It’s been a few months since we got our first glimpse at high-definition content from What We Left Behind, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine retrospective documentary, and while backer-funded premieres in Los Angeles, New York, and the UK have come and gone, fans have been wondering when a wider audience will get to see the film.

Today, in a new update today from Ira Steven Behr, the DS9 and What We Left Behind executive producer has shared a new status update on what’s going on inside the production of the documentary — and has also revealed a special surprise!

In today’s release, Behr details why things are taking a bit longer than originally planned: the team is moving forward with a full conversion of all used Deep Space Nine footage to high-definition.

So what the hell happened? One night last August, I suddenly realized I did not want to release the film until we had remastered all the show clips we were using to high definition. Now at first, [the DS9 doc team was] not thrilled with that decision. They said that it would be too expensive; that even with another fundraiser we’d still have to take out a huge loan to pay for it. That it wasn’t financially feasible. That the remastering process would take months and months and months, and we’d never have the film ready for 2018. And you know what? They were right. But this is an opportunity — perhaps the only opportunity for years to come — to show how great ‘Deep Space Nine’ looks in HD… and I’m afraid I can’t pass that up. You’re going to get the best-quality version of the film we can provide, and that’s going to take more time. So if you wanto be angry, be angry! If you want to complain and vent, please do. I get it — I’m annoyed, and it was my idea! But bear with me. In the long run, when you finally sit down and watch the film, I think you’ll be happy. And though you may not think so now, you’ll come to agree that it was indeed worth the wait.

While it’s great to hear that the documentary will be full of HD content from the series, the even bigger news today is that we’ve now got our first look at high-definition video from the rescanned film masters, as part of Ira Behr’s video update.

In this newly-revealed HD excerpt from “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang,” we can see the fan-favorite strut of the DS9 crew down the Promenade, ready to head to the holosuite and save Vic Fontaine’s casino from mobster Frankie Eyes.

As first revealed in the August production update, we can definitely see that the additional widescreen composition made possible from the original filming process is being used here, as there’s definitely new picture material visible on the sides of the frame — though it’s resulted in a slight loss of material at the top and bottom of the image.

That being said, we know there are plenty of original-aspect-ratio purists out there, so please keep in mind that this widescreen look for the Deep Space Nine clips is only for the documentary, and is not an indication of what any (potential) remastered version of the complete series may look like.

Now as for the image quality seen in this HD clip, remember that this is a compressed video uploaded to YouTube, so the final documentary will look much closer to the “pure” HD look you’re probably expecting — in addition, there’s still more work to be done on the remastering process itself, the documentary team tells us:

The HD remasters are still an ongoing process — we’re working with the team at CBS Digital to get access to scan the many boxes of original film negative and search for the correct scenes and takes. Any additional post-production work (recoloring, cleaning up the picture, editing and VFX work) is being handled by our team internally for purposes of the documentary. We’re hoping to get Jonathan West back in to oversee final color, and have been working with the Okudas, Doug Drexler, and Dan Curry throughout for support and supervision.

As Behr and the documentary team has said multiple times over the last few years, this HD footage may only ever find a home within What We Left Behind, but boy is this a tantalizing look at what a full remastering project for the Deep Space Nine series could bring us.

Those who donated to the most recent @DS9Doc fundraiser drive are receiving a special note from producer @IraStevenBehr and a cool challenge coin #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/k40fEOnd9Q — TrekCore 🖖 (@TrekCore) December 19, 2018

Regarding the fundraiser itself, we’re told that there’s still time to contribute to the “HD Heroes” second-wave campaign; while they have completely sold out of the ‘legacy sponsorship’ spots, there are still #HDHero challenge coins available, which have just begun shipping.

While we know that some backers have been frustrated and the long development timeline of the documentary, we’re happy to wait until the team can bring us as much HD Deep Space Nine content as possible — so while things may be taking longer than originally expected, it sure seems like the wait will be worth our patience.

What do you think of this latest update, and our first look at high-definition footage from the series? Share your thoughts in the comments below!