By GustavoLeao / 14:18, 25 November 2012 / General Star Trek

• Share on Facebook
• Beam story to friend
• Syndicate news

TrekCore posted a new extensive 2-part interview with Michael and Denise Okuda regarding the Star Trek The Next Generation remastered episodes for Blu-Ray. Here are excerpts from both parts.

PART 1

TrekCore: Looking at the second season as a whole, do you have a favorite shot or favorite episode from that season that you were desperate to see in high definition?

Denise Okuda: I think that – Mike and I both agreed – that ‘Q Who’ was an episode that we looked forward to and were very excited. We are really, really thrilled with the results of remastering that episode.

TrekCore: I was blown away when I saw the new digital matte painting done for the Borg Cube interior with all the steam coming from the vents – it looks fantastic. Was the old matte painting lost? How did it come about that it was replaced by a digital painting?

Mike Okuda: A lot of the original matte paintings – not all of them, but a lot – were done by the legendary visual effects company Illusion Arts by the great Syd Dutton and Bill Taylor. A lot of those were done old-school style, that is – composited in-camera from the matte painting – and in many cases those original film elements still existed, and that was the case here. Usually when we have something like that, we will simply clean up the shot a little bit and use it. However in this particular case, because there was that very dramatic pull back, at the beginning of the shot, they were quite close to the painting and as a result you could see some of the brush strokes. Now this was not at all a problem in standard definition – even though the brush strokes were there, you didn’t really notice them. Now suddenly in high definition, it became an issue. Dan [Curry] suggested – and CBS concurred – that this was a case where it was appropriate to try to recreate the sense of the original but make it look better in high definition.

Denise Okuda: And this is a point where we really want to give a shout out to CBS – Ken Ross, David Grant and Ryan Adams. They’ve been extraordinary in the support for this project. We’ve worked on Star Trek a long time and many different projects before, but we continue to be amazed at the support that this project has received. This matte painting, and the extra love that was given to it, is a prime example of how the folks at CBS really want this to be the best it can possibly be, even when we’re running at warp speed to a deadline, they will support us and give us the OK to do wonderful things like that Borg matte painting.

PART 2

TrekCore: ‘The Icarus Factor’ and ‘Up the Long Ladder’ also have fresh deleted scenes included. Could you tell us a bit about those?

Mike Okuda: In both of those cases there were small amounts of additional material. It’s fun stuff but it’s not so much as to warrant creating a new episode out of it. For those of us who have loved the show for so many years, just to spend a few extra moments with those characters is something very special.

TrekCore: Speaking of that, we discovered that CBS found an absolute goldmine of outtakes and bloopers from the show that haven’t been seen for 25 years. How did you feel when you discovered these elements had been found?

Denise Okuda: Well we obviously were really excited. It’s a lot of work to go through and find these things. I think we’ve said this before – Mike and I, when we’re working on this and being fans of the show, we get really excited about some of the things that come forward – the bloopers, the missing footage et cetera, and of course the quality of the HD episodes. We feel like we’re sitting on Christmas or something like that and we just can’t wait for Star Trek fans around the world to see what we’ve seen. So as far as we’re concerned the release of the second season can’t come fast enough!

The full 2-part interview is here and here.