VOY - Alice

[RobbyB1982]

Which explains how most of the ships in B5 looked, and the poor compositing in...uh....the recent one Chuck did. The Hunt? Something hunt. Also, you always spend a lot on the opening, it’s *there* to look good and sell the show.

Not at all. The CG looks cheap and old because it was early CGI, it WAS old. (It looks better by season 3)

The CG and composite shots look *fuzzy* because even through the show was filmed in widescreen to future-proof it, the CG was rendered for square televisions, because rendering it for widescreen would have cost more money.

The files were saved with the intent of someday going back and just plopping them in when the tech was cheaper, and with intent to uprez it at a later date. (ANd possible toss in higher quality CG models as they got developed later in the show.) Unfortunately, Warners did a bad job archiving it so that data is all lost, the originally intended uprezzing is impossible without just actually doing the CG again from scratch.. So instead they took the old footage and blew it up and cropped it to fit widescreen so it looks bad.

It looked okay before everything went HD though.

This is also why there will probably never be a blu-ray release of B5.


Also, while yes, you put extra effort into your opening credits to make them look good since they'll be seen every week, putting in enough money to fund a season of a different show is obscene.

[clearspira]

With CGI being so cheap now why can't they just do what they did to TOS and just insert whole new scenes? A Blu-Ray release of B5 should not be hard.

[Durandal_1707]

Speaking of Q...

While not asking at all was a mistake - probably more likely a writers oversight or it was edited out for some reason - I doubt that asking Q to get them home would have mattered any. Like it or not, Voyager did actually do a lot of good in the Delta Quadrant, despite all of the short term mayhem caused. Regardless of how you feel about it, they dealt some major blows to the Borg

They prevented some major blows to the Borg by helping them against 8472.

they stopped the Krenim from wrecking history with their temporal cannon,

Granting this one, but...

they eased the potential omnicidal wrath of Species 8472

They provoked the potential omnicidal wrath of Species 8472! If they hadn't improbably stumbled across that infiltration training camp later on, it would have been war.

No, I'm never gonna let this one go.

8472 was already on a tear across Borg space and there’s no indication they would stop at the Borg. If they could get *so much information* about the Federation, and Federation HQ in San Francisco, to the point of recreating *Boothby*, how could they have *possibly* missed that the Federation was *fighting* the Borg? That requires either *deliberate* misinformation on the part of the Borg, who are the only ones they could have gotten such information from, thanks to the many assimilated Starfleet personnel - and why would the Borg lie in their own information? - Or 8472 thought that every species assimilated by the Borg was working with the Borg by choice, in which case half of the galaxy was on their hit list.

The only alternative to those possibilities is that whoever leads 8472 knew, yet misled their own people in favor of a war of extermination. Basically, the only thing that makes sense, considering they have SO much information about Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy, is that they knew the Federation was innocent, *and did not care*, despite what they told Voyager.

Or, and in my opinion more likely, they got their information from Voyager, probably through the telepathic probing they were doing of their crew (although given Federation security they probably could also have hacked into Voyager's computers without too much trouble).

Voyager, you'll remember, is that ship that they witnessed fighting alongside the Borg. And also the only representative of the Federation that 8472 has actually encountered in person.

Given their information they've acquired, it's quite possible that they're aware of what the Federation says they represent... but actions speak louder.

[Durandal_1707]

With CGI being so cheap now why can't they just do what they did to TOS and just insert whole new scenes? A Blu-Ray release of B5 should not be hard.

B5, sadly, doesn't bring in the kind of money that TOS or TNG do. Or even DS9 and Voyager, which sadly probably aren't going to get hi-def upgrades either.

[Yukaphile]

Which is good. I don't want B5 being screwed by corporate greed.

[Yukaphile]

Also, you want Voyager rewrite? I'm actually getting into the nitty-gritty of world-building, and am building something like a fleet that follows Voyager. Perhaps some of those are wounded ships, or pilgrims looking for a better life in what they think is the promised land of the Alpha Quadrant.

[Kendrakirai]

Speaking of Q...

While not asking at all was a mistake - probably more likely a writers oversight or it was edited out for some reason - I doubt that asking Q to get them home would have mattered any. Like it or not, Voyager did actually do a lot of good in the Delta Quadrant, despite all of the short term mayhem caused. Regardless of how you feel about it, they dealt some major blows to the Borg

They prevented some major blows to the Borg by helping them against 8472.

they stopped the Krenim from wrecking history with their temporal cannon,

Granting this one, but...

they eased the potential omnicidal wrath of Species 8472

They provoked the potential omnicidal wrath of Species 8472! If they hadn't improbably stumbled across that infiltration training camp later on, it would have been war.

No, I'm never gonna let this one go.

8472 was already on a tear across Borg space and there’s no indication they would stop at the Borg. If they could get *so much information* about the Federation, and Federation HQ in San Francisco, to the point of recreating *Boothby*, how could they have *possibly* missed that the Federation was *fighting* the Borg? That requires either *deliberate* misinformation on the part of the Borg, who are the only ones they could have gotten such information from, thanks to the many assimilated Starfleet personnel - and why would the Borg lie in their own information? - Or 8472 thought that every species assimilated by the Borg was working with the Borg by choice, in which case half of the galaxy was on their hit list.

The only alternative to those possibilities is that whoever leads 8472 knew, yet misled their own people in favor of a war of extermination. Basically, the only thing that makes sense, considering they have SO much information about Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy, is that they knew the Federation was innocent, *and did not care*, despite what they told Voyager.

Or, and in my opinion more likely, they got their information from Voyager, probably through the telepathic probing they were doing of their crew (although given Federation security they probably could also have hacked into Voyager's computers without too much trouble).

Voyager, you'll remember, is that ship that they witnessed fighting alongside the Borg. And also the only representative of the Federation that 8472 has actually encountered in person.

Given their information they've acquired, it's quite possible that they're aware of what the Federation says they represent... but actions speak louder.

If they got it from telepathic scanning, that would *also* tell them that nobody there likes the Borg, and were only doing it as a short term thing to get past.

It still comes down to 8472 knowing the truth *and not caring*. *Any* method that they’d be able to glean *that much* information about Earth using would *also* tell them that the Federation opposes the Borg. Only by deliberately ignoring that fact does it make sense.

[Kendrakirai]

Which explains how most of the ships in B5 looked, and the poor compositing in...uh....the recent one Chuck did. The Hunt? Something hunt. Also, you always spend a lot on the opening, it’s *there* to look good and sell the show.

Not at all. The CG looks cheap and old because it was early CGI, it WAS old. (It looks better by season 3)

The CG and composite shots look *fuzzy* because even through the show was filmed in widescreen to future-proof it, the CG was rendered for square televisions, because rendering it for widescreen would have cost more money.

The files were saved with the intent of someday going back and just plopping them in when the tech was cheaper, and with intent to uprez it at a later date. (ANd possible toss in higher quality CG models as they got developed later in the show.) Unfortunately, Warners did a bad job archiving it so that data is all lost, the originally intended uprezzing is impossible without just actually doing the CG again from scratch.. So instead they took the old footage and blew it up and cropped it to fit widescreen so it looks bad.

It looked okay before everything went HD though.

This is also why there will probably never be a blu-ray release of B5.


Also, while yes, you put extra effort into your opening credits to make them look good since they'll be seen every week, putting in enough money to fund a season of a different show is obscene.

Putting in enough money to fund a season of a different show is done all the time, just not often in live action, or in America, these days.

[RobbyB1982]

With CGI being so cheap now why can't they just do what they did to TOS and just insert whole new scenes? A Blu-Ray release of B5 should not be hard.

CG is cheaper now, sure. But you're talking about redoing every single spaceship and monster shot in the show, and all the composites. Those are numerous and add up to thousands of shots and hundreds of minutes over the course of the series. If it was just a one-off movie maybe they could justify it, but an entire 5 season series that was super FX heavy?

They were willing to do it for Trek because of its status, and they were going to be able to sell new box sets with that and push it in syndication in perpetuity. But even TNG didn't make its money from its remasters which thus precluded DS9 and Voyager getting that treatment. (Though the effects on those shows has generally aged better... EXCEPT for the cgi.)

B5 doesn't have nearly as much a following, no impeding syndication deal, no real demand to have it on Blu ray, and streaming is overtaking physical so they can't make their money back as easily.

[Kendrakirai]

and required about five times the budget Voyager had. You know, the show that couldn’t even afford a *matte painting* in The 37s? How do you imagine a flotilla of ships, the aliens, the battles, would look on the budget Voyager had?

It's funny because what they spent on the opening credits was equivalent to the budget of like half a season of B5.

Which explains how most of the ships in B5 looked, and the poor compositing in...uh....the recent one Chuck did. The Hunt? Something hunt. Also, you always spend a lot on the opening, it’s *there* to look good and sell the show.

It's more complicated. The series was shot in 4X3 CGI due to cost and then moved over to 35mm film. All the CGI material was saved to an Exabyte backup tape, that could be used to upgrade the effects for later release and syndication when the cost of conversion would be more affordable. The tape was given to Warner Brothers for safe keeping. Warner Brothers lost the tapes so all we have are the 35mm film images for the CGI work and they do not translate well. There's a pretty good explanation here https://b5books.com/2017/05/02/babylon-5-blu-ray-will-probably-never-happen/

I dunno, I was there to actually watch Babylon 5 airing, and I don’t remember the shots looking any better. And ‘fixing it later’ just means you’re pouring more money into it later, to, you know, *fix it*.

Cutting edge CGI will look terrible in five years, but a good practical effect will always look good. That’s the special effects trade off. Look good for now, or always look good.