"Pathfinder" is a worthy win.
"Blink of an Eye" I adore more for its first rate use of sci-fi, including being mindful of the two differential timelines running in parallel
and not screwing it up (something newer sci-fi forgets about, like Tron Legacy - not a bad movie, but that flaw still drives me nuts. ) I can handle "Wink of an Eye", especially for TOS season 3's time and budget limitations but sci-fi evolved and became more sophisticated over the decades... which is not said to backhandedly slap TOS, which was extremely groundbreaking and mature for its time.
Plus, Olaf Pooley is in it. How bad could the episode be?
But "Pathfinder" and seeing Reg score a victory, in seeing something everyone else hadn't. This is genuinely great stuff, produced well, acted well, directed well, written well, fantasized over dinner and a movie well, you name it.
Both are true to character and it's lovely. The spinoffs returning to TNG cast as a lifeline could be hit or miss, but in VOY they generally worked to the show's favor. Sparingly and for a positive means to a positive end.
That said, guess who misses playing H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock? I don't blame Dwight either; he's too jubilant at times, but he still makes it all feel like Reg. There's a fine line with contextual difference between the characters and he meets it with aplomb. Definitely an underrated actor...
Yeah. let's introduce Neelix to Spot. If they don't tear each other to bits they'll end up with a litter of 50 within a year... VOY missed the opportunity to have Bob Barker telling you to spay and neuter your tribbles, too... but I digress.
Soft'n'fuzzy or not, it looks more authentic and 3D.
So here's the waxworks pseudo-4K-enhanced version:
"signal processor", indeed, hehehehehehehe!
Definitely looks like too much enhancement was applied, with the result looking like a cheap 3D effect with too-distinct-yet-inconsistent edges (and with jaggies too!!), too soft everything-else, and oddly ever-so-plasticky... I suspect the "dione dehalo" variant of the deinterlacer wasn't enabled as there's a distinct halo-like outline as well... but that adds much to rendering time as well...
I've been playing with the same Topaz AI software, which I do agree does some amazing things to videotape source material, but it still does not and can not add real detail, such as names of ships from medium- or short-range distance. The algorithms have no clue what to fill in, but for native videotape material it does wonders. 35mm scanned by a telecine imager to videotape (VT) in the 90s strips out and blurs a ton. Repatriating that is not going to happen, no matter how much edge enhancement and gamut-smoothing takes place. In contrast, 35mm restoration captures all that fresh,
real detail* and even downscaling that still preserves more detail than the equipment circa 1999.
That, and if I wanted to see a bunch of window shop dummies, I'd sit through that "Mannequin" movie starting Kim "Valaris" Cattrall.
* with apologies to anti-replicator and verbiage-stuffed Eddington but, dang, there's so much image smoothing that uniforms look like mannequins wearing plastic table mats. Sheesh, even I would have turned on the "grain" and "noise" settings to 3 instead of the default 2... unless the creator used 0, which explains a lot... yuck... also note at 2:26 with Reg's uniform; real HD would show all the quilting, fuzzy-wuzzy texture, and more. With the AI algorithms, after stripping out mpeg artifacting and "guessing" what is where, it can't compensate. His cheekbones are smoother than the quintuplets' shiny new butts, too, and those are jarring against his magically dematerializing crows' feet. Maybe he's a TARDIS. Or 2:30, for that matter. Wow.
That said, imagine how "AI" would work on the cleaned-up master videotapes and not the DVDs that strip out far more detail due to the compression needed. The master tapes, probably archived to D1 tape by now, are lossless and have a lot more comparative detail to be used. That said, finer detail still doesn't and won't come through and, of course, the mannequin shop is loaded. So now imagine a true 35mm restoration before all 80 zillion reels of film turn into pulpy vinegar in some salt mine It's why you will not see anyone vaunting and flaunting "Look at my TNG title sequence 1080P upscale, it's better than blu-ray!" because they'll be laughed at the moment you see the worker bee port and the word "ENTEPRISE" mushy half-blurred text next to it.
But for nuanced edge enhancement and color smoothing - oh, do not get me wrong - these new algorithm-based tools are a genuine godsend. But the difference is still huge and is why nobody is releasing, even on streaming, film-turned-VT-now-upscaled material out.
