The Star Trek: Picard Legacy Collection is huge, and for anyone new to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and wants to follow everything this captain (wonderfully played by Sir Patrick Stewart) has done, it’s the perfect jumping in point! Not everyone will have grown up watching this franchise’s best comeback. Without it, the subsequent series would not have been created. We have Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy and so on. Although not every series was made avaiilable on Blu-ray, that’s the hope most long time fans crave.
In this release, all the episodes are identified on the sleeve that makes up each case. Each plastic enclosure is sturdy, and although I’d be tempted to put the series into a binder, I don’t need to rush to do that. The discs aren’t that hard to remove, and instead of forcing, I gently tugged.
And as my unboxing video shows (featured below), there’s lots of design and packaging aesthetics to like. After sitting down to view the remasters, the details are far better than what I recall from my television viewing days. Although Blu-ray isn’t as forgiving with the bits of blue screening used, some suspension of belief is required.
The design of the menu replicates the look of one of Starfleet’s computer console. And although this 16:9 layout jumps to the broadcast ratio of 4:3, this flex is hardly an issue. Although I recall some television releases were cropped to the cinema format (like Battlestar Galactica), the choice to keep this series as originally presented has my respect!
It’ll take time for me to go through all the bonus features, and I’m fairly sure there’s nothing new. Thankfully, all the newly made material from the special story arc releases are teased at, and I assume they’re part of this Legacy Collection. As a result, there’s no need to upgrade from the past release to this one unless the fan wants the book.
Now, as for why Picard’s “secondary” appearance is not important, that’s because most fans saw the moment with Captain Sisko a mere passing of the torch. For myself, I believed there was much more going on, since it concerned how Ben Sisko felt about meeting his wife’s killer. Paramount decided not to remaster Deep Space 9 mostly because the initial sales of The Next Generation on Blu-ray did not do all that well. But after watching the said sizzle reel, the reminder that Julian Brasshir met Data in the episode, “Birthright,” hints that maybe some work was done. When considering Shout! Factory released What We Left Behind: Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (review link), they did some work to show how awesome this series would look.
As for the details of just how good the sound is, that’s something I could not report until after watching more than a few episodes for this followup. Although the DTS-HD MA 7.1 audio format isn’t hugely taken advantage of, that’s because not every scene really needs it. And for the films, they’re mixed in Dolby TrueHD 7.1
And maybe, if sales exceed expectations, Paramount may well remaster the missing series. What Deep Space 9 left behind is as memorable and important to maintaining the security of Alpha Quadrant. After all, The Dominion War is just as much of a threat as the Borg Invasion, and just how many captains have turned into prophets?
When The Picard Legacy Collection All Leads Up to The U.S.S. Enterprise D Returning…
