[samwiseb]

I expect the sales will hold, at least enough, through S5 or so. I'd like to think that for every fan who stops buying them because it's becoming too expensive, there's another who didn't buy S1-2 because he was waiting for S3-5. Sales may drop after that, but it probably wouldn't matter.

Sales probably will drop on DS9 though, if they decide to pick it up. But maybe, in an optimistic scenario, CBS will figure they're already committed and push on ahead. But then decide to cheap out on VOY by simply upscaling the effects shots.

This is all evil speculation of course.

[kevin]

I don't know if they could cheap out. Because of the early CGI not all the effects look so good. I'm in the middle of a break on rewatching VOY but up til the mid point of season 3 there's still a lot of that soft video look to the show like TNG and DS9.

I don't know if the later seasons looked sharper or not. I can't recall offhand.

[samwiseb]

I don't recall it changing either. Then again I'm still fuzzy on how much of DS9/VOY was models vs CG, and as to the latter which seasons.

[kevin]

Broadly speaking DS9 used mostly models (apart from the wormhole itself) until around 1995 because 'Explorers' was the first episode of that series to use a fully CGI ship in the form of the Bajoran sailship (if I recall correctly).

VOY mixed things up from the start but they clearly started relying more and more on CGI from the third season onwards.

So, all in I would think that it was around 95/96 that the main switchover began to happen on the shows. As far as I know ENT was always just CGI.

[samwiseb]

That seems to fit with what Wikipedia is saying (once you sort through the specifics).

I remember being dumbfounded to learn that the ST shows were making regular use of CG, when up to that time my impression had been that all 'made-for-TV' CG looked like Babylon 5.

[kevin]

It's a bit hit and miss to my eyes in those early days.

I think it depended who they used (I assume it was always either Foundation Imaging or Blue Sky when ILM wasn't involved) at the time. It's quite strikingly notable that the CGI by ILM in FC from 1996 remains superior to what I think were the Blue Sky CGI work in Insurrection in 1998. And even today in 2012 FC holds up pretty well.

On the TV side some of the early stuff works and some doesn't. The Badlands on the pilot of VOY were pretty horrible looking in 1994 but by 1996 some of the ship shots are still pretty good. It probably was easier to CGI the ship than something like The Badlands.

I can't really remember the early CGI on B5 though I have a faint memory it did seem very blocky and undetailed.

[samwiseb]

Blocky and untextured, yes. And yet B5 (in earlier seasons) was done by the same people who worked on ST (Foundation Imaging). I just can't figure.

[kevin]

Yeah, but B5 went into production in 1992 if I'm not mistaken whereas it was around 3 to 4 years later that the Trek TV shows started to move over. That's a lot of time for some aspects of the visual effects capabilities to be improved.

And I do believe B5 always had less budget to work with as well, so perhaps affordability was an issue on top of what CGI could do at the time.

[samwiseb]

[rechecks wikipedia] Hmm... yeah, I guess B5 would've moved to Netter Digital by the time Foundation up FX for VOY. I would have written off VOY by that time anyway (though it seems I still saw the occasional 'Scorpion' or 'Year of Hell'), so I never noticed the transition. Although somehow, I didn't notice it when watching most of VOY on Spike-TV back in '06 either.

[samwiseb]

http://trekmovie.com/2012/11/08/excl...-ray-season-2/