[kevin]

I went halfway and bought a Sony Blu-ray player.

[horatio]

Geordi enjoying a good sniff, Riker sitting on consoles, those were the days.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by samwiseb

On a more positive note, Trekmovie has begun reviewing the remastered episodes. It doesn't seem like there would be much to review content-wise (I mean for the most part the eps aren't going to be all that different aside from looking more film-like), however as long as it's there...

http://trekmovie.com/2012/07/26/revi...omment-4908887

I do agree with some of the problems 'Farpoint' has and yet because I saw it so young at the time it remains locked in my head as my favourite of the pilot episodes.

I wonder (and would presume) that the region 2 box sets would have the same issue. Although I don't know how one would ever know when they would be able to identify a 'fixed' set on a shelf.

The comments on S1 and TNG are however, a useful reminder of how strongly some folks seemed to hate TNG in it's early years. I would still say the bulk of S1 and S2 are more enjoyable than S6 and S7 myself.

I do get surprised by some of the comments about TNG though. Although I probably shouldn't.

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by kevin

I do agree with some of the problems 'Farpoint' has and yet because I saw it so young at the time it remains locked in my head as my favourite of the pilot episodes.

I wonder (and would presume) that the region 2 box sets would have the same issue. Although I don't know how one would ever know when they would be able to identify a 'fixed' set on a shelf.

The comments on S1 and TNG are however, a useful reminder of how strongly some folks seemed to hate TNG in it's early years. I would still say the bulk of S1 and S2 are more enjoyable than S6 and S7 myself.

I do get surprised by some of the comments about TNG though. Although I probably shouldn't.

Heated reactions seem to be the social norm for just about anything. The new Batman I think had the biggest opening this year (I believe they said?) but we still have to tear it apart even while we're happily consuming it. And I think reactions can be truthful but still not necessarily reliable. My reaction to VOY is that I've pretty much written it off. And yet somewhere I have a list of all the Berman Trek's that I consider 'rewatchable' (I've been very slowly building it over the years for archival purposes)... and plenty of VOY eps are on it. Clearly I haven't been able to write it off.

I personally would have to rank 'Farpoint' as my least favorite ST pilot, just because I don't believe it's well scripted, well directed or well blocked. However I do have more nostalgia for seasons 1-2 of TNG in general, even though my list shows a stronger batting average for seasons 5-6 by comparison. My earliest memories of TNG are the anticipation generated from catching the countdown promos during re-runs of TOS, and they are not on the BluRay (seems to me the episode teasers also used to 'explode' like that at the end... however the teasers I've seen so far on the BluRay are the re-touched ones circulated later on, with that streamlined 3D 'wipe' effect used instead). I had seen TVH and loved it (barely able to follow most of the 23rd century parts), but TNG was the first ST that was truly mine.

So anyway my aforementioned enthusiasm has renewed since receiving the set. Even though, yes, the audio is messed up. The good news is CBS seems to be taking their response seriously. Here's some follow-up.

As for corrected discs, there were issues with the Back to the Future DVDs some ten years ago. Universal swore back and forth that corrected copies would be easy to identify by the barcode. But every time I looked at a copy... I could tell by the barcode that it was the original (defective) pressing. I guess they weren't defective enough to recall. I finally ordered mine from Canada... and still ended up with the first pressing. Called customer service, mailed the discs in, got replacements in a couple weeks (Problem solved, after waiting over a year to buy them in the first place).

Anyway, my TNG BluRay loads first thing with a dozen different language options (French, Dutch, Italian, etc). So I believe these are non-region discs, and the same ones you would be getting. So I would imagine solutions will present themselves as soon as CBS is ready (let's just hope they're thorough in their inspection).

[kevin]

Well I would have to agree on VOY. In totality my opinion of it as a complete series is low. The plus side of recently fully rewatching Season 1 and now working through season 2 via rental is that I'm actually happy with that assessment of the show so far holding up to my memory.

Given it's been a good number of years since I've watched this much of it in continuity since I never replaced my VHS collection with DVD at the time.

But even within that umbrella opinion of the show there are episodes which turned out good or even above for me. Not perhaps many out of them all, so there's a lower batting average than I would give TNG but then I would have no problem saying that while overall I love TNG as series, it doesn't mean I can't find stinkers of shows amongst them.

Anyway, I put the Season 1 blu-ray on my rental list for the moment. I expect I will buy the set as well at some point but may as well now wait to see if these reported issues can be addressed.

[samwiseb]

That sounds like a good idea. I hope they do address everything because this is a really awesome set.

To me TNG is mostly about the first four seasons. S1-2 have the ideal sound and vibe for ST (not to mention the nostalgia factor), while S3-4 have the highest overall writing, direction and production. So hopefully we get those seasons HD converted with no more of these hickups to endanger consumer interest in the project.

On my list, I show the middle seasons of VOY S4-5 are about even with TNG S2 or S6, which is to say there are a good 10 or so re-watchable episodes per season. Other seasons of VOY are about even with TNG S1 or S7... in other words maybe 5-7 good episodes per season at the most. VOY S7 scores the worst with just 4 re-watchables (Hmm... sounds like I may have burned out -once again- by that point and stopped watching. I really can't remember). Stinker episodes are like land mines that leave you permanently weakened... and even with a really trusted review site you can't avoid them all. Makes it REALLY hard to find all that is good. Whether I ever do or not, I expect there are at least a couple dozen VOY eps that I will simply never see in my lifetime.

[kevin]

I will rewatch them all (VOY) but there have been a few even so far that basically couldn't end quickly enough ('Parturition' and 'Twisted' being a recent case or two) but when it comes to a lot of the show I'm already renewed and reaffirmed in my feelings about the intrusive-ness of technobabble in the show (again a recent example would be 'Non-sequiter') and the use of it to pad out airtime and fill scenes with dialogue basically not relevant to any story.

In fact the above episode would kinda be a contender for an episode like the ones that Ron Moore alluded to in his 'tech the tech' interview.

But I think I could probably pull together about thirty or so episodes of it to form a much abbreviated 'series' that I could watch. The rest I would expect to be a case of being able to leave them for a good while again.

TNG - I'm more forgiving of seasons 1 and 2 than others, for me it's more about seasons 1 to 5 with some scattered episodes in the final two. I think it was in a rut by that point again that it was cancelled from before time could tell if it would have emerged from.

[samwiseb]

I'd have to re-check my list to see how many episodes my abbreviated versions of TNG and VOY currently are. Most of DS9 has yet to be added to my list, however I expect it would have the highest batting average of all Trek (even though I don't think it ever ascends as high as the very best of TNG/TOS... but it doesn't drop as low either)

I'm pretty finicky about this list, also. For example, I won't acknowledge 'Birthright, part 2' just because I've already added part 1.

The 'tech the tech' stuff... even though I believe it all too well, I still can't quite wrap my mind around it. Imagine if you were actually writing dialogue around that. You are (literally) writing nothing. For all you know, you could be forcing the editors and continuity checkers to contradict themselves. For instance, if you have three point-counterpoint-counterpoint lines of 'tech the tech' dialogue, and yet the [tech] was already of such that Okuda/Sternbach/whoever would have had it covered in two. So now he has to twist his previously-established hypothetical tech around just to satisfy the number of lines you need him to revise.

I mean, I just can't even fathom writing like that. It's a factory line approach. Once your franchise has come to that, I don't see that it even matters how many 'fresh' story ideas you have.

[samwiseb]

Update:

Looks like an exchange program for the defective discs is now in place.

Predicated on already having bought the discs, from what I understand. No word yet on identifying corrected sets by their packaging or whether original pressing sets will be recalled. Replacements are expected to ship Aug 10, but you want to be on the list.

I haven't called them yet, since I'm at work.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by samwiseb

I mean, I just can't even fathom writing like that. It's a factory line approach. Once your franchise has come to that, I don't see that it even matters how many 'fresh' story ideas you have.

Interestingly, as I was rewatching the episode 'Tattoo' I decided to have a look at the Memory Alpha reference page for the episode (sometimes I do that for curiosity) and within are a couple of references from Micheal Piller over the behind the scenes production and creative issues that the series was grappling with.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tattoo_%28episode%29

I never knew that at one point 'emergency development meetings' had been held to 'get the show back on track', nor that even Piller himself felt that up until 'Tattoo' he had felt that 'the shows weren't really about anything'. Which I can reasonably concur with since everything up to that point is relatively fresh in my mind again.

What I'd like to do one day is actually take the time and embark on a mini-project to go through the MA entry for every episode of Trek ever made, because I KNOW there would be a vast reservoir of insight and information about the behind the scenes issues that would probably flip a perspective or two. But it would take a huge amount of time and need to probably be done in phases.