I forget where I was discussing this with Tom, but I ordered the preview bluray disc containing four remastered episodes of ST:TNG the other day. It arrived yesterday, and I watched the remastered pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint”.

A lot of reviewers criticized the inclusion of this episode on a disc meant to show off the new high quality edition, with good reason: It was poorly shot, with harsh lighting; they were just dipping their toes into primitive CGI and still using physical special effects; and the acting was at its absolute nadir. Denise Crosby was never more wooden, and Marina Sirtis never weepier. “Oh STFU!” was constantly on my lips.

That said, the remastering job was competent, and I got what I expected. The show was filmed, so there’s lots of extra resolution available, and it looks good at 1080. Not crystalline-edged as it would’ve been if shot in digital, but film-sharp. A few darker scenes showed noticeable film grain. Colors were vivid; the Federation always was highly saturated.

I think they redid the external effects, which was pretty much all there was. When I think about it, ST:TNG wasn’t at all ambitious when it came to special effects. They lavished resources on external shots using traditional models and later some CGI, but indoors, it seems like all the special effects were, at root, dissolves: One thing turns into another, or something is revealed, or something hidden. Remastering can’t touch that. But the external shots show more resolution than I think could be accounted-for by scanning original film. Lots more detail on the Enterprise D, and of course it spends a lot of time on-camera.

This charmed me: Although they probably redid the external CGI, they were careful to reproduce the original motions exactly. Thus, the new high-def Enterprise still wallows around like a ship on the ocean, remaining stubbornly “vertical” out in the void between stars. Or, as a former girlfriend once put it, this was the era before they located the snap-to-grid checkbox and unchecked it. OTOH, the pilot has the cool scenes of the undocking and redocking of the saucer, and those were cooler in HD. The remastered CGI was enjoyable.

They did a good job overall. I’m not such a fan of the series that I expect to go out and spend a couple of hundred bucks to buy the new version (never thought it was worth buying in DVD either), so for me it suffices to see a few high-def episodes to flesh out my mental copy of the series. I’ve seen the high-def Enterprise. It’s pretty. Take a look, at least once. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably be happy buying the new edition.