In an attempt to cover Ron Jones' entire Star Trek musical library, Film Score Monthly released the Ron Jones Collection in 2010 (still available) but due to contractual reasons only included five minutes of unreleased music: short cues left off the GNP/Crescendo CD to facilitate a better album experience, but included to flesh out the scores’ subtler moments.

Fans finally have the chance to complete their collection of Ron's music with this expanded edition of "The Best of Both Worlds". According to GNP Crescendo's website, the expanded edition "features the complete scores, adding the shorter, transitional moments that contain at least one piece of important thematic material missing from the original album."

We've got an early look at the track listing for the album. Those tracks listed in bold were not included on the original release.

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title
PART I
2. New Providence
3. Not Ready / Job grabber / Early Worm / No Doubt
4. Preparations / What Do You Want? / Fatigue / Hansen's Message
5. Borg Engaged
6. First Attach / Looks / Tell It Like It Is
7. Contemplations
8. Borg Take Picard / Death Is Irrelevant / His Place
9. Away Team Ready / On The Borg Ship / Nodes
10. Captain Borg
PART II
11. Energy Weapon Fails
12. Repairs / Humanity Taken
13. Contact Lost
14. Repairs Complete / Cemetery Of Dead Ships
15. Currents
16. Intervention
17. Sitting Ducks / Borg Reach Saturn
18. The Link
19. Sleep Command / Destruct Mode / Picard Is Back
20. Picard's Nightmare
21. Star Trek: The Next Generation End Title (3rd Season, long version)

Total Disc Time:
55:12

TrekCore will be profiling the release in greater detail over the coming days and we'll have an exclusive interview with album co-producer Lukas Kendall who has been one of the main driving forces in pushing for Ron Jones' entire canon of work to be made available.

You can head on over to GNP Crescendo's website to secure your order for $19.95 here.

Ron Moore & Ira Steven Behr: The London Interview, Part II

Interviewed by Adam Walker and Chris Wales for TrekCore.com

TrekCore: So, you both moved from Next Generation very successfully to Deep Space Nine. Do you think that some of the darkness, some of the flaws in the characters that were so beautiful on Deep Space Nine could have ever worked in The Next Generation? Those characters were almost perfect in comparison. Do you think you could have ever moved that into The Next Generation, or were you restricted?

Ronald D. Moore: Well, we COULD have, but we were restricted! They weren't going to allow us to do that but there was no reason why not. I think that when we were working on Next Gen, we always wanted to do that; we always wanted to make them more complicated; to have rougher edges to the characters; have them have interpersonal conflicts and make mistakes... but there was just a stricture against that and we tried to push against that as far as we possibly could but you just couldn't get very far with it.

TrekCore: Were there stories that you wanted to do on Next Generation that then you then moved onto DS9, or that you were saving up that you couldn't do? Even ideas that you had?

Ira Steven Behr: Well, not that I could move into DS9, but yes. One of the reasons why I chose to come back in Season Four was a story that I kind of broke with Ron up in his tiny little office, on a tiny little whiteboard it just freaks me out how TINY that board was, that somehow we got a whole story on there... which was the show that I was really jonesin' to do, and he really liked, Piller liked it, everyone on the staff liked it; it was like, yeah! This is what I want to do!

Then it became a whole long story that I'm not going to get into now, but it got SLAMMED dead by Gene; it was my big 'Gene meeting', where he slammed me down with all kind of pronouncements about what Star Trek is and is not. And then, even after it was dead, I had to meet with Patrick - I had lunch with Patrick - and even though the show was dead, Patrick slammed it down, and made sure I knew that he would never do it, even though there was nothing to be done!

TrekCore: What was it?

Ira Steven Behr: It was simple. I created this planet called Risa, which was a pleasure planet. The captain was stressed out and needed a vacation. He went on this vacation and there was a holosuite there - or a holodeck - I guess a holosuite, we called it.

Ronald D. Moore: It was a holodeck.

Ira Steven Behr: Holodeck. It said, "Face Your Greatest Fear!" and it was like a carnival place. It wasn't what it became, this sensual, open-sexuality place - Gene turned it into that! It was like this carnival atmosphere place; a true vacation resort. And he thought, "Oh, cool, this is going to put me in a good mood. What I need is to fight some Klingons without thinking about the repercussions of it, or go after some Romulans or whatever it is."

And he goes into this holodeck, and it was all about the captain being promoted to admiral, and losing the Enterprise, and Riker being bumped up to captain of the Enterprise. Basically, though we never really hit it on the head, it's about growing old. Not to grow old, but your time of life changing and suddenly you're not going to be the guy going off on adventures, you're going to be sitting at a desk somewhere, SENDING people on adventures. That's his greatest fear.

Gene went STARK RAVING MAD. It was like, "Picard fears nothing. If it's time for him to grow old, to become an admiral, he becomes an admiral! He would not think about that, AT ALL. Picard is John Wayne!" Well, John Wayne had all kinds of fears and guilt and angers and bitterness in his best movies... "No. John Wayne is a hero, Picard is a hero, we are not doing this episode." Even though I guess this had happened a lot on the show in the first couple seasons, it hadn't hit us.

It hadn't hit me, or certainly Ron either... it was just like, it's dead! But Michael loved it, and it was gonna happen, and Rick was saying, "Look, there's nothing we can do." And that's when Gene sat there, "...but I LOVE the pleasure planet! Get the captain laid!" "Patrick wants to get laid; he doesn't do enough f---ing and fighting, you gotta get him laid!" Suddenly, it turned into sexual fetishes, and we were gonna have women making love to women in the background, and men kissing men... it's like, I'm thinking, "I have entered into some kind of Phantom Zone. Some kind of strange new world!"

Behr's original design for Risa was much different than the final result.

I walked out of the office, Gene's office... and Gene was very nice, but it was like NO discussion. I turned to Rick, and I said, "Men kissing men? Women caressing women?" He goes, "Oh, don't listen to anything Gene says. Write a story where the captain gets laid and has some fun." And it was like, that was it. If that's the show... and I wrote it, because I'm a whore! And, you know, it was okay, but it wasn't what it set out to be. And that's ultimately why I left.

Ronald D. Moore: And what a difference a year makes, because the next season, I wrote a show called "Family". Picard goes back home to Earth, with his brother and so on. Same kind of setup, I wrote this story; he goes home and has this fight with his brother, it's an old family animosity and bitterness that boils to the surface of these two brothers.

Gene HATES it. I had my version of this meeting, not by myself; it's with me and Rick Berman and Michael Piller, we all go into Gene's office. Gene goes through this whole thing about how much he hates this script. "It says terrible things about Picard's parents; these brothers don't exist in the twenty-fourth century; they have such profound personal animosities; this would never happen. I don't buy any of this, this is not a Star Trek episode. There's no action in this; there's no jeopardy. We can't do this show."

I was like, shell-shocked. We walked out of the office, and I remember going into that hallway of the Hart Building with Rick and Mike and saying, "What do I do?" At that point, Rick and Mike just looked at each other and said, "Don't worry about it; we'll take care of it. Go write your script." I went, "Okay..." and I went off and wrote it, and never heard another word. Somehow, they were then dealing with Gene in a different way and that script just went through after that point. He just stopped kind of throwing out scripts and chaning things from that point forward, and just started slowly to change.

Ira Steven Behr: I think also - because I remember you calling me up and saying "Watch it!" it was like the second episode - it was very early in the season.

Ronald D. Moore: The second of the season.

Ira Steven Behr: When we were doing what became "Captain's Holiday", it was in the middle of a very screwed-up season. We were behind... when you say that Michael was in the room with you, which you never told me, it's like, "Why did Michael come in and fight?" Michael was rewriting... you know, we were holding on, really, by our fingertips to not shut the show down! It was just... I felt like I was tossed away and I don't want to overplay it, but we were really excited.

It seemed like, "Yeah, this is the kind of thing we have to do!" We were just so excited, and it was so great to be exciting, like, this is the beginning of OUR Next Gen - not even Next Generation, our Star Trek. We were going be creating this thing and I just couldn't get over it. It was a big wound.

TrekCore: When you guys moved to Deep Space Nine, you got to do this grittier, darker series, which you always wanted to do. Did you have to fight for that, or was the studio actively trying to push you down Gene's idealistic, perfect world again? Or did they not notice because the other shows were on the air?

Ronald D. Moore: Well, by the time that I got there, it was already in that place. I don't know how hard it was in the first season or two to get that tone.

Ira Steven Behr: Well, you know, what happened was, when I went to this ball game with Mike, and Mike said, "I want to read the bible" - not even the pilot which hadn't been written yet. What he said was, "This show is going to reflect your sensibilities, it's going to be edgier, funnier, grittier, more character driven, and after two years I'm going to hand the show over to you." So that sounded really good, and that's why I came back.

But almost immediately after the pilot, cold feet started to develop all over the place. It was like, "Make the show more TNG-like." Not so much "don't make it so dark", it was just like, what kind of shows are we going to do?

TrekCore: This is why we saw Q and Lwaxana Troi coming in.

Ronald D. Moore: Yeah.

Several familiar TNG characters made appearances in the early days of DS9.

Ira Steven Behr: So, it was like, this is getting away from us. So we started to have to... not fight, so much, but make sure we came up with stories that were more specific to our series. It wasn't until the end of the first season, with "Duet" and "In the Arms of the Prophets", I think...

TrekCore: "In the Hands of the Prophets".

Ira Steven Behr: Yeah, "In the Hands of the Prophets," that we really started... and there were some other good episodes at the beginning and throughout, but it was... and then the studio got freaked out and said, "Should we put engines on the space station and fly it through the wormhole? Do we need the character of Bashir?"

So, you know, it really did seem to be on a knife's edge at one point, but luckily we were able to weather that. Once we got the Defiant, which we had started talking about - and the Dominion, we prepared for that in the second season; we were setting the stage for the show to become what it became.

TrekCore: When you moved, Ron, from Deep Space Nine, you had a very brief spell on Voyager for a couple of episodes. Why do think that didn't work? Differences with your writing style, or where there other problems?

Ronald D. Moore: You know, there were a lot of reasons that didn't work. I think, ultimately, it was time for me to have moved on. I was there for ten years at that point, and there was a part of me that just did not want to leave. I wanted to keep my same office, it was a lot of money, and I knew Star Trek and I just sort of wanted to keep going. I don't think I was aware that I had also come to the end of what I could contribute. When I went into that show, I pushed it in directions it wasn't ready to go, it wasn't ready to embrace what I wanted to so, and ultimately it was just a mistake. It was just like... I shouldn't have signed up for it in the first place.

TrekCore: What do these things, these conventions, mean to you? What is it about them that makes you want to come?

Ronald D. Moore: Well, I haven't done them in quite a while. I've been sort of out of this... I did one this summer in Vegas, and it was the first one I had done in a long time. It was just nice to reconnect with this community, it was nice to reconnect with writers and cast members I hadn't seen in a long time. I was surprised, to be honest; I sort of thought it had thought, "Maybe it's all withered away, and it's not what it used to be." I was kind of prepared for it to be a sort of low-key experience and I'm surprised and sort of impressed that there's still a thriving fandom that supports this franchise.

Ira Steven Behr: I never like to look back. I never went back to my high school; never went back to my college. I don't look back, you know, not that I didn't enjoy it, but I just can't do it. Enough time had gone by, and I started to do these interviews for Bill Shatner about Sisko and about TNG, and some other stuff, and it seemed okay suddenly.

It was nostalgic - not for other people, but for me. It was part of my past, an important part of my past, and like Ron said, it was just great to see everyone again and to be able to get this unconditional love. You usually have to have a little baby to get unconditional love! The fans kind of give you this kind of unconditional love, and who's going to say no to that?

TrekCore: Guys, it's been tremendous. Thank you so much.  

Go to Part: 1 2

Pre-Order Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 Blu-Ray today!

Pre-Order TNG - "Redemption" Feature Blu-Ray today!

The Novelization

Alan Dean Foster's official novelization of Into Darkness is already available in the UK, Germany and other European markets and will be released on May 21 in the United States. Here's the official synopsis from Simon and Schuster and the final cover art:

Months after the dramatic events seen in the 2009 blockbuster film Star Trek, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise—including Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, Doctor Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, and Ensign Pavel Chekov—is called back home. But an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has declared all-out war on Starfleet and everything it stands for, leaving Earth in a state of crisis. Now with a personal score to settle as a result, Kirk must lead a covert manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As these valiant heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Captain Kirk has left: his crew.

You can order the book direct from Amazon below:

Order Star Trek Into Darkness: The Novelization

The Audio Book

Simon and Schuster are also putting out a special Audio Book version, read by none other than Alice Eve who plays Dr. Carol Marcus in the movie. We have the cover art for the CD below:

The Audio CD is available to order now from Amazon:

Order Star Trek Into Darkness: Audio Book

Movie Posters

Amazon also have a huge range of movie posters from Star Trek Into Darkness for you to collect. We've featured some of the best ones below:

We'll be taking a closer look at the Audio Book and Novelization from Simon and Schuster in a later article, so stay tuned for all the latest news!

This mostly affects fans in Europe, with the majority of countries not carrying the single-disc "Redemption" Blu-ray. We've compiled a list of countries that are releasing the disc and will endeavor to update this article as and when we receive further information from distributors.

• United States - July 30 - Pre-Order from Amazon.com
• Canada - July 30 - Pre-Order from Amazon.ca
• Australia - July 24 - Retailer exclusive at JB Hi Fi
• Japan - August 9 - Pre-Order from Amazon.co.jp

We've confirmed that the disc will not be releaed in most European countries, however we've been unable to confirm the situation in Germany. Paramount Germany released "The Best of Both Worlds" as a retailer exclusive to a series of supermarkets and may well adopt the same strategy with "Redemption", however at the time of publication we haven't been able to ascertain any further information.

Fans in the UK and other affected countries can still import the disc from Amazon.com, who ship internationally. If your country is releasing "Redemption" and it isn't listed here, please let us know in the comments!

UPDATE: For clarification, the Blu-rays sold by Amazon.com are REGION FREE so you should be able to play them in your machine wherever you are.

Pre-Order Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 Blu-Ray today!

Pre-Order TNG - "Redemption" Feature Blu-Ray today!

Here's the press release reproduced in its entirety:

ACCLAIMED HIGH-DEFINITION UPGRADE OF ICONIC SERIES
CONTINUES WITH TWO NEW REMASTERED COLLECTIONS

STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION

THE FOURTH SEASON BLU-RAY™
And
REDEMPTION BLU-RAY

Packed With Exclusive Special Features Including Cast And Crew
Interviews, Audio Commentaries And More

Available July 30, 2013

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (May 14, 2013) – The epic sci-fi adventure continues as the latest high-definition collections of the celebrated series, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION® – THE FOURTH SEASON BLU-RAY and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION® – REDEMPTION BLU-RAY (including Ultraviolet™ download or stream) arrive July 30 from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Media Distribution.  Featuring painstaking restorations of the beloved series’ episodes, both sets are also packed with must-see special features that delve into the inception and creation of some of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s most unforgettable moments.

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION® – THE FOURTH SEASON

From the season premiere - the epic conclusion of the two-part cliffhanger “The Best Of Both Worlds” - to its thrilling finale “Redemption” Part 1, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – THE FOURTH SEASON is distinguished as one of the most favored amongst fans.

In addition to all-new commentary tracks on select episodes with some of the franchise’s biggest names including writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, and director Rob Bowman, the collection also includes brand new special features exclusive to the release including never-before-released deleted scenes.  With “RELATIVITY: The Family Saga of Star Trek – The Next Generation,” fans will uncover special insight into particular challenges facing the production of the fourth season.  This multi-part documentary focuses on the series’ evolution after its critically acclaimed third season turned the show into a crossover hit, while also giving viewers a special look into the personal relationships and family bonds of the crew of the Enterprise with key episodes such as “Reunion” and “Brothers.”

Also, “In Conversation: The Art Department” special feature offers unprecedented insight into the creation of some of the series’ most iconic designs through interviews with production designer Herman Zimmerman, illustrator Doug Drexler, illustrator and technical consultant Rick Sternbach, scenic art supervisor Michael Okuda, scenic artist Denise Okuda and FX maestro Dan Curry, each revealing fascinating background into how the series cemented the look of the 24^th century.

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – THE FOURTH SEASON BLU-RAY features all 26 episodes of the fourth season, brilliantly remastered into stunning high-definition that continues to be hailed by critics including High-Def Digest, who called the third season Blu-ray release “an amazing, fan-pleasing product.” 

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – REDEMPTION

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – REDEMPTION BLU-RAY, also featuring Ultraviolet download or stream, is a seamlessly edited, feature-length presentation of the classic two-part episode that served as the season four finale and season five premiere.  Penned by acclaimed sci-fi screenwriter Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica), the thrilling episode follows Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) as they fight to end a Klingon civil war.

Along with an extensive audio commentary from Moore and scenic artists/Star Trek consultants Mike and Denise Okuda, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – REDEMPTION BLU-RAY includes the exclusive documentary, “Survive and Succeed:
An Empire at War.”  This newly produced special feature explores the Klingon mythology of Star Trek: The Next Generation and features all-new interviews with writer/producer Moore, who, in addition to “Redemption,” wrote some of the franchise’s most memorable Klingon storylines, and some of the actors who played the most renowned Klingon characters including Michael Dorn (Worf), Robert O’Reilly (Gowron) and Gwynyth Walsh (B’Etor).

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – THE FOURTH SEASON BLU-RAY will be available in 1080p with English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English Stereo Surround, French Mono, German Mono, Castilian Mono, Italian Mono, and Japanese Mono.  The discs also include English SDH, and French, German, Castilian, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish subtitles.  The Blu-ray is Not Rated in the U.S. and rated PG in Canada.  It will be available for the suggested retail price of $130.00 U.S. and $150.00 Canada.  Its disc breakdown is as follows:

Disc One:
Episodes

• The Best of Both Worlds, Part II
• Family
• Brothers
• Suddenly Human
• Remember Me

Special Features

• Archival Mission Log: Mission Overview Year Four (SD)
• Audio Commentary with Rob Bowman and Mike & Denise Okuda on “Brothers” – NEW!
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)
  • Promo #3 (SD)
  • Promo #4 (SD)
  • Promo #5 (SD)

Disc Two: 
Episodes

• Legacy
• Reunion
• Future Imperfect
• Final Mission
• The Loss

Special Features

• Archival Mission Log: Selected Crew Analysis Year Four (SD)
• Audio Commentary with Ronald D. Moore, Brannon Braga and Mike & Denise Okuda on “Reunion” – NEW!
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)
  • Promo #3 (SD)
  • Promo #4 (SD)
  • Promo #5 (SD)

Disc Three: 
      Episodes

• Data’s Day
• The Wounded
• Devil’s Due
• Clues
• First Contact

Special Features

• Archival Mission Log: New Life and New Civilizations (SD)
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)
  • Promo #3 (SD)
  • Promo #4 (SD)
  • Promo #5 (SD)

Disc Four: 
      Episodes

• Galaxy’s Child
• Night Terrors
• Identity Crisis
• The Nth Degree
• Qpid

Special Features

• Archival Mission Log: Chronicles from the Final Frontier (SD)
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)
  • Promo #3 (SD)
  • Promo #4 (SD)
  • Promo #5 (SD)

Disc Five: 
      Episodes

• The Drumhead
• Half a Life
• The Host
• The Mind’s Eye

Special Features

• Archival Mission Log: Departmental Briefing Year Four: Production (SD)
• Archival Mission Log: Select Historical Data (SD)
• Archival Mission Log: Inside the Star Trek Archives (SD)
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)
  • Promo #3 (SD)
  • Promo #4 (SD)

Disc Six: 
      Episodes

• In Theory
• Redemption, Part I

Special Features

• In Conversation: The Star Trek ^TM Art Department (HD) – NEW!
• RELATIVITY: The Family Saga of Star Trek – The Next Generation (HD) – NEW!
•             Part 1: Homecoming
•             Part 2: Posterity
• Gag Reel (HD) – NEW!
• Deleted Scenes (HD) – NEW!
  • The Best Of Both Worlds, Part II
  • Family
  • Brothers
  • Final Mission
  • The Wounded
  • Galaxy’s Child
  • Qpid
  • The Host
• Episodic Promos
  • Promo #1 (SD)
  • Promo #2 (SD)

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION – REDEMPTION BLU-RAY will be available in 1080p with English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English Stereo Surround, German Mono, French Mono and Japanese Mono.  The collection also includes English SDH, German, French and Japanese subtitles. The Blu-ray is Not Rated in the U.S. and rated PG in Canada.  It will be available for the suggested retail price of $28.28 U.S. and $32.00 Canada.  Its disc breakdown is as follows:

• Redemption (Parts 1 and 2)

Special Features

• Audio Commentary with Ronald D. Moore and Mike & Denise Okuda – NEW!
• Survive and Succeed: An Empire at War (HD) – NEW!
• Episodic Promos
  • Part 1
  • Part 2

A few notes on the new press release. It seems that the close scheduling of Seasons Three and Four only permitted two audio commentaries to be recorded for the fourth season set (although the Redemption standalone release gets a full length 90-minute commentary). That's certainly a shame given the number of terrific episodes spread throughout the season - I was rather hoping for a Ron Moore commentary on "Family" or even a Jonathan Frakes commentary on "The Drumhead". Alas.

The addition of a large number of deleted scenes is a joy to see. We discussed this development in the project in an earlier article. Spurred on by the discovery of a large number of VHS tapes containing extended episodes, CBS have sifted through scripts to pull out a total of 8 episodes with deleted scenes. We are told that these will be in full high-definition, sourced from the 35mm camera negative and presented as standalone clips, reinserted into the scenes they were removed from (in a similar fashion to TrekCore's deleted scene presentations).

UPDATE: We've confirmed with Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS that there are no plans to release the standalone "Redemption" Blu-ray in the UK or most other European territories. Fans wanting the disc will have to order from the United States. The link for ordering at Amazon.com is below.

Fans can now pre-order both "Redemption" and Season 4 from Amazon. Use the Amazon links below... every click helps support TrekCore. We'll have more news and previews of the sets as the release date gets closer! Watch this space.

Pre-Order Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 Blu-Ray today!

Pre-Order TNG - "Redemption" Feature Blu-Ray today!

Ron Moore & Ira Steven Behr: The London Interview, Part I

Interviewed by Adam Walker and Chris Wales for TrekCore.com

TrekCore: Ron, tell us how you got involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Ronald D. Moore: I was living in Los Angeles, trying to be a writer; I took a series of odd jobs. I was a messenger, I did personnel, and I worked at an animal hospital. Basically, I started dating this girl, who had a connection to Next Generation, because she had gone to work on the pilot. She found that I was a Star Trek fan because I had this big Captain Kirk poster in my apartment, and she said, "You know, I know people who work on Next Generation, and I can probably get you a tour of the sets."

I was like, "Oh my god, please!" "Could you make a call?" She said, "Okay!" So she made a call, and they used to have a regular set tour in those days, and she set it up; it was going to be in about six weeks. I just sort of thought, "I'm going to take a shot and write an episode."

I really wasn't 'that guy', I wasn't the guy who always had a script, knocking on doors I was always starting and stopping scripts without a lot of discipline to it at all. Somehow, this time, I saw it as an opportunity, and I just decided "I'm gonna do this!" And I wrote the script and brought it with me. Richard Arnold was giving the set tour, and I basically talking him into reading it - and he read it, he liked it, and he gave it to the woman that became my first agent. She submitted it to the show, and it sat in the slush pile for about seven months.

Michael Piller came aboard in the beginning of the third season, and started going through the slush pile, and found my script and bought it. I got a really lucky break and I had the right script at the right time; he was looking for something like that... that started my whole career, basically.

Moore's first story was Season Three's "The Bonding", rescued from the 'slush pile'.

TrekCore: You say you started and stopped things... how then do you then find transition into all of a sudden having to twenty-six episodes to do, and there being so much pressure to get finished?

Ronald D. Moore: Well, I didn't really have any choice. Once I was on the staff, here's the work, and you either did it or you didn't. There was a certain pace that the show went at. I remember very clearly, my first full day on the show. Michael gave me a memo, or a story outline that they couldn't make work, and he said, "Here, go try to make this work."

I sat down and just wrote up a new version and sent it downstairs; an hour or so later he sent it back up with a bunch of notes on it. Then I wrote up another version and sent it downstairs; the same then happened like twice more. I started putting the time up in the corner; I was literally putting the time of this draft... Michael, at some point, just laughed. "You don't have to do it THIS fast!"

I didn't know what the pace was! I just assumed that when it was given to me, I had to write it as quickly as possible, and fortunately, that was a really important strength to have on a television series, to be able to do it quickly and get it out.

TrekCore: Ira, how did you get onto Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Ira Steven Behr: I had done an outline for a science fiction series for Showtime, that I believe may have been something that I had worked on for Terry Nation, because I'd met Terry, he had a job with 20th Century Fox and even though I hadn't seen much Doctor Who, he was the guy who created the Daleks, I knew that. He used to let me hang out in his office while he drank red wine and smoked cigarette after cigarette, which shows you how long ago because you could smoke in your office back then. So, it was some outline; I had forgotten all about it.

Somehow, that outline got to someone at Paramount - don't ask me how, I have no clue - and I got a call saying, "Would you like to go onto Season Two of The Next Generation?" which I had not really watched. It was still Star Trek, so I said that I'd go in and take a meeting. Little did I know that they were asking me because they were cutting off writers' heads left and right, and it was a bloodbath every week. So I went to the Paramount commissary, and I met with Maurice Hurley, who was the showrunner at the time.

We had a very pleasant conversation, and I basically let him talk; I had nothing to say, really. He was telling me about the show, and by the time he was done, I said, "Thank you, but no thank you." Because it sounded like a complete and utter horror show. They were firing writers left and right; the one that killed me was you're not allowed to go down to the set as a writer/producer, because it's not allowed. I said that I'd never heard that anywhere before! And there's a lawyer who goes around looking through desks at night to find things that they wrote about Gene Roddenberry, because he was Gene's lawyer, and it was like, "Is this serious?!"

He said, "Yeah, but it's a really good job!" I said okay, and he seemed like a sweet guy, but there was just no way. I mean, you can't go down to the set? Why am I in the business? I've got to have SOME fun! So, I said no, and I thought that was the end of it. The next year, minding my own business, I get a call Michael Piller, who I knew for almost at that point a decade, was doing the show; he was now on TNG. And Hans Beimler and Ricky Manning, who had worked for me on Fame, were now also there, and they asked me again to come on, and I knew that it was still kind of a bloodbath, and I knew that they were behind already and it was a mess, but I knew the players so I said yes.

The funny thing, not unlike what Ron was saying - the first day I got there, I thought, "Man, I've got to brush up on my Shakespeare here, gotta learn what this show is." I'm barely there, Michael calls me into his office, gives me a script called "The Hunted", and says, "Rewrite Act 3."

TrekCore: Wow.

Ira Steven Behr: "Can I read what it is?" He says, "Well, yeah, read it, but it's basically a chase. The whole act is kind of a long chase. So, you know, put him in the Jefferies Tubes and stuff like that." So I walk outside and I go to my buddies Beimler and Manning. I ask them to help, and it's like, "Oh, we're in our own hell, get out of here!"

So then I go to a guy I don't even know, this guy Richard Danus, who is literally a dead man walking. The first thing he says to me is, "I'm on a ten week contract; they're not picking up my contract; I'm gone in like two weeks. I've never met Rick Berman, I've never met Gene Roddenberry, don't talk to me, I'm dead." I said, "What's a Jefferies Tube?"

Ira Steven Behr's first challenge was route a chase through an unfamiliar ship.

So he explained what a Jefferies Tube was, and I went back and literally banged out by hand on a yellow pad, Act 3, scared out of my mind. There was some dialogue obviously in there, but I was just like throwing it up in the air and hoping there was a parachute attached. I gave it to Danus to read, and I said, "Is it English? Does it make sense? Does it have anything to do with the show?" And he said, "You're a writer!" He goes, "There's no doubt. I read it. You're a writer." I said, "Well, I think I knew that, but that's good!"

I gave it to Mike, and I walked out of his office, and I just sat in my office alone, thinking, "Oh my god, am I off this show day one? Is he going to be SO disappointed?" And he just, after whatever it was, twenty minutes or a half hour, he just strolled in, and said, "Great, perfect. I made a couple of changes, terrific." And that was it.

Go to Part: 1 2

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Thanks to CBS's faith in Star Trek as a product and a strong determination to preserve it at HD resolution for future generations, an unprecedented remastering project was green-lit. The project goes back to the original 35mm camera negatives of The Next Generation, with the team at CBS Digital rebuilding each episode shot-by-shot in a similar fashion to how the show would have been produced back in the 1980s. Visual Effects are being freshly composited using the latest software available and planets and CG effects are being rendered from scratch with a keen sense for detail and authenticity.

The Challenges of Reproducing CG Work

A key difference between TNG and later shows is its dependence on physical models over CG elements. This gave CBS a huge advantage in the remastering project, as the majority of 35mm footage of the physical models still existed in the Paramount vaults. Of course, different passes (model, matte, lighting elements etc.) of shots have to be recomposited, but this is a far less daunting prospect than having to reconstruct CG models from scratch.

On the few occasions where CG models were used in The Next Generation - the most notable being the Crystalline entity from "Datalore" and "Silicon Avatar" - Niel Wray and his CG team at CBS Digital have to start from scratch in building the elements. Any original files that may have been used to render the shot back in the day have long since been lost. As any CG artist will tell you, rendering shots in CG is complicated enough, but when you have to reproduce something, not only in appearance but in motion, the level of difficulty grows almost exponentially.

Complex CG battle sequences with dozens of ships in each shot were common during the last two years of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Considering a show like Deep Space Nine which relies so heavily on CG models (especially in the last two seasons), the task of reproducing 50 different CG ships following complicated flight paths, firing at each other and exploding left right and center in grand battle sequences would border on the impossible given time, financial and resource constraints in any DS9 Remastering project.

Original CG Assets

It's long since been the belief of fans - and indeed CBS - that the scene files used back in the 1990s to render these CG shots have long since been lost. After all, it was far easier to neglect computer files than it was rolls of physical film. Couple that with how hard disc space was such a valuable commodity 15 years ago, and an assumption that the original files were lost or simply overwritten could certainly be believable.

As part of an upcoming feature profiling the original CG artists who worked on Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise, I set about researching and contacting a number of the team who were responsible for CG work back in the day for effects houses such as Foundation Imaging and Eden FX. A startling breakthrough came during an interview with former Senior CG Supervisor Robert Bonchune who worked on all three post-TNG spinoffs and won a host of Emmys for his CG work on several famous episodes. During the interview - which will be published later this month - Bonchune revealed that he still has in his possession all of the original CG scene files which he worked on during his time working on Star Trek.

CG work on Deep Space Nine was originally split between two FX houses, Digital Muse and Foundation Imaging, as Bonchune explained:

Digital Muse was doing most of the work on Deep Space Nine – I don’t know if they’d changed their name to Eden FX – but they did most of the CG for that show. We [Foundation] did a fair amount of work for that show as well, but I can’t say that we were regularly doing weekly work on DS9. We were certainly part of the bigger shows, because they just didn’t have the capacity to do it all; it just needed two big teams.

The spaceship stuff is a little easier. If you have all of the assets – all the ships that are needed – and you load the scene file, theoretically, if it loads all the ships with textures it needs, then yes, you’d just hit ‘render.’

[Deep Space Nine] is much more difficult for the last three [seasons] because of the combination of CG and motion control – and when there was CG, it was usually those massive, full-blown war scenes. Going back and revisiting it isn’t as simple as just hitting ‘render’, but it’s still pretty straightforward.

Bonchune went on to describe how he has all of the original assets for not only his work with Foundation Imaging on Deep Space Nine, but also the vast majority of Star Trek: Voyager:

Unless someone has some fantastic algorithm for up-rezzing to make it HD quality – and I guess that could be possible – but to redo it is to virtually start over from scratch. You’re talking about what they did for the Original Series, getting a real team to sit down and redo basically everything from the third season on, almost from scratch.

If they ask one of us – and if they use a team that uses LightWave – it’ll be much easier for them to redo… because the guys who worked on it, like me, have the assets. We have the original ships; we have most of everything that was used [in the making of the series]. That would eliminate a ton of the cost of rebuilding.

So, how would I approach it? The same way I did at the time – I’d figure out what was done in CG, and we’d just start from there. And today, it would be easier! Literally, you could just load the scene files and hit ‘render’ – it would be done! I mean, not everything… but a lot more than you’d think.

Quality of the Assets: Do They Hold Up In HD?

What's more, Bonchune went on to reveal in our interview that while he was working in CGI and Digital Effects on Star Trek, a large amount of work was purposefully over-built with the team putting in a huge amount of detail which could never be seen at standard definition, but which makes a re-render in high definition all the more tantalizing:

...If it was built by my team, it was overbuilt. It’ll hold up. I would be more surprised to see something that doesn’t hold up. I would be shocked if it doesn’t hold up to high definition.

This was an absolute revelation to me, and made even more surreal by how calmly Rob Bonchune announced the news in our telephone interview. Clearly, the potential ramifications for any remastering of Deep Space Nine and Voyager are huge. Given access to the original scene files which were used to create the show's CG sequences, the difficulty of remastering DS9 and Voyager would be considerably reduced and a transition to HD would appear far more feasible than if CBS had to start from scratch.

I asked Rob if he would be so gracious as to provide TrekCore with an exclusive sample of an HD re-rendered still from his archive of assets. He was all too eager to agree and show off how well the work done by the team at Foundation holds up in HD, 15 years after it was first produced.

The shot in question shows the USS Honshu, a Nebula-Class ship featured in the 6th Season Deep Space Nine episode "Waltz".

Original SD (DVD)	Re-rendered in HD
The remastered USS Honshu - our first look at how a 1080p re-render of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would fare. As Bonchune notes - The registry of the ship was changed at some point, but is easy to revert to the final aired version. "The shot was done without any motion blur or touch-up, but you get the idea of how much clearer the ships is [...] I even see a few places where the polygons will have to be multiplied out to smooth the nacelle ends properly."

The sheer quality of the re-rendered shot blew me away when I first received it. Rob was certainly correct when he said the team "over-built" the models back in the day - there is a stunning amount of detail that comes through in the HD render, from the patterning of the hull plating to the escape pod hatches to the tiny ship's registry number on the top of the ship's sensor platform - this is one impressively made CG model. If this is any indication of the type of quality inherent in the original scene files, then not only would it make a high-definition remastering of the show far more feasible economically- and practically-speaking, but by referring back to the original files, you have the opportunity to preserve the show's original artistic direction and match the look as closely as is humanly possible.

In Summary

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager are far more challenging to remaster in HD due to their use of CG. Until now, the original assets used to create these CG shots were presumed lost.
• Through talking to original artists such as Robert Bonchune, I discovered that a large number of the assets still exist for these shows.
• The scene files can be accessed using current technology relatively easily.
• A large amount of the work produced originally was over-built and should hold up well when re-rendered in high definition.

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Varese Sarabande have released the following description of the soundtrack

Original score to the 2013 motion picture composed by Michael Giacchino, an Academy Award winner for his score for Up. When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

We've also got a great look at the artwork for the soundtrack (both front and rear):

The rear art contains a nice look at the track listing, broken down as follows (where an asterisk * indicates the presence of the iconic Star Trek theme composed by Alexander Courage):

1. Logos/Pranking The Natives (3:01)
2. Spock Drops, Kirk Jumps (1:43)
3. Sub Prime Directive* (2:23)
4. London Calling (2:09)
5. Meld-merized (2:40)
6. The Kronos Wartet (5:25)
7. Brigadoom (3:41)
8. Ship To Ship (2:50)
9. Earthbound And Down (2:37)
10. Warp Core Values (2:56)
11. Buying The Space Farm (3:17)
12. The San Fran Hustle (5:00)
13. Kirk Enterprises* (3:00)
14. Star Trek Main Theme* (3:25)

Giacchino's Star Trek Into Darkness score is released by Varese Sarabande on May 28 but you can pre-order the release at a discounted price through Amazon. Head over there now using the links below

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We have used three versions of "The Bonding" in this presentation: a production-era workprint VHS tape dated September 15, 1989, the 2002 DVD release, and the newly released Blu-ray remaster! The Season Three Blu-rays also contain a special audio commentary on this episode, the first to be written by the legendary Ronald D. Moore.

1989 Workprint	2013 Blu-ray
TEASER, SCENE 2A: The workprint uses a cross-dissolve for the away team beam-in; this is actually the first of four primary stages involved in creating the standard TNG transporter effect. In the finished shot, a "shower" of streaks is wiped down over the actors, which then dissolves to a more confined version. A semi-transparent, soft-edged hold-out matte is created by an artist in the shape of the actors; this matte "holds-out" the background to allow the familiar shimmering points of light of the transporter effect to be seen just inside the body. Lastly, another dissolve and soft-edged circular wipe reveals a final residual chest cavity layer which, in turn, is slowly dissolved away.
ACT TWO, SCENE 22A: In the workprint, handheld "home movie" footage featuring Susan Powell and Gabriel Damon (as Marla and Jeremy Aster) is used when editing the sequence. In the finished shot, the footage is resized and cropped to fit the screen of the PADD; in addition, a reflection of Damon (likely shot separately) was added for greater realism. Actor Gabriel Damon doesn't seem to be holding the PADD in this shot (look at those chubby thumbs). In a later scene in the episode, you see his actual hands and realize his fingers are much longer and thinner. Take note how rigidly the hand-actor appears to be holding the prop - it was likely secured to prevent movement. He is also careful not to let his thumbs pass over the display area, which avoids an unneeded complication in the final compositing process.
ACT FOUR, SCENE 46: Here we see several separate elements in the workprint, in quick succession: a background plate of Powell on a couch in the Aster's home, a clean plate of the Aster quarters aboard the Enterprise, and Marina Sirtis and Damon on a bluescreen stage. The bluescreen footage has been carefully lit by Director of Photography Marvin V. Rush to integrate it with both background environments as seamlessly as possible. In the completed shot, the first background plate cross-dissolves to the second to create the effect of Jeremy's fantasy vanishing; the foreground plate with the actors is composited on top.
ACT FOUR, SCENES 53A-69: The Koinonian non-corporeal energy being seems to have been created by traditional cell animation, painted frame-by-frame by an artist on transparencies and photographed in 35mm on an animation stand. The abundant dirt specks on these shots (as seen on DVD) give the effect the appearance of being optically printed on top of the background plates with the actors. This process was certainly an unusual one for TNG, as these type of effects were usually painted electronically by an artist on the Quantel Harry effects-compositing system, with Paintbox software. This change from the norm actually worked out in CBS Digital's favor, as an original 35mm element existed for this effect and could therefore be re-scanned and composited digitally and cleanly with the 35mm background plates. In addition to the visual effects work, the footage of the two stunt men being attacked by the energy being was sped up to give a more violent look to their on-set movements; we had to increase the speed of the workprint footage by nearly 15% in our comparison video to match the final Blu-ray sequence.
ACT FOUR, SCENE 53E: In the workprint, a background plate of the Aster quarters cross-dissolves to footage of Sirtis and Damon performing on a bluescreen stage; a final dissolve reveals the plate of Powell in the Aster's Earth home. In the final composite, a cross-dissolve transitions between the two background plates while the foreground plate with the actors is composited on top.
ACT FIVE, SCENE 70: The force field effect seen here occurs in two stages. As the characters initially hit the field, concentric rings radiate outward due to what appears to be a practical ripple effect in water, with light reflecting off the crests and troughs of an expanding wave. In the Blu-ray footage, it's even more apparent that this element was mirrored both horizontally and vertically as each quadrant appears identical. The second stage (on DVD) seems be either a general turbulent rippling of the same water surface - sped up - or some kind of glitter element, similar to the third stage of the transporter effect. For the Blu-ray, CBS Digital had one of their artists approximate the original look in Autodesk Flame. Force fields on TNG were approached in many different ways, depending on the look that was required. Sometimes a Mylar pom-pom was used; other times, table salt falling onto a simple surface (such as a bowling ball) sufficed. Occasionally, even the water spray from an ordinary garden hose served as a base element for the effect!
ACT FOUR, SCENE 43: In the workprint, Sirtis and Damon perform on the Aster Earth home set with bluescreen behind the doors. In the completed shot, an appropriate angle of an Enterprise corridor is composited into the background.
ACT FIVE, SCENE 74: In the workprint, a background plate of Powell in the Aster home set cuts to footage of Michael Dorn and Damon on a bluescreen stage. In the completed shot, the footage of Powell cross-dissolves to an appropriate angle inside the Aster quarters.

During our analysis of this episode, we noticed one small effect missing from the Blu-ray version of this episode, during the Koinonian attack. Originally, the cell animator highlighted portions of the security guards bodies in white as the energy being contacted them. We mentioned the shot to CBS, and it appears that this split-second effect was unfortunately missed during the restoration of the episode.

Watch out for future installments of our TNG Visual Effects - Behind the Scenes series. In case you missed them, take a look back at our behind-the-scenes look at visual effects from "The Child" and "The Wounded".

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While all the North American and United Kingdom releases of this set include both German audio and subtitle tracks, it appears that the only way to find a set with German-language packaging is through a few select supermarkets - including Real Markt, Edeka, and Kaufland - at a price of €9.99.

Photo posted by MR (CineFacts.de forum)

We're pleased that German fans have the opportunity to pick up a copy of "Angriffsziel Erde" - or "Earth Assault" - in their home territory, but for those German speakers who don't have access to a local Real Markt location, we recommend purchasing the disc from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Have any of you been able to track down a copy of this release in a Real Markt store near you? Let us know in the comments below!

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