RVR II's Star Trek thread.. Cause it's sure to veer off course!

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Got the last season six blu-ray set on the shelf at best buy for $70, it's up to $117 on Amazon now.

Oh, and RVR, streatching out the show to avoid the black bars, shame on you!

I hate it when I have to watch something like that, drives me crazy, all I can see are the proportions all screwed up...

I just can't stand seeing those bars on each side of the picture.. It just GNAWS at me!
Why they recorded the show in 4:3 anyway is beyond me 

HDTV was not even a blip on the horizon when next gen aired.

Actually they considered remastering in widescreen because most of the live action was filmed that way.  But the effects shots were all masked for 4:3, and they found too much "junk" on the edges of the live action.  So too much to clean up with CGI, and it would have meant doing the same thing they did with TOS, scrap all the effects and redo with CGI.  I'm really glad they didn't do that, the original film of the models looks so much better than what it would look like redone with CGI.

I still haven't seen the remastered Friends Blu-Rays, but I've heard they had the same problem, bits of the studio background creep into the edges of shots here and there.  But it doesn't really matter for a show like that, much more of a big deal to have bits of set construction showing up on the edges of Star Trek.

I watch a lot of old TV and movies that are 4:3 (academy standard aspect), so got used to the black bars a long time ago.  And like I said, the stretched out look drives me crazy.

I've got to scan the disc info and print out a sheet to put in the season 6 case, how stupid is it to have to remove a disc to read what is on the discs....

[RVR II]

See and that's weird cause Battlestar Galactica 1978 (still not on blu ray) was done in wide screen (or they just 'stretched it' to 16:9) but it looks really good to me.

I can understand the tedious work that would have been involved to make them 16:9 and as for stretching the screen like I do to eliminate those vertical black side bars, I just don't see the flaws in the picture but maybe I don't pay attention to them but that's just me

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Finally watched Relics on the Blu-Ray.

Wow, that 12 foot tall model of the doors on the sphere really looks fantastic, there is so much detail.
The inside of the sphere also has way more fine detail, not sure if that is original or new CGI but it looks great.

And the deleted scene with Troi was cool, nice going Troi, making Scotty feel worse....

The commentary track is OK, a bit too much of Moore whining about not being able to put TOS references into TNG so he crammed as many as he could into this episode.

[RVR II]

I never got back to doing my final review of S6..

Went back through each individual episode to look for deleted scenes and there was maybe only half of the episodes that actually had some deleted scenes and they were ok I suppose
I liked the deleted scene on Relics as well, but thought there would be a little more behind-the-scenes with Scotty..
No mention of Wendy Hughes who played Commander Daren from 'Lessons' who passed away back in March

I guess I was expecting a bit more extras but still looked good in BluRay.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I liked the deleted scene on Relics as well, but thought there would be a little more behind-the-scenes with Scotty..

 There is some behind the scenes footage from that in the documentary and the mission logs (recycled from the DVD set), in the commentary track Moore talks a bit about stuff that happened on set with Jimmy.

No mention of Wendy Hughes who played Commander Daren from 'Lessons' who passed away back in March

I guess I was expecting a bit more extras but still looked good in BluRay.

To be fair I'm guessing most of the new extras were filmed at least a year ago.

The 3 part documentary on disc 6 is OK, not great, part 1 is kind of boring, they talk about DS9 way too much, part 2 is somewhat interesting talking about the music and sets, part 3 with the actors is the most interesting.

Except for the deleted scenes and commentary tracks I think all the other extras are from the DVD sets.  So, yeah, this set is probably has the least amount of new material.

[The Lurker]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/showbiz/obit-star-trek-arlene-martel/index.html

[RVR II]

Yeah it was the BSG movie that was stretched not The tv series.. My bad

I don't see the flaws that much, but I guess I'm used to watching it stretched

[RVR II]

And Finally a release date (December 2, 2014) for Season 7 of TNG along with 'All Good Things' (just rewatched that episode last night by the way)..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NAIMGXI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NAIMHMS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Sideswipe]

Awesome.  Now bring on DS9.

[RVR II]

Awesome.  Now bring on DS9.

I am still 50/50 on getting this series currently but as they start showing the improvements and extras, I'm sure I'll wind up getting that series as well 8-)

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I'm still not sure I'll get season 7 on Blu-Ray.  Just not that many episodes I really want to see in HD.  If I read that the extras are really good I might think about it, but the extras on season 6 were pretty disappointing.

As for DS9, if they do it I might get season 1 just to see some of the effects in HD, but then again I might wait to see if it shows up on Netflix or Amazon Prime in HD someday.  I thought about getting Enterprise but the streaming HD is good enough for me, and I haven't even looked to see what kind of extras were shot for the Enterprise blu-rays, TNG is the last series that the extras matter to me.

I kind of agree on the low "rewatchability" of DS9, there's a few episodes I've rewatched on Netflix, but compared to the other series where I'll go back and rewatch sections of seasons I just don't ever feel like doing that with DS9.  DS9 certainly leads in the number of episodes I've only seen once when they aired and have never gone back to.

[Sideswipe]

TNG and DS9 were both weak in their first two seasons, they didnt get good until season 3.

[Rainbow Dash]

I'd argue that of all the modern series, DS9 had the best start.  Some fantastic episdoes in S1, and I don't think the bad early DS9 episodes top the bad ones on TNG, Voyager, or Enterprise.

[Soguru]

TNG had some good stuff early on, but yeah, 3rd-5th seasons were the good ones.  Early DS9 is...yeesh.

I must take this opportunity to mention season 1's "Duet". For all the flaws of DS9's early shows, it probably had the strongest premiere episode of all Star Trek shows. Better than "Encounter at Farpoint"? I don't think there's any debating that. Better than "Caretaker"... any argument here? Better than "Where no man has gone before? Mmmmmm.... in fairness I'd have to say it's a tough choice but I think The Emissary has a stronger story overall. Some other early great DS9 episodes include "Cardassians", "The Maquis I and II", "Crossover", "Tribunal", and "Battle Lines". On one point I must agree, DS9 had trouble initially finding a good dramatic direction. In its favor, the characters were always stronger than any of the crew of Voyager.

As an aside, I'm sick of having to put episode titles in quotations. Can anybody please explain the rather obscure and possibly unwritten rules behind when it's necessary to put quotes around titles and when it's okay not to?

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I'd also say either pilot of the original series are far superior to all the first episodes of the others.

Farpoint is unwatchable, Emissary is OK , Caretaker is meh, Broken Bow is also meh.  Of those I've rewatched Emissary maybe twice, but have seen the pilots for the original series probably a dozen times each.

Duet needed a better ending, extremely lazy writing the way it was.  Would have been better to have Kira stop the attack, causing a rift between her and her resistance comrades.

Since I've got the lists of episodes up, my list of how far you have to skip into each series to get what I think is the first really good episode:

TOS: both pilots
STTNG: 13 or 15
DS9: 6
Voyager: 7
Enterprise: 7

Really is amazing how dramatic the turnaround for TNG was, from loads of crap to pretty good over little more than half a season.