What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[Westie1701]

When it comes to the tech side of these things, I am definitely the equivalent of a Pakled.

Me: We like screens. Screens show things. Things that make us think.

Tech Guy: With this remote, you can access your channels from anywhere in the room. Your remote's home button will take you right back to the main menu.

Me: Buttons are for pushing!

(I kept trying to find a way to add "Teeth are for chewing" because I find that line hilarious for some reason. The best I could do is my buttons line.)

Oh, but you're nice, Farscape, and funny - that's something I can't say about the Pakleds...

I got a feeling of innocent malevolence from them, if that makes any sense - they could be quite coy about pushing buttons when they wanted to blow something up, almost like a Space Urkel saying "Did I do that ?!"

They're Number One on my list of Most Annoying Species Ever.

 

[fireproof78]

When it comes to the tech side of these things, I am definitely the equivalent of a Pakled.




Me: We like screens. Screens show things. Things that make us think.

Tech Guy: With this remote, you can access your channels from anywhere in the room. Your remote's home button will take you right back to the main menu.

Me: Buttons are for pushing!


(I kept trying to find a way to add "Teeth are for chewing" because I find that line hilarious for some reason. The best I could do is my buttons line.)

I use to be a lot better at the tech side but it is not as valuable to me as it was back in college. I find it more a distraction than an asset in terms of personal enjoyment. Because of that my own personal knowledge is pretty much "How do I hook it up." Once that's done then it can just go.

The value of it is a very strange thing to me and I am fascinated by those who put a lot of emphasis on the visuals being so good.

 

[tesral]

Now, the controversial part for me is that I still don't think it is a worthwhile investment, but that's just me. I have no intent of updating my video equipment any time soon.

All machines fail. And having gone HD decades ago there is no way I would consider going back.

When your current video system fails what then? Will it be worth it? To those that have kept up with the technology it is worth it now. There is a reason rotary phones and CRT TVs are no longer in stores.

Do you know how hard is is to get rid of one of those toxic monsters?

 

[fireproof78]

All machines fail. And having gone HD decades ago there is no way I would consider going back.

Yes, all machines fail. Good to know, thanks...

When your current video system fails what then? Will it be worth it?

Probably. I don't use it all that much so that will be a while.

To those that have kept up with the technology it is worth it now.

Cool. I'm happy for them.

There is a reason rotary phones and CRT TVs are no longer in stores.

Indeed.

Do you know how hard is is to get rid of one of those toxic monsters?

Yes, I do. Good thing I don't have one.

 

[1001001]

Snarky comebacks when I’ve already spoken up are not helpful.

 

[Lord Garth]

When it comes to the tech side of these things, I am definitely the equivalent of a Pakled.

I work in A/V. I'm an Editor and Videographer. 1080 is my default. 4K... the files are too large for their own good for my purposes.

As far as watching 4K on TV: there's good 4K and bad 4K. Bad 4K, which I've seen more of, looks too much like a cartoon. Good 4K that's half the sweet spot. The real sweet spot something far beyond 4K. Old Movies shot on 35mm film can retain detail way passed 4K. An old movie in 8K will look amazing if the film stock is restored and/or well-preserved. There's great potential we've barely scratched the surface of.

I think, as a visual medium, TV and Movies should look the best they can possibly be. Otherwise, you might as well just listen to radio plays.

Also, I think we're at a point where younger generations think of HD as normal. Thanks to Holo-Janeway being on Prodigy and Seven of Nine being on Picard, more people will probably want to revisit Voyager. There would be more interest in it than before. So if HD is the new standard (and it has been since 2009), then SD is now sub-standard despite still being called Standard Definition. So I think it's a mistake to have any portion of the Star Trek franchise look sub-standard.

TNG looks great in HD. I'm genuinely impressed with how it came out. I think DS9 and VOY could look equally as amazing, but they'll have to only be "almost" because I know they wouldn't put the same effort into upgrading those shows as they did TNG, but at least it would be something, as the ability to do so becomes cheaper and easier.

During the VOY episodes I re-watched before PIC, one thought that was an under-current throughout revisiting those episodes was, "This would look so much better in HD."

 

[tesral]

As far as watching 4K on TV: there's good 4K and bad 4K. Bad 4K, which I've seen more of, looks too much like a cartoon. Good 4K that's half the sweet spot. The real sweet spot something far beyond 4K. Old Movies shot on 35mm film can retain detail way passed 4K. An old movie in 8K will look amazing if the film stock is restored and/or well-preserved. There's great potential we've barely scratched the surface of.

You can take even film too far. I recall the Sorcerer's Apprentice scene in Fantasia 2000, taken from the original and into IMAX. You could make out the film grain. But 20 years ago they didn't have the kind of CAD smoothing we have today.

I am sure that given time we can improve the old shows to be watchable at what ever resolution we are using.

 

[plynch]

As a musician whenever I listen to music I am always analyzing, critiquing, ranking, criticizing…
When it comes to this stuff I know nothing about pictures, it always looks good unless the tint is too red or green. So for that I am happy as a clamshell, as I said, to just turn on and watch show. In fact the crispness of TOSR can be offputting when you see Spock’s earlines or Shat’s toupe.
I do like the darker tone to TOSR and how the command chartreuse looks it, though am told it probably did come through as gold on 60s color tv.

 

[fireproof78]

Snarky comebacks when I’ve already spoken up are not helpful.

Apologies.

I work in A/V. I'm an Editor and Videographer. 1080 is my default. 4K... the files are too large for their own good for my purposes.

As far as watching 4K on TV: there's good 4K and bad 4K. Bad 4K, which I've seen more of, looks too much like a cartoon. Good 4K that's half the sweet spot. The real sweet spot something far beyond 4K. Old Movies shot on 35mm film can retain detail way passed 4K. An old movie in 8K will look amazing if the film stock is restored and/or well-preserved. There's great potential we've barely scratched the surface of.

I think, as a visual medium, TV and Movies should look the best they can possibly be. Otherwise, you might as well just listen to radio plays.

Also, I think we're at a point where younger generations think of HD as normal. Thanks to Holo-Janeway being on Prodigy and Seven of Nine being on Picard, more people will probably want to revisit Voyager. There would be more interest in it than before. So if HD is the new standard (and it has been since 2009), then SD is now sub-standard despite still being called Standard Definition. So I think it's a mistake to have any portion of the Star Trek franchise look sub-standard.

TNG looks great in HD. I'm genuinely impressed with how it came out. I think DS9 and VOY could look equally as amazing, but they'll have to only be "almost" because I know they wouldn't put the same effort into upgrading those shows as they did TNG, but at least it would be something, as the ability to do so becomes cheaper and easier.

During the VOY episodes I re-watched before PIC, one thought that was an under-current throughout revisiting those episodes was, "This would look so much better in HD."

Thank you for the explanation.

 

[Lord Garth]

As a musician whenever I listen to music I am always analyzing, critiquing, ranking, criticizing…
When it comes to this stuff I know nothing about pictures, it always looks good unless the tint is too red or green. So for that I am happy as a clamshell, as I said, to just turn on and watch show. In fact the crispness of TOSR can be offputting when you see Spock’s earlines or Shat’s toupe.
I do like the darker tone to TOSR and how the command chartreuse looks it, though am told it probably did come through as gold on 60s color tv.

I have mixed thoughts about TOS-R. In principle, I understand the idea: Clean up TOS for HD-TV. That's fine.

But the problem is: the CGI of the space shots often looks too much like what it is: cartoonish looking '00s CGI shots mixed with digitally restored '60s live-action footage everywhere else, and it's jarring sometimes. If the space shots were beyond salvageable, I think they should've used physical models that were exact replicas and reshoot the footage exactly as it was before. This would've put TOS-R on the same level as TNG-R.

[EDITED TO ADD: The only things I'd change would be reasonable things like Earth and planets that look like Earth should have clouds. Or the Enterprise after WNMHGB should always have spheres in the back of the nacelles, not grills. That's as far as I would go, if it were up to me.]

With things like Spock's earlines, there's a way they could've fixed that, and they should've. If they used selective blurring, then the parts of the shot that look better clearer would be clearer and the parts that would look better not-so-clear would stay that way and be blended into the rest of the shot with a feathering effect. They'd have to apply a layer to blur the selected area frame-by-frame, and they probably didn't want to be bothered with that, but the results would've been worth it.

The remastering of TNG, though, whatever anyone thinks of the show (good, bad, mixed, or indifferent), that's a textbook example how to remaster a show from the '80s or '90s. They really did a good job.

 

[DigificWriter]

I've got 3, all related to Voyager:
* Threshold isn't a bad episode
* Endgame's final moments are fine
* Although it could've benefited from more setup, there was nothing inherently wrong with the Chakotay/Seven of Nine relationship

 

[Paul755]

I agree with you on the last one. The only problem with Chakotay/Seven is that it only had one episode of build up before the finale. Maybe have it be a slow burn at the start of season 7 until it culminates with her Holodeck experimentation episode.

 

[Vger23]

I've got 3, all related to Voyager:
* Threshold isn't a bad episode
* Endgame's final moments are fine
* Although it could've benefited from more setup, there was nothing inherently wrong with the Chakotay/Seven of Nine relationship

Here’s a VOY one : I don’t think Chakotay is a bad character or a bad first officer.

 

[cooleddie74]

Kes was fine until "Fury(VOY)." There. I said it.

Even when she was in bad episodes the character was fine. "Fury" shat all over three seasons' worth of character development and her noble departure from the series and made people hate her who didn't already for other reasons.

 

[fireproof78]

I never understood the hate for Kes. Other Voyager characters sure but not Kes.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I found Kes boring.

 

[DigificWriter]

Here’s a VOY one : I don’t think Chakotay is a bad character or a bad first officer.

Agreed.

He's not on my list of favorite characters, but that's only because I connected to other characters more.

I agree with you on the last one. The only problem with Chakotay/Seven is that it only had one episode of build up before the finale. Maybe have it be a slow burn at the start of season 7 until it culminates with her Holodeck experimentation episode.

Having an entire season's worth of setup for the Chakotay/Seven relationship would have been too much, IMO, but I do think that it could've used more buildup than just getting hinted at in Human Error and a reveal in Endgame, and the simplest way to have done that would've been to have woven hints of it into the six episodes in between Human Error and Endgame.

I'm a fan of it regardless, however, so waxing philosophical about 'what ifs' regarding how the writers could've done more after introducing the concept of it isn't intended to be a criticism or an indictment of it.

 

[Vale]

Kes was fine until "Fury(VOY)." There. I said it.

Even when she was in bad episodes the character was fine. "Fury" shat all over three seasons' worth of character development and her noble departure from the series and made people hate her who didn't already for other reasons.

"Fury" has just been voted the most disliked Voyager episode of all by members of this very forum.

 

[cooleddie74]

It's pure shite. "Threshold" is at least goofy and entertaining. "Fury" is just crap.

 

[fireproof78]

I found Kes boring.

Ok. Doesn't explain hatred.