Season FIVE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[Maxwell Everett]

I'm curious, what makes you think that it was specifically that story which led Braga to write "Cause and Effect"?

I doubt Braga ever read the story. For all I know, Braga may have thought he invented the time-loop story. While the cause of the main character's experiencing the same day again and again and the story's resolution are totally different from "Cause and Effect," of course, "Tunnel" is the earliest "Groundhog Day" time-loop (or apparent time-loop) story I'm aware of.

There are earlier time loop stories, according to Wikipedia. In 1941, there was an American short story called Doubled and Redoubled where the protagonist repeats a "perfect" day after being cursed by a witch (Groundhog Day's original script used a curse as the cause). That precedes Pohl's story by 13 years.

 

[Salinga]

I agree with that, Braga and Moore are quite the contrast. It's very clear Moore still really cares about Trek and loves it deeply. He's said in most of his commentaries that he went back and looked at his original script notes and re-watched the episode before he came into do the new commentary.

I wouldnt say Braga doesnt love Star Trek. I remember him often saying, how much he misses working on the shows.

It's just that Moore prepares better. If Braga would prepare himself for the commentaries by watching the episode and taking notes, he would appear to be more remembering like Moore does.

Actually I sometimes wonder if Moore really loves all aspects of Star Trek. He always states how much he got into arguments with the producers, when he wanted to tell a story in contrast to Roddenberrys view on the future and how Star Trek should be. It wouldnt surprise me, if a pure Moore Star Trek would be very grim and gritty, full of conflict, war and voilence. Moore definatly didnt share the very optimistic view of Roddenberry regarding the future of mankind and many stories on TNG written by Moore would have looked very differently without the infuence of Berman and Piller on the stories.

 

[jimbotron]

Jones was saying that he was the only composer who used the Trek theme in his scores. One notable example was Locutus' full body reveal, the main notes play.

Though I do recall McCarthy quotes the TOS theme very nicely at the end of the Yesterday's Enterprise teaser. "NCC-1701....C....USS....Enterprise."

 

[d514]

It wouldnt surprise me, if a pure Moore Star Trek would be very grim and gritty, full of conflict, war and voilence.

And you could call that Battlestar Galactica


I've finished the season 5 set. I posted most of this already on Blu-ray.com:

Redemption II: A
Darmok: A
Ensign Ro: A
Silicon Avatar: B
Disaster: A
The Game: B (First half C, second half A)
Unification: B+
A Matter of Time: B+
New Ground: B
Hero Worship: C
Violations: C+
The Masterpiece Society: B
Conundrum: A-
Power Play: A
Ethics: B
The Outcast: B+
Cause & Effect: A-
The First Duty: A-
Cost of Living: B-
The Perfect Mate: C
Imaginary Friend: C
I, Borg: A-
The Next Phase: A
The Inner Light: A-
Time's Arrow: A-

Commentaries:
Cause & Effect: C-
The first duty: A
I, Borg: A-
The Inner Light: B+

Gag Reel: A
Requiem: A Remembrance of Star Trek: The Next Generation: B+/A- (A little short. Too bad there's no 3rd part since season 3 - at least not on the season set)

In Conversation: The Music of Star Trek: The Next Generation: C
I was very disappointed with this one. This is a special feature about the music and you never hear a single note played in this. Dennis McCarthy sings the Intro and that's it. Why is he sitting at a piano? They are talking about music for 75 minutes. "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." He could have played some of his compositions, he is talking about. They could have cut to the episode they are talking about. Most of them are already remastered so they probably could have played scenes of episodes with music only - without effects and voices. This is a lost opportunity!

 

[Dick_Valentine]

STAR TREK was always far more than "explosions" to me. They were always way down in importance to story and acting.

Harry

Seriously? We're still trotting out that tired old line? Especially in a thread that's dealing with the new additions of the remastering, IE the story is staying the same but the main topic of discussing is the new aspects of the episodes brought to us by the restoration team. Yes, the special effects!

It'd make an interesting thread on it's own TBH, why is the hard work put in by the FX team (make no mistake they work just as hard as the actors, writers, etc) undervalued just because they spend their time designing the ships and making the amazing universe that Star Trek is set in seem as real as possible.

There's no need to guilt other posters just because the topic of discussion is on the SFX, for a change. There's more than enough threads out there talking about every possible story permutation to justify the fact we're not JUST here for the explosions and one aspect of the series isn't more "worthy" than another, thank you very kindly.

And don't forget that very explosion was used for the destruction of the Enterprise D's star drive section in Generations. For all the times that explosion has been used throughout Star Trek's history, I'm surprised they haven't used it at least once in the restoration. It's a fairly nice looking explosion in my opinion.

They did. It's used at the end of Evolution (as in the original):

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x01/evolution_hd_409.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x01/evolution_hd_410.jpg

Speaking of explosions, here's another example of reuse:

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g40/DledRhapsody/shieldgenerator.jpg
http://geeksoulbrother.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/death-star-explosion.jpg
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd1286.jpg

The Reliant explosion has been used a few times too, such as in Night Terrors.

It's a shame they never had the budget to provide new explosions every time because by their very nature explosions aren't that uniform, obviously.
Just another aspect of the show we all accept in the filter in our eyes. "That explosion may look the same, but it's actually hugely different somehow"

Same with the warp effect too. After Encounter at Farpoint we never did get another new "Entering Warp" effect (The Runabout one from Timescape was made for DS9 IIRC )

Oh well, there's only so far a TV budget can stretch, I guess.
(Which is why those who say "I want it restored to exactly as it was" end up being a bit shortsighted imo. "Exactly as it was" isn't exactly how the writers expected it to be tbh.

 

[jimbotron]

Same with the warp effect too. After Encounter at Farpoint we never did get another new "Entering Warp" effect (The Runabout one from Timescape was made for DS9 IIRC )

That's right. IIRC, the closest they came to a new one was the stalled warp in Phantasms.

 

[Dick_Valentine]

Same with the warp effect too. After Encounter at Farpoint we never did get another new "Entering Warp" effect (The Runabout one from Timescape was made for DS9 IIRC )

That's right. IIRC, the closest they came to a new one was the stalled warp in Phantasms.

Yeah. Must've been too prohibitively expensive in those days.

(Conversely as soon as they got into the CG era Voyager and The Enterprise were warping off left right and centre, sometimes entire fleets would be seen going to warp. It was quite a contrast )

*Edit* There's a couple of episodes where the D engages its engines and warps past the camera but I don't count those. No Rubber Band Effect, no dice IMO

 

[TV's Frank]

Jones was saying that he was the only composer who used the Trek theme in his scores. One notable example was Locutus' full body reveal, the main notes play.

Though I do recall McCarthy quotes the TOS theme very nicely at the end of the Yesterday's Enterprise teaser. "NCC-1701....C....USS....Enterprise."

Ron Jones was referring to Goldsmith theme from STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE when he said that, not the Alexander Courage theme from TOS. The TOS fanfare by Courage is used extensively by both Jones and McCarthy in the first two seasons, less so as the show continued.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Yeah, you would only hear the Courage theme at the end of some episodes in the later seasons, most notably "Cause and Effect".

 

[Hober Mallow]

There are earlier time loop stories, according to Wikipedia. In 1941, there was an American short story called Doubled and Redoubled where the protagonist repeats a "perfect" day after being cursed by a witch (Groundhog Day's original script used a curse as the cause). That precedes Pohl's story by 13 years.

I'll have to check it out. The ending of the Pohl story is classic, though.

*Edit* There's a couple of episodes where the D engages its engines and warps past the camera but I don't count those. No Rubber Band Effect, no dice IMO

That's right. It would be just the normal stock fly-by, only the engines would brighten and then the fly-by would get quicker. Not much of a warp effect.

 

[Salinga]

Finished the set.

NEXT!!!

 

[jimbotron]

I hear ya. When I finish the season, I go back and rewatch my favorite 10-15 episodes from the prior seasons.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I just watched Cause & Effect earlier.

The one thing that gets me, is the lackadaisical way they're acting as the Bozeman is bearing down on them (and we're watching it on the main screen too, it's getting closer pretty fast).

You'd think Data would have some command override and just do whatever was necessary, right away.

But rather, we have Picard eliciting "suggestions". At least they could have had more of a sense of urgency in the later loops, after they knew the ship "was" destroyed.

Of course, I thought the same thing about the end battle scene in Yesterday's Enterprise.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I just watched Cause & Effect earlier.

The one thing that gets me, is the lackadaisical way they're acting as the Bozeman is bearing down on them (and we're watching it on the main screen too, it's getting closer pretty fast).

You'd think Data would have some command override and just do whatever was necessary, right away.

But rather, we have Picard eliciting "suggestions". At least they could have had more of a sense of urgency in the later loops, after they knew the ship "was" destroyed.

Of course, I thought the same thing about the end battle scene in Yesterday's Enterprise.

I always figured that was their way of showing how professional and reserved they are. Of all the shows, the TNG crew are actually the most professional group where TOS had a crew of mavericks, DS9 was a joint operation, VOY was a mix of officers and terrorists and then there's ENT where they're pretty much n00bs.

 

[BriGuy]

In Conversation: The Music of Star Trek: The Next Generation: C
I was very disappointed with this one. This is a special feature about the music and you never hear a single note played in this. Dennis McCarthy sings the Intro and that's it. Why is he sitting at a piano? They are talking about music for 75 minutes. "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." He could have played some of his compositions, he is talking about. They could have cut to the episode they are talking about. Most of them are already remastered so they probably could have played scenes of episodes with music only - without effects and voices. This is a lost opportunity!

Agreed. I started watching this and gave up on it about 20 mins in. As they were talking about the music, I wanted them to cut to examples, so I could hear what they were talking about. Didn't seem like they were going to, and you confirmed that for me.

 

[Admiral Bear]

My Italian Season 5 turned up yesterday. Having turned off the DNR on my tv and turned down the sharpness to just over half way (any lower and the picture is a blurry mess,) I was disappointed with the picture quality of Unification. Soft focus in many shots, yet very grainy in some of the dark scenes.

The viewscreen shots of the Bozeman in Cause and Effect looked awful regarding the grain.

Will catch up with some more episodes when I have time.

I'm also noticing across the later seasons, that quite a few shots, mainly on the Enterprise Bridge, are just plain out of focus. There was a close up shot of Crusher (not on Bridge) I saw the other day(can't remember the episode, but it was season 3 or 4) where she was hopelessly out of focus. It almost looked upscaled SD but it wasn't.

 

[jimbotron]

Well, you can't please everyone... I don't know what you're expecting out of TNG-HD.

 

[BillJ]

I always figured that was their way of showing how professional and reserved they are. Of all the shows, the TNG crew are actually the most professional group...

They are also the dullest. Which is probably why the show hasn't aged well in an era of far more dramatic storytelling.

 

[Admiral Bear]

Well, you can't please everyone... I don't know what you're expecting out of TNG-HD.

While I appreciate that different film stock was used in season 2, and that some directors favoured "softer" filming techniques in later seasons, I'd expect far less variable picture quality, especially across any given episode eg I'd have thought that excessively grainy shots in an otherwise decent looking episode would've been slightly DNRd, not to make them soft, but just to lessen the grain and make them look like the rest of the episode. CBS have access to far better technology for cleaning up grainy footage than any of us has on our TV.

 

[jimbotron]

I appreciate the relative "hands-off" approach of presenting the film the way it looks originally, for better or worse.