The untitled Star Trek: Voyager documentary which launched a crowdfunding campaign at the beginning of the month had already broken fundraising records in its first week. Today it passed another stretch goal and finally announced intentions to include footage from Voyager remastered in HD.
VOY in HD
On Wednesday the Voyager documentary being developed by 455 Films, makers of several previous Star Trek docs, passed their seventh stretch goal of $750,000 pledged, with over 7,300 backers. With this milestone achieved, they announced three new stretch goals. If they reached $825,000 they will have enough to remaster “some” of the footage from Star Trek: Voyager into high definition, and with $900,000 they will have enough to remaster all of the footage used in the doc.
There is a caveat noted on the campaign page that while this is the intent of the 455 Films it still requires the permission and support of CBS who own the rights to Star Trek: Voyager. CBS did work with the 455 to remaster footage for the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind (see below), so hopefully the same can be done with Voyager.
-
- original image from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
-
- HD remaster from What We Left Behind
In a statement released on Monday before the new stretch goals were announced, Executive Producer and Director of this Documentary David Zappone said:
“The entire Voyager Documentary team and Cast of Star Trek Voyager continue to be amazed and grateful to the fans of Star Trek for their overwhelming support of this documentary. We have many more surprises in store over the next couple weeks before the campaign wraps, including working with CBS on exploring the possibility of taking select standard definition Voyager series scenes and transcoding them to a higher resolution.”
The third new stretch goal announced on Wednesday is set for $1 million and is a bit of a mystery. It is listed as an “exclusive never before seen Voyager surprise,” and it has the same caveat requiring the cooperation of CBS. So it’s likely this means the inclusion of some footage that has not been released before, even on home video.
There are still 15 days remaining on the campaign on Indiegogo.
New stretch goals announced
New perks
In addition to the stretch goals, the doc team also announced some new perks.
Here's new perk #1 that's just been unlocked for reaching Stretch Goal #7! What do you think?
This awesome new shirt and the other three new perks are available NOW here: https://t.co/a8Z6v0XCH1#tuvok#StarTrekVoyager #StarTrek #vulcan pic.twitter.com/XhMa1TOCqy— The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 17, 2021
New Perk #2 is a guided tour of the famous Santa Monica Pier (featured in Voyager episode, "Future's End") and the beautiful Getty Center (several scenes in Star Trek into Darkness) with GARRETT WANG and CHASE MASTERSON!
Check out all four new perks here: https://t.co/gRWWh4UXgW pic.twitter.com/ZQR5xmEjVa— The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 17, 2021
VOY Doc Star Trek Cruise panel Thursday
Star Trek: The Cruise will be running a virtual live Q&A event with the team behind the documentary, which will debut never-before-seen clips from the forthcoming film. The event will take place on both Facebook and YouTube on March 18 at 8:00 pm ET
VOY Doc Director on TrekMovie podcast Friday
Voyager documentary producer and co-director David Zappone will be the guest on this week’s TrekMovie.com podcast All Access Star Trek. That episode will be available on this site and wherever you get your podcasts on Friday morning.
If you have suggestions for questions to ask David Zappone, you can submit them below before noon ET on Thursday.
To support the doc visit the Indigogo page.
Visit the official site at voyagerdocumentary.com, or follow VOY Documentary on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
YESSSS!!
Amazing news all around. I’m glad this project has gotten such a huge response and they can do so much more with the documentary. But none of this is a surprise, Voyager is still a very popular show and sounds like it still gets a lot of big rewatches by the fanbase while attracting new fans at the same time. Now with Janeway back on Prodigy it will get even more fans in time and build on its popularity in the coming years!
Dang, they want almost $300k more than DS9 needed to get HD remasters? I begrudge them nothing, the more you have, the more you can do, and I look forward to this.
But it’s still a little frustrating how DS9 has gone right back to middle child status again.
I wouldn’t over think it. It’s just a documentary and Voyager is probably getting more money because of how great the DS9 doc turned out and more fans are confident their money is going to something worthwild. In other words if VOY documentary came first then it’s possible the DS9 documentary would get more money as well if that was very successful.
@Tiger2 that’s a great way of looking at it.
If I’m honest I saw the news about the VOY doc making more than the DS9 doc and, as a huge fan of DS9, I must admit to being a bit irked by the fact that DS9 seemed to be getting the thin end of the wedge in terms of fan love once again.
But I think you’re absolutely right here – the DS9 doc came out so very well (who doesn’t cry when they watch it? I know I do!) that I think it’s persuaded more folks this time to donate their money to a similar effort for VOY.
If only this would result in HD remasters of DS9 (and VOY for those who want it…!) we can but hope!
I don’t understand why DS9 dosen’t get the love it deserves. For me season 3 to 7 is the best star trek that exists up to this day. It was way ahead of it’s time in regards to storytelling. I do hate the double fist punches and Sisko’s over acting at times but man did the writing staff did an amazing job. The acting, the vilains, the drama, the space combats,… it was one hell of a saga. The season finale was a bit of a let down.
Voyager had a very good first season and lots of potentiel. But after that everyone bacame friends and it went back to the old formula. I beleive Voyager to be the cheesiest of them all. Still ok though.
Agreed. It was light years ahead of its time in terms of serialised storytelling as well.
Tbf I also think the first couple of seasons were good too – I would argue that Ds9 has the strongest first season of any trek show.
I would also say that ds9 had better antagonists than any other trek show as well – particularly Winn, who still makes me grind my teeth now! But combined with Dukat, Weyoun, the female changeling, and the various Jem’Hadar who showed up over the years, DS9 is (for me) the clear winner in terms of developed baddies.
Don’t get me wrong, VOY isn’t bad. I would say when VOY was done well, it was done very well. But when it was done poorly we got space salamanders or rogue Irish holograms. I suppose much of the fandom likes the familiar routine of TOS and TNG – crew on a ship, go places, do shenanigans, move on.
Ds9 went out of its way to break that mould – and did it really well, I thought. Although I do have to say that I loved the finale. That final shot of Jake and Kira makes me tear up to this day. I thought (unlike any other series finale) ds9 actually wrapped things up really well – foreshadowing the finale to BSG years later (another finale I enjoyed immensely!).
If I was to name a successor to ds9 now I’d actually say LDS (believe it or not!). I enjoy the exploration of the mundane as well as the focus on a non-hero ship and crew, and the humour that is present in LDS, as it reminds me of what ds9 brought to the table.
If only ds9 could shake the associations of being “dark” (which it wasn’t) and “boldly going nowhere” (show me another trek show where single civilisations were explored to the extent of the Bajorans, dominion, cardassians, and Klingons – did we explore the hirogen culture? Or the ocampans? Or the space hobbits? Or species 3.14159? Nope…!) then I think more folks would see ds9 for the jewel that it is.
Anyway imma step down off my soapbox now – this is becoming a speech…!
I think that’s it. Also, just speaking for myself, I simply missed out on supporting the DS9 doc just because I procrastinate and so on; it has nothing to do with how much I like the show. I love Voyager, but I love DS9 even more – it’s in a three-way tie with TOS and TNG for my favorite Trek series – yet I didn’t support the DS9 doc, but I am supporting the Voyager one, simply because I regret missing out on supporting the DS9 one.
Totally agree Tiger2. Such a great vibe after watching What We Left Behind. I can’t wait for this one!
Lovely way to see it!
I was surprised to see the 150k price tag to remaster all scenes they include in the doc. In the end, this will probably only amount to a few minutes of footage in total. Scaling that up to about 175 episodes for a whole 7-season show would mean something in the range of $50 million or more.
I think it’s $150K simply because they think the fans will give it to them and I think they are right.
So, my opinion only, but I am skeptical that this is really based on how much it will cost them to do it. I think that hey should easily be able to do that for the total they have already collected without having to ask for this.
remastering and restoring Star Trek will be an expensive project for Paramount/CBS. They only have to do Star Trek I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X in 4K. And Voyager and Deep Space Nine for 2k. Wrath of Khan was done years ago in 4K HDR and never received a physical UHD disc release.
One might wonder if they are “fattening their belts” in terms of the salaries they are paying themselves on this one versus the first DS9 one?
Kids gotta eat and the mortgage needs to get paid, and I would conjecture that the DS9 one probably was done with a lot of unpaid extra work and was more of a labor of love, but this time, especially given COVID, they simply need the cash, and now that that see the fan response, why not self-justify the need to “pad” this?
It’s human nature. Most of us would be doing the same thing, and we would self-justify it as needed.
Its probably because more people are aware of it than were for the DS9 doc.
I’m one of them… I had no idea about the DS9 doc until about a month before it’s release. I saw a trailer on youtube and immediately pre-ordered it on xbox live.
Had I known about the crowdfunding part of have contributed. I bet that’s what’s going on here.
Keep in mind that they likely used the DS9 doc as a learning experience. Maybe they found the HD remastering was more costly than anticipated and are applying that knowledge to properly fund this one.
Frankly, I like the remastering, but in a crowdfunded doc, i’d rather they skip it. Spend all that money on more cast and crew interviews, visits to prop houses, and a longer run time. Heck, use overflow to fund the inevitable ENTERPRISE documentary.
1MM might be a tough one….but I’ve been wrong with all my other guesses. Good luck!!
Looks like they hit 1 million + already
$808k as of now.
Oh, I must have misread.
I see $1,018,456 on the fundraising page.
Are you Canadian by any chance? The Indiegogo page seems to convert amounts to local currency. So I’m seeing Euro. Maybe what you’re seeing is Canadian dollars?
Ahhh, that is it. I don’t recall the indiegogo page converting currency during the ds9 fundraiser.
For a million, I hope they can do a 30 minute, season 8 or 2 decades later animated episode.
That is way beyond the amount of $ DS9 needed to do that. This sounds a tad “cash grabish” to me.
Alec Peters, what do you say? ;-)
what happened with Axanar? did it ever get made?
That’s fantastic but HD isn’t good enough. They should be doing it in 4k. The ai upscaler can do 4k better than it can do 1080p. The more pixels in the final output image the easier it is for the ai to find and refine detail.
I’ve done allot of my own experimenting, I’ve been upscaling DS9 to 4k. I’ve basically used some extra hardware I had and made myself a little render farm in my basement.
Its been churning out gorgeous 4k episodes of DS9 for weeks. I figure by June I should have the entire series finished at the current rate.
Honestly paramount should be using the same ai to do this and replace the horrid sub vhs quality episodes available on netflix, amazon etc. It would be cheap for them to do. The biggest hurdle is time but surely they have enough resources that they could do all 7 seasons in just a couple of weeks.
The money saved from not having to restore and clean up the footage could be spent on new CG effects. I mean come on… Those battles in DS9 in pristine 4k… It would be amazing.
What AI engine are you using?
CBS won’t let it happen. Don’t waste your money.
CBS did let it happen for the DS9 documentary. No reason to expect anything different for this one.
Probably, but that was before the merger, and Paramount lawyered up and shut down the Axanar fan production several years back. So that could impact this as far as how the new merged legal department views this.
That’s a completely different thing, though. Axanar used Trek elements without permission to make a Trek movie of their own and they tried to make money from it.
The VOY documentary will officially license any excerpts they use from the show. That’s completely independent of whether they can remaster any clips in HD. The extra money they’re collecting now is to allow them to remaster those shots.
I got some questions for David and you guys which you can consider.
What about remastering the special effects and ship shots? I heard they are only on video and not on film, which would make remastering them difficult – is there a solution in sight?
And are you considering to use the help of artificial neural networks and deep learning in the remastering processes? I saw some fan-made footage of Star Trek and Babylon 5 which exceeded the traditional remastering results done by studios while being much cheaper. Is that an option to use (in addition perhabs)?
And what about jennifer Lien? Will she be a part of this?
Oh, and one more: I have some problems of legally watching the DS9 doc here in Europe with seemingly no way to stream it or buy it locally. The only way to acquire the Doc seems to be ordering and shipping the blueray from the US. Will this be handled differently for the Voyager doc? Maybe by buying it on Amazon Prime Video or Vimeo?
It’s easy to get legally in the UK. Amazon Prime are selling the digital version for only £3.99 at the moment.
I’m pleasantly surprised. I liked Voyager but didn’t realize it had such a fanbase.
Very happy and not surprised I mean Voyager has most of the top 10 episodes watched on Netflix. It was always my favorite series by far. I had to laugh when I seen people saying it would never do as good as DS9 obviously they couldn’t be serious. I hope they do alot of footage though for the amount of money they are getting. They should even redo a whole episode or two like the year of hell…
But it isn’t as good as ds9.
It looks great but lacks substance in terms of characters and it’s premise
It a Netflix top ten because the Borg episodes