Season FIVE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

I really enjoy what the Okudas have done on the commentaries. They've taken what could have been pretty dry commentaries, and made them enjoyable and insightful, especially with Jeri Taylor in Unification. They managed to pretty much sum up Taylor's entire Trek career AND talk about that episode in an hour and a half and not make it boring or an infodump.

Someone like Braga who sounds pretty detached from the material now needs moderators like the Okudas to engage him, and get him to open up.

McFarlane sounded like a frat guy.

 

We have an embargo on news until next month I'm afraid.

At the moment, we're looking at June for the release month. It's slightly longer because CBS-D have been doing S5-S6-S7 consecutively, with no assistance from an external company..

 

As it should have been from the beginning, I'm more than willing to wait for them to get the best possible product out there for me to buy

 

Thanks for the update! It's slightly disappointing (that's probably too strong of a word) that it's an even longer delay than expected (I was thinking 5 months making it April, rather than the 7 months until June), but I'm looking forward to see what a great job CBS will do with the remaining seasons.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same release schedule as Seasons 1 and 2, just so they can release it around the Holidays. I'm looking forward to seeing what special features are on these sets and hopefully they put Journey's End: The Saga of The Next Generation on the Season 7 set and not the additional set they will probably bring out.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if TNG season 6 is April and season 7 is September and we're getting a DS9 sampler by next January. Emissary, The Visitor and Trials and Tribble-ations, please.

 

If there will be a sample for DS9 I doubt they will include an effects heavy episode like Trials and Trible-ations...

 

I'm not sure there is really a need for a sampler. The waters have been tested, people know the quality to expect.

 

A sampler is a good introduction and might get some people to buy the season sets who otherwise wouldn't be interested.

 

I too doubt there will be a sampler. The sampler was to get people's interest early on in the TNG project, to see if they really should keep going forward with it, etc. etc.

CBS now has a clear time and money cost per-season for a TNG-era show, and they now have a clear awareness of remastered Trek spread among the fans. So there is no need to try to pique interest in the same way (see also: the cessation of the Fathom theatrical events).

So I'd assume that DS9 is will be green lit to start remastering season-by-season or it won't be at all.

 

DS9 is a different beast though, so a sampler might still be a decent idea to see how sales might vary from TNG.

DS9 also differs in that they started to depend more heavily on CGI as the seasons went onward. Thankfully, Trekcore reported that a large number of the original project files for the CGI effects still exist and that a lot of the work was 'overbuilt' to stand up to some scrutiny. I'm sure the textures on the ships would still require a good bit of work to fix up but overall it would simplify and reduce the workload for the poor folks at CBS if the majority of the original CGI files were recovered.

Original Trekcore article.
http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/05/deep-space-nine-in-high-definition-one-step-closer/

 

Why did TNG in Season 5 focus so much on Children. From New Ground, to Hero Worship, to Imaginary Friend, some of these episodes are oh so predictable. I think the only one I liked that focused on Children was Disaster and that probably was the weakest part of the episode, even though it was a little cute for the kids and Picard to be singing farajaka.

It's been a while since I've watched season 5, so some of these episodes are ones I haven't seen for a long time. I remember really hating Cost of Living, but then a few years ago someone suggested looking at it from the point of view of what was happening Behind the scenes and the episode kind of works. I mean you had Gene Roddeberry's death, Majel losing her husband, and this episode was a way for her to grieve in a public setting, or at least let the world know how she was feeling. Some of her quiet scenes were actually really really nice. It's still a bad episode, but it's not the worst the series has to offer.

That might go to the third episode I watched tonight, Imaginary Friend. Good Lord this episode is tedious. The girl who played Isabella was not very good, and, considering I've seen Shadowplay more than I've seen IF, Clara was pretty much Teya.

On a positive, I forgot how nice Perfect Mate was. Here's an episode that never get's talked about, yet it features the gorgeous Famke Jannsen, Picard letting his guard down, and a really funny (Even though I still don't entirely get why) line from Riker.

As for the HD, because I haven't seen these episodes in a while, I've forget there are a good number of visual effects here. Imaginary Friend has the nebula, Cost of Living is quite colorful, and the outside shots (and Earth) in First Duty are as gorgeous as ever. I still think the early seasons boasts some of CBS-D's best work, but the later seasons aren't too bad. Maybe it's the whole we're used to the HD and we now take it for granted. If that's the case, I can understand why there is general excitement for DS9.

 

Which one? "If anyone needs me, I'll be on Holodeck 2?" Lots of implications with that one.

 

It was Holodeck 4, but yeah that one.

 

I hope you don't take this as a negative at all, but I genuinely loved the way you spelled "Frere Jacques".

And I totally agree with you on Perfect Mate, that's always been one of my absolute favourites (Patrick Stewart is just too good in it) but it doesn't seem to be on many people's radar.

 

I had to look it up and for some reason the way I spelt it was the way it came up. I need to work on my French.

 

Finally finished Season 5 (Will watch Times Arrow when I get Season 6 so I can see both parts) tonight. It's a great set, with great features and some well done HD. The Inner Light is still a masterpiece, and I was trying to pay attention to Power Play to find out what Chattaway liked about the music and couldn't figure it out. This is why while I liked the music feature, it was flawed in that we should have gotten some musical cues, maybe from McCarthy on the Piano or something.

Now it's probably back to watching X-Files season 2, but I might go back and watch the commentary tracks, which I have not seen yet for any season. It's interesting that I choose to wait on Times Arrow since I've seen a lot of Jerry Hardin in The X-Files in the last few weeks.

 

I think this might explain the lack of news on DS9 remastered, there was a lot of CGI from the beginning, for Odo effects, apparently they even used it to remove set clutter!

So given cost per season to remaster will likely be higher, and very high for seasons 5-7, and that sales are likely to be lower, I'm hoping that the future HD streaming market and Blu-Ray sales are sufficient motivation to keep the project going.

 

It should be, if they really want to future proof these shows otherwise they're stuck in SD forever.

 

If they can recover even more of the original CGI files, I don't think the cost should be all that much more. I think the article even said a lot of the voyager stuff was all safely stored as well. Might open the way for both shows to be done even more effectively than TNG. It must have been a huge chore to recomposite those shots.