The issue with showing the documentary in front of the film was that it showed all of the important moments from the*entire whole episode, including the ending! If it had to be in front of the film, I would have cut the documentary down to a third, or even a quarter of it's running length and slap on the "See the full documentary on the BluRay set!" at the end. Although I am thankful that Jonathan Frakes openly admitted that they should have used Shelby more often in the series since she was a very well done character who could have had tremendous staying power. When the Star Trek TNG novel writers were doing their own spin off series that would feature Shelby, they actually asked Ron Moore if they had any plans on bringing her back in any way, to which he responded:
Ronald D. Moore said:
"No way – do what you want with her."
Sigh.
As for Seth McFarlane? Yeah, he probably heard that Robert Meyer Burnett was doing the bonus material and begged him to be a part of it. While I don't mind a fan's perspective on the event that this two-parter had, it would have been nice if they got someone who actually had something informative to say about the episode. Don't forget that this is the same guy who says that there's not enough material in Star Trek to do a multi-part dedicated series unlike Star Wars.... which at this point only has seven movies.
Couple of things I noted.
- The long pan out of the Borg Interior from "Q Who" was used. You will note that there are indeed some Borg moving in the back ground and, for reasons that don't make sense, seeing Borg drones using "First Contact" style regeneration alcoves.
- Thanks to the remastering work of the HD team, the phaser effects now more clearly showcase that they're on a multi-frequency firing rate, as evidence by the blue/orange coloring of the beam itself. Looking back there's certainly evidence that it was there so I'm glad it's made more clear.
- In the briefing room, whenever the crew are doing something that involves the wall display, you can now see the reflection of whatever is on the screen on the table's very reflective surface.
- When Riker orders Data to take the shuttle in unpowered, the next shot of the shuttle model now has a "powering down" effect before it cuts back to Data and Worf on the inside.
- The new Borg Cube explosion was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Looking back at the original, it really does look like a very small model being blown up with no sense of scale. Not a bad change.
Overall, it was worth the hour and a half drive to the theater to see it.
Before I go, there is one minor gripe I have about this episode that just bugs me.
CRUSHER: With our recent experience in nanotechnology, we might be able to introduce a destructive breed of nanites into the Borg.
SHELBY: Nanites?
DATA: Robots small enough to enter living cells.
RIKER: How long would it take to execute that?
CRUSHER: That's the problem. Two to three weeks.
TROI: In two or three weeks, nanites may be all that's left of the Federation.
I cannot believe our heroes decided not to go with this plan simply because the Federation 'might' not survive during that length of time. For one thing, there are hundreds of other worlds with other forms of alien life that are both technologically advanced and sophisticated who are not a part of the Federation. And as many episodes of Star Trek, including TNG and movies have shown, it takes a long time to get from planet to planet. So unless this was JJ Abrams' universe where you can go anywhere in the galaxy pretty much in minutes, there really is no reason why the crew shouldn't be working on this as a last resort rather than simply brushing it aside like "If Earth gets destroyed, what's the point in saving anyone else?".
. Is this the "movie" I'm thinking of? (assimilate this!) I haven't seen TNG since it originaly aired.
