Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different stories

[Extrocomp]

I'm trying to make a list of every Star Trek episode, movie, novel, short story, comic book and video game. I'm also planning on making similar lists for Doctor Who, Star Wars and other franchises to see which franchise has the greatest number of stories and how much larger it is than the second-largest franchise.

But I've run into several problems:
Should I count the remastered versions of the TOS episodes and TNG episodes as separate stories from the original versions?
Should I count the various ports of Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator as separate stories? There are at least 5 versions of the game, all of which have different graphics but identical gameplay.

What do you guys think?

 

[Tosk]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

No, you shouldn't.

 

[Green Shirt]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

+1

 

[Extrocomp]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

No, you shouldn't.

Are you answering the first question or the second question or both?

 

[BillJ]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

No, you shouldn't.

Are you answering the first question or the second question or both?

No. I'm answering both. There are no substantial changes to any stories brought on by the remastering of the two shows.

 

[bbailey861]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

No, they are the same.

 

[Tosk]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

No, you shouldn't.

Are you answering the first question or the second question or both?

Both.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

Should I count the remastered versions of the TOS episodes and TNG episodes as separate stories from the original versions?

Of course not. They're the same stories told in slightly different ways. Lots of stories get re-edited when they're released in new editions; it's pretty common in prose fiction. A new edition of a novel or short story may correct grammatical errors and typos, and sometimes the author will take the opportunity to correct factual errors or improve the flow of the text. For instance, when I published an e-book collection of a trio of my stories originally published in a magazine, I incorporated some corrections that had been missed in the original editions (such as an alien species' name changing from one story to the next), and I expanded descriptive passages and incorporated some new material between scenes, but otherwise I kept the events and dialogue unchanged. So it's still depicting the same story, it's just doing so with a bit more detail and accuracy.

TOS-R is the same way. We're still being shown that the Enterprise is docking with a space station or that Flint has led the crew to his mansion, but while the original storytellers were forced by budgetary limits to approximate those places with stock footage of other things we'd already seen, the TOS-R makers were free to create renditions of the new locations and thereby add a bit more detail to the representation of the exact same story. In the case of TNG-R, the changes are even more minimal. All the miniature footage and matte paintings are exactly as they were; the only changes are to video animation, to things like energy beams and forcefields and the appearance of planets from orbit. It's not even changing the story, just polishing its appearance a bit.

 

[Extrocomp]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

What about alternate versions that do have dialogue changes, like the Star Trek II Director's Edition? Or the 1997, 2004 and 2011 re-releases of Return of the Jedi, all of which have new dialogue?

 

[Melakon]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

They're still the same stories, but you could make additional notations for any changes in various released editions.

A colorized It's a Wonderful Life isn't a different story than the original black and white version.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

^Like I said, stories get edited in new editions. This is not something unique to Star Wars or Star Trek. Creators have always exercised the opportunity to change things in new editions of their works. After all, the original released version of a work is itself the end result of a lengthy process of trial, error, revision, rethinking, and editing. That process of self-criticism doesn't end when the work is released. Just about every writer or filmmaker alive will look back on a released work and see flaws that they wished they could've fixed before release, or will have second thoughts about things they did the first time.

So they aren't different stories, just slightly variant versions of the same story. The creator's intent is that the later version is the more "correct" one, but they're just different approximations of the same set of events. Unless it really is changed radically enough to be a different story, like when Arthur C. Clarke rewrote his first novel Against the Fall of Night as The City and the Stars.

 

[Chronos]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

The remastered releases of Star Trek are not really a different story. They're usually just a better, higher resolution film scan with CGI taking the place of scenes which scale models were used for. The story doesn't change, and changing the story enough to make it separate from the original would certainly upset fans.

I can't speak for the game. I haven't played it. If the 'chapters' of the story are all self-contained and large enough to be an episode then I can see why you would call them separate stories.

Alternate versions which have dialogue changes aren't even enough to call it a 'new story'. It's the same story, but we see more of it in the extended or director's cut edition.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

The thing to remember is that a story is something that's told. And everyone who tells a story -- or even the same storyteller at different times -- will tell it differently. That's part of what makes storytelling a dynamic form.

A lot of fans want to think of Trek episodes or movies as some kind of documentary recording of actual events, wherein every last detail that we see is absolutely real and can only have one "correct" version. But even Gene Roddenberry always saw them as dramatic retellings. That was the original idea behind the captain's log narration -- that we were basically being told these stories after the fact by the captain who'd experienced them. (He used Gulliver's Travels as a model; indeed, Herb Solow claims that he originally intended to use that name for the show and have the lead character be named Captain Gulliver!) And he held onto that idea later in life. His ST:TMP novelization adopted the conceit that TOS had been an inaccurate 23rd-century dramatization of the "real" adventures of Kirk and his crew, and that TMP was a more authentic, less distorted account (explaining the changes in technology, costuming, Klingon makeup, etc.). So GR always intended them to be stories, and stories are always filtered through the storyteller, a step removed from objective reality. Keep that in mind, and the slight discrepancies between different tellings are easier to accept.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

I think the only change that I really noticed between two versions of a story was between the Special Edition and Final Cut of Bladerunner. In the original Bryant tells Deckard that there are five skin jobs to be retired. With Pris, Zhora, Leon and Batty that makes four that we see in the movie, with one unaccounted for. The Final Cut changes the dialogue to four.

But that unaccounted replicant spun off K.W. Jeter's Blade Runner novels.

 

[The Wormhole]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

What about alternate versions that do have dialogue changes, like the Star Trek II Director's Edition? Or the 1997, 2004 and 2011 re-releases of Return of the Jedi, all of which have new dialogue?

No to all those as well.

 

[YJAGG]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

no but I would like to see the footage from DS9 in the Trouble with Tribbles

 

[Albertese]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

^^^
I would too, but purely for the novelty of it. Both stories stand on their own and certainly don't "need" such treatment.

--Alex

 

[Lance]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

There are *some* discrepencies between TOS and TOS-R, where the Remastered teams have taken a liberty or two in replacing one type of spaceship with another or replaced details on a planet from what they were originally and so forth. To be sure, a pedant could argue that the fiddling at the edges by the remastered teams might change the occasional context here and there... But I wouldn't say the ''base episodes'' are any different from the un-remastered originals, therefore they shouldn't be regarded as 'seperate' to them.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

There are *some* discrepencies between TOS and TOS-R, where the Remastered teams have taken a liberty or two in replacing one type of spaceship with another or replaced details on a planet from what they were originally and so forth. To be sure, a pedant could argue that the fiddling at the edges by the remastered teams might change the occasional context here and there... But I wouldn't say the ''base episodes'' are any different from the un-remastered originals, therefore they shouldn't be regarded as 'seperate' to them.

Just trivial differences of detail. Like I said, these are stories we're being told, and every telling of a story has its own idiosyncrasies.

Mostly, TOS-R just replaces stock-footage reuses of things from earlier episodes, like replacing K-7 in "The Ultimate Computer" with a new station, or replacing the Rigel fortress in "Requiem for Methuselah" with a (gorgeous) new mansion for Flint. And I think that's closer to the original intent. The makers of those episodes didn't want Flint's mansion to look exactly like the Rigel fortress right down to the moons in the sky; they just didn't have the budget to do a new matte painting, so they approximated it as best they could with the available stock materials. To me, it's always been a given that Flint's mansion didn't really look that way, that what we were shown was just a prompt for our imaginations, a stand-in that we were supposed to look beyond. So the (gorgeous) TOS-R version is like finally seeing the real thing instead of the stand-in. So I don't consider that a change in the story at all, just a refinement in the way the story is presented.

 

[Lance]

Re: Should TOS episodes and TOS-R episodes be counted as different sto

^ Oh, believe me I am in agreement with you. But I don't doubt there are those out there who'd say, "They Changed X, So It Doesn't Count".