TT:
Just to bring the interview to a close, the release schedule means that the entire run of the series won't be completed and available to the market until roughly 2015. Is it likely that CBS will look to other Star Trek properties such as Deep Space Nine and Voyager at this point?
Y'know that's the big question, and I think the overall sales of this will determine that. The problem is that in addition to just the restoration, those shows never had the ratings that
Star Trek: The Next Generation had. My favourite modern
Star Trek was
Deep Space Nine, and as they got into later seasons, they relied heavily on CGI to create their visual effects and there's a lot more visual effects in those episodes of
Deep Space Nine and
Voyager than there were in the
Original Series, and it's hugely cost prohibitive. I mean the Dominion War, all of those visual effects, the ones where they don't have models or film elements for, are going to have to be recreated digitally and that is a massively daunting task, and that could affect the desire or even the economic feasibility of making the shows, to do the same thing that they've done to
The Next Generation, but it's my hope they will. I want
Deep Space Nine. I really want
Deep Space Nine in
HD because I dearly love that show and I think it really holds up and I love those characters and I really hope that it does happen. But as of now, I think it's too early to say.
TT:
So the message is that if fans want to see Deep Space Nine in 1080p they should jettison their Next Generation DVD's and upgrade to Blu-ray?
Absolutely. And if you're a fan of
Star Trek, you're forward thinking in that way anyway, you're gonna want to see it. And I just think that all the hard work that went into that series, it's never been seen this way before and even the aesthetics, like when you watch a first season episode that people laugh at like
Justice;
Justice is a really weird episode. When I watched it, I actually watched it twice in HD, and I'm like there's some really interesting stuff, there's that great space station and they live in a different dimension, and what are they doing and they never show up again and then there's a great moment in that episode where
Data and Picard have a great discussion about the prime directive and I was like "˜y'know this is a great scene and while this episode is kind of absurd, I kind of enjoyed watching it, the colors are very inviting and so even when
The Next Generation is clearly not at its best, there's clearly something valuable about watching these episodes on high definition. It makes even what I think is the worst episode maybe of the series, besides
Night Terrors, is
Home Soil that's on the first season, that episode is unbearable to me, but I watched it because of the way it looks in high def, and I actually enjoyed watching it. And I would never watch that on DVD, but I'll watch it on Blu-ray!
