The Picard Legacy Collection puts one of the greatest remasters of all time in sprawling context
Like a lot of folks here at Polygon, I’m a bit of a physical media nerd. I’m not going to extol its virtues here (we have a regular roundup for that), but I’ve recently leveled up my media library game, obsessing over the quality of a given release, learning about the work that goes into a good restoration, being a stickler about packaging and extras. It’s a fun way to engage with art more intentionally, like a pop culture archeologist.
This is how I recently learned what an incredible feat the Star Trek: The Next Generation remaster was. Released from 2012 to 2014 in celebration of the show’s 25th anniversary, the remaster brought the 1987 series into high definition through incredibly painstaking labor. The short version is that, due to production streamlining that was common at the time, the team working on the remasters basically had to rebuild the episodes from scratch. Locating, then re-cutting the original negatives, rebuilding all the special effects, compositing everything all over again and striving to stay faithful to the original intent, warts and all.
The remaster was a fascinating and wildly expensive labor of love, one that is almost certainly not going to repeated for Deep Space Nine or Star Trek: Voyager. So it’s worth checking out every iteration of its release, to consider picking it up. For example: this fall’s Picard Legacy Collection.
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An absurdly comprehensive collection of just about everything Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard was in (barring a guest appearance or two like Deep Space Nine’s pilot), the box set includes all seven seasons of The Next Generation remastered, all four Star Trek movies featuring the Next Generation cast, and all three seasons of Picard, all in a
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