Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation Remastered, Season One
Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Remastered, Season One
By Rich Handley
Sometimes, you just don't realize how much
you need something until it's handed to you.
Take the microwave oven, for example. For
thousands of years, mankind got along just fine cooking at the speed typical
for placing food above a heat source and occasionally stirring, turning or flipping
it. It never occurred to most people, throughout all those centuries, that they
were suffering because they lacked the ability to simply stick the food in a
box, hit a few buttons, go pour a glass of lemonade, and then walk back to the
box in time to remove and eat the fully cooked food, two minutes later. Then
came the microwave, and overnight, having to set aside an hour to cook a meal
seemed painfully slow by comparison.
This month, Star Trek fans were finally able to devour The Next Generation's much-anticipated remastered first season on
Blu-ray. From a visuals standpoint, this new ST:TNG is one heck of a microwave oven, providing a feast for ravenous
fans who, until now, had consumed a Star
Trek prepared over a 25-year-old, single-burner hot plate. The meals always
tasted great, sure, and fans were perfectly satisfied with the cooking medium's
inherent limitations. But once presented with the remastered cuisine they never
knew they craved in the first place, many will find it difficult to ever cook
using the original recipes again.
OK, enough with the food metaphor. I think
the point has been made: The remastered version of The Next Generation is simply delicious.
When TNG
debuted in 1987, watching television was a very different experience than it is
now. For many people, a 26-inch TV was considered BIG, and some still watched
their shows in black-and-white. So even if a series' special effects, lighting,
costuming, set work and sound utilized state-of-the-art technologies, it wasn't
always apparent to viewers just how amazing the finished product was—the medium
didn't yet make that possible. And few even realized it, so we were blissfully
unaware of what we were missing.
The show was at the forefront of televised science
fiction, not just in terms of writing, but also effects; when it debuted, Trek fans were mesmerized. But "Encounter
at Farpoint" admittedly had some problems in terms of characterization and
acting, and it was more than a little derivative—yet another holier-than-thou alien
species judging and condemning humanity, with a little Trelane thrown in for
good measure (back then, we had no idea just how cool Q would turn out to be).
As fun as the episode was, and though responsible
for ushering in 18 continuous years of televised Star Trek, "Farpoint" had its flaws—but the visual and audio
elements were not among them. From Q's "chain-link fence" space forcefield
to the design of the Bandi city, to the look of the alien lifeform and its
mate, to the barrage of the Old City, to the 24th-century
transporter effect, to the new Starfleet uniforms, ST:TNG's pilot was an amazing sight to behold.
And yet…
The version we were all watching and hearing
was missing a lot of existing brightness, detail and vibrancy. That extra information
was right there all along—but we simply couldn't see or hear it due to the
constraints of 20th-century mastering and playback methods. It was
as if we were viewing the series through a cheese cloth, with cotton swabs
stuck in our ears. It's hard to believe, I know, given how fantastic the show
looked and sounded, even back then, but it's true.
I was admittedly skeptical, from the first time
I'd heard of this project, about whether remastering The Next Generation was even necessary. Last year, I watched the remastered
Original Series on Blu-ray, and it
was one hell of a ride. That series never looked so fantastic. But TOS was produced in the 1960s, so there
was no doubt that it could benefit from a facelift. The Next Generation? A show with modern effects, utilizing model
work and lighting equivalent to what one might see on the big screen? Surely
that would just be an unnecessary cash-grab, capitalizing on the success of the
previous remastered sets, right?
In a word: no. The effort made to remove the
cheese cloth from our eyes and the cotton swabs from our ears is evident in
every remastered episode—even the awful ones. The vibrant colors, the crisp
lines, the astounding details never before visible, particularly on Enterprise's outer hull—it's
breathtaking. I had always noticed that TNG's
coloring looked a bit muted, that its lighting seemed a bit dim, that its
planets and spaceships lacked details, and so forth. But, as with the
proverbial cook unaware of microwave ovens (so much for dropping the metaphor),
I never saw that as a problem—it seemed entirely normal to me, as someone who'd
grown up watching TV shows produced using the technology of that era. It was
just how '80s Star Trek was, and I
loved it.
PR types like to over-use such terms as
"lovingly crafted" and "painstakingly authentic" and
"with the greatest attention to detail" when planning out press
releases or marketing materials. But this is one case in which such
superlatives actually ring true. As one watches the bonus materials, one thing
becomes abundantly evident: Those who put this set together gave a damn about
doing it right. And that effort has absolutely paid off. Now that I've seen
what's been done to clean up these episodes, I can't imagine watching the older
versions again.
When Paramount first embarked on bringing The Next Generation into
high-definition, the result of initial up-conversion techniques, using scenes
from "The Best of Both Worlds," was deemed unsatisfactory, according
to a fascinating behind-the-scenes special included with this new set. Instead,
the company decided to allow its staff to do something unprecedented: It
authorized them to hunt down and rescan all of the negatives. It was a massive
undertaking, obviously—but until you watch the bonus features, there's no way
to fully comprehend just how massive it was.
Countless hours were spent searching through
underground archives (amazingly, only two
seconds of season-one film were missing); identifying layers upon layers of
effects, lighting and sound; and determining what needed to be adjusted, what
needed to be re-created, and how far they could go while remaining true to the
vision and intent of the show's creators. Having Michael and Denise Okuda guide
them in these efforts was a huge boon, as the Okudas know more about Star Trek and the show's inner workings
than most people alive.
Their involvement, as well as that of a team
who cared about doing right by The Next
Generation, resulted in a viewing experience that is extremely reverent and
authentic to what came before, and yet measurably superior. Q's period costumes
stand out beautifully. The scenes involving the Tkon Empire portal look
fantastic (despite the Ferengi's rather stupid antics). The Klingon makeup is
bolder. The area of space to which the Traveler brings the ship is more
dazzling. And you really need to see the new Crystalline Entity to believe it;
I actually yelled "Ha!" when I saw it.
If there were a single negative to this set,
it would be that there are not enough bonus features. What's there is
fantastic, but it's a short list. Plus, the packaging is bland. Still, there's
a lot to enjoy about the extras that are provided: candid interviews with the
entire cast, as well as the Okudas, David Gerrold, Rick Berman, actor Steven
Macht (who'd been in the running for the role of Picard) and others; a
hilarious blooper reel; and (much to my delight, since it brought me back to
the '80s), the original "Next time on Star
Trek: The Next Generation!" trailers for all 26 episodes, as well as
several commercials that aired prior to the series' debut.
A quick aside: Some fans have noticed audio
issues regarding the surround-sound track. Thankfully, CBS has offered to
replace such discs for free, releasing the following prepared statement:
"We have discovered an anomaly in the English 7.1 DTS Master Audio track
in our Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 1 Blu-ray boxset. There are some episodes that inadvertently had their
front channel designations incorrectly mapped, resulting in an undesired
playback experience when listening to them in a 7.1 or 5.1 Surround Sound
environment. We are quickly working to remedy the situation. Replacement discs
(disc 1, 3 and 4) will be made available free of charge. Please email phe.stng@bydeluxe.com
for details regarding the replacement program. You may also call 877-DELUXE6
(877-335-8936) between 8 am to 6 pm Pacific, Monday-Friday."
The above problem aside, the quality of this
set is undeniable. The real question, then, is this: Is it worth buying if you
already purchased the DVDs at their exorbitant price tags? Before watching the
Blu-rays, I would likely have said no. I normally see double-dipping as a waste
of money, and I'm not one to jump at every new technology. My collection still
contains far more DVDs than Blu-rays, and I see little reason to spend a ton of
cash replacing them all. Besides, the episodic content hasn't
changed—"Heart of Glory," "The Big Goodbye," "11001001,"
"Conspiracy," "Datalore" and "Too Short a Season"
are just as fun as they are on DVD, while "Angel One," "Home
Soil," "When the Bough Breaks" and "Justice" are just
as badly written as ever. And "Code of Honor" is still awful.
But now that I've seen what Paramount has
done to clean up season one, I have come full-circle from my initial stance. This
isn't just a simple, underwhelming up-conversion, as one might expect it to be,
nor does it involve controversial and unnecessary content changes, as was done
with the Star Wars Special Editions. The
work done was exactly what needed to be done.
To say that this remastering of ST:TNG is an improvement over the VHS
and DVD iterations is like saying that flying over the ocean in an airplane is
an improvement over paddling in a canoe. The show has simply never looked this good—or,
more accurately, it always did, but we never knew it. I can't begin to count
how many times I've watched and re-watched every episode of season one over the
years, and yet, I sat agape, from one remastered episode to the next, astounded
at how many details I had not been able to discern before, which now stood out
exuberantly.
Labels: review, Rich Handley, Star Trek
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