The Star Trek Thread, 3.0

No kidding!

trevanian wrote:

My wife was traumatized seeing him that big. Course, we'd just rewatched all of FF, so his shiny cheeks were still in mind.

Hope he doesn't go the way of MIcheal O'Hare, where you get insanely fat and then die a couple decades early.

Didn't know he was dead! :shock:

Voyager, Final Season Reviews

"Shattered"
This is kinda like a clip show where the reshot all the scenes. Voyager gets split into mulitple timeframes from across the series seven year run and only Chakotay can travel between them. We run into a bunch of characters and situations from a few different episodes, and I bet the writers thought this was a good tribute to the show's history but it's all really pointless and procedural and has no fun and at the end everyone's memory is wiped so for all intents and purposes it never happened anyway.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians <--- Past-Janeway claims she started with 153 dudes, but that's actually the combined total of her crew and the Maquis -- she started with 141.
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,593.2 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

More temporal bullshit.

I am totally disappointed with my stats. I figured we would have a skeleton crew and have passed Earth by now. Instead we are only operating four short of a regular crew complement for an Intrepid class ship thanks to Janeway's penchant for picking up hitchhikers

VOY Season 7's motto: "Who gives a fuck? ENTERPRISE is on the horizon so let's just coast this bitch like we have been doing for the past five years."

Anyway, "Skin of Evil" HD: http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=25

I think what really shocks me the most when looking at all of these caps is the fact that they're color corrected. I have gotten so used to S1's pink tint that when I see these I realize "oh yeah, Worf actually wore a red uniform that season!"


EDIT: Oh, looks like they fucked up on one shot though during color correction. Crusher's uniform is green.

Sweet mother of Pearl and her hair's lighter.

More's the pity about Wesley. Never mad on the jumper.

Even far into the future, it seems there's no escaping the iffy Christmas present jumper.

Voyager Final Season Reviews

"Lineage"
A superbly realized, dramatically effective, and well acted piece about B'Elanna and Tom's troubles once they learn B'Elanna is pregnant, and she wants the Doc to genetically modify the fetus to weed out its Klingon traits. It's a good exploration of a plausible sci-fi ethical issues -- except -- wait -- isn't genetic engineering of any kind except in cases of life-threatening conditions ILLEGAL in the Federation? What is everyone doing standing around having moral arguments over whether this is right or wrong? It's not only wrong, there's already a law against it for just this kind of scenario. The whole episode is totally invalid and complete joke because it never even slightly brings this fact up. That's like a Trek episode being about how hard interstellar travel is since faster-than-light travel is impossible. What?
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,539.9 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 49 days

"Repentance"
A death penalty allegory episode that strikes one as the VOY writers trying really hard to do a classic Trek "moral choice" episode. Some of the metaphor works, some of it doesn't, some of it comes across as hopelessly naive. I did admire, however, that Janeway respected the spirit of the Prime Directive throughout and remained level-headed, rather than unfairly judging another culture and cowboying their way to moral victory like they usually do. Also I liked the twist that the crazy psycho killer was mentally unbalanced and actually not a bad guy, while the "they only looked me up cuz the system is racist!" guy turned out to be a scheming asshole. This episode is all right, but flawed.
# of Crew: 135 Total -- 115 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,517.5 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 57 days

I was planning a TOS run in the spring (I do it every other spring, 2007, 2009, 2011), but I may bump it up as it'll probably be MAD MEN time around then.

Watching TMP: Director's Cut right now. I don't think I've seen it in maybe five years. Which version do you guys like better? I have to say this DVD looks like dogshit next to the Blu-ray. I'm not on board with all of the changes that I'm seeing in the DC, but the pacing and attention to character do seem sharper.

I prefer a lot of the changes in the DC, but I wish they would've left the "we all create God in our own image" line from the home video cut in.

Some amalgam of all the cuts would be best.

Yeah I was really shocked by the clarity of the blu-ray. I dunno if it's true to the theatrical look color-wise, but a lot of it looked great.

As for which I prefer. I probably say DC as you said that feels a lot sharper. I like that they restored the unused Foley made for the flick which really brings life to the bridge scenes. It's a more proper way to go back to a film and do some tweaks than the way Lucas did with STAR WARS, and that TMP's was rushed and they never gave it a proper polish after the premiere.

I really hope they someday give it a blu-ray treatment, they have to at some point. No doubt it would be much easier than the way they're working on TNG-R.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

I prefer a lot of the changes in the DC, but I wish they would've left the "we all create God in our own image" line from the home video cut in.

Some amalgam of all the cuts would be best.

That's what I'm thinking. And what's awesome about the DC DVD is that it's got those deleted scenes in anamorphic widescreen, including that line. Would probably be easy to put in if I had decent editing software. A hybrid cut would be fun to make, like the SUPERMAN II cut I was working on until my FinalCut trial version ran out (I still think 300 dollars is an outrageous price for that program). And iMovie is a piece of shit.

As for lines, I think my personal favorite is Rand's "Oh no, they're forming."

I would definitely keep Kirk's repeat of "viewer off!"

Come to think of it, "Oh no, they're forming" really suited the film in 1979.

Moore speaks the truth

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a409467/star-trek-could-still-be-tv-hit-says-battlestar-galactica-exec.html

He often does.

Python wrote:

Yeah I was really shocked by the clarity of the blu-ray. I dunno if it's true to the theatrical look color-wise, but a lot of it looked great.

As for which I prefer. I probably say DC as you said that feels a lot sharper. I like that they restored the unused Foley made for the flick which really brings life to the bridge scenes. It's a more proper way to go back to a film and do some tweaks than the way Lucas did with STAR WARS, and that TMP's was rushed and they never gave it a proper polish after the premiere.

I really hope they someday give it a blu-ray treatment, they have to at some point. No doubt it would be much easier than the way they're working on TNG-R.

If you could find images from the 1980 TMP calendar (the 12 month one, not the pic a week one), you'd probably have a good match for how the film actually looked. I'm thinking of a page that has a view of Kirk on bridge w/ McCoy just before wormhole, where the lighting choices in terms of angle and quality combine to make the guy look godawful in a really pale way.

I saw TMP 4 or 5 times in the theater, in 3 different theaters, and in one case, a radically different print (in terms of quality.) It always looked kind of mushy, probably because of the use of soft lighting, and unflattering, since it was often coming from the floor or an unflattering angle to create some contrast (but not the good rich kind.)

Am holding off on trek br entirely till they do it again, based on the frame grabs.

Went to the TNG screening at my local theater, with "Q Who" and "The Measure of a Man" extended version.

That was just awesome. It's great to see these classics in quality above video tape. TNG has never looked so film-like and it was great that they included some of the docs before and between shows, some which were a lot more honest than I expected. They even have Sirtis admit her acting was horrible in "Farpoint", even showing snippets of those awful moments as she pointed them out, and the some of cast writing off S1 as an awkward yet successful start. Maurice Hurley is only mentioned once but it had nothing to do with the sexual harassment over Gates, instead they leave him out and Gates explains she wasn't prepared for how sexist the studio and executives were at the time and that because she was not familiar with the politics of Hollywood, fought against it she paid the price by getting fired. The entire docs weren't shown as they'll have to wait for blu-ray, but it was interesting to see a lot of disclosure.

As for the extended version of "The Measure of a Man", I loved it. It was nice to see all of the cut footage and extra dialogue integrated and I thought they really helped enhance the story. The only quibble I suppose is that Maddox is more dickish than ever before. It has to be seen to be believed. During that farewell party in Ten Forward the broadcast cut ends with Data saying goodbye to Geordi, in the extended version however it continues with Maddox showing up uninvited and just flat out insulting Data telling him his next job should be working at a carnival as a walking encyclopedia, ending with Riker literally dragging Maddox out the door. I think it might have been too much, as Maddox is already enough of a prick in the broadcast version.

"Q Who" was pretty awesome too. Nothing much to add other than I noticed little things that became more apparent on a large silver screen. For a long time I just assumed the Borg that are seen regenerating were all dummies. Turns out they were actual people standing still and one of them even blinked. In the doc they talk about how those suits were extremely uncomfortable for actors to wear and expensive, so I kinda wonder why they bothered to use actual people instead of dummies as that wouldn't have been too noticeable on TVs in the 80s and there were enough Borg tech to mask them. Just goes to show how they really didn't hold back on production values and I kind of grown a new admiration for the crew that went so far to make everything as convincing as they could.

I've always thought Maddox was the one weakness in the episode. Just in terms of how over the top his dickishness was. He should have been noble, but mistaken.

Yeah, his behavior really goes at odds with his last scene where he's suddenly noble and acknowledges Data as a sentient being "you didn't call him 'it'". The extra Ten Forward stuff with him just pushes it even further to absurdity. Still, I liked a lot of other touches in the extended version, enough that I may prefer it over broadcast. Changes not just in adding new stuff but also different camera angles. I think the only prominent shot missing was the one with Riker holding Data's arm as the hand twitches.

I also got a great audience tonight. I was shocked that nobody showed up in costume. I'd say this is the best Trek experience I've had in theaters, but that might not be saying much since the others were Generations, Insurrection, Nemesis and nuTrek.

I've seen 'em all in the cinema back to GENERATIONS, which I saw at this great old multiplex that has very sadly since been demolished. They had a big Ent-D model outside. I saw FIRST CONTACT there, too. And there were people dressed as Borg fake fighting people dressed in Starfleet uniforms.

I was looking for a MAD MEN image for something, and I found this.

I call it "Me as Bert Cooper watching STINO".



STINO, BTW, the what I'll probably call nuTREK from now on. Star Trek In Name Only.

The next film will be STD.

"Never hoard your silver bullet."

http://io9.com/5964697/george-rr-martins-writing-advice-that-led-to-one-of-star-treks-greatest-episodes

Still a real shame about the fallout between Piller and Snodgrass. I wonder if they'll get more into that in the S3 docs, it's great they brought her on board to give her input. Same with Rob Bowman. Their contribution was horribly neglected in the old DVD docs from what I remember.