The Thumbcast Blog

"That's thon Q on the big telly for you, captain..."

There was a mix of curiosity and scepticism when the remaster of TNG was announced – not least from me – with folk wondering what tampering would go on with the original 80s video effects, and just how cleaned up the episodes would look.

Well, the answer is – they look bloody lovely. Stunning, in fact. The HD transfer of the episodes is pin-sharp, not only throwing into sharp relief the surprisingly accomplished FX work and set design of the episodes, but also washing away the glorious smudg-o-vision sheen that VHS had given the episodes previously.

The model shots especially benefit from the clear-up – indeed, the Enterprise D now looks like a massive, powerhouse of a vessel it was in Generations, while the matte painting graphics of the Klingon homeworld look like the rival of any CGI creation.

It’s not all perfect though. There’s a couple of shots where either the transfer hasn’t worked, or it’s not been attempted at all – one scene between Riker and Crusher in Sins of the Father looks like it’s just taken from the DVD without even being upscaled, and is obvious because it sits between two that HAVE been tidied up.

And while the ILM effects look marvelous, the HD transfer has exposed how badly some of the make-up and costumes have aged in the last 25 years. Yes, that’s only to be expected, but the Klingon make-up was clearly designed for SD television and looks uncomfortably like rubber prosthetics.

One thing that’s surprisingly jarring is the aspect ratio. Perhaps it’s just being used to modern HD releases being in 16:9, but seeing the crystal clear picture in its native 4:3 just seems wrong somehow. Yet at the same time I’m glad it is, because faux-letterboxing or stretching the image would have been unforgivable.

So it all looks and sounds lovely. You’d expect nothing else, frankly, given the sterling work the CBS digital archivists achieved on the previous Trek blu-ray releases. But for a sampler, there’s an obvious issue which balances off the beauty of the digital transfers.

The episodes they’ve selected. Quite frankly, they’re shite.

Look, let’s be brutally honest about here – the first couple of seasons of TNG were piss-weak. A couple of episodes here and there aside, the show was very much finding its feet during those early years, and it’s not until season 3 that it really hits its stride.

And as a pilot episode, Encounter at Farpoint – the big selling point of this release – is shockingly bad. Wildly uneven in tone, with a flimsy plot, it gets away with a lot through sheer force of will and some strong performances – especially John De Lancie, giving a surprisingly restrained turn as Q compared to the histrionics we’d come to associate with the character in years to come.

What’s remarkable is just how annoying everyone is. Picard comes across like a royal prick, Beverley an emotionally fragile moaner and Wesley as a excitably punchable little git. Brent Spiner clearly hasn’t worked out what to do with Data yet, giving him some frankly odd body language which is completely at odds with the rest of his performance – just about acceptable because clearly Data’s working himself out too – while Riker just seems to be a total arsehole.

The contrast in characterisation from here to even a season later is remarkable.

And then there’s Troi. No amount of HD mastering and restoration by CBS can make up for the fact that Marina Sirtis is a truly awful actress at the best of times, and in Farpoint is jawdroppingly bad. Hampered, admittedly, by her stupid accent and some of the worst written dialogue in Trek history, but still enough to grind your teeth to putty every time she starts with her whining.

What’s remarkable about Farpoint is how far away from the tone of the rest of the series it is – in some places a complete 360 from what the show would become.

Sins of the Father is the first installment of the truly interminable Son of Meg and Mog stuff about Worf’s family name being dishonoured. About the only good thing about the Klingon stories – with their tedious grunting about honour and folk struggling to speak while wearing Halloween glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth – is the showcase they afford Michael Dorn, who’s probably the most unsung hero of the cast.

He and Stewart make for a great double-act, but Sins of the Father focuses so much on the whole Worf plot that pretty much everyone else in the cast is relegated to standing over consoles spouting exposition.

The Inner Light is often hailed as one of Next Gen’s gems, and certainly it’s by far the strongest of the episodes on the sampler, giving Patrick Stewart the chance to show off the full range of his acting as he relives the memory of a blacksmith on a long-dead planet. It won the Hugo in 1993, and it’s a very pleasant watch. The restoration gives a vibrancy and natural feel to the scenes on Kataan.

That said, it’s hardly representative of the whole of TNG – but at the same time, you can see why you’d want people to have these episodes and not, say, Best of Both Worlds or Yesterday’s Enterprise on the discs. Give away the genuine classics for a bargain price, and there’s no incentive for folk to pony up the £70 a shot for the season box-sets.

So is it worth getting the sampler? It depends on what you’re expecting really. If you have a particular love for the episodes featured, then yes – obviously. If it’s curiosity about the quality of the transfer, then the disc gives a nice glimpse of what you can expect, but no more than watching clips on YouTube would.

Ultimately, given the sub-tenner cost of the disc, it’s probably worth shelling out anyway – whether or not you intend to ultimately by the box sets. If nothing else, there’s a curio value to seeing just how well some aspects of TNG have dated in the last 25 years – and how badly the rest has…