The arrival of a new 4K UHD TV in our den provided me with ample inspiration to dive deep into my Star Trek collection once again.
In this case, after baptising the new screen by watching The Martian with my partner, I decided I wanted to enjoy Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in all its Blu-Ray glory. I was especially excited to see that amazing scene where Kronos 1 and the Enterprise cruise side-by-side through space before all hell breaks loose. What a gorgeous image to see on the new big screen, even if it's only at 1080p!
For some reason, I then got a hankering to watch the two episodes from later ST series in which the characters actually revisit the crew from TOS. I'm talking about, of course, Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations" and Voyager's "Flashback".
The DS9 epsiode has always enthralled me. When I first recorded it (on VHS, dontchaknow) I actually set up a portable DVD player beside my TV and watched the matching scenes from the TOS episode and the DS9 episode at the same time to marvel at the amazing CGI work done in the newer show.
The writing of the new episode impressed me when I watched it again on the big screen. I think it takes a special kind of talent to weave a new story into an already existing one and to create a new, exciting and well-paced combined story.
I hadn't watched the Voyager episode half as much and I have to admit I thought it was accomplished through CGI as well. But it wasn't. TV producers brought back the film cast and their sets and actually re-created the scenes from the original movie that had been worked into the script to allow the TV actors to enter the story. Amazing work. It must have been fun for George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney and the others to have the chance to return to their Star Trek roles for this one.
Once again, a very clever plot permitted the interaction between the old and the new. Unlike "Trials and Tribble-ations", however, "Flashback" doesn't really weave the original story into the new but merely uses the movie scenes as the setting for the new TV plot.
My favourite part of the Voyager episode is the scene were Captain Janeway wistfully describes the freedom enjoyed by starship captains of earlier generations. The first time I heard that, I got a tingle. It's true, of course, and one of my main complaints about TNG especially -- instead of being explorers, Picard and his crew are corporate stiffs, administering on behalf of the Federation rather than exploring strange new worlds for Star Fleet.
