Last night I had the opportunity to attend Fathom Event’s Star Trek: the Next Generation screening. Celebrating the 25th Anniversary (and Blu-Ray release of season 1) of Star Trek: the Next Generation theaters hosted a screening of two episodes, ‘Where No One Has Gone Before’ and ‘Datalore’. Between the episodes a featurette (which is on the Blu-Ray release) which discussed the return of Star Trek in 1987 and the screening wrapped with a preview of the season 2 Blu-Ray release.
I have to admit, I didn’t pick up the Blu-Ray preview disc, so I was going into this event with just some screen caps featured on a few websites and some youtube trailers. Ultimately I’m glad I went into the theater with limited exposure to the remastering of these episodes to HD, as I was blown away by how amazing these episodes looked. Unlike the updates made to the Original Series (which I also enjoyed) when it was converted to HD, the upgraded visuals looked right and didn’t make you go – “wow that’s new”. ‘Where No One Has Gone Before’ was a fantastic choice of episodes for this screening as the visuals of the outer rim of the universe looked amazing in HD – very crisp, very bright. Regarding revisions, the crystalline entity in ‘Datalore’ was a new 3D-model, but the new model was very true to the source material, which should make purists happy.
This screening event was a fantastic two and a half hours, and as I was walking out I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind owning the season 1 Blu-Ray set (available today!). Thanks to Fathom for providing this opportunity, if there’s another event and you’re a Star Trek fan; be sure you jump on it!
