FAULTY - the two worst TOS remastering mistakes

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by Mister Atoz, Jan 25, 2013.

  1. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I've only seen two of the remastereds, but the front spikes in the "Mirror, Mirror" (R) ISS Enterprise were intentional.
     
  2. BoredShipCapt'n

    BoredShipCapt'n Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That may have been this thread.
     
  3. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The biggest TOS-R gaffe for me was in "The Paradise Syndrome," in which Miramanee specifically says Kirok should go to the temple and make the blue flame come out. For no good reason and in ignorance of the dialogue, they changed the beam to orange. That's a goof.

    I understand the loss of live-action-to-fx film dissolves was unavoidable, and yes it's a loss.

    On the other hand, there are cases in TOS-R where old mistakes are corrected. For instance, in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," Chekov looks at the main viewscreen and says "I think that may be a Star Fleet shuttlecraft." In the original version, the fx shot was a close-up, so obviously a shuttlecraft that Chekov's line makes no sense. In the TOS-R version, the craft is shown from a distance.

    I've seen several cases in the original where they simply didn't have an fx shot that was just right for the dialogue, and the TOS-R version took care of it. I just can't recall them specifically. But they're there.
     
  4. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Didn't the remastered "Arena" add a Gorn ship? And an Orion ship for "Journey to Babel"? I think Memory Alpha mentioned it. And an Antares for "Charlie X".
     
  5. Warped9

    Warped9 Admiral Admiral

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    Yes and yes.

    To which I would add drastically changing ship designs and other things to look more contemporary. In particular I'm thinking of the blinking Gorn, the awful hull plating on the Romulan warbird in "Balance Of Terror," Kara's spaceship in "Spock's Brain," the Tholian ships in "The Tholian Web" and the shitty energy barrier in WNMHGB. I also don't think the "new" opening shot of the Enterprise in "The Cage" is as dramatic as the original. They also lost a few iconic shots I really liked.

    There are a host of other things, but it all adds up to me refusing to buy TOS-R and stick with my dvd box sets.

    Maybe one day TOS will be enhanced yet again only this time with a vision of making it all look like it's all of the same show while still featuring upgraded f/x.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2013
  6. Grant

    Grant Commodore Commodore

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    They fixed the 'blue-flame' error on the Blu-rays
     
  7. Grant

    Grant Commodore Commodore

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    Kind of funny how we're arguing over a fraction of a second error of static vs a shot of the ship, but all the errors that were corrected are ignored.

    In Charlie X Kirk says, "we are coming alongside cargo vessel Antares."


    --but there is NO SHIP in the shot.

    The remastered adds the ship so the line now makes sense.

    In "Is There In Truth NO Beauty" they clearly state they are meeting a Medusan vessel to transfer Kollos and Miranda

    --but at the end there is no ship in sight!! They are orbiting a planet instead.

    The remasterd fixes that. And Scotty's lack of a phaser beam in Naked Time, etc, etc

    But hey let's nitpick the Remastered because we don't the remastered.
     
  8. Mister Atoz

    Mister Atoz Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Hey, that's a really good point. I love the remastering work 99 percent of the time. But it's the nature of the human mind to zero in on the imperfections. Can't help it!

    If only Nomad could be as thankful for life's imperfections.

    ~ Mr Atoz
     
  9. Robert Comsol

    Robert Comsol Commodore Commodore

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    I bought the TOS/TOS-R Blu-ray set but except for most of the enhanced matte paintings (passionate work in this department) I still do prefer the VFX effects of the original series.

    Considering that there are so many beautiful VFX shots of the Enterprise in the original series (not to mention the VFX footage from the second pilot that never made it!) I, too, hope there'll be an upgrade - and only if to use second and third season original footage to replace the VFX footage of the pilot 11-footer throughout the regular series.

    But please not another release in the original airdate order (who cares?!). IMHO, production order is the only one that makes sense and if CBS feels they need to be original they can go for the stardate order - and put "Day of the Dove" (stardate unknown) last. ;)

    Bob
     
  10. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    My favorite original, optically printed beauty shot was a long, slow close-up of the saucer section approaching camera, engines spinning along, repeated several times in the series. It's a shame if they didn't copy it.
     
  11. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Commodore Commodore

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    That, then, would be fixing mistakes and/or inconsistencies, which some still do see as overstepping the bounds of remastering.
     
  12. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I think all the iconic "beauty shot" angles were copied, but they were not all placed in the episodes where they belonged, probably to avoid repeating them too often. They do pop up in TOS-R, though. :)

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  13. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^^^ First one is better.
     
  14. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Wasn't there another version, slightly below the saucer? I think it was reused in "Is There in Truth No Beauty".
     
  15. boobatuba

    boobatuba Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Why? Because it's washed out with no detail?

    Sheesh. Hard to argue with that logic.
     
  16. Metryq

    Metryq Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    A preference of that sort doesn't have to be logical, but I can give you a few reasons why I, too, prefer the first shot.

    The original artists were working with bluescreen, which requires a certain amount of "fill light" to combat blue spill on the model. Blue spill would make matte extraction difficult. (In other words, no deep shadows on the model shots.) This had the undesirable effect of making the ship look a bit ghostly at times, yet also made the lighting "directionless."

    I've seen maybe a third of the TOS-R effects and dislike them for many reasons. Here is one shot that I believe I capped from "Mudd's Women":

    [​IMG]

    There is a hard "key" light, further accented by what I consider excessive specularity (gloss) on the ship, despite the fact that it is supposed to be in deep space far from any star. Granted, video is a visual medium, so the audience must be able to see something. The TOS TREK movies gave the Enterprise running lights for its external markings, and the makers of Disney's THE BLACK HOLE took another approach to the "lit only by distant starlight" look. The point is, computer artists have virtually unlimited control of an image, yet we get shots like my example above.

    One of the TOS movies features a panning shot of the Enterprise passing the camera. The highlights and shadows on the model are coming from one direction, yet there is also a nearby star in the background—in a different direction—occluded by the ship as it passes. I can't recall where, but I think I saw a similar "visible light from the wrong direction" shot somewhere in the TOS-R effects. (I don't have all the TOS-R episodes, as I disliked the alterations in those I've seen.)
     
  17. Robert Comsol

    Robert Comsol Commodore Commodore

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    @ Melakon

    You don't mean the one-time only bow shot from "Metamorphosis"? Trekplace has Tallguy's great visual compilation of all Enterprise VFX shots from TOS.

    @ BeatleJWOL

    I don't understand. TOS in its most possible original remastering is available on Blu-ray (together with the TOS-R version). I was under the impression we are talking about a different TOS-R version that makes optimal use of original elements for enhancement.

    @ Metryp

    Looks like you provided one clue why some or many of us feel the CGI of TOS-R look crappy.

    There were no glossy spaceship surfaces in blue-screen VFX before the advent of CGI because blue reflections on such surfaces would have created holes in the optical results (one of the reasons the Star Wars spaceship miniatures had no glass windows!).

    For the generation I belong to, a make-believe spaceship never had glossy surface textures, so one that does - consciously or unconsciously - inevitably looks fake.

    I've already stated how I feel about this retcon weathering and paneling (that has also tainted the original VFX model at the Smithsonian) and feel the urge to - do so again: :barf:

    Bob
     
  18. Dalen Quaice

    Dalen Quaice Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    The lack of detail in the first shot is simply a poor telecine transfer coupled with overuse of the digital noise reduction (DNR) that tends to make things muddy and washed out... if scanned properly with a film scanner like the Northlight (rather than a telecine like the Spirit 2k), it would look much better. The main issue with older film is the detail is present, but it is obscured by film grain on the surface. You must do an emulsion level transfer to extract the detail while keeping film grain under control.

    Also, there were no gridlines on the model -- only penciled-in lines. The nacelles are wrong also in the CGI. The lights do not blink properly and the colors are wrong-- and they haven't simulated the mirror shards that are the key to proper nacelle lighting, IMHO.
     
  19. Metryq

    Metryq Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Oh, I can think of many others. For example, I recall one shot of the Enterprise in orbit where the camera pans to follow the ship as it passes. In any other context, that would be an interesting, dynamic shot. However, the production design of TOS did not feature lots of camera movement, even with live-action. (Some movies keep the "action" going even in slow scenes by flying around with a Steadicam, or worse yet, the A.D.D.cam, closely related to the ShakyCam™.) Thus, many of the new shots simply do not match the design philosophy of the rest of the production. So they contrast, rather than complement.

    Sometimes a dynamic shot, like the orbit shot I just described, when shoe-horned into the same space, the same duration, as the original shot, ends up looking rushed. Too fast. I felt that many such decisions compromised the "scale" of the nuFX in "The Doomsday Machine." The Enterprise "surfed" around like an X-wing fighter, which made it look like a toy. The flame-like licks of the DM's beam also killed the scale. The straight-edged flash of the original was like a piston-punch or a lightning strike. The audience could feel it.

    One other toy-like shot that comes to mind is the Enterprise sling-shotting around the Sun in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday." The curvature of the Sun was too tight, thus making it look smaller, rather than far away. Now imagine if something like the Leonov aerobraking from 2010 had been done instead.

    [​IMG]
     
  20. Warped9

    Warped9 Admiral Admiral

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    Several years ago, long before CBS announced TOS-R was going to happen, I envisioned how TOS could have done the sun-slingsht sequence more interestingly while maintaining its familiar look. I even photoshopped it for my Never seen TOS scenes thread. I'll try to find it.




    ...Okay, found it. This is crude because you're seeing only still shots and I'm using tweaked stock shots rather than a new filming miniature or a cgi model. But I think it does get the general idea across.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2013