Star Trek TNG Remastered?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' started by Jiraiya, May 9, 2009.

  1. Klaitu

    Klaitu Commodore Commodore

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    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.
     
  2. Jefferies

    Jefferies Captain Captain

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    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.
     
  3. CoveTom

    CoveTom Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ^ 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.
     
  4. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    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.
     
  5. CoveTom

    CoveTom Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ^ 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.
     
  6. Jefferies

    Jefferies Captain Captain

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    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.
     
  7. 3D Master

    3D Master Rear Admiral

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    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.
     
  8. JJohnson

    JJohnson Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    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.
     
  9. JJohnson

    JJohnson Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    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.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2009
  10. jefferiestubes8

    jefferiestubes8 Commodore Commodore

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    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.
     
  11. Prologic9

    Prologic9 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    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.
     
  13. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    But changing all the ships would screw up canon.


    CANON!!!!!
     
  14. bullethead

    bullethead Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    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.
     
  15. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    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.
     
  16. CoveTom

    CoveTom Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ^ 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."
     
  17. StarshipDefiant

    StarshipDefiant Captain Captain

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    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?).
     
  18. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    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.
     
  19. jefferiestubes8

    jefferiestubes8 Commodore Commodore

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    Well unfortunately here are the numbers of TV shows sold on Blu-ray:
    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.
     
  20. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    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.