There seems to be a universal opinion that it wasn't until season 3 of Star Trek The Next Generation that the writing on the show really started to hit a consistent note. New show runner/lead writer at the time, Micheal Piller, made it a point for his new crop of writers to focus on writing character episodes versus what was previously an alien of the week style of story arcs. And I think looking back that it showed in their work for the stories laid out in season 3. I can remember enjoying more episodes in this season in a row than I did the previous 2 that seemed to only have one or two real stand outs.
Anyway, the Blu ray has been out for a couple of months and I'd say overall it's worth the upgrade. The opening episode alone, Evolution, seems to have had some significant work done in terms of new special effects shots, making the show never look better in my opinion. Another standout episode from season 3 was Yesterdays Enterprise, and finally getting to see many of the exterior shots of the Enterprise D and C battle the Klingon ships is really something now that you can decipher the high level of detail that went into the model work. Overall the majority of the shots for each episode on the Blu ray pop like never before, however, I'd say there were a few instances where I wasn't sure if I was still looking at film quality or more of an SD upconverted to HD set of shots. One scene in particular on the episode Offspring, when an Admiral is standing outside of Data's repair center, where he explains to other crew members that Data wasn't able to save his daughter from overload, looked a little bland to my eyes in terms of picture quality. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me but I really felt it looked a little flat compared to many of the other shots and scenes you see explode in a beautiful level of detail on the Blu ray. Hell, the picture quality is so pristine in some shots that you can clearly tell Will Wheaton was battling, like many teenagers, the joys of your skin looking a little bumpy. Why anyone would want any show or movie to look clearer than that, is beyond words for me!
One of the major highlights on this set for me is the extra in which Seth MacFarlane sits down with four of the primary writers from season 3-season 7. So many good stories are told about some of the rules they were all confined to staying within in writing the episodes, based on Gene Roddenberry's "box" that didn't allow for typical interpersonal conflict between characters on the ship. Ronald Moore lamented how that proved not only challenging but just downright frustrating at times since he was used to the original series dynamic of Spock and McCoy constantly going at it verbally, along with Kirk having real moments of anger and losing his cool. Other interesting tidbits from this round table discussion was how for about a full year, Moore, and Brannon Braga wrote the first feature film, Star Trek Generations, and how they both recognized that it paled in comparison to the work they did in writing the show's final episode, All Good Things. They both chuckled at how literally writing All Good things was like a side job compared to all the time put into the feature film, and yet realized which one was the more loved over the years. In addition to that, at one point Moore drew on the marker board how strict and thorough Micheal Piller was in making every writer lay out each episode in excruciating detail before they even dared to put it all on paper. It gives you one hell of an appreciation for the time these writers spent delivering us Trekkies one of the best incarnations of Star Trek. (at least that's the effect it had on myself) In the end, it was nice to see that regardless of how boxed in these guys were from really adding true conflict on the show how much they missed writing for it. They all seemed to agree not getting to write for these characters anymore was a real pisser to some degree. I think much has been made on the internet in the past few years about how a lot of these guys hated having to adhire to the rules Roddenberry enforced from the beginning, before his death, and what Rick Berman and Micheal Piller kept enforcing, but regardless of that, these writers obviously had REALLY fond memories of writing all the various types of stories you saw from week to week on this program. They all viewed their work and the series by in large as an enormous success and felt it was the only show of it's kind where you could write episodes with such variety in genre, i.e. a murder mystery, a science based episode, time-travel, romance, etc. There aren't many shows on TV anymore that offer that degree of choice.
Now from a technical standpoint, the sound on the Blu ray is top notch, and definitely something that will make your home surround sound system boom. And the picture quality, as I mentioned earlier, is quite awesome, with few instances where I may have caught a few not quite HD shots spliced in.
I'd say if you're going to own any of the Next Gen seasons on Blu ray, pick this one up, this is really when the show started firing on all cylinders and now you get to enjoy those memories in glorious HD picture and DTS 7.1 surround sound. Nuff said.
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