them to HD. There's no way to do it. So they must have the original material on film for them to even consider it.

(xpost to Shakey)

right they'd have to re-edit the entire thing from the original film (assuming they still have it) and then re-do all the effects - an insane amount of time and money and effort

the actual DS9 live footage only exists on videotape and there is no original material on film.

Yeah, but that's exactly what they did with TNG. Which was my point.

(xpost)

TNG had original footage on film though, which made upscaling possible.

or not upscaling but hi-res capture

the actual DS9 live footage only exists on videotape and there is no original material on film.

If this was the case, they could never remaster it on HD. As the guy interviewed in the article says it's possible, only very expensive, they still must have the the (non-effect) shots filmed in storage somewhere.