Star Trek: The Next Generation Blu-ray Review

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today, visit www .sfi .org. Better than your

number two, Steve Megatron Phillips. And we are

joined by frequent collaborator, one of my favorite

people on one of the other sites I work with

over on that guy with the glasses, that sci -fi

guy, otherwise known as Leo. How's it going?

It is going well. It feels good to be back here

in the captain's chair talking Trek on this lovely

July evening where it is hotter than pretty much

Mercury right now. It is hotter than hell. Just

wait for tomorrow. Oh God, don't remind me. I

am melting in this heat but... What better way

to beat the heat than to sit in a nice air conditioned

room and watch Star Trek, which kind of brings

me up to what we're going to be talking about

today. Today's topic, we were originally going

to talk about Klingons, but I might be able to

get a guest for that show. And he's been kind

of I just haven't got a chance to get a hold

of him just yet. So in this episode to celebrate

what comes out on July 24th, so not this Tuesday,

but next Tuesday, we're going to be talking about

Star Trek, The Next Generation. And I'm going

to talk about the Blu Ray a little bit during

today show, but before we get too far into the

opening here, let's go around the table, find

out what everybody's been doing. Myself, I've

been... Well, I've been doing a lot of Twink

stuff, actually. I've been doing a lot of interviews

over on ThisWeekInGeek .net. Talked to porn director

Robbie Dee, who is actually quite a fun guy.

Also talked to Cam Banks, who's the creative

designer for the Marvel Heroic RPG, and that

was... surprisingly a fun nerd out for that particular

episode. I'm going to be talking to a couple

of people you may not expect coming up on the

show in the coming weeks. So that's what I've

been up to. Steve, what about yourself? Well,

I've done some numerous things on GeekCast Radio,

recorded a couple of things on TFCon, which is

the Transformers Canadian Convention that I'm

going to in about two weeks. We just recorded

something on our movie we can review show for

the amazing spider -man with a panel of different

movie going guests and Be doing the same thing

after I see the Dark Knight Rises later this

week I'm really looking forward to Dark Knight.

I'm actually I was actually just just telling

Leo off air. I'm hoping I get into the press

screening. If I don't get up, I don't contact

me either today or tomorrow. I guess I'm going

on midnight for that. But I'm looking forward

to that, which kind of is going to be twigs.

Next topic show is going to be Batman. Got some

really cool support from Warner Brothers and

DC Comics for that one. So big thanks to the

PR departments over there. And Mr. That Sci -Fi

Guy, what have you been doing the last little

while? Well, you know, I just got that episode

of Splice up on that guy with the glasses recently.

But other than that, you know, just sort of working

on the next episode of that sci -fi guy, which

If it is a it's my think 15th episode at this

point, you notice I'll do a five and five kind

of every five episodes So that'll be up on next

on that and then also still working on the League

of inebriated gentlemen our little side beer

review project Me Alan and Nick, you know, I've

got a few of those shot including guest episodes.

So just getting those Kind of rolling out good

stuff and I suppose that you joined us This episode

will go up on that guy with the glasses. Unfortunately

weren't joined by Nick this evening who understand

who is in sickbay currently Yeah, yeah, he kind

of spent the weekend not sounding too good. So

hopefully he won't die because I've rather enjoy

him Yeah, I think he's think it'll be fine All

right, guys, we're going to take a small break

here on This Week in Geek. And I've got to say,

the replicator's working again. Yay! So we're

going to take a small break and take a listen

to what we were able to replicate from our rations

this week. And when we come back, L cars, and

then our topic of Star Trek, the next generation,

memories, thoughts, and the legacy. We'll be

back, guys, right after this. Only on ThisWeekInGeek

.net, brought to you by SFI .org, Starfleet,

the world's largest Star Trek. Star Trek Online

Fan Club. We'll be back guys right after this.

Amazing. And when I mean amazing, I mean amazing.

I mean, seeing each episode in high definition

and mixed in 7 .1... If Paramount does anything

right, whenever they touch any of the Star Trek

properties and they put them out the Blu -ray,

it's a gorgeous job. And this one that was personally

overseen by the Okudas... could not have done

a better job. Everything has been completely

remastered, certain special effects shots have

been touched up, but more importantly, it's in

HD, true 1080p. They've fixed some of the shots,

they've made the ships look better, but not like

the original series where they completely redid

everything. They've just restored everything

that was done from the original film negative,

which is not exactly possible with shows like,

say, Voyager. or um enterprise because it was

all cg at the time a lot of this is all in camera

stuff but they do touch up things like phasers

and transporters but seeing the ships there it's

amazing and i didn't even notice this during

the standard definition days is when they do

the beauty shot where they're going back over

the enterprise and you see it go by the camera

you can see people in the ready room walking

back and forth and they actually tell you about

that in one of the feature x for this that's

another reason to pick this up there's a huge

like 90 minute documentary splitting the three

parts on this there's also a gag reel as well

but they also do a special feature showcasing

how they did everything like this thing sat in

a cbs warehouse in 4 000 plus boxes and they've

had people going over it frame by frame restoring

it finding lost footage and making it back into

the show so it looks just as good as it was then

when it was truly shot. This thing looks like

it was shot yesterday. That's how good things

look. And I don't need to tell you about the

show because you've already seen it. You know

the content. But seriously, if you want the best

possible looking and sounding Star Trek, then

Star Trek The Next Generation Season 1 on Blu

-ray is totally worth it. I cannot recommend

this set enough, trust me, to boldly go into

the final frontier in 7 .1 in 1080p. Man, it

makes the holodeck look like a Nintendo. It's

totally awesome. Anyway, guys, now back to Future

Imperfect brought to you by thinkgeek .com and

this week by Paramount Pictures. And welcome

back to Future Imperfect. I... Love this Blu

-ray. In fact, I... I gushed about it in the

review. I'm gonna keep gushing about it right

now. A friend of mine, Roger... Roger Lay Jr.,

he's the guy who most recently worked on the

Captain Power... television series that just

came out on DVD a couple months ago, and just

premiered the Masters of the Universe toy documentary

at Comic -Con this past weekend, worked on the

special features for this. And it's really cool

just to kind of get an inside look at, you know,

what people think about Star Trek. There's some

cool stories, some test footage. Brent Spiner

is one of the funniest guys I've ever seen. Because

he does the stuff in the... in the data makeup.

You'll look at the camera and he just does this

weird lizard looking tongue flicking thing and

I was on the floor laughing pretty hard because

I didn't expect it. Or just when people flub

lines in the kind of gag reel. That was surprisingly

funny. And I also have all the original episode

promos. I think the only thing that would have

made that set better is that if they had the

guy who was originally doing the narration for

the episode promos come back and narrate the

documentary. But other than that though, it's

a fantastic looking set. Six Blu -rays. It looks

really nice. I'm surprised just how well they've

cleaned up the original special effects. And

it looks like this thing was shot last week.

That's how clean and crisp it looks. So yeah,

you guys should be picking that up. Now that

I've done my obligatory selling out. Let's take

another small break here before we get to our

main topic. And Steve has prepared something

which is a bit of a primer for it. And this is

L -CARS on the history of Star Trek The Next

Generation. We'll be back, guys, right after

this. This computer terminal provides full access

to the L -CARS computer net. It can be operated

both by voice and keypad commands. Initiating

update. Hello and welcome to Elcarce. I'm your

host, Steve Megatron Phillips, and in this edition

of Elcarce, I thought it only fitting that I

give you a little history lesson on the show.

Star Trek The Next Generation, often abbreviated

as TNG, is the second live -action Star Trek

TV series set in the 24th century. Like its predecessor,

it was created by Gene Roddenberry, produced

at Paramount Pictures. It aired its first -run

syndication by Viacom in the US from September

1987 to May 1994. The series led to two spinoffs

in the TNG era, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, which

it ran alongside during its final two seasons,

and Star Trek Voyager. Star Trek The Next Generation

had an episode run of 176 episodes. which spanned

across seven seasons. The time span covered in

this show is 2364 to 2370. The crew over this

show was over the USS Enterprise D. So as you

can see many years have gone by since the Enterprise

A with no recollection of what happened between

until later on in the show. This series featured

many new aliens such as the Ferengi, the Cardassians,

and the Borg. They also introduced the complete

spandex uniforms, which was something of a mark

of the 80s. The crew of the Enterprise -D changed

a couple times during its run. Season 1 included

Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Commander Troy,

Dr. Beverly Crusher, Geordi LaForge, Data, Worf,

Tasha Yar, and Wesley Crusher. The Season 2 role...

uh, included the death of Tasha Yar, the exiting

of Dr. Crusher, and the entrance of Dr. Pulaski,

which as you'll hear in this episode is not a

very light character. And then upon later in

the show, uh, I think the next season they get

Dr. Crusher back and get rid of Pulaski, and

then you end up with your core seven for the

remainder of the series. Star Trek The Next Generation

overall spanned four films which included Generations,

First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis, spanning

from 1994 to 2002. Unfortunately, the series

ended at a very sad note, being that Insurrection

and Nemesis proved to be pretty much fatal to

the Star Trek franchise. So after Nemesis, we

never got another film until the Abrams reboot

in 2009. Star Trek The Next Generation was originally

pitched to the then -fledgling Fox Network. However,

they couldn't guarantee an initial order greater

than 13 episodes, not enough to make the enormous

startup cost of the series worth the expense.

It was then decided to sell the series to the

first -run syndication market. According to issues

of Star Trek The Official Fang Club Magazine

from early 1987, TNG was originally planned to

be set in the 25th century, 150 years after the

original series. However, the Enterprise featured

in this show would have not been the Enterprise

-D, it would have been the Enterprise -G. Gene

Rodmeri ultimately changed the timeline to the

mid -24th century, set on board the USS Enterprise

NCC -1701 -D. as a G would have been the eighth

Starship to bear the name, and that was too many

for the relatively short time period that was

to have passed. September 28th, 2011, the 24th

anniversary of the series premiere, Star Trek

.com announced that Star Trek The Next Generation

would be remastered in 1080p high definition

for release on Blu -ray Disc, and eventual syndication

starting in 2012. Now, not having seen the remastering

myself and my co -hosts in the episode have,

I would definitely suggest picking it up if you

have the extra cash. It follows along the remastering

of the original series only much, much better.

And the Season 1 set is now released in July

of 2012. So with that, I throw it back to the

show. Until next time. Welcome back to future

imperfect big thanks to Steve for putting together

that little bit of a slice of history for Star

Trek the next Generation and the series that

almost wasn't made because Roddenberry originally

didn't want to do it until the executives of

Paramount convinced them and I got to say I'm

really thankful someone was really persuasive

to See this iconic franchise come back to TV

and this is what it's 25th or 30th anniversary

or something like that It is 25. Yeah, because

they've got the entire cast is going around the

different comic book conventions right now. Actually,

Toronto Fan Expo will have them in August. Will

Wheaton was actually just up here for Polaris,

which was a Toronto Trek convention. Our very

own Steve Saylor got him to sign his Kindle.

There and the only reason I only reason I bring

that up because will Wheaton said this is the

closest I'm ever gonna get to collaborating with

George R. Martin the guy that wrote Game of Thrones

because Steve has his Kindle signed by all these

big famous authors Nice, so Wheaton was pretty

happy about that So I guess guys since we're

talking about Star Trek the next Generation,

let's go back. How old was everybody back in

1986 when this came out. I was five I Was five

as well I was just born. Oh my god, we're old.

So when did everybody here start watching? I

started around 90, probably say 93. That's kind

of hard for me to answer directly. Because my

parents watched it. My parents were trickies.

So it was on around me. whether I wanted to watch

it or not. I wasn't really watching it, though.

It wasn't until Enterprise that I actively started

watching it myself, and then I went back and

kind of watched everything else since then. But,

you know, a lot of it I've seen. I just... Yeah.

What about you, Steve? Go ahead. Oh, no, I was

saying, when did you start to get into TNG? Basically,

when is your earliest memory of Trek? For me,

it was probably very, very early 90s, like 91,

92 because my parents grew up with the original

series. So they would have us watch it or we

would watch it when it would air new episodes

during, you know, dinnertime or after dinner,

we'd sit and watch it. So it was ingrained in

me pretty early to the point that I ended up

with all of the Action figure toys see, you know,

that's something that I'm kind of noticing between

you and Leo's background is you you guys had

parents that were into it. My household was very

much. all sports and whatever happened to be

on, like Jeopardy. My parents never watched anything

that was serialized on TV with any regularity,

because, well, my grandparents are old. I was

raised by my grandparents. And I can't remember

how precisely I got into it. I think it was one

of my teachers at school, Mr. Collins, I think

it was, started talking about Star Trek one day,

and he loaned me a videotape of it in school,

and he's like, Mike, this is for my private collection.

Don't fuck it up. And I think the first two Trek

episodes I saw was Descent Part 1 and Descent

Part 2, which was the Season 6 stuff, yeah. Late.

The Borg. That's what got me into Star Trek.

I'm thinking, holy shit, these guys are cool!

And I saw the episode where they all got turned

into kids. Which was stupid. Which was stupid.

The Captain Bacard day one where they got trapped

in the turbo lift. And I think, I'm trying to

remember what else, I think I saw one with the

crystalline entity and where they killed it because

of lore, or no, it was the other android that

looked like Data but it was his mom or something.

That's... Those were my introductory ones, and

then I got my parents to buy me the toys. I had

the Phaser, I had the Shuttlecraft, I had the

Tricorder. I mean, we talked about this in our

Trek Toys episode. And I really wish I still

had them. I do have a Type 2 Phaser around here

somewhere. Funny thing is, I just, just the other

day, it was a fluke, I pulled out this... 1992

Batman animated series backpack that for whatever

reason I kept and in the side pocket was the

TNG light up electronic communicator Nice does

it still work? I do not know I'd have to put

batteries in it, but it's from 1992 from Playmates

I remember having that too, and I actually wore

that to school when I was I did too I love being

a nerd and you know that's something about TNG

that really makes it stand out to me as one of

the best Star Trek series. You can't talk about

Star Trek TNG without having a smile on your

face. I mean really it's just it's such a fun

series but it tackles a lot of really serious

issues. During it and I think it's what kind

of got me interested in dramatic writing because

I see episodes and this is gonna be a really

weird one for That really kind of tipped me off

and put me into a different area of geek there

was an episode season one where Captain Picard

goes to the holodeck and he does an episode called

the big goodbye and It's where he does the whole

Dixon Hill thing and Cyrus Redblock and there

was just something about that just really caught

my attention that and it turned me on to pulp

stuff like 1930s detective stuff it had me asking

my grandparents about stuff like the Shadow and

Dick Tracy and Dick Tracy would be in theaters

in 1991 I think and it just got me thinking about

Star Trek has opened so many more doors because

of that stupid plot device, the holodeck, which

there have been some good holodeck episodes.

And I don't know, there's just something about

the writing and TNG that just really got me going.

So I guess my question is to our panel of Star

Trek captains here. What really caught your attention

about this particular series? It's the one that

I remember the most from my childhood. Like I

said, I don't really remember a time not having

Star Trek around and I mean Because the original

series was around before I was even you know

so this but like as far as the one that I think

I Just the most seen the most throughout my life

would be next -gen I'd have to say that being

that I grew up on it, it makes that memorable

in that sense. But also at the same time, I would

say that it was just the various technologies

like the New Age Communicator, the new Starship,

the Android, the Holodeck. I mean, there were

so many reasons to like this show over any of

the others. Plus, it was pioneering for the later

shows. Yeah, because this portrayed a different

view of the future that we saw in the original

series. And I liked how it was still very bright.

It was still very happy. But there was always

something going on in the galaxy that, you know,

the crew of the Enterprise had to go up and save.

And I don't know, it never really came across

to me as super hokey like the original series

did. And I liked how they expanded all the different...

Aliens, we saw the Romulans, the Klingons, the

Borg. I don't think we saw the Breen until DS9,

but they were mentioned. No Andorians. Weren't

there Andorians in TNG like once? I never saw

one. I know there were fish people. I remember

that one. The Bolian blue people, almost Andorians.

No, they were in there, I think. And that's another

thing too. There are so many episodes something

like a hundred and seventy eight I think I mean

the show lasted seven years and then kind of

I don't know just really weird funny story about

that I Remember in my quest for Trek because

like I said, my parents were like yeah sports

I had to be very Entrepreneuring and how I acquired

my fix for Star Trek because I couldn't rely

on my teacher to tape it every week so what I

did is