Very cool Trek stuff: the classic Star Trek show is being remastered, cleaned up, with new digital effects put in. The new effects are generally pretty good, and are not very distracting, like in some other efforts (cough cough Star Wars cough).
The newest one is one of my favorites, "Operation: Annihilate", where little rubber gloppy things take over Spock and Kirk has to blind him. TrekMovie.com (what? you don’t have them in your RSS feed? I’m gonna have to take away your little rubber pointy ear appliques) has stills and video from the new version.
It’s funny: somehow, it does actually breathe some new life into the show. Back in the 60s they simply didn’t have the tech to show some things, so you’d hear Kirk order the bridge crew to do something, Sulu would hit a button while saying "Aye aye," a sound effect would ensue, and that was it. Now they can actually add in the effect, and it adds a cool factor without looking like a cheap gimmick to make fanboys like me watch.
I’d watch anyway. But now it’s even more fun.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I was SO enjoying these remastered episodes, but it’s looking like Toshiba, who had been paying for the work to be done on these, has withdrawn their financial support. It’s quite likely we might not be seeing many more of these being done.
http://formatwarcentral.com/index.php/2008/02/18/star-trek-season-2-canceled-not-delayed/
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I think the new remastered version is great. But, quit knocking Star Wars! SW is way better than Trek! But, BSG trumps them all.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I remember that episode. I think it was about a world that had been conquered by an order of over easy eggs, and the breakfast was eventually defeated with a tanning booth. Good times….. good times….
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Sorry, I still like em more pre-upgrade. Using one’s imagination is far better than seeing a cheesy 3d animation. The switching back and fourth is really what gets me. I am a huge TOS fan, old school.
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Can we have the real link please?
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Redoing special effects in classic SF is no different from colorizing old movies — sure some people might think it’s “better” and be induced to watch, but it removes the original artistry. What’s next, redoing Forbidden Planet with a CG Monster from the Id? Replacing the stop-motion Talos in “Jason and the Argonauts” with modern FX?
And on top of that, the new Star Trek FX really aren’t that great — they look like something a college student did five years ago.
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Seems I’m one of the few that actually like the effects.
The exteriors make me belief more that they’re on a real ship, and not a model.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just weird.
Decados, according to what I read at TrekMovie.com, the thing with Toshiba is that they’re not making anymore HD format episodes.
The remastering of episodes is still going on.
CBS/Paramount is looking toward Blu-Ray discs for these episodes.
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Think of it! In another forty years, we can redo the effects we’ve just redone!
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The same week that the episode originally aired in 1967 the school cafeteria served mini-pizzas which bore a strangely similar appearance to the “microbes,” particularly at the end when they started frying in the UV radiation from the satellites . . .
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I dunno. This was one of my *least* favorite first season episodes (do I get extra credit for knowing that it was, in fact, the very last ep of the first season?). I was only a junior in high school when it aired originally, but even then I caught a fairly major mistake in the dialog. When McCoy says, “I threw the whole spectrum at him (Spock) with no effect”, and later they find out that it’s *visible* light that kills the things, I said, “waitaminnit, isn’t visible light part of the spectrum?”
I think it was the first and last time we ever heard about Kirk’s brother.
WRT these upgraded episodes, I can’t comment directly since I haven’t seen any, but my cynical take is that this is a way of sucking even more money out of those of us (myself included) that ponied up nearly 200 Federation credits for the DVD’s of the entire original series. No thanks.
- Jack
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Hey, don’t insult Star Wars!
I linked to your reviews of the prequels in a Publisher “mini-site” about SW that I made for school!
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Are they going to redo William Shatner to make it appear like he can act?
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
You’ve got to admit , though the Special Edition Star Wars effects are lacking , those films really pioneered the way for CG , it’s likely that we wouldn’t even have the ‘New’ Trek DVD’s without the SE version of Star Wars.
I’d love to see what they could do to those crappy effects now with the advancements that have been made since 1997 , I bet they could really do some cool stuff!
February 24th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Said Michael Lonergan on 23 Feb 2008 at 3:37 pm :
“I think the new remastered version is great. But, quit knocking Star Wars! SW is way better than Trek! But, BSG trumps them all.”
Nah. Babylon 5 thrashes all of them.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:29 am
My alltime faves for SF TV :
1) Babylon 5
2) Dr Who
3) Firefly (Even if that was more Space Western a lotta the time! Awesoenm dialogue & characters..)
4) Star Trek : The Next Gen
5) Jeremiah (Nothing like a good apocalypse!)
6) Battle Star Galactica (new version – havn’t seen old.)
7) Original Star Trek
Star Trek : Voyager
9) Star Trek : DS9
10) Crusade ( A one season B5 spinoff that never quite got going ..)
11) Blakes 7
12) Space Above & Beyond
& finally
Dead Last) Enterprise (a.k.a. Not just flogging a dead horse but urinating on its memory too …
)
All, o’course, In My Humble Opinion Only.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Hmm.. the 8 + ) =
emoticon autoformat thingy can be problematic …
8 ) Star Trek : Voyager is what I meant ..
Voyager had its moments – good & bad – and was patchy – got off to a bad start but then had some nice episodes with the Borg and 7-of-9′s intro …
Original Trek was pioneering and enabled the others to be made so deserves credit for that – NextGen revived TV SF and was also excellent – but then the Trek spin-off seemed increasingly staler ..
Star Wars being movies rather than TV doesn’t qualify for this – SW beats ST hands down for me …
(The Trek movies Versus StarWars? No contest there! SW every time & by parsecs!)
Oh, & I’m only assessing what I’ve seen hence no ‘Stargate’ & whatever else ..
—————————
All In My Subjective Opinion Naturally.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Got to put my two pence worth in about Trek vs. Wars: IMHO Star Wars isn’t even SF, it’s merely space opera! Show me one scrap of science fiction in Star Wars! You could take away the spaceships and lightsabres and you could rewrite the whole thing as a western, with a bit of religion thrown in (the so-called “force”)… At least Trek tries to extrapolate future science from current ideas and research, even if it does add in a bucketload of technobabble. And it tackles real-life social commentary (drug problems, racism, Aids, controversial medical research, you name it), which for me is worth more than any number of space battles.
I bet I’ve just made a death-star-full of enemies with that rant!
February 24th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Oh, and another thing: In Star Wars the writer (Lucas?) didn’t even know what a parsec WAS: there was a lot of backpedalling when that was pointed out. The so-called “explanation” of that gaffe is ridiculous. You wouldn’t say you got from New York to California in less than 1000 MILES, would you? Even if you can swallow that, nobody can deny that a parsec is a unit of distance based on the Earth’s motion around the Sun. So much for a galaxy far, far away!
OK, I’ll take my pointed ears off now.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:59 am
… And why are my comments still being flagged by the spam filter???
February 24th, 2008 at 6:19 am
@Jack Hagerty: I recommend you watch the episode again. You memory is faulty; there is nothing wrong with the science!
February 24th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Cue Death Star Music @ Elwood…
February 24th, 2008 at 9:21 am
@Elwood Herring,
The “Family Guy” Star Wars episode “Blue Harvest” pointed out the same thing you mention, regarding parsecs. It’s even brought up by Phil in his book.
Great minds think alike, do they not?
February 24th, 2008 at 9:39 am
If you have ever wondered what the craft from Arthur Clarks Rendevous With Rama might look like from the inside, here’s a link to an animation fly-thru of that ten mile wide space colony on Mike Combs SpaceStudiesInstitute site. It’s really awesome,,,
http://space.mike-combs.com/rama_vid.htm
GAry 7
February 24th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I love the remastered Trek episodes. They updated the old shows without really changing them in any fundamental way. George Lucas should take note.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
If you watch the “parsecs” scene closely, Obi-Wan DOES flinch a little when Han says it, as if Obi-Wan knows he’s being lied to.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
@KaiYeves, that was Alec Guinness flinching at the horrific thought that most modern audiences would end up knowing him only from his performance in Star Wars.
I love the new Trek effects, which are ingeniously constructed to look as if they were of the period – the Enterprise still looks like a model shot and so on. Fairly nonintrusive and not jarring at all to the viewer. And hey, any excuse to rewatch the only good Trek series.
February 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Elwood Herring says: “@Jack Hagerty: I recommend you watch the episode again. You memory is faulty; there is nothing wrong with the science!”
Okey-doke. I’ll admit I haven’t watched that episode for at least a couple of decades!
I’ll get back to you.
- Jack
February 24th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
The most obvious changes in the remastered Trek episodes are the exterior shots of the Enterprise. VERY cool! The ship no longer looks like a plastic toy….. Which I guess it was. One other thing I noticed: Especially in the episodes involving time travel, Sulu used to check the ship’s chronometers, and they were black & white wheel thingies, like a car’s odometer. Now the chronometers are actually digital!!! The 22nd century has come a long way, baby!
Last week channel 20 aired ‘The Trouble With Tribbles.’ I was disappointed to see that they did NOT insert any Deep Space Nine characters into the bar fight scene. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re not a true Trekker.
And someone said Toshiba had been underwriting the remasters? Why did they withdraw their support? I guess they’re just bitter about the defeat of HD DVD at the hands of the evil Sony empire.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
“Operation Annihilate” is one of my favourite episodes for the sole reason that it contains the most risque lines of the 60′s.
“You were so worried about his Vulcan eyes, you forgot about his Vulcan ears”.
Say it quickly.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
The new effects look cool, but what has pissed me off about these versions (at least the ones that I have seen) is that a couple of minutes have been trimmed from each episode. For instance, in the episode where the Romulan ship attacks (I’m having a brain fart on the name of the episode. Time to turn in my Trekkie creds.) almost the entire exchange between Kirk and McCoy during the 2nd act is gone. Kirk is baring his soul and revealing his personnal doubts about his ability to command and THAT is what they decide to snip? You can keep the new effects if it means such scenes are butchered.
Ruprect
February 24th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Fear not, Ruprect.
What we see are the syndicated versions of the episodes.
The full length, “unbutchered” episodes are coming out on DVD. Season 1 is available, IIRC.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“Last week channel 20 aired ‘The Trouble With Tribbles.’ I was disappointed to see that they did NOT insert any Deep Space Nine characters into the bar fight scene. ”
That’s because this was an episode of TOS, not DS9.
There’s no reason for them to go THAT far into altering episodes.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Other than Eps 4 and 5, Star wars *SUCKS*. Deal with it phanbois.
Lucas lost the formula after Empire. As for it being Space Opera (or science fantasy) and not SF, I hate to break it to you but pretty much 98% of “SF” films are space opera. Even 2001 turns into space opera at the end.
And the space opera generally isn’t even good space opera. Hell, as far as I’m concerned, the best science fantasy “film” in the past two years was the video game Mass Effect, with Bioshock in second place.
Name a real SF film, something that posits a possible future and explores the issues there. I’d say Gattaca, The Children of Men, Fahrenheit 451, Destination Moon, and THX-1138. Can’t really think of another off the top of my head. Maybe Logan’s Run and Silent Running. Colussus: The Forbin Project possibly.
If you allow a single MacGuffin, you can include things like Minority Report (the precogs) and Sunshine (the Sun Bomb).
And, Sean, the new effects were deliberately made not fancy to blend in better with the show. They are on the level of what was state of the art at the time (see the movie 2001).
It’s completely different from colorizing because [A] The colorizing was never that good and [B] black and white films were made with the recognition of the medium. The directors and cinematographers worked the B&W to their artistic advantage.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:35 am
The new effects look cool, but what has pissed me off about these versions (at least the ones that I have seen) is that a couple of minutes have been trimmed from each episode.
That’s the syndication market. Nothing to do with the folks doing the remastering and new effects.
More SW: Stop the “parsecs” debate. It was a dumb error. End of story. Move along. Nothing to be seen here.
Also note that Empire Strikes Back, generally recognized as the best film, was written by Lawrence Kasdan (finishing up for Leigh Brackett, an actual SF author) and not Lucas.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
“Also note that Empire Strikes Back, generally recognized as the best film, was written by Lawrence Kasdan (finishing up for Leigh Brackett, an actual SF author) and not Lucas.”
Yah, so was Return of the Jedi. I always thought that George should have given Mr Kasdan a call about the prequel trilogy, but I think he has gone into shameful hiding after Dreamcatcher.
Ruprect
February 25th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Everyone reacting to Phil mentioning Star Wars, I will note that his comment is not that Star Wars sucks, or even that the effects are poorly done. Rather, it is a remark about the intrusion of the effects into the story. Some of the new film additions were good, but a few were jarring and intrusive.
For example, making Mos Eisley bigger and busier was okay, adding new scenes of the landspeeder cruising through the city wasn’t bad, but in the scene where Luke and Obi-wan are first confronted by Stormtroopers, the new edition clutters the street so they are obscured from the camera.
Another awkward insertion was the scene between Han and Jabba. This was restored film that would have been fine, except the original edit had an actor in funny clothes as Jabba, and I think the original reason Lucas cut it was he wasn’t able to make Jabba the way he wanted. This edition digitally inserts Jabba, which would be okay, except the blocking on the scene had Solo walk around Jabba. Given that Jabba is a huge slug with a long tail and not a man, the scene was difficult to adapt. The option chosen was to have Solo walk across Jabba’s back. That is not believable, and disrupts the flow of the scene.
And that doesn’t touch the ultimate in film rewriting – the cantina scene. Greedo shoots first?!?!? Greedo misses? UGH! That scene was a quintessential scene in establishing Solo’s character, and even as a ~10 yr old I totally understood the importance of the scene. I had conversations with my friends about it. Now Lucas feels it portrays Solo poorly and establishes a bad precedent, so he makes Solo “nicer” by having Greedo shoot first! UGH! That’s not making the effects prettier, that’s changing story content. Might as well have Obi-wan warn Luke, “She’s your sister, you schmuck.”
February 26th, 2008 at 7:56 am
I hate to break it to you folks, but BOTH Star Wars and Star Trek are space fantasy! Care to explain to me how the Enterprise, powered by magic crystals, warps space-time? How a phaser generates so much energy that it can vaporize someone? How someone being vaporized doesn’t take out the entire area they are standing in? How the transporter gets around the uncertainty principle?
Come on now, get a grip. It’s all good fun in the “Space Patrol” tradition, just as Star Wars is Flash Gordon crossed with mythical westerns. But lets not go overboard. They aren’t real science fiction. They are not in the same class as 2001, or the Andromeda Strain.