Star Trek: Burnett on Why DS9 & Voyager HD Remasters May Not Happen

Posted in: CBS, Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: Deep Space Nine, star trek, Voyager

Star Trek: Burnett on Why DS9 & Voyager HD Remasters May Not Happen

Star Trek director and editor Robert Meyer Burnett breaks down how difficult it would be to get HD remasters of DS9 and Voyager releases.

Published Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:37:09 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• Robert Meyer Burnett says Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager HD remasters face steep cost and time hurdles.
• Burnett explains why Star Trek TV shot on film but finished on tape loses the detail needed for true modern HD releases.
• Unlike Star Trek: The Next Generation, DS9 and Voyager relied heavily on SD CGI that would need costly rebuilds or rerenders.
• Lost or discarded Star Trek VFX assets could make DS9 and Voyager remasters a multimillion-dollar gamble with weak ROI.

When it comes to putting anything out, in business 101 terms, it has always been about the return on investment (ROI). It gets exceedingly complicated in the streaming world, where convenience is king and fans aren't as attached to physical media when so much of what they have functionally has homes forever, and it's a problem Star Trek fans are certainly familiar with. The problem, unfortunately, is that licenses get moved around and libraries change so much that even original content isn't preserved, and without physical media as a backup, fans are left in the dust when it comes to access. This isn't a problem specific to streaming; it's a problem for all digital releases, as PlayStation 5 owners learned the hard way when a chunk of their film library was removed. To even get a physical release these days, more studios are shuttering their divisions and relying on dedicated third-party companies like SHOUT, Arrow, or Criterion to handle content and distribution.

While The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Enterprise have seen high definition releases and, in the case of the first two, remastered releases with updated VFX, there are Deep Space Nine and Voyager that came in before the HD era. Writer, director, producer, and editor Robert Meyer Burnett, who worked on the bonus features of the TNG and Enterprise sets, spoke with TrekNews.net about the exhaustive process of updating the completed projects, but how the lack of ROI might have hurt the chances of DS9 and Voyager, an opportunity to get the same remastered treatment.

Star Trek: Burnett on the Uphill Battle to Get DS9 and Voyager to Same Treatment as TOS, TNG, and Enterprise

When asked about why Paramount's pending release of DS9 and Voyager on DVD, but opting out of a remaster and/or HD release, "A complicated question with a simple answer; It takes way too much time and money to remaster DS9 and Voyager into HD," Burnett began. "But I have a longer and hopefully more comprehensive answer for you. Because even after eight years since The Original Series Blu-rays hit, there's still a great deal of misunderstanding regarding the restoration of both TOS and TNG."

Burnett broke down the process. "Until fairly recently, both motion pictures and TV were shot mostly on 35mm film — live television, news, talk shows, game shows, soap operas, etc., were shot on various video formats, and the difference from film was readily apparent. Some television used 16mm while certain event films were shot on 65mm, but for the most part, 35mm film was the industry standard. 35mm film has a resolution of about 20 megapixels or greater. Comparatively, NTSC video, used in North America and Asia, has basically 640 pixels by 480 scan lines of resolution… far, far, FAR less than the resolution of 35mm film. Both motion pictures and TV used to be finished the same way. After being shot on film, that film was edited, the negative was cut, and prints were struck from that cut negative. All visual effects, titling, etc., were also shot on film."

He continued, "Depending on the finishing process, the resolution of the 35mm film was retained in the cut negative. This cut negative, properly stored and cared for, was then put away until it was needed to either strike new prints or be scanned for use on television and home video. It was the dark times, before the rise of HD and now UHD images, ALL movies and television originating on film were scanned down to standard definition video resolution from their original negatives. NTSC resolution in North America and Asia. So a 20-megapixel original image was scanned down to a 640-pixel x 480-line image, so we could all watch them on broadcast television, and later VHS and DVD. For over 50 years, the images we all saw on TV were really quite terrible, displaying a mere small fraction of the color and clarity contained in the original 35mm camera negatives. But most people didn't know this. Or even care. Television was television, movies were movies, and of course, movies looked way better when you went to the theater."

It comes down to changing TV standards of the time. "Here's where it gets both interesting and maddening. In the mid-1980s, the advent of cheaper and cheaper computing technology allowed video post-production to grow more and more sophisticated," Burnett said. "Now, a new post-production methodology, once existing only for shows originating on videotape, like soap operas and talk shows, could now be applied to shows shot originally on film. A program could be shot on 35mm film, but instead of editing on film and then cutting negative, the original 35mm material footage would instead be scanned to videotape — at NTSC resolution, and the rest of the post-production process, editing, mixing, etc., would then be completed on tape, at a reduced cost. However, NO FILM NEGATIVE WAS CUT, so the final product would only exist on videotape, at NTSC's greatly reduced video resolution and color. True blacks, stable reds and rich blues simply didn't exist on videotape. Those shows originally shot on 35mm, with a 20-megapixel resolution, were never to be seen again if finished on tape…."

As far as how it relates to why remastering DS9 and Voyager would be difficult, "They absolutely would," Burnett said. "Unlike TNG, which shot both all of their live-action and all of their model photography on 35mm film, which made scanning the original elements possible, both DS9 and Voyager made extensive use of CGI for their visual effects, especially in the later seasons. Those visual effects were rendered in standard NTSC resolution, with a maximum of 525 scan lines of resolution per second, split between two interlaced video fields of 262.5 scan lines running at 60 fields per second. So, the original resolution remains far, far below what audiences used to today's HD, and now UHD resolutions, are accustomed to. These VFX could be upscaled 5x, but they'd have no detail. The Starship Defiant would look like a fuzzy, grey blob. If the VFX assets originally created for the shows could be acquired, which is a HUGE if, they could be reworked and re-rerendered in 2K resolution for Blu-ray, but even then, VFX artists would have to go in and add all kinds of upgrades to the original shots to make the ships, planets, weapons fire and explosions. They look like they fit in with the gorgeous live-action photography. This would entail a number of artists working many, many long hours at considerable expense."

Burnett then broke down that some of the original VFX was lost of the two shows, "During the latter seasons of the TNG restoration, Mojo, one of the original, Emmy-Winning VFX artists on Voyager, who, at the time, was still in possession of many of the original DS9 and Voyager VFX assets, did a re-rendering VFX test on footage from 'The Sacrifice of Angels.' The test really looked spectacular and proved it could be done. But again, it would still take very talented VFX artists working long hours to accomplish the number of shots required for the episodes at great cost. However, since then, I've heard many of these assets have been lost, either through drive failure or simply the dumping of all the original data. The only alternative would be to re-create all of the CG VFX shots from scratch, much the same way CBS Digital re-created TOS' visual effects. But with the number of elements needed during DS9's Dominion War arc, with sometimes hundreds of starships in combat, this could cost in the millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, depending on who was doing the VFX."

For more on Burnett explaining the creative decisions that went into the TOS and TNG remasters, and what to reconstruct and what not to, the decision to build new VFX from the ground up, especially on the extremely dated effects of 1960s TOS, and more, you can check out the entire interview.

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