Remastered STAR TREK TOS

[B-52 GUNNER]

Has anyone seen this yet?

[bandit29]

Ya I read this a few weeks ago. They are supposed to redo all the fx, ships, etc.

http://tv.ign.com/articles/731/731274p1.html

Talk about desperation...

[Pat Payne]

I've gotta admit two things:

1. I can't wait for it, to get a new perspective on TOS.

2. I'm dreading the "First Star Wars, now this" battying that's going to occur.

(Gaaah! the filter strikes again!)

Edited September 12, 2006 by Pat Payne

[bsu legato]

I hear that the Gorn is going to shoot first in this version.

[Mr March]

Read about this on The Digital Bits a while back. Actually looks like a real nice treat for Trek fans. If I didn't despise Trek so much, they would be worth picking up

[JsARCLIGHT]

[sulu from Family Guy] Heeeellllllooooooooooooo! [/sulu from Family Guy]

[Mr March]

I hear that the Gorn is going to shoot first in this version.

Aaahhh, MacrossWorld is indeed back to normal

[azrael]

I've been hearing that Star Wars remark a lot about this update. But from what I've read, most of their work will only be the starship/space VFX.

[UN Spacy]

I saw a video with the NEW cg footage and it looks promising. Hopefully it'll have that Mirror, Mirror feel from the last season of Enterprise.

[Pat Payne]

I hear that the Gorn is going to shoot first in this version.

Nah, but I hear that they're going to have the Tribbles riding comical dino things down the corridors of the Enterprise

Edited September 12, 2006 by Pat Payne

[sketchley]

New soundtrack - given that some of the principle actors have passed on, how are they going to remaster the voices? The clip provided above didn't mention anything about that...

Though, it will be "interesting" to see. Interesting, as in what subtle changes they will make to bring it closer into line with the spin-off series. Perhaps adding a logo here or there... Klingon text on their ships, etc.. Perhaps the "ST: Enterprise"'s title ship appearing in the background when at a starbase...

What is really picking my interest is their talk about the longer cuts - apparently in the past few decades, commercial time has increased, and what we can see now, wasn't exactly what was seen back in the day... interested, but not going to go out of my way to see it.

[David Hingtgen]

Being a big Trek fan and reading about it on a Trek forum, I gather the change is 99% only remaking exterior planet and ship shots. And there won't be any artistic/drama changes----they will try to do them exactly the same, star-by-star, only with CG. No "let's add a shockwave ring when it blows up and then have the Enterprise bank away dramatically " SW stuff. And the mirror universe ep of ENT was almost certainly their "test-run" for a Constitution class CG.

Replacing other effects with new ones will be very rare. There will be a few corrections made--CORRECTIONS. Like there's a time where Scotty welds a bulkhead together with a phaser---but there's no beam coming from his phaser. They'll add the beam that was originally supposed to be there. And at least few times where the Enterprise was supposed to be firing phasers---but torpedoes came out.

[Sundown]

Being a big Trek fan and reading about it on a Trek forum, I gather the change is 99% only remaking exterior planet and ship shots. And there won't be any artistic/drama changes----they will try to do them exactly the same, star-by-star, only with CG. No "let's add a shockwave ring when it blows up and then have the Enterprise bank away dramatically " SW stuff. And the mirror universe ep of ENT was almost certainly their "test-run" for a Constitution class CG.

Ironically, an added shock ring would be more authentically Trek than a rip-off of Star Wars. It was Star Trek VI that first featured the ring, and it worked. Star Wars then tried to shoe-horn that effect into every planetary explosion they could find in the movies.

I would actually have liked to see the exterior effects brought up to movie quality, with a grand and gritty style and direction that more resembled the original six star trek movies, but this would probably be sacriligeous.

[David Hingtgen]

I know, I always mention to people about Praxis' explosion being the first "big shockwave effect".

Gritty=heresy apparently. Most people find the new CG 1701 to be too "grid lined" and varigated color-wise---they apparently want the saucer to look like it's molded from one vac-formed piece of grey plastic. I like the new CG one, better than the previous one from DS9's Trials and Tribbleations. The new one is every so slightly plated, with very faint grid lines. The DS9 one was pretty heavily paneled in comparison.

My only real complaint (and many others') is the lighting. Every window GLOWS with a halo surrounding it like it was a million candle-power beam. Or the light of God. It's a WINDOW. Not a SEARCHLIGH. Nav lights have the same problem---real nav lights don't glow so bright they illuminate their surroundings. They're small pinpoints to identify attitude. Just watch the movies---1701 refit and A have tiny little lights, not blazing becons. And the windows are lit, but don't themselves emit light.

Edited September 13, 2006 by David Hingtgen

[Sundown]

Here's a higher res version of the same promo.

Star Trek TOS Remastered

I don't know what to feel about the new shots. I mainly feel nothing. They don't look terrible, but they still look a little "off" and cheezy, maybe because they tried to replicate the unrealistic camera movements and lighting of the original shots. And speaking of lighting, I would have preferred they used lighting that really "placed" the model in its environment the way the movies did, instead of lighting it any ol' way and slapping it on a space background.

Gritty=heresy apparently. Most people find the new CG 1701 to be too "grid lined" and varigated color-wise---they apparently want the saucer to look like it's molded from one vac-formed piece of grey plastic.

I know the 1701 is sacred, and fans are extremely sensitive to changes in its interpretation, however subtle. I guess I would have liked to see a new model really look like it would belong in a spacedock next to the 1701A from the movies. It should look like a massive ship with its own heft, rather than a smooth chunk of plastic. Now I don't mean I'd want a bunch of crap and greeble added to it... but perhaps there are ways to light, finish, and render/film the surface so that it does look like a real ship rather than a cleaned up simulation of a poorly filmed plastic model.

[Nied]

My only disappointment with this is that it appears they've really done a move for move re-creation of the effects from the original, complete with all the weird ship movement artifacts from the pre-motion control era special effects. Thus the shiny new CG Enterprise still bounces around drunkenly while flying towards that planet instead of going in a straight line. One wonders if they're still going to switch between the pilot version of the ship and the series version of the ship between shots like in the original. Also while they made a big deal about the Earth supposedly looking so great in the promotional stuff I've read but seeing it for myself it looks really bad (not enough clouds I think). I am really impressed with how good the original footage looks though. The colors are much brighter and everything is much more defined. Overall I guess I was expecting more from the new Special Effects and less from the original footage.

[Skull Leader]

They get an "A" for effort, but they could go the extra step and make the space scenes smoother. I agree that if they're gonna CG up the space stuff, they might as well make the motions more realistic. I figure I'll probably get this.

[David Hingtgen]

Well it premieres this weekend most places. At least in my city it's replacing when they showed ENT.

[Sundown]

My only disappointment with this is that it appears they've really done a move for move re-creation of the effects from the original, complete with all the weird ship movement artifacts from the pre-motion control era special effects. Thus the shiny new CG Enterprise still bounces around drunkenly while flying towards that planet instead of going in a straight line.

Yeah... not sure what's the point if the ships are still going to move badly. The sharp CG graphics actually highlight the mismatched movement of the ships against the camera and the stars, and the old models almost look better, being real objects and capturing more lighting nuances. They should have just taken the model from the Smithsonian and refilmed new sequences, or done the same with another model built from scratch. But that wouldn't fly in today's look-what-we-can-redo-with-CG age.

As much as I find myself hating all new things Trek, I actually like the way the 1701 was lit in the Enterprise episode A Mirror Darkly, though the rendering could have been better.

[David Hingtgen]

Heh heh---one thing Trek purists seem to hate more than most any other revision, is how the original Enterprise was "restored" for the Smithsonian. Basically, it was panel lined and weathered. Severely.

Still, I didn't think they'd match the STUTTER of the movement. That's just plain stupid. Frankly, that's in the category of error, like Soctty's missing phaser beam. It's not intentional, it's just what happened, since motion-control cameras didn't exist then.

[Mercurial Morpheus]

Yeah... not sure what's the point if the ships are still going to move badly. The sharp CG graphics actually highlight the mismatched movement of the ships against the camera and the stars, and the old models almost look better, being real objects and capturing more lighting nuances. They should have just taken the model from the Smithsonian and refilmed new sequences, or done the same with another model built from scratch. But that wouldn't fly in today's look-what-we-can-redo-with-CG age.

As much as I find myself hating all new things Trek, I actually like the way the 1701 was lit in the Enterprise episode A Mirror Darkly, though the rendering could have been better.

I agree with that sentiment. Personally, I've never had a problem with the old effects. The ship looked realistic enough, and while the planets needed a bit of work, it got the job done. Though I've always been in the camp that thinks when done well, a plastic model will always look more realistic than a CGI one. After all, it actually is real and tangible. In respect to Star wars, I think the old X-wings looked considerably better than the new CG ones. I'm sure I'll feel the same here. You'll probably see more detail as it's not filmed with forty year old cameras like the old, but CG always looks cartoonish to me nine times out of ten.

They probably could've or should've smoothed out the movement. With the faker looking CG, it'll probably stand out more. I can't really tell from the trailer. Though I appreciate that they're going with the "we respect the original work so as not to think we should trumpt it". Part of the reason i hated the Star Wars SE so was the total slap in the face it was to the original artists. Especially Dykstra's masterful Battle of Yavin sequence.

Personally, I just don't like the idea of CG in the classic series. Why couldn't they just restore it and let it be? I don't mind approaching it with the same mentality as the Director's Edition of The Motion Picture, i.e. just fixing what needs to be fixed. But CGI every exterior is pushing it. I just don't get why they'd CG it for what seems to be no other reason then to say, "look, it's CGI now, no more sixties effect, just replicas of them". The whole, "make their mouths water" line pretty much sums it up. "People think CG is cool, let's CG it". While at the same time fearing such a backlash as to keep it relatively the same.

So all in all it's just another reason to say, "Watch this!"

As for the other parts, the remastered imagery is great. I remember back when they did the Star Trek Special Edition run for the SCi-Fi channel. I recored the whole run with Shatner hosting. The image is a plus and makes me glad I haven't bought the series yet.

The redone sore I'm a little iffy about. I've never been a fan of remixes when it comes to classic audio. Though it sounds like they're trying as hard as possible to keep it accurate. Assuming they suceed, and not decide to remix the whole thing in 5.1 for absolutely no good reason, I should have no problem with it.

Bonus points is the eventual DVD release includes the original audio (I doubt it though).

So really, the only thing I'm not liking here is the CG. Though that's to my natural aversion to pure CGI. In the end, I liked what they did with TMP, but I just don't see the point here other then to say, "Don't watch this on the Sci-Fi channel or G4, watch this version, it's got shiny new Enterprise!"

As for the Enterprise episode, what's this "Enterprise" that you speak of? I've never heard of such a series.

Well, at least it's not like the original gets locked in a vault never to be seen again...

Sniped!

Heh heh---one thing Trek purists seem to hate more than most any other revision, is how the original Enterprise was "restored" for the Smithsonian. Basically, it was panel lined and weathered. Severely.

Still, I didn't think they'd match the STUTTER of the movement. That's just plain stupid. Frankly, that's in the category of error, like Soctty's missing phaser beam. It's not intentional, it's just what happened, since motion-control cameras didn't exist then.

I walked all over the Air and Space Museum years ago, yet saddly missed the room it was in (it was a goal too). I never knew they did that. That does piss me off. Geez.

Like I said above, I haven't really seen much of the footage, but I do agree that if they were going to do this, they probably could've smoothed it out. It's really hard to tell anything from these videos. EDIT: Reading the above IGN artical, they claim that they have indeed smotthed out the movement. I also take issue with saying they'll be prettier. Prettier in that they won't be unrestored footage? (duh) Or prettier as in CG supposedly looks better than models? Going from the little I've seen, some shots look great, others look downright nasty. For all the talk about not wanting it to be jarring and to emulate the original, it still stands to wonder why they just didn't fix the errors and restore the rest.

It seems that the biggest change is to the planets. I loved how over the line about keeping the new effects as faithful as possible, they show a shot of a planet on the viewscreen where the entire composition has been vastly altered.

Edited September 13, 2006 by Mercurial Morpheus

[Sundown]

Heh heh---one thing Trek purists seem to hate more than most any other revision, is how the original Enterprise was "restored" for the Smithsonian. Basically, it was panel lined and weathered. Severely.

I had no idea. I just now googled for a picture of the Smithsonian model, and it is indeed way too weathered. The original prop model was probably a bit boring to look at, but to deface a piece of TV history like that...

And it does look like they're trying to replicate things shot for shot, camera movement for camera movement, and fixing only really glaring errors. The clip of the cg Romulan bird of prey shows it flying away from the camera, not along its axis but crabbing to the left. It's also flying into the moving starfield at a weird angle, and it's kind of disorienting to look at. The shot of the Enterprise flying away from the Earth also shows a similar problem, and it's not really flying straight with respect to the camera's position. Either the camera's also moving, or the ship's flying off axis, but either way, it visually looks like the latter, and I'm not sure why anyone would want that effect.

I'm sure most folks won't be able to pick out just what's wrong with these shots, and perhaps the goal of the art team was to make sure you'd never be able to spot the new footage if you weren't told about them... but it just seems that their goal should have been to make everything more believable while staying faithful to the established style, instead of just making everything sharper and prettier while still laboriously reproducing all the old, distracting visual errors.

And again, the lighting used just isn't convincing. In fact, ships now look worse set against an uber-realistic Earth than they used to flying over a fake looking one.

Ah well, I do appreciate the crew's reverence for the original material, even if I don't agree with how they went about things.

Edited September 13, 2006 by Sundown

[Sundown]

In respect to Star wars, I think the old X-wings looked considerably better than the new CG ones. I'm sure I'll feel the same here. You'll probably see more detail as it's not filmed with forty year old cameras like the old, but CG always looks cartoonish to me nine times out of ten.

I'm only slightly torn about Star Wars. I prefer the old models-- they do have a certain rough, gritty, presence about them that the sparkly, sharp, CG X-wings don't have. But the CG shots do show better movement in a few tasteful sequences, even if they went a little overboard with making every shot "dynamic" for my tastes.

But yeah, CG's biggest boon is realistic, flawless camera and object movement, and it just makes no sense to me to ditch the best that CG offers in order to simulate bad 60's effects, except made prettier and smoother and not necessarily more convincing.

"People think CG is cool, let's CG it". While at the same time fearing such a backlash as to keep it relatively the same.

Yeah. Seems like they're CG-ing it for all the wrong reasons while trying to have their cake and eat it too.

The redone sore I'm a little iffy about. I've never been a fan of remixes when it comes to classic audio. Though it sounds like they're trying as hard as possible to keep it accurate. Assuming they suceed, and not decide to remix the whole thing in 5.1 for absolutely no good reason, I should have no problem with it.

I was impressed with how close the new orchestra sounds to the original track. The most noticeable difference is the female vocals-- the original vocalist had a sultrier, thicker sound that had a haunting quality about it. The new vocalist sounds very similar except that her voice is clearer and sharper, and she doesn't seem to crescendo at the song's end with as much power. It's a small thing, but I could actually feel the difference, even after not having heard the original theme for awhile. Maybe it'll sound closer after the mix.

[Uxi]

Looks pretty good to me.

[Mechwolf]

Ironically, an added shock ring would be more authentically Trek than a rip-off of Star Wars. It was Star Trek VI that first featured the ring, and it worked. Star Wars then tried to shoe-horn that effect into every planetary explosion they could find in the movies.

You do realize ILM is who did the SFX for ST VI, including the shock ring? In fact they have done the SFX for most of the Trek films.

[Nied]

I had no idea. I just now googled for a picture of the Smithsonian model, and it is indeed way too weathered. The original prop model was probably a bit boring to look at, but to deface a piece of TV history like that...

To be fair, I used to live near the Smithsonian and as any who's read the Aircraft Vs Superthread can imagine I visited the Air And Space museum fairly regularly, and saw the E-nil both before and after the restoration. While it looks like crap in the pictures it the weathering is much subtler in person. Last I saw of it the Enterprise was housed in the gift shop.

[terry the lone wolf]

This has been long overdue. Instead of making a prequel they should've done this!

[bandit29]

This has been long overdue. Instead of making a prequel they should've done this!

No what they should have done is make a new show that is worth watching. The Star Trek franchise has become even a bigger joke.

[Hurin]

Much of the original series is still worth watching. Even if it is a "broader dramatic style" from an earlier era.

As for the effects and remastering, I think they've struck the right tone. I have faith, if only because a middle-aged George Lucas isn't involved.

If Gene Rodenberry were still alive and were involved, I'd be worried. The original creators feel more free to mangle something even after it's been in the public domain for a long while. Which is made worse because they seem to lose their touch as they get old.

[Pat Payne]

Actually, that was the same conclusion that Paramount came to after TMP. They were not pleased with Roddenberry's handling of the film and his constant interference with the production team to which they partially attributed the critical and commercial failure of TMP (and they were allegedly appalled at a script he was suposed to be writing for the followup that would have involved the Enterprise crew having to assassinate JFK or allow him to be assassinated to restore the timestream), and accordingly kicked him upstairs to being the "creator emeritus" of the franchise with little executive power.

As to the SFX, although they get definite kudos for not being unobtrusive, I wish they had been just a tiny bit MORE visually adventurous, at least in the shots that they showed in the trailers. Although I like Star Trek: TOS, it certainly doesn't hold any claim to having dynamic SFX shots.

Djer, I agree with you to a point. Braga and Berman have been a disaster for the franchise, and I'm glad that they sent them packing with STXI. Voyager, to me, is unwatchable. Janeway, as a character, couldn't make a decision to save her life. However, I did like the last season of Enterprise. If they had started THERE, and ditched that "temporal cold war" and "Xindi war" crap and gone into the TOS Prequel fanservice as they did in the last season, I think it would have gone better.

The other thing though that would help, IMHO, is if they both brought back some of the original writers (I'd love to see DC Fontana do another Trek script) as well as go back to the old system of allowing outside freelancers to submit scripts (I'm not a screenwriter, and so this is not self-serving ), and bust open the closed system of a limited pool of writers who have been milked for ten years of stories. Some of the best Trek scripts from the first two series came from outside writers (such as David Gerrold's "Trouble with Tribbles" or Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever").

Edited September 17, 2006 by Pat Payne

[GobotFool]

Yeah, when I saw that every effect was just a shot for shot replica with new FX I was a little disapointed, I don't think they had to go that far to preserve the look of TOS as to be honest they only seemed to move the way they did because of the limited FX as well.

As for ST, They should have ended at DS9 and waited another 10 or 20 years.

[cobywan]

I am currently of the opinion that UPN was the demise of Star Trek. It doesn't get mentioned much the the Berman was in charge all through Nect Gen and DS9. All people talk about it how he messed up on Voyager and Enterprise.

I think it's far more honest to say that having a network meddling in Trek again was the true disaster.

[Dobber]

Well, I just got to watch one of the remastered episodes and while the picture quality is great, I too was a bit disappointed at the "NEW" effects. Shot for shot with CG including all the awkward movements of the ships was really disappointing. I also thought they where going to do something alittle more updated and different from what was originally there. Also, I thought they would also make Phaser effects instead of the torpedo effects when they say fire Phasers.

Chris

[sketchley]

I am currently of the opinion that UPN was the demise of Star Trek. It doesn't get mentioned much the the Berman was in charge all through Nect Gen and DS9. All people talk about it how he messed up on Voyager and Enterprise.

I think it's far more honest to say that having a network meddling in Trek again was the true disaster.

Agreed.

[azrael]

Agreed.

That's a fair place to point blame at. Berman was with TNG and DS9 since the beginning so he was doing something right with those 2. What happened with Voyager and Enterprise would fall around the time UPN took over broadcast of the Star Trek series. First Contact was done right as well and Berman was in charge of that.