Do the Re-Used Effects in WYLB bother you?

It certainly bothers me..! Somehow, I was never able to truly embrace the episode because of several things, and I must admit, they are all visual...

I've always hated that they used effects sequences from Sacrifice Of Angels, Tears Of The Prophets and The Changing Face Of Evil... I mean, this is the SERIES FINALE for crying out loud..!

And I've also always hated how little effort was made to make Cardassia seem just a little bit bigger. I mean, a series in 1998 could have shown more than just a soundstage street, Mila's cellar, the same digital matte painting over and over and over again or the backdoor to Cardassia's central command (which seemed awfully easy to penetrate, might I add...).

I absolutely love DS9, but I've always felt that purely from a visual point of view, they went for the easiest way out in WYLB.

 

Good point..! It always seemed rather weird that the entire Dominion War was plotted and coordinated from within that tiny brown room... I know it's a TV show, but come on: with a little more effort for the estetic, and they could have up with something better. Babylon 5 did at times seem a little more ambitious when it came to visually translating a script to screen.

 

I wouldn't say they bothered me that much, since when I first watched WYLB I wanted to see a resolution to long running storylines and character arcs instead of kewlspacebattles!OMG. Looking at it from a different perspective, maybe the reused CGI scenes were a metaphor for the repetitiveness of war and world-weariness of the characters?

 

They irked me a little, mainly because when we first saw some of those shots, they were used in such memorable, climatic moments (like the two Mirandas being totally thrashed!).

It's sort of like the reuse of scenes in the movies. STII recycled a ton of footage from the first movie, but much of it was rather stock ship shots, the sort you don't really pay much attention to in the long run. On the other hand, when GEN took the exact same exploding Bird of Prey shot from STVI, it leaped out as totally blatant because they were both at the climax of an intense action scene (for the sake of argument, let's just ignore the general lameness of GEN's 'space battle'), so you're more emotionally involved in seeing the bad guys getting blowed up real good. You want to see them getting their comeuppance in a new, exciting way.

Same thing with WYLB. Watching the same thrilling explosion that we already saw once just doesn't have the same impact - we've used up all our "holy shit!" feelings for it in the original shot.

 

Well, it kinda bothers me, but what can you do? I'm sure people behind DS9 would have liked to make a new, epic FX scene for the episode. Damned budget limits.

 

The problem wasn't with WYLB, the problem was the way that Behr and the rest of the producers planned and budgeted season 7, because they neglected to set aside enough money for the finale. They ramped up the plot over the final chapter arc and had to pay a lot of money for the large cast of recurring characters as well as special effects, such as the kickass action scene in The Changing Face of Evil. When they got to the finale they found that they didn't have enough money to make the final battle be as epic as they wanted so they stretched it out with stock shots. I believe this was also one of the reasons why the Defiant A had the same registry as the original Defiant, they wanted it to be the 74205-A but they kept it the same because they knew they were going to have to use stock shots, and it would have cost them a lot of money to rework the model for the one episode.

Ron Moore gave this as one of the things he learned from DS9, and when BSG neared its endgame he held back money from the episodes in the second half of the final season so that the final episode could have the epic feel it deserved. This caused some people to complain that the final stretch of episodes didn't build up enough and were too lifeless (I disagree), but the final battle was probably the biggest in the whole show.

 

Yeah, I'm rather irked by it. I'm also not a big fan of the stock shots of Cardassians and Klingons from inside the ships during the battle (taken from Star Trek Generations and, IIRC, a previous episode in the final chapter). It just cheapens the end of the series.

 

That Cardassian is actually Garak, I think, running from the explosion he set in Dogs Of War!

 

I noticed a few of the recycled shots, no doubt someone who's seen the show more than I have would notice more. However, it didn't really bother me too much. As space battle sequences go it wasn't as spectacular as Sacrifice of Angels or as intense as The Die is Cast, but it was still pretty exciting. In general I found the parts of the finale dealing with the conclusion of the war to be the most effective stuff in the episode.

 

I was pretty sure of that, but it's been ages since I've seen the episode, and didn't want to sound like an idiot. Because the idea that they would re-use footage of Garak from the previous episode to represent some random Cardassian...it's just crazy.

 

Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! I can't express how betrayed I felt when I saw the finale for the first time. I *loved* Sacrifice of Angels and was so excited about seeing a new battle, so when it was just old footage... it pretty much ruined the finale for me. I've gone back and watched and enjoyed it since, but if they ever redo DS9 for HD, I bloody well hope they ante up for a new 'biggest battle in Federation history' scene.

Bah.

 

They bother me a fair amount. I bet they could've done a pretty spiffy space battle if they'd cut out the Dukat stuff.

 

They didn't bother me, not much else to say.

 

I was disappointed, but not bothered. The realities of television.

It's no worse than when, in WotW, there's more than one occasion where Sisko orders weapons fired and all we get to see is Kira pressing a button.

 

Pretty much echoes my feelings on the subject.

WYLB, as a whole, lacks a lot of epicness in my opinion.

 

It was not just old footage, there was a 38 second block in the middle of the battle to try and it give a sense of scope that they couldn't otherwise afford, and a shot of the Defiant flying past the wreckage of a Breen ship. The majority of the battle was new footage.

 

Reused VFX on a Star Trek series? Really?

Seriously, if reused VFX on a Star Trek series bothers you, move on to something else. In fact I can't think of ONE space-based science fiction series in the last 50 years (from multiple countries, includining animated ones, that HAVEN'T reused effects footage from time to time.

 

I think B5 may have never reused combat footage...at least no obvious reuses are coming to mind.