Star Trek TNG Remastered?

[Klaitu]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why should there be no stars visible when depicting space realisticly? If we can see them in the night sky with all that interfering atmosphere shouldn't one expect to see them in outer space as well?

Because the stars are not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye when in orbit around the earth on the day side of the planet. The light bouncing off the earth drowns out all the stars.

However, on the dark side.. there's a heavenly light show for you.

Anyways, Star Trek stars are not realistically bright, nor should they be zipping by while at warp.. but let's face it, Star Trek is a TV show, and we make exceptions for cool stuff.

 

[Jefferies]

Because the stars are not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye when in orbit around the earth on the day side of the planet. The light bouncing off the earth drowns out all the stars.

However, on the dark side.. there's a heavenly light show for you.

Anyways, Star Trek stars are not realistically bright, nor should they be zipping by while at warp.. but let's face it, Star Trek is a TV show, and we make exceptions for cool stuff.

Thanks for your explanation!

Personally, I would find it waaaaay cooler if they depicted space realistically. One reason being that space, as it is, already looks cool enough and second reason is that that it would make it much easier to picture in one's mind what the universe look like for real. But as has been said, this is not going to happen as long as George Lucas' infamous paradigm for space FX continues to rule.

 

[CoveTom]

^ You do have to allow some leeway for dramatic needs, though. It's difficult to depict a sense of speed when you're showing things moving, whether on Earth or in space. Why do you think in car chases they always want to show you the wheels close-up or show a bunch of leaves getting blown away by the cars? It's to add that feel that the car is really moving.

Similarly, having streaking stars go by, while not terribly realistic, does give the sense that the Enterprise is moving very fast. It gives a clear visual contrast to impulse speeds. And that's what that effect is there to do.

 

[Hober Mallow]

^ You do have to allow some leeway for dramatic needs, though. It's difficult to depict a sense of speed when you're showing things moving, whether on Earth or in space. Why do you think in car chases they always want to show you the wheels close-up or show a bunch of leaves getting blown away by the cars? It's to add that feel that the car is really moving.

Similarly, having streaking stars go by, while not terribly realistic, does give the sense that the Enterprise is moving very fast. It gives a clear visual contrast to impulse speeds. And that's what that effect is there to do.

There's stretching believeability, and then there's being so inaccurate that it's downright comical. The worst offender has to be in "Voyager Home," as the Klingon ship speeds toward the sun at Warp 9. As they very slowly come upon the sun, all around stars thousands of light-years away are streaking by, making it appear as if the earth's sun is also traveling at high warp in an attempt to evade Kirk and co.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Well, The Voyage Home is perhaps unique in its total disregard for anything even remotely scientific. They did do a good job on the animatronic whales, but that's about it. Heck, the Bird of Prey even went to warp in Earth's atmosphere! No, scientific accuracy is definitely not what they were going for in that outing.

 

[Jefferies]

I have to agree with Hober Mallow. Sure, it's fine to bend the rules on occasion for dramatic suspense, but I would argue depicting reality in space fx has never ever even been attempted on Star Trek. Not for a one second of footage. It’s always the case that either the ships are lit up bright as hell without a natural light source, or that the planets look much too small, or that the planet they beam down to looks like a gas giant, or that you hear weapons and engine sounds in space, or that space ships always encounter each other the right way up, or that spaceships are always just a few meters away from each other where it would be more realistic to have much larger distances between them for example in combat situations, or that you can see stars where there should be none, etc. etc. etc.

The way space has been portrayed in Star Trek has made the cosmos look tiny, with an abundance of light coming from all directions, filled with loads of gas to enable vibrations of sound. I find this to be a real shame, because space in reality is truly majestic, mysterious, and infinitely vast. I can’t see how people would be less interested in seeing that compared to the stuff I have listed above.

 

[3D Master]

The streaking stars though, is an illusion, as a product of crunched space, and being stretched out again as you enter the subspace bubble. Hence why you see the same star streak by multiple times over, and why it seems to zip backward to its proper position when you drop out again.

Hence also why it doesn't happen with a solar system you are into; the body is a. in the crunch zone, and b. it's gravity fights off that crunching. In effect, it's light doesn't get put through the same thing, and thus the same illusion is not created with its light.

The thing is, the occasional dramatic license I don't mind so much, what I mind is ships so badly lit they look like flat cartoons instead three-dimensional objects.

 

[JJohnson]

^ You do have to allow some leeway for dramatic needs, though. It's difficult to depict a sense of speed when you're showing things moving, whether on Earth or in space. Why do you think in car chases they always want to show you the wheels close-up or show a bunch of leaves getting blown away by the cars? It's to add that feel that the car is really moving.

Similarly, having streaking stars go by, while not terribly realistic, does give the sense that the Enterprise is moving very fast. It gives a clear visual contrast to impulse speeds. And that's what that effect is there to do.

I didn't really think those were stars streaking by - I thought they were space particles caught in the warp field, and the spectrum shift as a result of the light bouncing off those particles as the ship moved away from them, and the warp field no longer interacting with them as the ship moved off.

 

[JJohnson]

Pardon: "original 35mm film negatives". I apologize for the earlier use of BB shorthand.

RAMA

Get it right RAMA!

I would definetly be first in line to pick up all the 24 century treks in HD also. Although I own all the series' on DVD, I find them difficult to watch now that I have a 50" Plasma.

If TNG were remastered in HD with new FX, I would buy all of it in a heartbeat. I'd save up and buy each season again. TNG, especially the early FX, needs an upgrade. Sharpen the images, redo the fx, and replace the 'every ship is an Excelsior/Nebula/Miranda-class in Starfleet' with some alternate vessels - i.e. some Centaurs, Constitution, alt-Soyuz that a board member here did, Freedom, Challenger, New Orleans, Springfield, Enteprise-B Excelsiors, etc. Perhaps show some Vulcan ring-ships too, and some variation in Romulan/Klingon vessels other than just the Warbird and the Vor'cha and Bird of Prey retreads. Also, planets need an upgrade, especially 1st/2nd season, alternate shots of the ship at warp, warp passes, entering orbit, would be nice, like was done in TOS-R. It still brings a smile to my face to see the original Enterprise from all the new angles, and not having to see the same 4-stock-shots every episode now.

One change I might advocate would be to make the Exterior of the Yesterday's Enterprise-D a little more militaristic, perhaps add the AGT phaser spikes on top, an extra torpedo launcher on top of the shuttlebay.

All-in-all, I eagerly await TNG-R and the vast improvement in visual quality and FX that it will bring. Bring it on!

James

PS - TMP Director's Edition needs a remastering in HD to remove those ugly matte lines on the Klingon ships and the Enterprise. Everytime I see that it ruins the illusion for me.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

JJohnson, remastering the visual effects is a hot topic on this thread be it by the original camera negative of ENT-D modelwork or by new CGI models. What you propose though is showing something different than what the director wanted. Also different sound effects would have to be added to represent any new ships onscreen.
That would lead to more work than just remastering the episode.

 

[Prologic9]

^^ What he proposes is exactly what they did with TOS- Remastered, and would be the least expected.

 

[bullethead]

JJohnson, remastering the visual effects is a hot topic on this thread be it by the original camera negative of ENT-D modelwork or by new CGI models. What you propose though is showing something different than what the director wanted. Also different sound effects would have to be added to represent any new ships onscreen.
That would lead to more work than just remastering the episode.

The last time a TNG remastered article showed up on Trekmovie, a bunch of people were advocating exactly what JJohnson proposed, myself included. And considering that TOS-R managed to do it quite well, taking into consideration that it was an inhouse team with limited time and money, there's no reason to think that a fair amount of people wouldn't like seeing some, if not all, of those changes.

 

[Tomalak]

But changing all the ships would screw up canon.


CANON!!!!!

 

[bullethead]

But changing all the ships would screw up canon.

So? They changed that automated freighter in The Ultimate Computer from a DY-100 to a whole new ship that they reused as the Antares. The world didn't end and people liked it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also different sound effects would have to be added to represent any new ships onscreen.

Not necessarily. Most Starfleet ships seem to make the same 'noises' so if you replace one with another, you wouldn't have to change any of the sounds.

And even so, I think we're just talking about stock footage. You know, when a guest character would come aboard the Enterprise, there'd be a shot of the Ent-D in space with the other ship, and it'd always be the same ship, like an Excelsior-class (because of the stock footage). Why not take the opportunity to replace that same ubiquitous shot with a different Starfleet ship design? It wouldn't alter the episode itself in any way, just give a bit of variety.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Indeed. While I am all for protecting the artistic integrity of the director's vision, I hardly doubt that each time we saw a ship on screen, the director had said "it MUST be an Excelsior class." Rather, I'm sure the director was told "we have stock footage of the Excelsior class, so that's what you're getting."

 

[StarshipDefiant]

But changing all the ships would screw up canon.


CANON!!!!!

I'm not sure if you are being serious or not, but in the off chance you are, canon is violated if the ship of the week was explicitly said to be an Excelsior-class (in dialogue, not just visual shots) and the new effects made it into a Freedom-class without alterations to dialogue.

With that said, I wouldn't mind a TNG-R, so long as it was done properly, I'd prefer a more upstanding quality to the effects, but TOS-R was still just fine. A new work to the planets and the ships (especially the Enterprise which looked like a flat image at times) would be pretty cool. It could possibly offer chances to show proper angles on the ship of the week to show their name and registries to match what was being said. I would also hope they updated the designs, showing that Starfleet has several classes of recent designs rather then just the Galaxy, Nebula and later on the stuff we got from DS9, VOY and the TNG Films. In the Dominion War episodes, they could then keep some older designs, just to show a desperation on Starfleets part (which they were, right?).

 

[Tomalak]

But changing all the ships would screw up canon.


CANON!!!!!

I'm not sure if you are being serious or not

I'm not. I couldn't care less. I would want to see as many different ships as possible to replace to the stock footage of the Excelsior we saw most weeks.

But there are lots of people who would kick up a fuss. I felt duty bound to mock them.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

maybe they should test it out on a couple of standout eps before they decide to go ahead and remaster the whole lot.

Well unfortunately here are the numbers of TV shows sold on Blu-ray:

Studios and retailers note that consumers have been relatively slow to embrace the overall TV on Blu-ray genre. To date, the average TV title streeting in standard and high-def sells just 5% of its copies on Blu-ray, sources said. That compares with a 12% to 15% Blu-ray average for theatrical new releases and 25% to 30% for some high-profile films.

Several TV shows that had upgraded to Blu-ray Disc have shifted back to standard-definition DVD-only releases, indicating hurdles in the adoption of the category.

Video Business, 12/4/2009
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6709928.html

This would give at least a little more reason to not proceed with an entire season of TNG-R if only for the Blu-ray market and no intention of TNG syndication in HD in the long term.
I've always felt it would be better to do a test as some 1 Blu-ray disc with say 3 TNG episodes on it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

canon is violated if the ship of the week was explicitly said to be an Excelsior-class (in dialogue, not just visual shots)

That never happened.

In TNG, whenever a "stock footage" ship would ferry a guest aboard, no one ever said in dialogue what class that ship was. So a TNG-R could change it to whatever class the EFX team wanted without violating anything.