Season FIVE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[asp7485]

I like all the location shooting at the beginning of season 5 too!

It seems like early in the season is a good time to go on location. Deep Space Nine went on location at the beginning of seasons too if I recall. I remember an interview with Jeri Taylor where she said there was so much time with the first four episodes of a season, they could afford to get away from the sets.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Has the explosion of the alien warship in Unification pt.1 been mentioned?

I can't believe they didn't redo that one.

 

[jimbotron]

Has the explosion of the alien warship in Unification pt.1 been mentioned?

I can't believe they didn't redo that one.

Why should they if the original materials are available? I thought it held up pretty well.

Besides, the CGI explosions thus far in TNG-HD have not been very good. Nothing beats actual pyrotechnics.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Has the explosion of the alien warship in Unification pt.1 been mentioned?

I can't believe they didn't redo that one.

Why should they if the original materials are available? I thought it held up pretty well.

Besides, the CGI explosions thus far in TNG-HD have not been very good. Nothing beats actual pyrotechnics.

The ship is surrounded by that electrical effect, then they switch scenes to an explosion with no sign of that ship within the explosion.

I find it a very cheesy scene and somewhat jarring. They had better explosions in many other scenes throughout the series.

I can only imagine they didn't have a second model to blow up and didn't want to blow up the model they did have.

Even a so-so CGI redo would have been more seamless.

 

[jimbotron]

That's how effects were done back then. The image of the model jump-cuts to the explosion effect.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Either way, I've seen better at various points in the series.

Can't think of which ones right now, but I know I haven't seen any that stand out the way the one from Unification does.

 

[jimbotron]

I really enjoyed the composers' round table (round...piano?), very candid.

I'm surprised the score to Best of Both Worlds only got a passing reference - but a pretty telling one. It's the most famous of the scores, but I suppose it's cool that other episodes got a lot of mention, like Skin of Evil, Tin Man, Inner Light. After doing that incredible cliffhanger music for BOBW, the producers' response was "we don't need to do that again" ....ugh!

Ron said that if he hadn't been fired, he might have left on his own. Based on the direction of the music from then on, I believe him. It's refreshing to see that Chattaway and McCarthy shared his criticism of their limitations. I know Ron had been critical in the past, but I don't remember hearing their perspective before.

When Dennis talks about the opening music, he relayed the conversation I think from Justman that they were going to use the Courage theme and Goldsmith's TMP theme, which they did. But he made no mention of the unused main title theme that appeared on the EAF soundtrack. I would have loved to hear more about that, and the decision to scrap it.

The Inner Light flute tune over the end credits was a nice touch.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

They do mention the unused main title theme. McCarthy says that from the get go they were gonna do the Goldsmith's TMP, and after they did sessions on that, he was asked to try to make an opening theme this time without Goldsmith's music. I think the unused theme was likely just something they wanted to have around in case the producers decided not to go with Goldsmith's theme. Either way, it's now dubbed as "the Picard Theme" which the host Jeff Bond mentions.

The Picard Theme is something McCarthy only used every once in awhile, usually for a heroic moment for Picard or a grand Enterprise moment. I don't think he ever used it again past the third season. I found some examples in YouTube.

Here's the cue used again in "The Child" at 0:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs9_RQvo4II

Here's the cue being used in "Yesterday's Enterprise", twice during 1:39 and 4:10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cdy-vIbbeA

There are plenty of other moments I could cite. Like in "Sins of the Father" when Worf asks Picard to become his Cha'DIch. What I find most interesting is the fact that Ron Jones is the only TNG composer to actually use the Goldsmith theme within the episode. McCarthy never did that (there is the saucer seperation sequence, but that was tracked music from the end credits, here's the music he actually scored for that sequence at 0:41 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP6D4V1_b4k ). I think it's too bad Jeff Bond never asked McCarthy or Chattaway why they didn't use the Goldsmith theme during episodes. On the liner notes for the box set of Ron Jones music, it's explained that he used the TMP theme a lot during the first season, but by the second season he started to no longer use it. By the third season, he only used the Courage fanfare twice as he wanted to continue making brand new music for the TNG crew now that they were starting to step out of TNG's shadow. I think this is a good example of him deciding to make new flyby music instead of relying on either Goldsmith or Courage fanfare at 52 seconds in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxklAsl2v2I

 

[jimbotron]

They do mention the unused main title theme. McCarthy says that from the get go they were gonna do the Goldsmith's TMP, and after they did sessions on that, he was asked to try to make an opening theme this time without Goldsmith's music.

Whoops, my attention must have wandered during that part. Thanks.

 

[jimbotron]

What I find most interesting is the fact that Ron Jones is the only TNG composer to actually use the Goldsmith theme within the episode. McCarthy never did that (there is the saucer seperation sequence, but that was tracked music from the end credits. I think it's too bad Jeff Bond never asked McCarthy or Chattaway why they didn't use the Goldsmith theme during episodes.

McCarthy did express his fear of not wanting to repeat anything, so maybe that was part of the reason. He or the producers did not want any music to sound tracked, so he consciously created scores from scratch and rarely reused something he created before. But ironic since the very first episode has the tracked Goldsmith music.

McCarthy's efforts didn't always work. I occasionally hear stuff reminiscent of the Generations score throughout TNG. Plus in early TNG, you could always detect a Jones or McCarthy episode within a few notes. Were there any other guest composers?

If I recollect, there was no mention of the guest composers like the veteran Fred Steiner (a very nice TOS-like score) or John Debney.

 

[Admiral Bear]

For anyone who wants Season 5 on the cheap, Amazon.it have the Italian packaging version for just over 31 Euro. Postage is another 7 Euro. Total cost just over £32 at exchange rate of 1.16.

My Italian season 4 from Amazon.it came from the Amazon UK warehouse. Was a bit pissed that I'd paid nearly £6 for supposed postage from Italy. Still saved myself £9 on the UK version price.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

What I find most interesting is the fact that Ron Jones is the only TNG composer to actually use the Goldsmith theme within the episode. McCarthy never did that (there is the saucer seperation sequence, but that was tracked music from the end credits. I think it's too bad Jeff Bond never asked McCarthy or Chattaway why they didn't use the Goldsmith theme during episodes.

McCarthy did express his fear of not wanting to repeat anything, so maybe that was part of the reason. He or the producers did not want any music to sound tracked, so he consciously created scores from scratch and rarely reused something he created before. But ironic since the very first episode has the tracked Goldsmith music.

Except McCarthy was allowed to reuse the Courage fanfare throughout the whole series, so maybe the producers only allowed that theme and the Goldsmith one to be used. But for whatever reason it was only Jones who used Goldsmith's.

If I recollect, there was no mention of the guest composers like the veteran Fred Steiner (a very nice TOS-like score) or John Debney.

Given how candid they were about the producers being hard on composers, I'm surprised they didn't mention Steiner's role, which was not just a guest composer. Originally, there were to be three composers set for TNG: McCarthy, Jones and Steiner. However, the producers hated Steiner's score for "Code of Honor", likely because it sounded too "old fashioned" like TOS, so they decided to just work with McCarthy and Jones.

The other two guest composers besides John Debney are George Romanis and Don Davis. I think that's all, unless I forgot someone else.

 

[Dick_Valentine]

Has the explosion of the alien warship in Unification pt.1 been mentioned?

I can't believe they didn't redo that one.

Why should they if the original materials are available? I thought it held up pretty well.

Besides, the CGI explosions thus far in TNG-HD have not been very good. Nothing beats actual pyrotechnics.

Couldn't disagree more.

The explosions of series 1 in particular (The Oberth class ship and the klingon ship from their episodes) are so much better than the bizarre puff-ball effect they originally were
(Even worse, they're the same explosion from the Oberth class ship in The Search For Spock copied and pasted over.
What, you only have ONE explosion effect in the archives? Jaysus.... )

And Cause and Effect is a great episode but let down but multiple angles of the Enterprise going off in a shower of sparks like someone is sawing into a cheap chinese firecracker instead of the epoch shattering explosion a majestic Galaxy class should put out.

Since none of them are in any way realistic you might as well chuck in a shed load of flames like they did in early season 1 and at least pay lip service to the idea that the ship is shedding all its atmosphere first and that's what is going up like a petrol tanker in an 80s action film.
It looks much better too.

Trek explosions didn't start getting even halfway good until about season 4 of DS9, they were behind the curve in that regard tbh

 

[HGN2001]

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

Harry

 

[Hober Mallow]

I actually prefer the explosions early in the series to the ones in later seasons, which tended to look like 4th of July sparklers.

 

[Salinga]

I found the commentary of Cause and Effect with Braga and McFarlane dissappointing, because there was not much commenting going on. And if Braga was beginning to talk about something, McFarlane cut him off mid sentence with a funny remark and after that there was silence again for a minute or two.

 

[d514]

My Italian season 4 from Amazon.it came from the Amazon UK warehouse. Was a bit pissed that I'd paid nearly £6 for supposed postage from Italy. Still saved myself £9 on the UK version price.

It probably didn't come directly from the UK warehouse. My amazon.it orders always come from the Amazon GER warehouse - but it always takes a day longer. My guess is, that amazon.it collects all orders of the day which don't go to Italy, packs them in big boxes and ships them to the warehouse in other countries. From there they are shipped individually to the customer. Probably cheaper.

 

[jimbotron]

I found the commentary of Cause and Effect with Braga and McFarlane dissappointing, because there was not much commenting going on. And if Braga was beginning to talk about something, McFarlane cut him off mid sentence with a funny remark and after that there was silence again for a minute or two.

That commentary sucked. It begged for an Okuda to be there, because they're constantly asking questions but there's no answer. Heck, some of that stuff I could have answered. I'm tired of MacFarlane imposing himself in the features. We get it, you're a fan. Go back to your one-note cartoons.

And MacFarlane, BOBW was the summer of 1990, not 1989, doofus.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I found the commentary of Cause and Effect with Braga and McFarlane dissappointing, because there was not much commenting going on. And if Braga was beginning to talk about something, McFarlane cut him off mid sentence with a funny remark and after that there was silence again for a minute or two.

That commentary sucked. It begged for an Okuda to be there, because they're constantly asking questions but there's no answer. Heck, some of that stuff I could have answered. I'm tired of MacFarlane imposing himself in the features. We get it, you're a fan. Go back to your one-note cartoons.

And MacFarlane, BOBW was the summer of 1990, not 1989, doofus.

Yep it was the worst of the group. It had no focus. And Braga really liked to crap on his work, he spent a bunch of time ragging on the 90's style/esthetic of the hair and makeup, etc. MacFarlane had to defended it. LOL.

 

[Jeyl]

The explosions of series 1 in particular (The Oberth class ship and the klingon ship from their episodes) are so much better than the bizarre puff-ball effect they originally were
(Even worse, they're the same explosion from the Oberth class ship in The Search For Spock copied and pasted over.
What, you only have ONE explosion effect in the archives? Jaysus.... ) =

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.