Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[Maxwell Everett]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Maxwell, did you get the impression that the second team hired to scan and edit the season 3 film were to be a permanent addition? Or just a stopgap to help pick up the pace?

Back in June I was only told Season Two and Three were being worked on concurrently and that they had "a second team working at the same time."

Turns out it was Illuminate Hollywood (according to Dan Curry in a video posted by Larry Nemecek) who were brought in to handle most of the workload of Season Two, while CBS Digital were supposedly busy working on Season Three. It's likely they are alternating even/odd seasons -- Illuminate says on their website they are working on "multiple seasons." According to them, they are using a relatively new process called iConform (<--definitely read this page) to do the restoration work on Season Two (and others).

FrontierTrek probably has a definitive answer on my even/odd speculation. I guess we'll know sometime next week.

 

[JJ-R]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

According to them, they are using a relatively new process called iConform (<--definitely read this page) to do the restoration work on Season Two (and others).

Wow - great find, Maxwell. I wonder if this service has only been established since TNG-R got up and running.

So we've gone from thinking that re-doing post-production on a video-edited/composited show like TNG was either impossible or too much work, to CBS figuring out a way to do it, to now a third party developing a technology and system so that studios can pay for it to be done more quickly and cheaply. That's a startling transition over the last couple of years.

It seems that a lot more has developed in the industry in this regard than we may have thought. It also suggests that there's sufficient demand among rights holders to convert their 80s and 90s content into HD that a service like this is deemed worthwhile.

Perhaps TNG is only the tip of the iceberg. Could The X-Files be next? And might the reduced costs of assembling the footage make the effects work for DS9 and Voyager an acceptable expense?

Season 2 is going to drive fans crazy! That's all I will say. There's going to be no sitting on the fence with this release, it is a MUST MUST MUST buy!

I can't fathom what this could be, which makes me all the more intrigued. A swath of rediscovered deleted scenes? Shades of Gray re-edited with alternate takes? Footage of the TOS and TNG casts interacting during the filming of Star Trek V? I must know!

 

[bullethead]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

I wonder if the Hybrid Extended cut of Measure of a Man has upscaled VFX, because I remember hearing something about how the TNG-R team would have to completely redo the effects with CGI or something like that.

 

[Mott the barber]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

What I'm looking forward to see.

***** Excellent
“Elementary, Dear Data”
“The Measure Of A Man”
“Q Who”

**** Good
“Where Silence Has Lease”
“Unnatural Selection”
“A Matter Of Honor”
“Contagion”
“Pen Pals”
“Up The Long Ladder”

*** Fair
“The Child”
“The Schizoid Man"
“Loud As A Whisper”
“The Emissary”
“Peak Performance”

I'd throw "Time Squared" under "Good" as well.

Wow, the excitement builds all over again! I'll definitely be at that theater screening again as well.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

*** Fair
“The Child”

Nice to know the episode that really cemented women's roles in Star Trek as being nothing but walking incubators and insultingly unprofessional officers has been labeled as being a "Fair" episode. I cannot wait to kill this episode once we get to it on the "Episode a week" topic.

But I will agree that despite some flubs here and there, Season 2 does have some pretty unique and well done stories. One episode I'm looking forward to seeing again is "Where Silence has Lease", even though they kill the black guy.

Worf: "This ship has one bridge. ONE BRIDGE! ONE RIKER, ONE BRIDGE!"

What about the battle bridge?

 

[Scotty]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

And I'm puzzled by the "Q Who?" commentary. Forgive my ignorance, but who is Don Berman? Anyone know?

According to Trekcore they mean director Rob Bowman.

 

[Scotty]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

*** Fair
“The Child”

Nice to know the episode that really cemented women's roles in Star Trek as being nothing but walking incubators and insultingly unprofessional officers has been labeled as being a "Fair" episode. I cannot wait to kill this episode once we get to it on the "Episode a week" topic.

Woah there! Don't get your femministic panties in a twist. Generalize much? Women's roles on Trek nothing more than incubators and insulting and unprofessional? What about Kira, Dax, Torres, Janeway? These were strong and well written characters. Even Troi was given more respect by the TNG writers in later seasons when she finally donned a starfleet uniform and was promoted to Commander.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Woah there! Don't get your femministic panties in a twist. Generalize much? Women's roles on Trek nothing more than incubators and insulting and unprofessional? What about Kira, Dax, Torres, Janeway? These were strong and well written characters. Even Troi was given more respect by the TNG writers in later seasons when she finally donned a starfleet uniform and was promoted to Commander.

Well, Kira was literally used as someone else's incubator, but that was handled much, much better than in the Child. Dax is a character who certainly earns respect with her being Sisko's right hand officer and being able to earn the respect of three legendary Klingons.

Janeway? Well, she demands respect and loves the Prime Directive more than Picard loves his Earl Grey Tea. Sure, she's the captain, but she doesn't really do anything to earn the respect of the crew under her command. One of her biggest missteps was making Torres the chief engineer, the character who punches officers square in the face, disobeys direct orders, puts the ship in danger and can't even identify fecal matter even with a tricorder. Obviously chief engineer material for starfleet standards.... well, at least standards for Janeway since when it comes to talking about crossing the warp 10 barrier, Tom Paris, Neelix and Harry Kim deliberately shun her off. Obviously the chief engineer whom they respect obviously knows nothing about warp engines. No, the helmsman is the one to turn to.

Also, why would you include Janeway at all? Compare her treatment of Harry Kim to Sisko's treatment of Nog. During the coruse of seven years on DS9, Nog went from a petty thief who ended up serving on DS9 to becoming a fully fledged Starfleet Lieutenant who served on the Defiant under Sisko's command during the Dominion War. During the course of seven years on Voyager, Harry Kim went from ensign to..... ensign. This is a character who has died several times in the line of duty, and Janeway never considers his acts worthy of an additional pin.

But I guess times have changed for the better, because now Star Trek has only one female character in the entire cast and so far she'll leave her station at the drop of a hat whenever it involves her boyfriend. You know her potential is really high when Chekov is the one who does her tasks.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Nice to know the episode that really cemented women's roles in Star Trek as being nothing but walking incubators and insultingly unprofessional officers has been labeled as being a "Fair" episode. I cannot wait to kill this episode once we get to it on the "Episode a week" topic.

Generalize much? Calm the fuck down.

...even though they kill the black guy.

Worf: "This ship has one bridge. ONE BRIDGE! ONE RIKER, ONE BRIDGE!"

What about the battle bridge?

Obviously in his rant Worf was talking about the main bridge, the central command center of the entire ship that is usually not connected to another duplicate right next door.

 

[Scotty]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

I think Jeyl that your view on the women of Trek actually says more about you than it does about the show, the characters and the writers intentions.

 

[davejames]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Awesome news, can't wait for this to come out! Other than Q Who and Elementary Dear Data, I haven't seen most of these episodes in over 10 years, so I'm curious to see if they're any better or worse than I remember.

With Season One, I was surprised to find myself changing my opinion on quite a few episodes.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Nice to know the episode that really cemented women's roles in Star Trek as being nothing but walking incubators and insultingly unprofessional officers has been labeled as being a "Fair" episode. I cannot wait to kill this episode once we get to it on the "Episode a week" topic.

Generalize much? Calm the fuck down.

<snip>

My advice to you is to mind your own business. This kind of comment can't do anyone any good and teeters on the edge of trolling. Don't do it again.

 

[Michael]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Really looking forward to season 2. There are a quite a few of my favourites in there.

Well, ask me, it's my favorite season of TNG!

I may actually be the only person looking forward to The Dauphin.

No, you definitely are not; I love "The Dauphin". Nice episode for Wesley.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

I find "The Dauphin" sort of weak since I find it hard to buy into Wesley's "aww shucks!" attitude over the girl. And the shape-changing-ness of the AOTW, particularly the "mother" is just hard to swallow and get into. It HAS been a while since I've seen the episode so my opinions could be different on a rewatch but watching Wesley crush on some average looking girl just isn't interesting.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

I think Jeyl that your view on the women of Trek actually says more about you than it does about the show, the characters and the writers intentions.

Which is what?

And if you really want to see the intentions, just look up Maurice Hurley. This is the man who was responsible for getting Gates McFadden off the show (with some reports saying that he sexually harassed her), and re-wrote the Phase 2 story without ever reading the original script. I don't think it's a stretch to say that TNG didn't have the most well meaning writers onboard. All the writers who actually wanted to do something special with Star Trek had already left by season 2. Heck, DC Fontana had her NAME removed from "The Naked Now" because the episode was so poorly handled. And that was the first regular episode.

And the participants in the BluRay extra features are pretty open about this subject as well. Patrick Stewart talks about how he felt there was a bit of sexism going on in the show when it first started out and how DC Fontana originally wanted more female crew members for the Enterprise like the chief engineer. It's sad considering that both the head of security and the chief engineer are all replaced with the male members of the cast, and any potential female characters that are brought in (Like Season Two's Sonya Gomez) are just abandoned and forgotten. It's not until Gene wasn't in total control of the series and outside writers came in that we were able to get shows that not only gave us new prominent female characters, but also gave the female characters we already had something to do. Crusher took command of the Enterprise in Descent 1 & 2, Ensign Ro was a pretty big regular.

 

[davejames]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Yeah some of the women's roles were fairly weak early on, but I don't think it warrants THIS much anger and vitriol. Most of the characters in general weren't very well-written until Piller came along.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Season 1/2 was rough overall and we all know by now what a colossal dick Maurice Hurley was but I don't think TNG's early seasons, or even as a whole, where as terribly sexist as you seem to suggest.

For example, in The Child once Troi decides to have the baby the issue on to abort or not is dropped. Which alone is showing a lot of support for women's rights and choices that abortion was even on the table! There's some initial concern over how the baby was conceived and what it meant but overall Troi's choices and motherhood isn't questioned in the least.

So how, exactly, was it "typical" of TNG/Trek's treatment of women? TNG even often showed women in positions of power and status. Picard's career in Pre-TNG history hung in the balance based on the actions of a woman. That's quite a long way from when in TOS it's pretty openly suggested women weren't allowed to command starships. S1's "Conspiracy" even has Picard admiring a woman who was able to achieve a commanding rank quicker than any other officer.

Yeah, occasionally we get the crap episode like the treatment of "Yar" in the widely maligned "Code of Honor" and we've discussed at great lengths the problems the series had behind the scened with Hurley.

But TNG was hardly using women as purely sex objects to appeal to male viewers which, really, was what they were used for in TOS and Voyager brought us with Seven of Nine's catsuit and Enterprise with T'Pol's catsuit. As DS9 wore on even Dax became more promiscuous and Leeta was pure eye candy.

So, aside from Troi's bunny outfit TNG was pretty damn even handed when it came to women because even though she was in a sexy costume atleast with Troi (being a counselor and possibly wanting to present a friendly appearance to her patients) added something to the stories and crew. Seven brought on an absurd uniform and a body full of Borg McGuffins.

T'Pol brought in the Braga-ian "emotionless woman in bunny suit", judgment of humans and someone to rub "decon goo" on.

But you've continually posted on episodes for the first two seasons like they were treating women as just pure pieces of worthless dirt. It wasn't great, sure, but it wasn't nearly as terrible as you're making it out to be.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

Yeah some of the women's roles were fairly weak early on, but I don't think it warrants THIS much anger and vitriol. Most of the characters in general weren't very well-written until Piller came along.

I'm not really that angry, I'm just disappointed. I certainly agree that every character got a lot of low points in the series, but from the perspective of the writers, you could tell they wanted to make the lead characters clever at the expense of other characters. The episode "Haven" for example when Tasha Yar recommends using phasers to disable the plague ship, and Picard calls her out on how stupid the idea is. From the writers perspective, they think they're making Picard out to be the smartest person in the room who thinks about more reasonable solutions. But instead of the final product doing that, it ends up proving your point in how both characters are so poorly written. Yar's suggestion of using phasers to disable, not destroy the ship is a reasonable solution, and not once does Picard bring up the idea of using the Tractor Beam to anyone.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

But you've continually posted on episodes for the first two seasons like they were treating women as just pure pieces of worthless dirt. It wasn't great, sure, but it wasn't nearly as terrible as you're making it out to be.

The reason why this strikes such a cord with me in TNG and not many other series is, well, the obvious. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was in complete control. The same man who preaches that in Star Trek, humanity is perfect, greed and hunger are a thing of the past and that we can accomplish anything. He'll approve an episode where Picard says we've eliminated greed and the need for possessions while at the same time using a contract to take half of Alexander Courage's royalties from the work he did on composing the original series theme. Some example he was.

 

[Warped9]

Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season TWO Discussion Thread

S1 TNG had a lot of sloppy writing and pretty much all the characters, male and female, came off poorly at some point or other. One can argue the writers didn't have a handle on the characters yet, but even so some of the things they had the characters say and do was just awful. I think the early TNG novels handled the characters better overall. Yar was handled particularly badly and it didn't help that Denise Crosby was lousy in the role and completely unconvincing in the part. Here it wasn't just poor writing but also bad casting.

S2 generally handled the characters better. Pulaski had some grit to her that Beverly Crusher lacked. Even when Crusher returned I never bought into her beyond the role of doctor although her performance improved immeasurably. Crusher in command of the ship was pure bullshit I never found convincing. Ditto with Troi.

TNG would eventually offer up some decent roles for women, but generally they were guest roles. The show didn't yet have the guts to feature a truly forceful female regular. It's sad in a way because by the late '80s we'd already seen a badass Elizabeth Ripley in the Alien films several years previously.

And note that only a few years later other genre shows started to do better than TNG with regular female characters. One of the very best was Dana Scully in The X-Files. I'd take her over any woman seen in contemporary Trek.