I know that the current blu ray releases of the individual seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation have updated special effects. I watched the episodes as they originally aired, and I remember the special effects as they were. My question is this: For blu ray releases of the individual seasons, would you prefer the special effects as they were in the original airings or would you rather the special effects were updated?
Strictly speaking, for the most part they still are the original effects. They've simply be recomposited along with everything else.
This. The vast majority of what is on screen is the original work. It just had to be pieced back together for the HD restoration as the original effects were put together on video tape. Trekcore.com has comparison videos for many of the episodes. The original poster should probably start there. [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMnppqxKJc[/yt]
I wonder if many people haven't bought the sets because they think the effects have been replaced with CGI, like in the TOS HD blus. Oantrek, was that your understanding? Did you think that the effects were all new CGI replacements? People really need to understand that these effects are made from the original filmed models from back in the late 80's and 90's. The layers are all reassembled using computers now, so that's how they look so much nicer. The only time you see CGI is if they can't find the original filmed footage for a ship.
Yes, to some degree, that was my understanding. You remember the part (or parts) where Q surrounds the ship/bridge/whatever with that red and white "barrier" in Encounter at Farpoint. I've seen that episode often enough that I know exactly what it looked like (or so I thought). One of the things I'm trying to figure out is if I should change out my original DVD's with the new blu rays -- they do look nice.
I'm now kind of tempted to start buying the blu ray sets, but I have a question. I seem to remember reading something about some of the sound effects missing from the blu ray sets (such as the sound of the doors opening and closing). Does anyone know if there is any truth to this?
I'm afraid you got that somewhere out of context. Many episodes on the blu-rays do come with never before seen deleted scenes, in those the sound effects you mentioned are missing. But the actual episodes are completly intact and the new 7.1 mix they did is very good. On the TOS blu-rays i mostly choose to watch the episodes with the old effects because i don't like the new CGI ones so much. But with TNG on blu-ray i don't have to worry about that, because they used the old effect shots and scanned them new in HD layer by layer or - if that wasn't possible - created them new from scratch, trying to match the original effects as closely as possible. With one exception: most of the planets do look very realistic now, with clouds and athmosphere around them. But in that case i surprisingly tend not to miss the old ones. I'd recommend buying "All good things" on blu-ray for standalone example.
Things like the Crystaline Entity might have been remade in CGI, but I'm not 100% certain. One thing that I do know for sure is that the original film stock of the model shots was rescanned and used in the Remastered, except in very minor cases where the film stock could not be located, so for the most part the sfx shots on TNG Remastered are the originals from the 80s and 90s, but rescanned and recomposited in higher definition from those original film elements. The ratio of original shots is certainly far better than TOS Remastered anyway, where every effects shot got replaced with a new CGI one. TNG Remastered does follow TOS Remastered in occasionally altering matte paintings for planet surfaces etc. That much they did do, for example on episodes like "Contagion", but on the whole the differences aren't as polarising as on TOS Remastered. IMHO.
There is a sampler disc that predates season one with "Encounter at Farpoint", "Sins of the Father" and "The Inner Light" in HD. It gives a good feeling of the direction the project took and is an inexpensive way to get your feet wet.