True to my idiosyncratic form on pretty much everything, my favourite Star Trek show of all Star Trek shows is Deep Space Nine, which ran for seven seasons from 1993 to 1999.
A marked departure from the shows up to this point, but not so much afterwards where the rules were relaxed a little, DS9, as it is fondly known, was far grittier, much less idealistic, happy to entertain the idea that while humanity and its Federation allies might have mostly but not always bested the darker angels of their nature, the rest of the galaxy hadn’t necessarily followed suit.
Thus rogue elements in the Federation and Starfleet battled it out with the militaristic Cardassians, the peaceful but independence-minded and mystical Bajorans, around whose planet the space station orbited, the avaricious Ferengis and the quadrant-hungry Founders, all of whom at one point or another came to the station and made life difficult for Commander then Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) who was on his own unique familial and spiritual journey.
It was gripping, utterly engrossing storytelling where the stories came to the crew rather than the other way around, and now DS9, in all its glory is being honoured in the labour of love documentary What We Left Behind, which is currently soliciting more funds from fans to complete some critical work for the doco’s final release.
An integral feature of the documentary, whose release is being timed for the show’s 25th anniversary and which is being co-directed by 455 film’s David Zappone and DS9 executive producer Ira Steven Behr, is remastering footage, about 20 minutes in total, into glorious HD.
Currently, the producers have raised enough money to remaster five minutes of footage, but a new funding effort is seeking enough money to complete the other 15 minutes so the entire amount of included footage is as eye-catchingly crisp as the length already in hand.
You only have to take a look at the difference between SD and HD, which you can check out in the pitch video above, which is a work of art into and of itself, and also at io9, to appreciate why upgrading the footage, drawn from all seven seasons of the show, will make such a crucial difference to the final look of the documentary.
The first public screenings of the documentary are scheduled for New York and Los Angeles in September, with a Blu-ray/DVD release to backers to follow (you can order this via the documentary’s main site)