VOY - Alice

[Yukaphile]

I'm coordinating this alongside my First Contact rewrite to keep the Borg a proper menace. Namely, that their whole civilization is decentralized in their assimilation campaigns. One cube is all that's needed for "primitive" civilizations. In First Contact, they sent two. When they encounter a threat of equal or greater power, then a majority of their forces are sent to engage it, as well as the engineering of Tactical Cubes, that are then stripped down into parts once that engagement is over. If they can't seize the technology through knowledge, it will be with force. That's who the Borg should be.

[Kendrakirai]

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.

And this is why the idea of ‘we plan to fix it later’ is such a poor one, even if it was forward-looking. CGI itself is inexpensive, but you still need to put in a lot of work which costs money, you’re just trying to defer that cost to a future date which may never happen for a multitude of reasons, including the loss of the original footage you want to fix later.

[RobbyB1982]

They didn't really have a choice in the matter. Having the shots done in widescreen would have added X amount to the cost per shot, and they just couldn't afford it, particularly when the show wasn't even going to be broadcast in widescreen. Even thinking ahead to future proof that much was really good on them at the time.

And really, had Warners not lost the archives, in theory you could just run the files through a computer and they would do the work now for nothing but... without those files, nothing you can do.

And again, before things moved to HD it was fine. It looked great when it aired on the Sci-Fi channel and general dvd release. But now that computer and tv monitors have more fidelity, well...

Its a much lighter version of the lost Doctor Who episodes. At least there's a SD version intact rather than being lost entirel.

[Kendrakirai]

They didn't really have a choice in the matter. Having the shots done in widescreen would have added X amount to the cost per shot, and they just couldn't afford it, particularly when the show wasn't even going to be broadcast in widescreen. Even thinking ahead to future proof that much was really good on them at the time.

And really, had Warners not lost the archives, in theory you could just run the files through a computer and they would do the work now for nothing but... without those files, nothing you can do.

And again, before things moved to HD it was fine. It looked great when it aired on the Sci-Fi channel and general dvd release. But now that computer and tv monitors have more fidelity, well...

Its a much lighter version of the lost Doctor Who episodes. At least there's a SD version intact rather than being lost entirel.

Again, I saw it airing back in the day, and I don’t remember the effects looking any better than they do now.

[CharlesPhipps]

The Undine (I know it's from STAR TREK: ONLINE but I prefer it to their official name) wanted to purge all non-Undine life from the universe out of disgust. At least, that was Kes' impression. However, it seems like they calmed down and only wanted to deal with the Federation SPECIFICALLY because they helped the Borg against the Undine.

Chakotay was correct that, bad first impression aside, maybe they should have expended a bit more effort in talking to the Undine before writing them off as worse than the Objectively EvilTM Borg.

[Yukaphile]

I'd say they were cribbing from Thirdspace, but then, Thirdspace came later, and was superior when stacked along where 8472 went, and not even later in the series, but how they were sent running when they lost ONE engagement. At least when the cube exploded in "Best of Both Worlds," the nearest one was probably light-years away. They could have sent hundreds of bio-ships after them, but did not, lol. And hey, given DS9's genesis, I don't mind if JMS wants to retell how 8472 ended up, only better. If only he could have fixed Voyager itself...

[Nevix]

This episode could have been SO much better, if they'd budgeted time near the end to explore the "at home in a particle fountain" aspect more.

[Kendrakirai]

So something about a particle fountain...I’m parsing it as being somewhat akin to a white hole. A point in space where matter and light are expelled. You could call it the outgoing end of a Stargate style wormhole.

In which case, going *out* of it would be safe, but coming back in would be a death sentence, as you’re basically flying into the active end of a giant sandblaster, even ignoring if going back through the event is actually possible to do while keeping your own material integrity stable.

If this is so, then - barring a being like the Q - it’s a one way trip, and the computer - Alice - either didn’t know or didn’t care that she’d be killing herself and her pilot in a mad Quest to go home.

[MightyDavidson]

The Undine (I know it's from STAR TREK: ONLINE but I prefer it to their official name) wanted to purge all non-Undine life from the universe out of disgust. At least, that was Kes' impression. However, it seems like they calmed down and only wanted to deal with the Federation SPECIFICALLY because they helped the Borg against the Undine.

Chakotay was correct that, bad first impression aside, maybe they should have expended a bit more effort in talking to the Undine before writing them off as worse than the Objectively EvilTM Borg.

I'm wondering if the Undine initially believed that all non-Undine life in the universe was the Borg and thus a threat to them, leading to the first impression that Kes got. After doing more research they realize this isn't the case and calmed down as you say, only going after the Federation because it's members aided the Borg against them.

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like there's more of a story here.

"Why" is it home?

Was she made there? Is she insane? An energy being that possessed her ship?