Star Trek TNG Remastered?

[trevanian]

Bertie wrote:

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Frankly, I've long been sick of analog nostalgia. You know, "models are better than CGI", "vinyl LPs are better than digital", all of it. Maybe these things were true once upon a time. I don't care — they aren't true now.

It ain't nostalgia, but it IS your loss if you can't tell the dif.

Me, I can't tell with audio, but I sure as shit can tell with visuals. New tech ain't necessarily better tech ... it is often just easier, cheaper or faster to make and market.

Oh, and you left out, 'physical is better than virtual' ... that's another bit you can rail against, and I'll quite happily enjoy handcrafted models and sex with organic women over whatever it is that is coughed up as the trendy replacement of the week.

[Hober Mallow]

Bertie wrote:

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Frankly, I've long been sick of analog nostalgia. You know, "models are better than CGI", "vinyl LPs are better than digital", all of it. Maybe these things were true once upon a time. I don't care — they aren't true now.

Vinyl is better than digital. It has nothing to do with nostalgia.

[Doug Otte]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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Vinyl is better than digital. It has nothing to do with nostalgia.

Indeed. It's just that most people can't hear (or see, in the case of video) the difference. I had a discussion w/ another soccer parent recently about vinyl vs. CD, and she was agog when I said that vinyl sounds better than CD. She literally just stood there with her mouth open - couldn't possibly understand the idea.

Doug

[ManaByte]

Similitude wrote:

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Wow @ Anyone claiming B5 was more popular than DS9.

Actually, it was. Was also more respected in SciFi circles, which is one reason why Harlan Ellison was a consultant on every episode.

B5's popularity is the sole reason you got the Dominion War in DS9. Berman wanted to turn DS9 into a serial with a big war to copy B5's five-year Shadow War story arc.

[trevanian]

ManaByte wrote:

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Actually, it was. Was also more respected in SciFi circles, which is one reason why Harlan Ellison was a consultant on every episode.

B5's popularity is the sole reason you got the Dominion War in DS9. Berman wanted to turn DS9 into a serial with a big war to copy B5's five-year Shadow War story arc.

Gotta disagree there. I think Berman was opposed to every aspect of serialization outside of cliffhangers. I think the retake the station part of ds9 was supposed to run for a helluva lot longer than the half dozen shows it does, but the creatives couldn't get approval to go further.

[ManaByte]

They didn't even start the serial nature of the show until the fourth season or so, which is long after B5 was starting to put a hurt on DS9.

[Hober Mallow]

ManaByte wrote:

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Actually, it was. Was also more respected in SciFi circles, which is one reason why Harlan Ellison was a consultant on every episode.

B5's popularity is the sole reason you got the Dominion War in DS9. Berman wanted to turn DS9 into a serial with a big war to copy B5's five-year Shadow War story arc.

Dude, I'm going to commit sacrilege and admit that I much prefer Babylon 5 to DS9 (collective gasp!), but B5 was never during any season more popular than DS9. It wasn't even close. DS9 was right up there in the ratings in the top five syndicated series or just below for most of its run. B5 never cracked the top ten any time that I paid attention to its rating. And trust me, I did pay attantion. It doesn't mean it wasn't a great show, but the numbers didn't even come close to DS9. Ever.

Of course, B5 had to make it on its own without the built-in audience a Star Trek name being attached to it would get.

EDIT:

Just did a quick google for B5 ratings, and found this listing of top action shows, posted January 1997:

Show HH A18-34 A18-49 A25-54
Star Trek: DS9 6.5 4.2 4.9 5.1
Hercules 6.2 3.8 4.0 4.1
Xena 6.1 3.7 3.8 3.9
Baywatch 4.5 2.3 2.3 2.4
Outer Limits 3.9 2.3 2.6 2.7
Babylon 5 3.7 2.4 2.8 2.8
Highlander 3.1 2.0 2.2 2.3
Sinbad 3.1 1.7 1.8 1.7
F/X: The Series 3.0 1.4 1.7 1.8
Baywatch Nights 2.8 1.5 1.5 1.6

Here are the SF ratings for the 1996/1997 TV season:

OVERALL 96-97 SEASON (9/16 to 5/21)
Prime-Time
Rank Net/Viewers/LastYr
1 (highest listing) 30.8 million viewers
12 The X-Files FOX/18.3 /15.5
74 Pretender NBC/10.9 /
76 Profiler NBC/10.8 /
85 Millenium FOX/10.3 /
94 Lois & Clark ABC/ 9.7 /17.0
110 Sliders FOX/ 8.5 / 8.7
112 Dark Skies NBC/ 8.4 /
125 Voyager UPN/ 6.2 / 7.3
144 Buffy,Vampire Slayer WB/ 3.7 /
148 The Burning Zone UPN/ 3.2 /
155 (lowest listing) 2.4


Syndicated (Gross Average Audience & Women/Men 25-54)
Rank Net/Rating/LastYr /Women/%Change /Men/%Change
-- Xena MCA/ 6.5 /5.5 / 4.0 / +18% /4.0/ +14%
-- Hercules MCA/ 6.1 /6.2 / 3.8 / 0% /3.8/ - 5%
-- Deep Space Nine Par/ 5.9 /6.7 / 4.1 / - 7% /4.8/ -11%
-- Outer Limits MGM/ 3.5 /4.2 / 2.5 / -14% /2.5/ + 9%
-- Babylon 5 PTN/ 3.2 /3.0 / 2.2 / +16% /2.7/ + 8%
-- Highlander Rys/ 3.0 /3.3 / 2.1 / - 5% /2.1/ - 5%
-- Psi Factor Eye/
-- Viper Par/
-- F/X: The Series Rys/
-- Sinbad Eye/

EDIT2: Checked two random 1996 episodes' rankings. One came in 22nd place for the week, the other 25th place for the week. DS9 was regularly in the top ten. I'd further compare the ranking to DS9's ranking for the same week, but my eyes are tired and I'm going to bed now. Suffice it to say, DS9's ratings were always better than B5's.

[Gary Sebben]

Bertie wrote:

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Frankly, I've long been sick of analog nostalgia. You know, "models are better than CGI", "vinyl LPs are better than digital", all of it. Maybe these things were true once upon a time. I don't care — they aren't true now.

And if you don't agree, well, its not like your existing 480-interlaced disks are going anywhere. For the rest (as the Modernists liked to say) "Make it New".

I think this is a bad analogy. A CD is not trying to synthesis sound from scratch that sounds like real sound. A model has weight. The light hits it just right. Its a real object. A CG model is and it render engine is trying to simulate that real thing. Yes, the CG is more flexible, but it is also a less than accurate representation of the model.

[Cyrus]

In terms of overall TV viewers B5 was never more popular than DS9, it wasn't even close (DS9 ratings were around double that of B5). DS9 was always in the top 3 among 1 hour syndicated shows (including 3 seasons as #1) while B5 more or less dropped out of the rating charts after the first few episodes of its second season. And serialization of a syndicated series is not helpful in that regard as it turns off casual viewers, and both shows had their best ratings in their earlier seasons. As for popularity among hard core sci-fi viewers, I guess that's up for debate. B5 was clearly more popular among Hugo voters.

Berman was very much against serialization of DS9. He wanted them to end the Dominion war after a few episodes, the writers had to battle with him to keep it going.

The debate about Vinyl vs CD or CGi vs models is interesting. But I don't care if they use models or CGI, as long as they create an HD version of the TNG I'll be happy.

[Dac]

Gary Sebben wrote:

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I think this is a bad analogy. A CD is not trying to synthesis sound from scratch that sounds like real sound. A model has weight. The light hits it just right. Its a real object. A CG model is and it render engine is trying to simulate that real thing. Yes, the CG is more flexible, but it is also a less than accurate representation of the model.

But the whole point of CG is being able to do things which are impossible with a model, or would take so much time and money with one that they are unpractical.

While I LOVE Physical models, and am not opposed their use in any way shape or form, they are overall harder to do than CGI and more time consuming. I can knock together a good enough spaceship mesh in a day or two and be animating it by the weekend. I highly doubt a model animator could say the same thing and achieve the same results.

[3D Master]

CGI could be better than model work, except that the CGI guys, under contract by producers and such, don't make it better.

CGI would allow one to do things a model wouldn't be allowed; like making ships meet each other NOT both straight up; meeting in every angle possible. Similarly the ships could move at every angle.

The problem with CGI is the problem that SF SFX have been plaguing since Star Wars; stylish, brightly lit, flashy, and thus extremely 2D pictures. They look like cartoons.

The reason why model work thus looks better, is even with the flashy overlit stuff that makes it look very flat, it's still an actual, solid model, an object, being filmed.

CGI by contrast isn't an actual model, and so when they make it look brightly light, and flashy, shadows become either non-existent or exist only lightly, often with conflicting lightsources: it becomes extremely flat, even more so than wrongly lit models.

You can see this extremely well in Star Trek versus the new effects versions and later TOS mvoies. The original Star Trek was before the Star Wars flashy convention; they're budget was small, so they wanted to get as much out of it as possible; they lit and filmed the model to highlight that it is an actual solid object; you can see it physically there. Watch the later TOS movies still with models, and you'll notice they are much less physically there; looking very flat and 2D - completely wrong lighting. Then check out the remastered new SFX, and you notice it is even flatter than the original effects and the TOS movie effects.

The problem is thus with the lighting and the conventional SFX for space ships to be brightly lit and visible - NOT with CGI versus model work itself.

Modeler's on the net, aren't limited to that, so to illustrate, I'll put a couple of pictures here; and I'd like you to say which are models and which are CGI. Now, don't reason about it; especially if you know the models and look for differences in the CGI mesh used, you could reason it out, so you should just look at them a few moments, and then decide, model or CGI:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

[trevanian]

Dac wrote:

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EDIT ADDON: just saw the pics above. I'd say 5 & 10 are photos of the model, and 8 probably. The blurry ones I won't guess at, though, just cuz they're blurry, which hides a multitude of sins (and artifacts.)


But the whole point of CG is being able to do things which are impossible with a model, or would take so much time and money with one that they are unpractical.

If that really was the whole point, then we'd still be doing all the other things with miniatures, because you'd be choosing the proper solution for a given shot, rather than just sweeping the whole list into the CG bag.

By doing beauty shots in CG, you're competing with physicality, reality, plus all the happenstance stuff you can't program for. Distant shots, fleet shots, ... sure, use CG, just like in pre-digital days you could use photo cutouts and animated them in views that don't involve perspective change. But close in stuff, or pyro stuff ... usually doesn't work as well, unless you are using huge files, 8k or more, and finishing at 4K, not 2K. And even then the artists have a lot of variance.

Plus the bit about doing the impossible shots is that sometimes those shots shouldn't be done just because some aspect of them seems impossible and it will take away from overall credibility.

[3D Master]

trevanian wrote:

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If that really was the whole point, then we'd still be doing all the other things with miniatures, because you'd be choosing the proper solution for a given shot, rather than just sweeping the whole list into the CG bag.

By doing beauty shots in CG, you're competing with physicality, reality, plus all the happenstance stuff you can't program for. Distant shots, fleet shots, ... sure, use CG, just like in pre-digital days you could use photo cutouts and animated them in views that don't involve perspective change. But close in stuff, or pyro stuff ... usually doesn't work as well, unless you are using huge files, 8k or more, and finishing at 4K, not 2K. And even then the artists have a lot of variance.

Except that pyro stuff and explosions are perfect for CGI. You can't blow up a physical model unless you have a MASSIVE, MASSIVE budget that allows you to continue building new models and blowing them up again and again. Result being; the only thing you see is an explosion and nothing else - as they remove the model so it doesn't get destroyed - only the orange ball of fire you'll see. CGI allows you to blow up ships, and send pieces of them flying away and such.

[Butters]

3D Master wrote:

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3.

I am in agreement with the 3D guy. And this shot in particular, with the galactic core behind and the lack of ambient light. This is a look that would enhance trek. Not dimish it. Bring on the new visuals now.

[trevanian]

3D Master wrote:

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Except that pyro stuff and explosions are perfect for CGI. You can't blow up a physical model unless you have a MASSIVE, MASSIVE budget that allows you to continue building new models and blowing them up again and again. Result being; the only thing you see is an explosion and nothing else - as they remove the model so it doesn't get destroyed - only the orange ball of fire you'll see. CGI allows you to blow up ships, and send pieces of them flying away and such.

I'll agree that CG can EMBELLISH a good pyro blast, adding what you're talking about, but I really like full-on practical pyro ... You can blow up a shell that conforms to the hero miniature and load it up with goodies, if you don't want to waste a mocon miniature ... and assuming you are willing to have a fireball for the effect, that is.

For spaceships blowing up IN SPACE, I strongly prefer the SILENT RUNNING ball-of-light blast type effect, or maybe that along with the burning embers on the hull kinda thing.