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Season SEVEN OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

Yes, Genesis is the only one I could think of. Hardly "technobabble deus ex machina galore". :lol:
 
This arrived through the letterbox recently, it's great to have the whole series on Blu ray now, there don't seem to be as many stand out episodes so after watching Descent I might go onto the next double episode and then the finale. They are always good to go back to now I have a complete collection.
 
It was bittersweet going through AGT again.

Naturally I popped in Encounter at Farpoint. Time to go through the whole show together in HD for the first time. :)

One interesting bookend with the show, involving the show's first and last shots. In EAF, they planned on showing Picard appear in the Enterprise window in that initial model shot. That proved too difficult/expensive, so they settled for a fade.

In the AGT commentary, it's mentioned that they had wanted a similar shot. The camera pans up from the poker table, and they wanted the camera to pass through decks, and out the ship, but it proved too expensive, so again, another fade.

They finally got their wish with DS9's final shot.
 
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It was bittersweet going through AGT again.

Naturally I popped in Encounter at Farpoint. Time to go through the whole show together in HD for the first time. :)

One interesting bookend with the show, involving the show's first and last shots. In EAF, they planned on showing Picard appear in the Enterprise window in that initial model shot. That proved too difficult/expensive, so they settled for a fade.

In the AGT commentary, it's mentioned that they had wanted a similar shot. The camera pans up from the poker table, and they wanted the camera to pass through decks, and out the ship, but it proved too expensive, so again, another fade.

They finally got their wish with DS9's final shot.

ISTR there was also an episode of Voyager that achieved the original intention (a pullback from the ready room windows to the outside of the ship, though this time from Janeway's office rather than Picard's), which is presumably because technology had finally advanced to the point where the optical effect could be pulled off relatively cheaply.
 
I just finished watching all 26 episodes of Season 7 (my vaction time well spent! :lol:), and I just want to say a big "Thank You!" again to CBS for doing this.

TNG started when I was 7 years old and it helped me find and set a lot of my values (like it probably has done for a lot of others) and to be able to see the show again in this outstanding quality has been a great joy for me over the last three years. Yes, Season 2 had it's problems but it's still leaps and bounds better then the DVDs. So again, thank you everybody at CBS and everybody else that was involved in doing this and bringing the show to HD with all of the awesome extras.

I will never give up hope that DS9 and Voyager will at some point receive the same treatment. I grew up on and cherish these three shows, but haven't watched DS9 and Voyager in a long time because of the horrendous picture quality. I really hope it will happen at some point.
 
Luckily I chose to preorder. For about a day Amazon lowered the price to about £125 so their guarantee of charging the lowest pre-release price came in handy. But I would've thought there's a decent chance of it being in the Boxing Day sale.

For the first time I'll be watching TNG in order from start to finish though! In the past it has always been random episodes on TV or favourites I've fancied watching from the box set. Can't wait given the reception and the comparisons against SD I've seen online. I'm just hoping some of the season 1&2 episodes aren't as poor as I've remembered them being in the past when I've tried watching them...

Having just seen a customer video on Amazon showing the packaging of the complete set, can I ask what you think of those two awful looking fat Amaray cases?

Urm yes, not the best. Would've liked it if they had just chucked together all the 7 individual cases in a box! Surely that would've saved them money as well... Not to worry though, decent price and it's all about the content on the discs etc.

Quality is fantastic though. You can now really appreciate the quality of work on the makeup and costume side of things. And the redone planets... it all looks so good. Bravo to the team at CBS.
 
Mr. Okuda changed the okudagrams for "Eye of the Beholder". The new okudagrams give us for the first time five-digit stardates which start with the number 1.
 
So I just listened to the commentary for Preemptive Strike. Hilarious and informative. They briefly discuss how they were prepping for 16:9 but still framed for 4:3. Even if they were to go straight to wide screen for DS9, the shots would look worse because they would never line up.
 
So I just listened to the commentary for Preemptive Strike. Hilarious and informative. They briefly discuss how they were prepping for 16:9 but still framed for 4:3. Even if they were to go straight to wide screen for DS9, the shots would look worse because they would never line up.

Possibly they were doing tests in preparation for shooting the Enterprise-D sets in widescreen for Generations?
 
So I just listened to the commentary for Preemptive Strike. Hilarious and informative. They briefly discuss how they were prepping for 16:9 but still framed for 4:3. Even if they were to go straight to wide screen for DS9, the shots would look worse because they would never line up.

Possibly they were doing tests in preparation for shooting the Enterprise-D sets in widescreen for Generations?

I listened to the commentary (the 16:9 talk begins just after the start of chapter 4) and I don't think they were referring to TNG at all. I believe they were just talking about DS9 as that's what Mike Okuda says in the discussion. Rene Echevarria says he remembers seeing two sets of lines on the monitors, but I'm almost sure he was referring to his time on DS9 -- unless he was simply confusing the TV Transmitted marks around the action safe marks for 16:9. As I understand it, the only 16:9 tests were done later on around 1997 on the sets of DS9 and VOY. After that, they decided that they wouldn't really pay attention to 16:9 at all while filming, but rather just reframe everything in post on a shot-by-shot basis (so-called "tilt and scan") if the need ever arose -- just as they did later on with the Enterprise pilot (and a few other of its 1st season episodes) before finally making the switch to shooting native 16:9 with Super-35 cameras.

Since the camera crews for TNG S7 and Generations were completely different, I wouldn't imagine the TV crew would ever do camera tests for the film crew. Jonathan West and his guys pretty much would've wrapped TNG and went over to DS9 and John Alonzo's team probably came in with his gaffer and they completely changed all the lighting, rigging and camera equipment to suit their needs. :)
 
Yeah, I do remember hearing that they did tests for future 16:9 matting on early Voyager.
 
Just watched "Inheritance". I have to say, Fionnula Flanagan (playing Juliana Tainer) is really an outstanding actress. She made that character 100% believable.

Plus it seems this episode was the root for B-4 from Nemesis, since Juliana told about failed Androids beeing made before Data.
 
Has anyone here from America, who ordered the UK complete series set, received theirs yet?

The estimated delivery date on my receipt was Christmas Day. I figured that wouldn't happen, but it wasn't there Friday either. I'm guessing it'll be today, but if not, the Australian set has dropped to a comparable price, if anyone's interested.

Salinga, I saw Fionnula Flanagan speak at UMass Boston several years ago when she was working on the Showtime series Brotherhood. She mentioned Star Trek, and by that point, she'd been on three times, on TNG, DS9, and ENT. She's really quite good.
 
I bought the set locally, but I have bought several items from Amazon UK. Deliveries have taken as much as a month for me.
 
I would have loved to see Flanagan's interpretation of Captain Janeway. She could pull it off.
 
I would have loved to see Flanagan's interpretation of Captain Janeway. She could pull it off.

I think she would have been a great Janeway. I loved her in Inharitance and I really also liked her in DS9's "Dax", but then they were kind of playing the same person. I love what Mulgrew brought to the role, but I think Flanagan could have pulled it off really well.
 
She was probably already too old (around 50) when VOY began. I sent Berman a tweet asking if she was considered (but I guess he wont respond ;).
 
The problem of season 7 with its technobabble deus ex machina galore already begins with "Decent II" (and was unfortunatly a forshadowing for VOY).

Which episodes? I recognise that accusation when levelled at Voyager but how many episodes of TNG relied on it?

Maybe Genesis, but I really wasn't bothered with the Technobabble on TNG as I was with Voyager.

Braga himself is acknowledging the problem of relying too much on technobabble to "solve huge plot problems" with TNG on his "Parallels" commentary (the warp bubble solution for this episode was such a technobabble deus ex machina I was talking about). "It is not something to look back on and be proud of."
 
^^
Yeah, but it made sense. It was basically "go back the opposite way you came in", not very technobabbly. The warp bubble was a bit extra of "and shut the door behind you", but really, they could have easily just said that flying back through could fix anything (it's a made up problem anyways).

I wouldn't classify it as deus ex machina at all, either. That term gets thrown around WAY too much in these parts. The problem started when he flew through a tear left to right. So they said fly right to left and fix it. It was set up well enough in the science fiction world of Star Trek.
 
Exactly. Deus ex machina seems to be used more and more as a way of saying "a problem fixed with technology" as opposed to the real meaning.
 
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