The exciting world of Star Trek remastering is actually really exciting and not just a term I’m using to make it sound more interesting than it is. The discovery of cool not-seen-before deleted scenes thanks to workprints and uncompleted VFXs are archival gold, and new stuff is popping up in unexpected places. TrekCore has posted some deleted scenes from The Bonding, that episode where a kid named Jeremy becomes an orphan when his mom is killed, and so the crew leaves him alone for long periods (right after Picard tells him that “No one is truly alone.”) and then wonders why he’s easily manipulated by the kooky alien of the week. Eventually he and Worf become Klingon blood brothers and he’s never seen again. Luckily the crew becomes much better at dealing with orphan kids several seasons later, when the next one is left alone for long periods and decides to pretend he’s an emotionless android instead of dealing with his grief.
Remember, this is the crew with the magical empath counselor that should have prevented all of this from happening!
In addition, there is news on remastered DS9! It turns out that many of the computer effects artists have much of the assets used to create the shots, including many of the ship models and skins and layouts. The skins were even overly complex considering how much would show up on tv, which helps make them look cool when used for HD work. The image above is an HD render of the DS9 ship USS Honshu from the episode “Waltz“, which just needs an NCC number modification and it’s good to go!
As the article says in summary:
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager are far more challenging to remaster in HD due to their use of CG. Until now, the original assets used to create these CG shots were presumed lost.
- Through talking to original artists such as Robert Bonchune, I discovered that a large number of the assets still exist for these shows.
- The scene files can be accessed using current technology relatively easily.
- A large amount of the work produced originally was over-built and should hold up well when re-rendered in high definition.
TrekCore continues to be the go-to place to find awesome stuff like this.
via TrekCore
