This new Blu-ray mastering makes the show look like it was shot yesterday.
I have loved Star Trek: The Next Generation for most of my life. It began airing when I was quite young, and thanks to generous placement in syndication, I saw almost the entire series by the time it ended in 1994. The hopeful vision for the future found in the show has always been compelling to me. (UPDATE: An audio bug has been discovered since this review was posted. See below under "Encounter at Farpoint" for details. My recommendation still stands. CBS will make sure everyone is taken care of)
Compared to the old DVD monoliths, the Blu-rays take up roughly 1/3 the shelf space. Roddenberry would be proud of the move to smaller, sleeker packaging...something he constantly championed in the show's production design.
At $60, the Blu-ray is also 30-50% the cost of the DVD sets I paid way too much money for in college.
I’m sure that this week will find the internet flooded with reviewers falling all over themselves to find new adjectives for “amazing” or “beautiful” to describe the look of this set. I’ve decided to do basically the same thing but also go another direction, picking out some standout bits of each episode on the set (a number of which I’ve watched more than once on the new Blu-rays).
Across the board, I can confidently assert that no one would have believed how wonderful these episodes could look, from the most ardent fan to the most deeply-involved producer or designer. I wish that last night's Fathom Events screenings had done proper justice to the quality on display here.
The show is presented in its original 4x3 aspect ratio (thank heavens), and the extras make a point of why cropping for 16x9 would have been a terrible idea, which I completely agree with.
My mini-reviews below contain loads of spoilers. Screen captures are all from the restored episodes.
“Encounter at Farpoint” - This was the first episode I saw on the sampler disc released in January. The things that are most apparent off the bat are the radically improved clarity, color range, and contrast. On top of that, motion blur is as nonexistent as it can be at 24fps. The creatures that emerge from the planet look like brand-new effects, but in fact are simply re-scans and re-compositing of the original ILM model work.This looks the exact same as I remember from months ago…but I didn’t remember the sound mix bleeding into the right channel. It was a minor annoyance, and I ended up shifting my settings to straight-up two-channel stereo for the rest of the season. I did pop the full 7.1 DTS on for a bit during all of the rest of the episodes. It was far from distracting, but surround won’t be missed by the 99% of fans who don’t have a 7.1 (or even 5.1) system. Audiophiles may very well lose their minds or find nitpick points, but I have had limited time with this set and decided to go with a configuration that would be like what most reading this review would have in the interest of blowing through the 20+ hours of content. (27 July UPDATE: Looks like there was something up here according to Digital Bits)
“The Naked Now” - Everyone gets drunk on a space virus, things get very silly and TOS-like, and Data gets it on with Tasha Yar with “multiple techniques”. Loads of very darkly-lit and otherwise high-contrast scenes do a great job showing off the contrast and color. I remember this episode always being much, much darker in terms of lighting, but here we actually see the color and detail.
“Code of Honor” - This is the one where they go to to a planet that may as well have been called Savage Planet Afrika, a place created in the minds of decades-out-of-date, white colonialists. It probably wasn’t intended to be so literal a translation of early 20th century ethnographic studies of matriarchal African societies, but when it came to casting, they cast black instead of “alien latex”. This episode served as a great low-point comparison to the heights that this season eventually achieved, and the deathmatch in the fluorescent bulb arena looked so different that it almost distracted me from the awful, regressive stereotypes on display.
“The Last Outpost” - Remember when the Ferengi were supposed to be a menacing new enemy, on par with the Romulans and Klingons? Armin Shimmerman, who later played Quark, played one of the sniveling, animalistic original Ferengi here. They had to re-composite the laser whip effects in addition to the starship models, which are crisp and cleaner than ever.
“Where No One Has Gone Before” - One of a few “If Only They Had Listened to Wesley Crusher” episodes, it introduced The Traveler. It also features some graphics and effects that may have been interesting enough in SD back in 1987, but they are now dazzling, since we can actually see the degree of detail form the original 35mm negative. The host of different hazards produced by the crew’s imaginations provide a very diverse series of visuals that show off HD admirably.
“Lonely Among Us” - The Cobra-head-ian race and the Dog-Wolf-ian people come aboard the Enterprise for peace talks. The HD resolution doesn’t help these already silly-looking plastic head masks, but it does add to their charm. Meanwhile, the Enterprise passes by a nebula-thing that they accidentally drag an electro-being away from. It proceeds to inhabit various crew members and the ship’s systems while teaching the crew a valuable lesson about non-corporeal life. They had to re-do multiple instances of Return of the Jedi-an lighting/electricity effects that look better than the postage stamp-sized screengrab on the back of the Blu-ray case would have you believe. I had forgotten that this was the second appearance of Chief Miles O’Brien. Seeing him made me yet more eager for all there is to come…and made me want DS9 on Blu-ray yet more.
“Justice” - The crew stop off at Planet Blonde Semi-Naked Hedonism, and loads of double entendre are allowed to just hang out for all to see, including Wesley indicating that a baseball bat is “this long and that big around”. A semi-transparent god-ship above the planet benefits greatly from much better 21st century compositing algorithms and techniques. It hangs in space like the spectre it was intended to be on the page.
“The Battle” - The fearsome, goofy, and bumbling Ferengi manage to completely snow Capatin Picard into almost killing himself. A great example of Season 1’s didactic, TOS-style scripting, which was mostly a result of Gene Roddenberry’s overbearing control on almost every script (as mentioned rather honestly in one of the new extras). The new HD mastering of the Picard Manuever in action matches the clean brilliance of some of the same ILM work in “Where No One Has Gone Before”.
“Hide and Q” - Q episode number 2 isn’t much of a visual workout, but it serves as a tease of some of the stronger character development to come for the entire main cast.
“Haven” - Oh boy…Lwaxanna Troi. Counselor Troi actually gets something to do other than to serve as the emotional thermometer of the ship, but I only needed to see it once, compared to many other episodes I re-watched almost immediately.
“The Big Goodbye” - The re-mastered Okudagrams (on-screen computer graphics) looked phenomenal here! The text images in particular looked like the difference between text on a 2nd-gen versus a 3rd-gen iPad. As tiny of a thing as that may be, it speaks to the extremely fine level of detail throughout one of my favorite episodes of the series, let alone “Holodeck” episodes. All of the 1940’s period sets, costuming, and makeup look like they were put together with the budget of a feature film, and as if they were shot yesterday on a RED Epic. That is actually true of the whole thing. It isn’t just a marketing line from the studio to say that this really does look like a fresh from the lab rendering of a currently-shooting series. To see the immortal Lawrence Tierney and Dick Miller rendered in such quality is a thing to be cherished. I may have a heart attack with Season 2’s “Elementary, Dear Data”.
“Datalore” - They had to re-do the Crystaline Entity from scratch, but that is actually a good, nay, GREAT thing. The original 3D files are lost to time or bad archiving techniques, but the look of it was comparatively super-low-rez and, to today’s eyes, not-so futuristic (like the massively improved planet models throughout S1). They re-did the model from scratch without making it look too new or too sophisticated, and with the exact same vertices and shape, and it looks tremendous, rather than cringe-worthy, as the original asset would have looked if shoehorned in here.
“Angel One” - Another Adventure in Matriarchy, survivors of a downed freighter have been traced to a planet ruled by women who are served by subjugated men in open-breasted shirts and sassy leggings. Commander Riker makes the first use of his Kirk-ian, in-his-pants-based diplomatic maneuvers with the Lady Overlord of the planet. The vibrant colors used in the sensitive, pastel-drenched men in this episode really pop.
“11001001” - Referred to by most fans as “the one with the Binars”, we get our first real Self Destruct Sequence episode. All of the ship-based visuals, both approaching and leaving the Starbase, are reason for the Skip Back button on one’s remote. A recurring theme from this set is found especially true here: you will find detail you didn’t know was there, and this is like watching a brand-new show even if you’ve seen these episodes upwards of seven times.
“Too Short a Season” - This is the one with the Benjamin Button-ing Admiral played by Just One of the Guys’ Clayton Rohner. HD does not help the fact that his acting choices, combined with various stages of age makeup, make him come off like a giant-sized Muppet for much of the episode. I expected him to say “Captain, thank you for your hospitality. I will tell Fleet Admiral Kermit and Commodore Big Bird that you have done Starfleet proud”.
“When the Bough Breaks” - A legendary planet de-cloaks and steals a bunch of children, since they can’t have any due to planet-wide Children of Men disease. I now realize that I couldn’t write most of these summaries before the year 2005. Brenda Strong, now better associated with Desperate Housewives, acts the shit out of a guest spot here.
“Home Soil” - Terraforming “ugly bags of mostly water” ignore intelligent life on a planet they’re converting, much to everyone’s peril.
“Coming of Age” - The best thing about this episode is not just its narrative linking to penultimate S1 episode “Conspiracy”, but that it also establishes stakes and consequences for all the insane things that seem to happen on the Enterprise every couple of days. I was a Wesley Crusher defender back before it was a thing to do and Wil Wheaton ruled the geek universe. I was that precocious, nerdy kid who none of the adults listened to when they should have. Team Wesley for life. This episode should have turned even the most ardent Wesley-haters around. There are loads of screen-based effects that have gotten a new lease on life, looking modern and cutting edge.
“Heart of Glory” - Even though it was the first “Klingon Episode”, this is still one of the best, playing with Worf’s internal conflict made external, while at the same time telling his backstory. Many darker shots and environments make for a great look at contrast quality. They also smash Engineering walkways made out of transparent aluminum into another dimension, since I’m pretty sure we never see them again.
“The Arsenal of Freedom” - The second use of the saucer separation gimmick re-uses the same stock shots from “Farpoint”, but it does for Geordi what the previous episode did for Worf. This episode is why the revolving door of Chief Engineers go out the window in S2 and Geordi gets the post of the ship’s Chief Geek. The automated murder drones and the in-atmosphere battle sequences benefit greatly from enhanced clarity.
“Symbiosis” - I had honestly forgotten that there was a pretty unsubtle Just Say No to Drugs episode in S1. That said, the pivot on the Prime Directive is actually rather interesting, and the simmering tension between Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard is hot, hot, hot (if you ask me). We get to see one of the first exploding freighters here, and once again, the re-composited ships look exponentially better than the CG garbage we’ve been suffering in the modern age.
“Skin of Evil” - This is the one where the petulant embodiment of evil that is never seen or heard form again in all of Trek history kills Tasha. There’s only so much they could have done to make that effect look better. What stood out here, and in fact does throughout, is how much better Data looks and pops now. His skin isn’t just a sheet of blown-out white, and his eyes are mesmerizing (no, that isn’t a come-on). Particularly here, where he gets some of the most touching dialogue at the end, Brent Spiner really gets to emote without emotions to marvelous effect. What a lucky son of a gun that guy is. The writing he got to play with, wow.
“We’ll Always Have Paris” - This features Picard’s first and possibly only appearance on the Bridge in fencing gear. I love Picard-y stories like this one, where we get a wistful, longing, and lonesome Picard regretting the folly of his youth. The script seeps with romance (and, yes, time-space recursion looping), and further develops the Crusher-Picard thing (which we don’t get to pick back up until Season 3 for God’s sake).
“Conspiracy” - The culmination of a number of narrative seeds planted earlier in the season, this episode features what I think is the goriest single scene in the show. It’s immensely satisfying to see the crew mobilize in their first massive-scale threat. That the aliens featured here never appear again in all of Trek lore is actually kind of disappointing, but then, the introduction of The Borg in S2 kind of trumps throat scorpions from space. Crusher, LaForge, and Worf get a good teamwork scene, and the Picard-Riker dynamic gets some quality time. This is a great payoff after some of the weaker stuff form earlier in the season. The practical throat scorpion effects look pretty good, age and all other things considered.
“The Neutral Zone” - The Romulan Warbird model looks so much better in HD that it’s on-par with some of the best model work in the movies. Leon Rippy plays a good ol’ boy 20th century country musician unfrozen from cryonic sleep along with a couple of others. He gets away with being what I think is the only guy to smack Doctor Crusher on the ass and get away with his hand intact. Also of note to true Trek fans is guest star Peter Mark Richman, who played Spock’s Henchman in TOS’ “Mirror, Mirror”. This season-ender is also the Trek introduction of the great Marc Alaimo, who would go on to play central DS9 antagonist Gul Dukat.
Extras
All of the extras from the DVD set are included, plus the original SD episodic promos. On top of that, we get over two hours of great new stuff and an easter egg (which I haven’t found yet). Here’s how it breaks down across the discs.
Disc 1
Season 2 Promo (HD, ~5mins) - New
This auto-plays before you even get to watch the set, and does a very effective job of selling one on one of the most-derided seasons in the show’s history. “Elementary Dear Data” indeed, plus more new interview extras!
Energized: Taking The Next Generation to the Next Level (HD, ~23mins) - New
The Outstanding Okudas (name that pseudo-reference!), Rick Berman, CBS Digital staff, and archival footage of Gene Roddenberry talk about the origins of and remastering of the series, showing off the process to delightful effect.
Introduction (SD, ~3mins) - Archival
Season One Promo (SD, ~4mins) - Archival
Episodic Promos (SD, ~30sec) - New
I don’t remember these from the old DVD sets, but here they do a marvelous job of showing what a substantial improvement the HD remastering is over the old SD TV masters. There’s one for every episode in the set.
Discs 2-5
Episodic Promos for all Episodes (SD, ~30sec) - New
Disc 6
Stardate Revisited: The Origin of Star Trek: The Next Generation (HD, ~93mins in three parts, “Inception”, “Launch”, and “The Continuing Mission”) - New
This is the king daddy new extra on the set, in which they are more candid than CBS/Paramount/Trek people have ever been publicly about various things, from the initial desire to cast Steven Macht (who does a newly-recorded interview here!) to the writers’ room fighting Gene’s overbearing control over the show, to loads of little behind-the-scenes nuggets that I had not heard previously. David Gerrold, DC Fontana, Andrew Probert, the Okudas, Herman Zimmerman, Rick Berman, the entire principal cast, and members of the CBS Digital team all appear throughout. Sirtis recalling her all-denim S1 jumpsuit and Spiner thankful that they didn’t go with the bubblegum pink makeup are just a pair of the loads of anecdotes recounted. It was wonderful to see Stewart talking about his surreptitious meetings with pilot director Corey Allen while jockeying for the part.
Gag Reel (SD, ~8mins) - New
This plays like a Season 1 wrap video, the sort of thing that the crew cuts together for everyone to laugh at after months of work. It is almost completely populated with double entendres and sex jokes, and is 100% delightful for the fans.
Mission Logs (SD, ~65mins in four parts) - Archival
These are not completely superseded nor duplicated by the new documentary in any sense. I’m glad they carried everything over.
The arrival of HD in the home, along with the host of gadgets and technologies that have arrived over the last quarter century, are a marvelous testament to the enduring effect TNG has had on our technological development. When you see Geordi LaForge or Wesley Crusher using a super-thin touchscreen tablet, you now think of it as an everyday iPad. What was impossible to conceive of back then is now a reality.
The philosophical conflicts presented are still relevant, even though Gene Roddenberry’s supremely optimistic view of a future without disease or greed appears to be so truly far off. That the show has endured so powerfully over these 25 years is a testament to how Roddenberry’s vision may come to pass in one form or another, or so we can hope.
This set gives a new life to an already-enduring, beloved show. This is immediately a benchmark disc for TV shows on Blu-ray, and is most certainly a Top Shelf Disc. Amazon has the best week-of-release price at $59.99.
