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http://ranthonysteele.blogspot.com/2006/09/classic-trek-gets-makeover.html
This could amount to sacrilege. They are updating the special effects for all 79 of the Classic Star Trek episodes, giving them all new computer generated effects shots.
I’m withholding judgment on this until I see the finished product. But I’m not holding my breath, either. The primitive effects are just fine with me. I don’t need my classic Enterprise to have ‘go fast’ stripes.
I’ve never seen the revised versions of the first two seasons of Red Dwarf[/url]. They went through a similar process of updating. Like Doctor Who and its ships on strings, there is something appropriate about old campy SciFi having visibly dated special effects, especially if there is an air of humor to the program.
On the other hand, I liked the revised versions of Star Wars, with the exception of the Whussification of Han Solo. So updated effects might be OK with me…
…and then there is the urge to tinker with the show. The episode “The Enterprise Incident” for example. Here’s a chance to finally put the Romulans in Romulan ships instead of the Klingon ships that were originally used. After all, why not? The Klingon Bird of Prey that is used for most of the movies and all of Next Gen owes it’s existence to the mythology that was built up around that one little slip up in Classic Trek. If the updates fix that problem, then why…?
Like I said, I’ll wait for the premiere. I’m just not holding my breath.[/i]
Hey Rant,
Yep, I’m a bit worried myself. The Red Dwarf changes were awful!! The ship itself went from being short and stubby to being long and sleek. Lost all it’s charm.
Then again, the Star Wars revamp wasn’t too bad I thought.
SadGeezer wrote:The Red Dwarf changes were awful!! The ship itself went from being short and stubby to being long and sleek. Lost all it’s charm.
The look and feel of the show changed for the worse after second season anyway. I would have been in favor of going back to the old Dwarf at that point. Instead they update the best two seasons.
Of course, the mistake in watching Red Dwarf is in taking any of it seriously. The effects are sort of beside the point.
-RAnthony
Hey gang: Have a look see at these two You Tube sites for a sampling of what might be in store for the “enhanced” Trek. These are samples from “The Doomsday Machine”. I don’t know which or if either of these versions are what will end up being used.
Now it wasn’t all bad but the reason the Doomsday machine was scary is because it looked like an alien machine and somehow biologic and ancient, this new one os like a modern day bomb, and the core well not scary like the old one. I like what they did with the shuttlecraft legs and the destruction of the Constitution but well the Doomsday Machine doesn’t scare me like the old one.
The second link is better but the new CGI makes the old, action bits seem choppy. Like the transporter changes, though.
The new CGI makes the Enterprise look like the movies but I miss the ghostly ol’ girl.Nope, not gonna fly. And it’s one of my favorite eps 😥 😡
Thanks Capt. If you know of anymore eps enhanced please pass them along. I have some definite favs I’d like to see, what about redoing BAAL in that ep, oh i forgot the name.
Thanks again! 🙂
Hi mandara k: Haven’t heard about anymore enhanced eps out there but here are the two best Trek sites, IMO, to get updates or news on the subject:
I first heard about the You Tube sites from Trek Web.
I’m tempted to vote in the affirmative for the makeover. There is alot that could be improved, but I agree that the old original Planet Killer was the best. I think I’ll wait for the first few eps to be released before I say one way or another.
I think it’s a foolish waste of time and money, as well as self-glorification by fat, spoiled multi-millionaires with no better ideas to work with so they have to redo old ones for profit.
imo, I think their time and money would better serve new ideas from new artists and writers, but that is probly too much of a gamble for them. They know that anything STAR TREK is like guaranteed sales, so like the big publishers, they go for it while a huge pool of new, unknown independent artists and writers get nothing, no attention whatsoever for their efforts.
This is one part of the capitalist sytem that irks me; the way it feeds the big sharks and starves the little fish, all because the majority are too dumbed-down to understand the importance of supporting new ideas and new minds.
Instead, we get the sons and daughters and nephews and nieces and grandchildren of old popular big-money makers remaking and revising the same old ideas ad nauseaum.
Give me a break. 🙁
I think it’s a foolish waste of time and money, as well as self-glorification by fat, spoiled multi-millionaires with no better ideas to work with so they have to redo old ones for profit.
Well, yeah, but the TV and movie industry has seen rot set in in their creativity department. I think it’s in direct correlation with how removed they get from sci-fi sadgeezers like us.
Sure it’s easy to for them to think they are THE sci-fi event if they surround ourselves with others whom just tell them what they want to hear, be it spouses, colleagues, or the networks. However the truth is more complex than that.
We are even in the minority because we post, most of the “masses” don’t even do that, but if given the right impetus they will make themselves heard.
Don’t ever lie to the little man. Don’t come across as anything but yourself, then you have nothing to fear.
But getting back to this, I LOVE ST TOS, i found the other incarnations sans movies quite cold like the vacuum of space. i appreciate the intellectual exercises of TNG, Deep Space Nine, etc… but these are people that lost touch with lessons attached to suffering and hope quite a long time ago.
They just worried about which script girl to frack without their wife finding out. 🙄
So yeah bring on anything from TOS (within reason)
But getting back to this, I LOVE ST TOS, i found the other incarnations sans movies quite cold like the vacuum of space. i appreciate the intellectual exercises of TNG, Deep Space Nine, etc… but these are people that lost touch with lessons attached to suffering and hope quite a long time ago.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that any of the Star Trek series that followed TOS were all that bad. I enjoyed most of all that, and the movies more or less, but I just think sometimes they go too far with the revisioning upon a fictional legend. I maintain the same opinion about all entertainment, for the most part. I think the directors and producers should spend less time revisioning yet another version of a popular historical fiction and more time supporting new ideas or ideas that have been neglected. I get sick of the way they turn down new and original ideas from unknown artists and writers simply because they are unknown and there is too much of a capital risk involved.
Publishers and producers all want guaranteed sales so they neglect unknown newbies while investing time and money in writers and artists that are already well-known and popular. Why? Because of the guaranteed sales. The $$$, that’s all they care about. This is what happens in a society that places so much value in money and so little value in original creativity.
I wrote 2 original Star Trek novels in the late 90s and submitted them to Paramount as possible screen plots for Star Trek movies. I got nothing but one script returned without any reply whatsover and the other simply vanished from the space-time continuum in a black hole somewhere. I submitted them to Star Trek web-sites online later. No feedback whatsoever. Flat rejection. Unless you’re somebody in the Star Trek universe, you’re nobody, period. My script for ST:NG was far better than the piece of crap they tossed together for either Insurrection or Nemsis, but of course, since I am nobody, then it probly wasn’t even noticed.
And now this. Some multi-millionaires upgrading an old TOS episode. Ugh, what a bunch of unimaginative borgs! They don’t know how to create, so they simply assimilate!
I think it looks really lame. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the feature.
I don’t understamd why they do things like this. I like extra scenes and features added in, but not when they do this when the movie is so old.
As far as I am concerned, Star Trek and Star Wars would/will always stand the test of time, no matter how out of date the special effects are.
maintain the same opinion about all entertainment, for the most part. I think the directors and producers should spend less time revisioning yet another version of a popular historical fiction and more time supporting new ideas or ideas that have been neglected. I get sick of the way they turn down new and original ideas from unknown artists and writers simply because they are unknown and there is too much of a capital risk involved.
Amen to THAT bro, let me tell you it’s an incumbent world in which we live. Why? Because we want to close our eyes and sink into an illusion of security while running new ideas and those brave enough to think them out of town on a rail. Or worse steal those new gems and feck them up. It’s happened to me.
You know rough ideas can be beautiful diamonds with the right craftsman. If you strike an uncut diamond wrong it shatters into a million pieces and becomes worthless.
I mean there was a writer’s wife on a BB of a show on now bitching to high heaven her husband wasn’t being paid enough. Okay, yeah may be but c’mon, hit show, I’d take the money and say “Thank you, please, may I have some more?”
So it didn’t cover her pedicure: I’d like it to buy groceries for cripes sake.
And that’s the rub, these people care about keeping the highlife exclusive and yet talk on fan BB’s. they don’t belong there. Sure answer questions but don’t cry to me about YOUR LIFE being rough.
And it taints and drives the fans, some will want to hang out near the “in crowd” but most we feel well, why should i contribute, no one will listen to me when so and so is here unless i say something complimentary or controversial. Gosh, that’s just horrible.
That’s why * here’s the sadgeezer kiss-up* 😛 this BB is special because it’s fan based, fan run, if the big peeps stop in it’s not to take residence here, they pop in and out but they don’t set up threads and expect us to kowtow and if they do I hope the saddest geezer of them all would say, feck no, we’re all equal here.
You try living on my salary for a while and still find free time to write and then bitch about money. Try rolling pennies and eating peanut butter, which i may be allergic to, for a week and then whine about being paid.
Feckin’ selfish idiots!
SHEESH! 🙄
*Counts 1….. 2….3..4. 5…. oh to hell with it!
Let’s have a beer. 😆
I forgot about the new remake stuff and broke down and bought season 3 of TOS ’cause i wanted a trip down memory lane and was in the mood for cheesy FX and well the old girl….
It’s amazing to me that the questions covered are universal in nature and parts are still true today.
And i still am a proponent of Spock over Kirk.
I loooved him in the Enterprise Incident; I wanted to be the Romulan commander; her uniform has a portion attached to her hand; I loove my sweaters like that ,and well she’s sexy and smart and powerful!
”mandara wrote:And i still am a proponent of Spock over Kirk.
Slash Mandara? You naughty, naughty girl! 😉
http://ranthonysteele.blogspot.com/2006/11/classic-trek-gets-makeover-what-was.html
I said I’d wait for the premiere when I wrote Classic Trek Gets a Makeover a couple of months back. Now, after having watched about eight re-mastered episodes, I have to wonder what all the fuss was about.
I guess Paramount wanted to hype the fact that they were changing Classic Trek so that they could get more people to watch it. I’m still waiting to see an effects heavy episode (they are holding those back until later in the release schedule, although some preliminary tests for the Episode “The Doomsday Machine” were uploaded to YouTube) to see how close they will stay to the original shots when they are in an extended effects sequence; so far I’ve been hard pressed to find any real differences.
Oh, the transfer quality is beautiful, crystal clear. The effects are state of the art and, so far, they’ve slavishly followed the original effects sequences. We watched Arena a few weeks ago, and I did notice that they cleaned up a good portion of the Gorn’s rubber suit problems, and gave him blinking eyelids, which I thought was a nice touch. Personally, for regular broadcast quality, I hardly think its worth the trouble.
Of course, they didn’t do it for the TV watchers out here in legacy TV land. They were looking toward the advent of HiDef broadcast, which is still being rolled out. According to those in the know, there will be a clear line between shows that were aired before HiDef, and shows that air afterwards; because the flaws that went unnoticed on the old TV set will be glaringly obvious on the HiDef, making the old shows virtually unwatchable unless they are updated. Or at least so they say.
I guess they know what they are talking about. I can’t imagine why they would go to the expense to re-master Star Trek and make as few changes as they have, unless they had a valuable future profit reason to do so.
I’m sure that the purists out there will object to even the small changes that have been made. I say this because I live with one. She rolled her eyes at a Gorn that blinks, and hasn’t stopped complaining about the colors being too bright, and the makeup being all wrong; the effects looking too “video game-ish”.
As for me, I just can’t get enough of the grand old lady of Trek, as she sails crystal clear through unclouded starfields, and circles planets that no longer look like painted balls of paper mache’. But then I’m watching it with my children. Something I’ve not been able to get them to do until now. “Watch Star Trek? That’s for you old people.” They both are glued to the set now. So, I’d say Paramount’s plan will pay off. Star Trek will live on through the HiDef era, with a whole new group of fans.
…IF they don’t screw up the next movie…
😯 😉 Ooh yeah a little Kirk/Spock action! 😈
Is that better?
Umm…… mind OUT of the gutter, Frey!
Speaking of gutter; notice how all the women are wearing garter floozy stuff or floaty material? And we women get oversexed Kirk. Cripes almighty!
I mean i remember it as a kid ’cause it was coool; but now i notice it, like all other sci-fi genre, is male-oriented!
Humph! 😡
Oh, the transfer quality is beautiful, crystal clear. The effects are state of the art and, so far, they’ve slavishly followed the original effects sequences.
Hmm… I guess i begin to understand all the reasons they have for wasting their time with this. It’s a technical upgrade, from the old analog quality to digital, which makes some measure of sense, because when analog is transferred to digital, without technical upgrades, the poor quality is noticeable, in contrast with digital.
Looks like an opportunity for guaranteed sales that they couldn’t ignore, when accounting for the full technical effects of the upgrades. I’d hate to say this, but, early ST:NG was still using analog. The quality is improved over the early OS, but its still not fully digital, so, after their done with the OS upgrades, 10 years from now, we can expect them to do the same with the NG. 🙄
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