How Far Should TOS-R Have Gone?

[BillJ]

I'm still pissed they added a beam to the scene where Scotty is cutting through the Engine Room wall in The Naked Time. They took something that seemed cool and futuristic and made it mundane.

[Metryq]

Redfern wrote:

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But where does one go from there? Smell-O-Vision?

As others have pointed out, the Blu-ray discs include the cleaned up original versions, which is great. That does not mean fans cannot debate the quality of the new effects. In general, I like the new "matte" shots, but dislike the CGI ships.

However one feels about the alterations, revising an old work in any way is a marketing gimmick. For example, many people dislike colorization (I'm one of them). This has nothing to do with "protecting" the original. Shooting an image for B&W is very different from working in color. I've seen some very fine colorization work, but nothing can change the contrasts of the image so that it looks right in color.

I've done a lot of experimentation with various 3D technologies—another gimmick. And while circular polarization (like RealD) is less stressful than older systems, any parallax-based "3D" system will create eye strain. We have two eyes, and feeding a separate image to each eye should be enough, but it is not. Our eyes also "track" closer together for nearer objects and farther apart for more distant objects. The parallax images of a "3D" movie are coming from the same distance. So when different parallax is thrown at us, our eyes try to track, getting caught between focus distance and parallax. One day a truly "holographic" presentation system will be marketed, but upgrading all the old favorites to the new system may fizzle, like colorization.

Many people have opined that 4K video obviates the need for "3D" because the images look very real just from the increased resolution. I've been told that HDR (high dynamic range) video monitors are like walking by an open window. But will HDR be a welcomed upgrade for casual viewing? Will viewers have to put on sunglasses for some scenes, and take them off for others? Will some "remastering" artist decide to make the hallways of the Enterprise as bright as desert sun "just because he can," while the bridge will have muted lighting for all the video displays?

How about making all the old TOS episodes interactive? Yeah! No, not a good idea. Those episodes were shot in a linear fashion to tell a fixed story in a set way. Likewise, adding parallax, depth-of-field, color, smell, etc. may change the framing intended by the director who worked in 2D.

How would one convert a "trombone" shot to 3D?

"Cleaning up" old favorites so that they present well on the latest displays is welcome, but changing old favorites should be done with discretion.

[Robert Comsol]

BillJ wrote:

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I'm still pissed they added a beam to the scene where Scotty is cutting through the Engine Room wall in The Naked Time. They took something that seemed cool and futuristic and made it mundane.

Yes. There a various examples in TOS where they use invisible energy beams to have an impact on something. One of my favorites is the trident engineering tool.

In "The Doomsday-Machine" Scotty uses it to remote fix something in the engine room's cathedral (obviously it wasn't a musical instrument and he wasn't singing a song to the dilithium crystals...).

Bob

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

I'd have liked to see what EdenFX could have done remastering the series instead of CBS Digital. these shots were done "just for fun" but I love seeing the original Enterprise against a realistically proportioned planet.

[Metryq]

^ EdenFX—"Sweet!"

[Noname Given]

King Daniel wrote:

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I'd have liked to see what EdenFX could have done remastering the series instead of CBS Digital. these shots were done "just for fun" but I love seeing the original Enterprise against a realistically proportioned planet.

IDK - given how "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" was handled - i don't see the Eden FX shots as all that different/better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...OiMVni1I#t=11s

[Robert Comsol]

King Daniel wrote:

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I love seeing the original Enterprise against a realistically proportioned planet.

Yes, that would be impressive, but please - not an Enterprise with such noticable gridlines, especially on the engineering hull

Bob

[Warped9]

TREK_GOD_1 wrote:

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Blame it on people brainwashed by ILM/Star Wars, instead of taking influence from the actual TOS FX/ship movements. The most logical way of "upgading" TOS FX would have been to think like FX artists of ther period if they had the larger budget--which would have been the ship work (lighting, detail, movement) seen in 2001, not the Lucas-ized, video-game crap of TOS-R.

Sing it!

[Lenny Nurdbol]

I know that I'm in the minority here, so don't clobber me.

IMHO, they should have LEFT TOS ALONE. What you see is what you get. You don't go back and retouch works of art. You don't colorize episodes of The Twilight Zone. You just leave them as the product of their times.

When I saw my first "remastered" TOS episode, I puked. Because what I saw, from my warped little perspective, was a lot of hard work by model makers and cameramen thrown away, literally Edited Out, and replaced by...let's be honest, souped up Cartoons. I knew that old model and it still looks like a Physical model rather than some computer-generated contraption. I think "remastered" does a great disservice to the people who brought the original Enterprise to life.

If that wasn't enough, they started to change other things. Spock's koon-ut-kali-fi stomping grounds in "Amok Time" were changed. The beam-down landscape of the Tantalus V penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" changed. Flint's home in "Requiem For Methuselah" changed. The SS Aurora in "The Way to Eden" changed. Changed for no good stinking reason other than the fact that they Could change things.

Yeah, and again: IMHO!
I'm the minority guy all alone in his own opinion.

[Shaka Zulu]

Lenny Nurdbol wrote:

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Yeah, and again: IMHO!
I'm the minority guy all alone in his own opinion.

Good. Please don't forget that.

[Shaka Zulu]

Dick_Valentine wrote:

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Considering that they probably would have the Original un-touched episodes on the Blu-Ray sitting right next to the re-masters, they should've gone further. So should've TNG.

I'm not a big fan of using the most high-tech modern computer imagery to recreate primitive 60s film-making.

Even at the time some of the shots looked dodgy, I've never been a fan of the way the TOS Enterprise seems to list around with her Nacelles tilted forwards as if the Saucer was 50x heavier (and it was feeling that in the atmosphere) and some of the love of that ship's looks is pure Nostalgia and nothing else, it simply doesn't look great from every angle the way later ships were designed to.

No, it would've been better to completely remaster it in the same way Doctor Who have done on their DVDs, (though they have the advantage in their episodes are completely lost so it's CGI or nothing in some case which placates the fan-base and even when they add CGI to existing episodes it's never seen as a replacement, just an optional enhancement )

I guess the issue should be just in the marketing.
It should've been made clear with the CBS remastering that the originals are still there to be enjoyed, but there are extra FX sequences for those who would like them.

The whole attitude of "well I don't like them so they shouldn't do them" is blinkered in the extreme.

Tonight on CBS Action here in the UK I watched the episode where Kirk loses his memory and marries a primitive woman while the Enterprise is left to attack an asteroid on course for the planet and the Asteroid part looked great on my HD TV, the final shot from the planet's defenses could've been more dynamic though, perhaps even blowed the damn thing up.

Agreed. I would have also completely CGI'd TNG to the point that the ships which were reuses of older models would be completely new ships (examples: the ships in 'Heart Of Glory', the ships in 'The Outrageous Okana', and every other episode that had an old model ship in it reused from the movies).

[Warped9]

Lenny Nurdbol wrote:

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I'm the minority guy all alone in his own opinion.

You're not alone.

[BillJ]

Lenny Nurdbol wrote:

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IMHO, they should have LEFT TOS ALONE. What you see is what you get. You don't go back and retouch works of art. You don't colorize episodes of The Twilight Zone. You just leave them as the product of their times.

I don't know about you, but my TOS Blu-rays have both versions of the episodes...

An interesting experiment is how I look at the new effects. Some things worked, others not so much.

[Lenny Nurdbol]

You don't know about me because I don't have a Blu-ray player nor a high-definition viewscreen...

And you couldn't pay me to buy remastered-anything.

I've been reading how the different episodes of TNG have been "remastered" with a little high-res here, and a "reconstructed" planet there (watch it in slow motion else you might miss it!). Amazing how fans pay for the same stuff over and over again. Maybe they've got more time and money to waste than I have?

I'm sure they'll have a 3-D release of them, sooner or later (call it Phase 2.0) all and fans'll run out and gobble them up, too. Better yet, put a stupid trading card in each pack with a mystery pink dot or something on one in a million to attribute some "collectors value" to it. They're well-trained to consume and swallow these gimmicks...

You'd think people would have learned from Lucas...
But they don't. Neither do they grow up. Thus the spectacular success of J.J. Abrams film.

Yeah, I am getting too old for this...

[Warped9]

When I watch TNG-R to me it looks like a cleaned up print of the show as opposed to the faded and muddy look of the original version. I know there are small fixes in it, but I find they don't scream out to me. To me the changes seem small and unobtrusive. This is in real contrast to TOS-R which leaves me exclaiming WTF!!! over and over and over again.