Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season Seven – Blu-ray review

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With the release of Season 7 we come to the end of rediscovering The Next Generation in high definition. It has been an amazing two years of releases from the CBS Digital team, lifting the veil of edited on videotape standard definition haze. So this release is bittersweet, a new season to go through is always welcome, but knowing this is the last remastered Trek show for the foreseeable future is saddening. Read on for the full review.

The Episodes

Season 7 is often referred to as the season of family. It’s a reasonable description; this season is filled with real, imagined, and fake kin of all kinds. The opening episode, “Descent, Part II” puts an end to the sibling relationship between brothers Data and Lore. A few episodes later in “Interface” we get to “meet” Geordi’s mother (really just an entity pretending to be her) and see his (actual) father on a viewscreen. “Dark Page” pulls the old cliché of a deep dark secret of hiding a sibling from the other with Deanna suddenly having an older sister that died young. “Inheritance” gives Data a two-for-one, more time with his creator/father via a program embedded into a “mother” he didn’t know he had, now an android herself. The awful “Homeward” drags up the fact that Worf has an adoptive brother. The very next episode “Sub Rosa” we visit where Dr. Crusher’s grandmother (fondly spoken of back in Season 1) has been living, the less said about the plot of this episode the better… Another just awful episode is “Bloodlines” which resurrects the mad Ferengi Bok, who already tried to kill Captain Picard back in Season 1, this time he wants revenge for the death of his son so badly he invents one for Picard so he can kill him.

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This is also the season where the-powers-that-be planted seeds for the continuation of the franchise. We get a quite a few stories that involve Cardassians (a continued reminder to watch DS9), the Maquis (a setup for the pilot episode of VOY), Riker even puts in a call to Quark at DS9 for information. These references were pretty cool at the time, of course now we’re all used to the idea of a franchise that references each other, like the Marvel movies, but it wasn’t really being done in 1994.

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While Season 7 is a mixed bag, there is much to like about this season.

“Descent, Part II” wraps up what happened to Hugh the Borg after leaving him in Season 5, and of course stops Lore permanently.

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I’ve always enjoyed “Phantasms”, I was happy to finally see the return to Data’s dreaming program after dropping it entirely in “Birthright, Part II” the year before.

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While the main plot of “Attached” is rather silly, the character moments between Picard and Crusher are great, and the attraction we all knew was there was finally brought out into the open. Of course since the writing staff knew they were on to a series of films nothing could really come out of Picard’s and Crusher’s feelings, the captain had to be left free for future female leads in the movies.

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Of course there are two widely acclaimed episodes mid-season: “Parallels” and “The Pegasus.” “Parallels” is well written, with the tiny changes slowly accruing to where it finally becomes obvious Worf is in a parallel universe (or two or three). “The Pegasus” is another one of TNG’s strong suits: an episode about ethics, following orders, and personal growth.

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In the “Lower Decks” we’re able to see events unfold from junior officers’ perspectives, it is a great story angle, one that wasn’t really allowed until the-powers-that-be could see the end was near and let up on the reigns a bit. We get a call back to the “The First Duty” with one of the junior officers being Ensign Sito Jaxa who was part of Nova Squad at the academy with Wesley.

Lower Decks 01_small

While a bit less amazing, “Thine Own Self” is a good Data story, where he uses scientific principles to uncover the truth about a mysterious plague that coincides with his arrival in a primitive village, even with damage to his neural nets that is equivalent to person having amnesia. The B-story of the episode is about Troi becoming a full commander, this fills in the gaps about how more senior officers move up in rank and fleshes out the character of Troi, there is a nice call back to Season 5’s “Disaster” when she found herself the ranking officer, yet with no real bridge experience.

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The final three episodes send TNG out on a high note. “Emergence” is classic TNG, a new form of an emergent intelligence being nurtured in the Enterprise’s computer is carefully handled by the crew, rather than dismissed as some kind of an anomaly and being erased and/or destroyed. “Preemptive Strike” serves to help set up the plot for the upcoming Star Trek: Voyager TV series, but much more than that, it lets us see Ro Laren one last time. She makes a difficult decision to leave Starfleet, even though she trusts and admires Picard.

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Then we come to “All Good Things…” it is an amazing episode, much better than the, simultaneously written, first film adventure of the TNG crew, Generations. For more thoughts on “All Good Things…” please read the single-disc release review.

 

Video and Audio Quality

CBS Digital has been remastering all of the later seasons, and as usual, the work is generally excellent. Season 7 was already the newest season of TNG, hence of higher quality than most of the other seasons in standard definition, but as usual the high definition upgrade brings out detail and clarity that were hidden behind the video taped post production process of the era. For example, the detail in the rocky face of the asteroid in “The Pegasus” is quite something, and incredible make up jobs from “Genesis” are freakier than ever.

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Genesis 01_small

Bonus Material

Deleted Scenes – There are an amazing 15 episodes with deleted scenes! Too many to review in the short time I’ve had the season set. The deleted scenes are on the same disc as the episode they came from. Episodes with deleted scenes include: Descent – Part II, Liasons, Gambit – Part I, Gambit – Part II, Dark Page, Inheritance, Parallels , Sub Rosa, Thine Own Self, Masks, Genesis, Journey’s End, Firstborn, Bloodlines, and Preemptive Strike.

New Audio Commentaries:

“Lower Decks” with Rene Echevarria and Mike and Denise Okuda.

“Preemptive Strike” with Rene Echevarria, Naren Shankar and Mike and Denise Okuda.

In Conversation: Lensing Star Trek: The Next Generation (~42 mins)

This director’s roundtable includes David Livingston (producer and director), James Conway (director of multiple TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT episodes), Johnathan West (DP and director), Kris Krosskove (camera operator). This is a rather technical discussion of behind the scenes of TNG. For people who are interested in the nitty-gritty of making Trek this is a good watch.

Gag Reel (~5 mins): Another great bunch of flubs and goofy moments from the set. Frakes taking off after a poor extra walking down the corridor is a standout. Another classis moment is Spiner filming his reaction shots for “All Good Things…” at the observation lounge table, acting like what he’s hearing is ridiculous and waving his hand in disbelief as Picard tells the senior staff he’s been shifting around in time.

Closed Set: A Tour of the Real Enterprise (~11 mins)

This is Mike Okuda’s home movie of the sets of the Enterprise-D. Mike and Denise Okuda narrate VHS footage from a time when they were able to sneak a camcorder on to the sets of TNG towards the end of the series. It is an all too quick look at the soundstages that held our beloved starship, well worth the watch.

The Sky’s The Limit: The Eclipse of Star Trek: The Next Generation ~30 mins/each – ~1.5hrs total

Part One: Umbra – This final season documentary opens with 1987 pitch from Paramount TV exec Mel Harris to local syndication affiliates. It talks about the commercial tie-ins such as the Galoob line of TNG toys. This demonstrates just how far the show had come, breaking all expectations for a syndicated show.

Berman says TNG was preordained to go to seven seasons and then move on to feature films, it was a corporate Paramount decision made two years prior.

The writers admit that they were getting a bit burned out by season seven. DS9 was in full swing, VOY was being launched, and prepping for the move to TNG films was underway. The writers looked for various threads to pick up and close out (Ro, Wesley, etc.). We hear from Moore, Braga, Shankar, Echevarria.

Part Two: Penumbra – Segment starts with Doug Drexler talking about how great it was to work on TNG, how the cast and crew all generally got along and worked to create something special. We hear from directors and producers about the grind of making episodic television. Lots of familiar faces from the production of Trek in this segment: James Conway, Johnathan West, Michael Westmore, Dennis Maddalone, Cosmo Genovese, David Livingston, DC Fontana, David Gerrold.

Part Three: Antumbra – Brent Spiner opens this segment, he so glad the public enjoyed it, since he didn’t do the project for himself, he did it for the audience. In this final segment we hear from the actors. Spiner talks frankly about being burned out, and glad that typically each episode had a focus on different cast members, so he could take a back seat in between Data centric episodes. Marina Sirtis weighs in on the rather forced Troi/Worf romance, she felt Worf became rather un-Klingon-like when he was with Troi, which weakened his character. Sirtis much prefers the Worf/Dax relationship that came a bit later on DS9. Gates McFadden discusses directing “Genesis”. Other actors that weigh in on the TNG legacy include Wil Wheaton, LeVar Burton, Patrick Stewart, John de Lancie, Whoopi Goldberg, Johnathan Frakes, and Natalija Nogulich (Admiral Nechayev).

 

Disc 6 also includes “Journey’s End: The Saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation” special which aired alongside The Viewer’s Choice Marathon the weekend before “All Good Things…” in May 1994. This is a great inclusion, one that fans had been asking for, so I’m really happy to see it here. The special is a good snapshot of the Star Trek franchise as it was in mid-1994. The special looked back on TNG, hyped “All Good Things…” which would be airing the next week, as well as promoted Deep Space Nine Season 3, the launch of Voyager, and of course the release of Generations into movie theaters that winter.

 

More Season 7 Images

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The Pegasus 02_small

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Thine Own Self 02_small

Masks 01_small

Masks 02_small

Eye of the Beholder 01_small

Genesis 02_small

Genesis 03_small

Emergence 02_small

Premptive Strike 04_small

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Ah, the season that gave us Parallels and thus, NuTrek.

I doubt that this is the end of this project for CBS. DS9 in particular has enough of a following that restoring it for HD now should be immediately profitable. VOY on the other hand probably needs TNG & DS9 to pay off so they can subsidize it’s restoration for posterity — fortunately they have 2-3 more years before that happens. Trek is too valuable a franchise in syndication to sit hundreds of episodes on a shelf and forget about them. And it will cost more to shut down the current team for an extended period of time, then to push through and do what they’re going to do eventually anyway.

#1- I would agree with the sentiment on DS9. I loved how that series evolved into a sweeping story line. I would be interested just for the episode “The Visitor” itself, one of my all time favorite Trek stories from any series or movie. Absolutely exceptional.

Waiting for the 4K Remastering ;)

Curious, if they were going to do DS9 they would have started already. The fact that there is no news about DS9 is not a good sign. Also, as much as fans on the internet love DS9, its overall following is not large enough to justify a remastering unless TNG had done better than it did.

Count me in as one of those who feel of the 4 post TOS shows DS9 was far and away the best of the bunch. I’m thinking it’s because many of the writers were freed of the Roddenberry writing rules that handcuffed so many.

And once again… Why the love for “All Good Things”? It was a VERY pedestrian episode. Plenty of better TNG shows out there. And plenty of worse ones.

Deep. Space. Nine.

@4 Avi,

CBS has too much invested in that franchise, to let the masters rot on the shelf. Perhaps they have done the math and expect that despite the startup costs, waiting may reduce the overall costs offsetting the additional expense to postpone. But every piece of celluloid connected to Trek will eventually be remastered for posterity. Lack of news is not necessarily a bad sign. Clearly there has been a lack of official news about STID over the last few months, and lo and behold we have a new movie scheduled for release. They could very well be cataloging the DS9 master elements, something that could take a while before any official decision is made. There are any number of explanations for the silence.

What I do know is that a friend of mine at a post house in LA told me two years before CBS committed to the TNG project that they were giving bids on the work, and that the project was definitely going to happen, despite no news at all about it, even rumors. I routinely fought with people on this very site who said it would never happen, despite what I told them I knew. The fact is, studios take their time, weigh their options, and don’t update the world about every decision they are making.

5. ML31 – January 2, 2015
And once again… Why the love for “All Good Things”? It was a VERY pedestrian episode. Plenty of better TNG shows out there. And plenty of worse ones.

Yes the B5 episode “sleeping in light” is far superior to any final of ST or sci fi television series. :)

“The awful “Homward””. What?! I’ve always enjoyed that episode. And even if it isn’t your cup of tea, I would be hard pressed to find anyone who would consider it awful. Now “Sub Rosa”, that is awful.

I really hope there will be more Trek on Blu-Ray eventually but I can hardly see it happening.

DS9 may have had a great die-hard following but it was never a smashing hit such as NextGen and even TNG didn’t sell as many BD sets as expected.
VOY on the other hand wasn’t very popular with fans of the older series but – in its better moments – kind of did what other Trek shows failed to do: explore strange new worlds! Visually VOY is the far superior show, that could shine in HD, but sadly it wasn’t popular enough…

Unfortunately, both shows are now footnotes in the history of Trek, which is a pity given all the anticipation and heart that went into their conception, production and reception. DS9 and VOY were our “home” for almost nine years (1993-2001) and it’s sad this chapter of the Star Trek saga will be lost in SD for good…

The best we can hope for is a “Best of” approach, focusing on the highlights of both series: the Dominion story arc for DS9 and the Borg for VOY. Maybe it would also be possible to sell the “legacy” aspects of both shows aka episodes featuring TOS and TNG elements such as Klingons, Tribbles and Mirror Universe stuff…

Maybe we’ll get something for the anniversary in 2016, even if it’s only the Tribbles and Sulu episodes…

@1: “Ah, the season that gave us Parallels and thus, NuTrek.”

I’m not so sure about that. The idea of parallel universes in Star Trek is much older than that Next Gen S7 episode. Even in TOS S1, we had that Lazarus episode which depicted an antimatter universe. And don’t forget the original mirror universe of TOS S2…

Of course, the other thing to keep in mind is that this conversation often goes to “how well will the blu-rays sell”, but the truth is that all the blu-ray sales in the world won’t make a dent into the cost of the TNG remastering project. Blu-ray wasn’t the goal, it was a nice bonus.

TNG, like Seinfeld or Friends (also on blu-ray) still has allure in syndication. Mastering TNG in HD means ten more years of syndication rights. A local Boston affiliate or a cable outlet is going to pay a lot more to show TNG for the next five years than you are going to pay for a blu-ray.

We can debate all we want how good DS9 is or how well it would do on blu-ray, but if there’s no real demand to syndicate the show, and without syndication money, DS9 could sell all the blu-rays in the world and not justify the cost – at this point. There may come a time when the technology is cheap enough to justify it.

@#8
Most consider All Good Things to be a classic, that’s why.

Interesting how several Season 7 episodes influenced various Bad Robot productions. “Parallels” obviously was one of the inspirations for MMW-theory that was the basis for the time travel in the reboot movie, “The Pegasus” featured a rogue admiral committing illegal acts in the name of Federation security — similar to a plotline in STID. “Below Decks” and “All Good Things…” were used as inspiration for episodes of “Lost” according to Damon Lindelof.

Anyway, this looks good, but no way will I spend a hundred bucks on a single season set. I’ll wait for it to go on sale. I managed to pick up all for seasons of “Enterprise” on blu ray for $135 recently on Amazon.

I think CBS made a mistake in overpricing the sets. They overestimated the willingness of Trekkies to go out and pay a premium for something they’ve already bought before, albeit in standard def DVD.

And that’s why DS9 won’t get a proper remastering anytime soon. CBS will probably eventually do it, but they’ll wait for another several years for costs to go down, and for another format to replace blu ray.

The other thing is, most stations continue to play only the standard version of TNG.

Space Channel in Canada no longer plays TOS, and the TNG series it airs is the non-remastered version.

Nice review, I got Season 7 for Christmas and it’s pretty awesome. A couple of excellent episodes (not mentioned above) were Gambit (pt 1 & 2) and Journey’s End. I definitely wouldn’t describe ‘Homeward’ as ‘awful’ however. Sure, the sudden addition of an adoptive brother for Worf is a bit lame and questionable, but I enjoyed the plot of the episode, and I really enjoyed how the holodeck was utilised in the story. The guy who played Nikolai was a good actor as well, and if I recall correctly, they did reference Worf’s adoptive brother at least once in DS9, so at least they didn’t invent him up and then completely disregard him.

Is ‘Blood lines’ awful as well? Hmm, it does suffer from the same problem as Homeward, but I had no issue with Bok returning and I thought Patrick Stewart was brilliant (as usual). Probably not awful, but perhaps a bit dull and uninspired.

I must admit my guilty pleasure is ‘Masks’. Yes, it’s ridiculous. But it’s imaginitive and Brent Spiner (who was given the script the night before shooting) was fantastic. That is such a tough job – finishing ‘Thine Own Self’ and then having to do a story that involved playing four or five different characters. I have a lot of respect for him. Great actor.

I really missed Ro Laren, O’Brien and Guinan on Season 7. Ro had a great last episode though, and we had more of O’Brien in DS9 (and he was briefly in ‘All Good Things’)

I’m so ready for DS9 in HD. Soooo ready.

@13

I may be mistaken on this point, but I believe that since the remastering of Season 7 only recently became available, the HD packages of TNG to distributers was either all seven seasons in SD or partial seasons in HD. I can see stations choosing either. Hopefully that will change now that the complete series is available in HD.

# 4. Avi – January 2, 2015,#7. Curious Cadet – January 2, 2015

” Curious, if they were going to do DS9 they would have started already. ” — Avi

Maybe it was just marketing hype but I thought Paramount at least demonstrated rudimentary interest when they upgraded DS9’s episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” and included it as a bonus in the TOS blu-ray set?

#15.

You may be right, though CBS may not want stations to air the remastered versions, preferring that customers buy the full sets instead of getting each episode for free. CBS has lost money on the project big time, and I doubt that airing it on traditional tv channels would help them that much, especially as people continue to cut cable in favor of NetFlix, HBO, and other new formats. You simply wouldn’t get enough eyeballs watching on networks like Sy Fy in the U.S, adn Space in Canada.

Either that, or CBS is charging stations exhorbitant amounts of money so that it isn’t worth it for affiliates to air the remastered versions.

FUTURE of Trek

The best future would be to let HBO,Showtime, Netflix (a company not afraid of producing their own shows) to do a Trek sow. The same way Sopranos,Dexter,Game of Thrones, Homeland, House of Cards, and many more…. have a season with 12 part episodes. They could focus on characters and have several small stories connecting to one larger event (a build up). The way Dexter or Homeland do. Maybe Game of Thrones does to, but I don’t watch it. That what was good about DS9. Seperate weekly stories but the season was building on something.
Imagine how cool it would be to have a uncensored Trek. Not just language,…no,..but by having time. They would not have to worry about cramming stuff in or cutting things out.

#16.

“Trials and Tribble-ations” was merely up-ressed. CBS didn’t remaster the episode. They just pretty much threw it cheaply on the blu ray as an extra.

17. Red Dead Ryan

“CBS has lost money on the project big time.”

I don’t see how that could possibly be the case when you add together worldwide Blu-ray sales, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, BBC America, SyFy UK, etc.

We know the project cost $9 million total. By combining the publicly available Blu-ray sales info from both the-numbers.com and homemediamagazine.com, you can account for about $7 million from North American sales alone. And that’s without any info for Seasons 2 & 7, Unification, Chain of Command, and All Good Things. And virtually no info about what they’ve made cumulatively.

The lowest performing season was Season 5 at around $430,000 in first week sales (that’s my estimate — thenumbers.com says it made $802,104 after 18 weeks). The lowest performing standalone was Redemption with about $125,000 in first week sales. If we use these low figures to fill in the gaps, that adds about another $1 million to the total, so roughly $8 million.

CBS must have made at least another $1 million in digital downloads, rentals, streaming, and broadcast syndication licensing. Most likely much, much more than that. Now, I freely admit I don’t know what, if any, actual net profit they’ve made at this point, but the project has almost certainly grossed more than what was spent.

@19 Justin Olson,

They didn’t lose money “big time”. People who have no understanding of the TV syndication business are weighing in with guesses and specious speculation.

Bottom line, all of the Trek TV library will eventually be remastered, for no other reason than preservation of a valuable asset. They might wait to recoup some costs and get TNG completely distributed in an HD package. Then offer them another popular Trek series, just as TNG starts to get old.

Broadcasters usually don’t buy a product unless it’s available, and CBS can’t offer it if they don’t do the work. They might make some sales on the strength of TNG remaster, and get some syndication partners to take DS9 on good faith, but they still have to deliver. That said, they might also be assessing interest from their foreign partners as well before committing to a start date, or working out an exclusive deal elsewhere. But it will happen, and the decision will not rest on how many potential BluRay sets they might sell, or any other future home video formats. The cost is not in transferring to the consumer medium, it’s in the remastering. And they are future protecting for the next big thing.

It comes down to blu ray sales. CBS mistakenly believed that they could sell each season set at nearly 100 bucks apiece and that Trekkies would rush out to buy them after already spending that much on the dvds a decade before. Nope. The fans decided enough was enough, and are waiting for a price drop. Stores aren’t keeping many on stock as nobody is buying them.

I don’t know how much (if anything) CBS has made from downloading/streaming and broadcasting, but it’s obvious that they misjudged the home video market when they severely overpriced the blu ray sets.

There are 5 or 6 bad episodes in this season, a drop off from Seasons 3 through 6, which were some of the best seasons in the history of TV, but Season 7 still has plenty of really strong episodes. Force of Nature is one that I always liked that I don’t see mentioned much—reality intrudes upon the fantasy of space travel, and it turns out that there is a real-world cost to it. The Pegasus is classic Trek, and Liaisons has some of the best Worf moments of the series. It’s amazing how much better the writing was here than on VOY, which began its run the following year.

I wonder if these Blu-ray remasters are going to replace the versions currently on Netflix?

Cool! Here’s hoping for the hi-def remastered versions of “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager.” Let’s also hope that Paramount Pictures would commission CBS Digital to recreate the VFX for the future hi-def remastered version of the 2000 “Director’s Edition” of 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.”

One precedent for intertwined sci-fi TV shows was two decades earlier: The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Not sure if any other franchise has matched the feat of having the same supporting actors as weekly regulars on two shows at once.

I sure hope DS9 and Voyager get updated. The fact is, Blu-ray is not the future, streaming is. Steve Jobs saw that from the beginning of the format and to this day Apple has never supported Blu-ray playback in its products. Judging the value of the remastering proposition by Blu-ray sales is short-sighted and will ultimately be irrelevant. The need to have the shows look good online will be what matters and CBS needs to figure out how to make it work financially.

Oh to redo DS9 in HD. Just think., The Fleet battles and the battled against DS9. That alone gives me goose bumps.

#26. Emperor Mike of the Terran Empire

“Oh to redo DS9 in HD. Just think., The Fleet battles and the battled against DS9. That alone gives me goose bumps.”

Hopefully, they’ll also redo Odo’s morphing effects. It was always fake-looking, and unconvincing, especially in comparison to the T-1000.

Odo, when in liquid form, simply appeared as a blob without mass or weight.

DS9 became rather predictable. Stationed in one spot with the action coming

to them was like Granny at the old folks home hoping someone would be kind

enough to stop on by.

Star Trek would best be served IF TNG came back twice or three times a

year with a TV movie. With adequate time between each movie this would

give all concerned what’s needed for proper input and output that this show

richly deserves.

I’m hoping to see some analysis as to why these flopped and why the spinoffs have fallen into obscurity with the mainstream public.

Other than the the typical “because the public are idiots” analysis, that is.

I’d be all over DS9 on blu ray!

I think what happened with DS9 is that it was smothered by Voyager. Had the studio waited until DS9’s final series before beginning voyager, DS9 would have probably been a huge hit. There was just too much Star Trek going on.

Also I echo sentiments made that CBS are probably going to do something with both DS and VOY because even though they may not be as popular as TOS or TNG, they’re still perhaps the best loved and best known Sci-Fi shows around. Nothing comes close to Star Trek on TV no matter what.

24. Red Dead Ryan

“CBS mistakenly believed that they could sell each season set at nearly 100 bucks apiece.”

No one I am aware of bought each season set at $100. I certainly didn’t! In fact, the sales figures on the-numbers.com are based on an approx. $60 sale price per set (you can tell by dividing the total spending by units sold). I’m not sure why, but you are exaggerating the true cost to consumers by 66.66%.

I sure hope they do re-do DS9 and market the hell out of it. It’s the most modern of the Star Trek shows. Tie-ins with other shows and movies? Check. Long, sweeping and epic story line? Check. TOS, TNG, VOY and ENT (to a certain degree) are monster of the week shows. No continuity (especially on VOY, even though the setting would have been GREAT for that! Bloody Jeri Taylor…). DS9 isn’t.

Most popular shows these days require you to watch every single episode in the correct order. Just like DS9.

So I think DS9 is actually able to find new audiences. Old fans chime in that the whole show is worth watching, and new people who want something new to binge watch can rediscover it.

I’d like to see a new TV show that ties in with the old Star Trek universe, DS9 era. There are more stories that can be told, and interweaving it with the other existing shows means people have a reason to watch those too.

The reason why I started watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was because I heard that season 2 would become really good and because it ties in with the Marvel movies, which I enjoy a lot. I loved every single minute of Agents. It was great.

Btw., in the beginning Agents was mostly a monster of the week show, and audiences and critics weren’t too kind with it. That started to change once they moved to more continuity (though even the first episodes before that had more continuity than all of Voyager combined).

I wouldn’t say TNG has ‘no continuity’. One example (of many) would be the links between The Neutral Zone, Q Who, Best of Both Worlds (Pt 1 & 2), Family, I Borg and The Descent (Part 1 & 2)

Beginning with the mystery of the destroyed outposts (The Neutral Zone), we are slowly introduced to the threat of The Borg. Once formally introduced to the Borg (Q Who) the federation begins preparing for a conflict. The Best of Both Worlds is centered around that conflict and the capture (and rescue) of Captain Picard. In Family; a direct follow up, essentially creating a 3-parter, Picard recovers from his experiences. He later comes face to face with a rescued Borg Drone (I, Borg) and his feelings towards the Borg almost convince him to use Hugh to destroy his entire race. In the end, he cannot do that. In The Descent, Admiral Nechayev berates him for not using Hugh to annihilate the collective.

The writers of TNG were desperate to do stuff like that; they wanted to do more with overarching stories and continuity. But ‘monster of the week’ stories were good for syndication. (The writers talk about this on one of the BLUs). It’s also worth remembering, this is the same time when producers laughed at Lynch’s idea for Twin Peaks never revealing or not revealing the identity of the killer for many seasons.

Unfortunately UPN flagship Voyager stayed well and truly in the past and stuck to it’s MOTW formula. Voyager was popular back then, but I don’t think it would be as popular now. Like some say, I think the modern structure of DS9, with connecting plots and stories could be more appealing to today’s audience. What would seal the deal would be if the directors future proofed the show and shot it in Widescreen as well. If X-Files was reportedly doing it, then DS9 should’ve been doing it as well.

Berman says on the special features of TNG Season 7 (BLU) that he regrets not spacing the shows out more. It’s a shame they didn’t, but nevermind.

Hopefully they box the whole series. Will be easier to get the wife to buy it!

@ 36. Optimus4 – January 3, 2015

“Hopefully they box the whole series. Will be easier to get the wife to buy it!”

The full Blu-ray series set is available in UK.

==========================

First Look at the “Full Journey” TNG Blu-ray Set – Dec 14 2014

Paramount UK’s exclusive “Full Journey” Blu-ray collection, featuring all seven seasons of The Next Generation, is making its way to buyers this weekend, and we’ve got the first photos available of this 41-disc collection!

http://trekcore.com/blog/2014/12/tng-uk-box-photos/

season 7 was terrible… same with season 6

It’s the last season of TNG, I’ll drink to that, Cheers! :)

Last one for me to complete all 7 on blu! Back then, i had the misfortune to witness the end of TNG on Greek TV by the end of Season 5. For some Reason 6,7 never aired!

I have my own theories as to why the spinoffs never became perennial classics and couldn’t move a few blurays. It’s a sensitive topic right now, but I think we’ll see some discussion in the near future.

#1 wrote: “Ah, the season that gave us Parallels and thus, NuTrek.”

Huh? Parallel universes LONG predate “Parallels.”

27. Magic_Al –
“The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Not sure if any other franchise has matched the feat of having the same supporting actors as weekly regulars on two shows at once.”

I believe before that The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. had one or two characters in common.

Green Acres and Petticoat Junction also shared quite a few Hooterville residents as well as the owner of the General Store.

31. Leon – January 2, 2015

I’m hoping to see some analysis as to why these flopped and why the spinoffs have fallen into obscurity with the mainstream public.

What are you talking about? Are you being sarcastic?

TNG was hugely successful, with an average of over 11 million viewers each week. And all of the Trek series are extremely popular on Netflix and have been so since they came to that venue. Trek in general is actually the most popular show/movie/franchise on Netflix.

#44. Cygnus

“What are you talking about? Are you being sarcastic?”

He’s referring to the blu ray and dvd sales, genius. Simply put, the TNG blu rays have been disappointing, to say the least.

As for Netflix, the most popular shows are “Orange Is The New Black” and “House of Cards”.

No Deep Space Nine! Boooo Cbs Boooo!

# 47. Red Dead Ryan – January 3, 2015

If the laments of the industry are to be believed, sales of blu-rays of all kinds are down in a slide that started with DVDs themselves compared to the heights attained by the DVD at the peak of its popularity.

I love to listen to people bitch about the price of Blu-ray television sets. Every season of ST:TNG was available on release week for $59.99 (NOT $100). When TOS first came out on VHS, I was paying $15-$20 PER EPISODE. Now an entire season can be had for under $60. After Black Friday, TNG season sets were available for less than $30, but people still want to bitch.