Remastered TOS: This really bugs me!

During the opening credits (when the Enterprise whizzes by) if you look near the middle of the star field you will see some stars roughly in the shape of a capital 'L.'

Then, when the Enterprise whizzes by coming from the other side of the screen, you will see a capital 'L' as it would look in a mirror.

They had all those guys and a substantial budget to remaster, and they had to use the same star field only in reverse?

That really bugs me.

 

*sigh*

 

All those crappy cartoony CG shots they did for the whole series and THAT's the one that bothers you most?

 

Yeah, I can excuse the lame CG (especially since I have no idea how much money was put behind the effort) but the pure laziness of the title sequence throws me right out of the 23rd century.

 

I was actually surprised more by the ending credits sequences, as far as actual remastering is concerned. Surprised they didn't remaster those as well to better fit the rest of the episode. Or recreate them even if needed. Seems it wouldn't have been too hard to screencap the same scenes as the original eps and add credits overtop using the same fonts. Not sure what would be involved though. That always 'jars' me more than the new effects.

Mark

 

Good point. I never thought about that.

 

I never would have noticed... and it doesn't bother me in the least. The meat of the material is in the body of it, not the intro or ending. My biggest complaint is how the Enterprise looks too fake in the earlier episodes... They certainly made some improvements later on. It would've been nice if they'd made a silent in-line release of updates to the earlier episodes, just to even it out.

Another thing is that they didn't bother to do much in the way of effects improvements in non-space scenes. In "Who Mourns for Adonais", the phasering of Apollo's temple looks really hokey. They could have embellished it with more convincing effects. They also could have made corrections to poor edits. For example, in "By Any Other Name", there are obvious synchronization problems between visual effects and sound effects, like when the Kelvans use their immobilization devices. There are many other cases that could've been addressed.

At least the space scene flaws were corrected, for the most part.

 

Just add that to the list of things we did not care for about the remastering effort.

 

I didn't get the whole remaster thing to begin with.

 

I don't understand why some of the audio flubs weren't fixed, especially they're so much easier to fix. The biggie on my list is in "The Corbomite Maneuver": When Sulu announces "one minute", Balok was also supposed to bellow, "ONE MINUTE!", thus prompting Sulu's response of, "I knew he would." Since Balok's "ONE MINUTE!" is in the "Next Week" promo, it'd be a cinch to just slip it right in, and suddenly Sulu's line makes sense. Other stuff, like the wrong sound effect used (or even easier, when no sound effect was used and there should've been), would be comparative pieces of cake.

 

You're not in the 23rd century. You're watching a TV show.

 

I don't know, I very much like the remasters! Like mentioned above, the first few episodes wern't too good (Balance of Terror comes to mind) and wish they could have done a remaster remaster on them! Maybe next go around to get us to buy yet another version of the DVD set.

 

I enjoy the remastered episodes very much. I have no problem whatsoever with them.

The only issue I have is this: The new effects were done in widescreen, but we will never get to see them that way (AFAIK, TOS-R was only broadcast in widescreen in Japan). And before anyone jumps down my throat for daring to suggest that the live action footage be cropped to match - AFAIK, it wouldn't have to be cropped, as such, since most filmed material from that era was, and possibly still is, shot with more filmed area than even the 4:3 ratio shows. Given this, I assume that some compromise could be made in making the live action material widescreen. But I don't expect that they will ever do this.

If the new effects had been done in 4:3, I would not have even brought this up. All I can think of is that since the new FX *were* made in widescreen, why would they do that without doing the same to the live action?

Or, hell, why not just make the external space shots widescreen and leave the live action footage alone? It's not as if viewers will particularly care, anyway. Anyone who's seen, say, Galaxy Quest will know that multiple aspect ratios can be mixed within the same program.

 

It's not perfect, but I thought the remastered version improved some episodes of the show because we get to see what the ship is doing from the outside.

 

I personally think that we could get better results if they paid people in this forum to do the Remastering. The Ship looks more fake now than it did before...Thats a joke...

 

With Blu-ray on a 1080p HDTV..the original effects are JARRING to say the least..they do work, but the limits of the 1960s technology are obvious..


I do feel the "remastering team" did try to be as true to the original spirit as was possible..and to keep the effects true to the story...and they appeared to have made a decision to keep the cuts as they were, even the bad ones..Maybe you can ask Mike Okuda (he's on my friends list here) for confirmation, but I'm sure they agonized over every shot...they were limited by budget and time, so nothing's perfect.

But to keep the fandamentalists happy, they did include the choice of seeing the new or old effects with EVERY episode, so if one doen't like the new effects, there's no reason to be sad, the old effects are there for you to enjoy in full 1080p..warts n all...

 

They're not on the standard DVD version, but then most of us already have the last release of the original versions, so that's not exactly a big deal, other than shelf space.

 

I guess I don't see any hokeyness. I thought that they had to keep it somewhat dull in order to keep it from contrasting too greatly with the old footage.

 

No.

 

Quality varies wildly. Some of the new shots have impressed, some have made me roll my eyes. I watched Elaan of Troius the other day. The Klingon battle cruiser looked horrible, and the shot where it buzzed the Enterprise and pulled up suddenly looked like something from the Animated Series.