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New TOS discoveries in HD/DVD

Also from a previous viewing Menagarie part 1 has perhaps the best 'clean-up job' of any remastered episode. Hardly a speck any kind.

It's nice that the "trailers" were left untouched on the DVD's. This is how Star Trek actually looked when I watched it in syndication. Lots of scratches, faded, washed-out colors and splices, with "pops" in the soundtrack.
 
^^^

Yes, I love to look at the untouched previews and see how the show looked when I saw them on TV. That is to say---awful!!

Finished Menagarie.
Besides the dynamic color I didn't see too much i hadn't seen before.
Vina's teeth are insanely white. Unreal how bright white they were in 1964!! Nowadays every celeb bleaches their teeth, but there is no way this lady ever touched a cigarette. Maybe the whiteness was a Talosian illusion.

'Burned Pike's' face was far more desacated than I ever saw it in standard def. Much more rough and bumpy--good improvement.

Colors---especially Pike's denim jackett, his 'sultan's robe, Vina's eyes----all fantastic.

Menagarie part 1 has the best clean-up restoration af any episode so far and part 2 the worst.
Especially grievous was the fight scene with the Kaylar---very dirty.
Pretty sure they worked so hard on part 1 that they then fell behind on part 2 and had to air it unfinished because of the 'remastered' schedule requiring them to shpw it the next week.
 
I've been watching a lot of 60s Tv on DVD lately, and yeah, the cigarette-stained teeth were a real turnoff! Barabra Bain in the first season of Mission: Impossible was simply stunning - until she smiled.
 
Anybody know?

It's real-world construction marks for clearing of trees or debris in preperation for clearing the whole lot. The marks indicate what should be cut-down or removed. (The site the episode was filmed on was built up on only a few months later, sadly)
 
Just saw Galileo again.

Any good reason Spock ordered Gaetano to stay out in the fog away from the ship and in sight of the shuttle?

Does anybody LIKE the fact that they replace the props with riddiculously over-sized versions once it leaves the creatures hands?

We see the first shield fall and it's clearly 4 foot or so and then we cut to Spock approaching it and it now 12 feet long. Were audiences so unsophisticated in 1966 that they wouldn't notice that?

i felt the direction was awful. They couldn't find a way for the rock 'pinning' Spock to stay in place without it being so obvious that he was 'holding it in place'???

It couldn't possibly be more obvious. They couldn't lean it against his leg and have him pretend to be pushing it away?
 
Does anybody LIKE the fact that they replace the props with riddiculously over-sized versions once it leaves the creatures hands?

The idea was to make them seem bigger with 'prop replacement'.. and it wouldn't have been quite so obvious with the 1960s television sets. It's not that they thought the audience was stupid.. it was "we've got two days to shoot this, and we're shooting it for TV".

It couldn't possibly be more obvious. They couldn't lean it against his leg and have him pretend to be pushing it away?

See above.
 
I know the reason they did it.

And the idea of '1960s TV wouldn't show it' is hogwash.

We're not talking about 'detail' or 'resolution'...

You could see the prop was replaced with a huge duplicate back on my old 17" B/W TV days.
Anyway they WANTED the audience to see the huge prop. that's why they did it in the first place. The goof was showing the smaller prop first in the same frame with the humans and then switching to the huge prop.
The small prop should only have been used with the 'creature' and not be seen in the frame with the human cast.


I blame the director for many of the shortcomings of this episode. I'd bet it was his call on those rops and the stupid rock scene.

Although, you're right about the hurried schedule hurting this episode more than most.

Robert Gist was the director and it was his only episode---thank goodness.
 
The idea was to make them seem bigger with 'prop replacement'.. and it wouldn't have been quite so obvious with the 1960s television sets. It's not that they thought the audience was stupid.. it was "we've got two days to shoot this, and we're shooting it for TV".

Add to that the fact there were no VCRs and no chance for a "repeat viewing" until the network decided to run it again in six months. It was one of those "blink or you'll miss it" moments. The small-scale shield hits the ground, cut away for a reaction shot, then cut back to the large-scale prop...and the viewer goes "wait...wasn't it bigger a second ago..." but by that time you forget about it because you're back in the story.

Thank God for the pause feature on my DVD player, so I can dissect every single frame. And don't think for a second I don't do it!
 
Agreed, I always loved how they used color. It was the fairly early days of color broadcasting and Trek was one of the shows that went out of its way to use the medium.


Then I remember one night visiting the appliance store with my family. They had a whole row of RCA color televisions, and "Star Trek" was on every one of them...in all it's primary color/pastel-soaked glory. As we walked out of the store my dad turned to my mom and said "We have to get a color set". A week later we were watching "A Taste of Armageddon" in color!

NBC was at the forefront of color programming because its parent company, RCA, manufactured the most successful line of color sets...therefore the order came down that all NBC programming (including, of course, Star Trek) would make full use of this technology.

Peacock_NBC_presentation_in_RCA_col.jpg

Your dad was one of the many who literally kept Trek on the air, despite its crummy ratings....
 
I think the poist about the shield was that they show the 'ape' throw the shield down and they then show the small version falling to the ground in front of, in frame with the actors........

They they cut and show them with the huge version.

Clearly they should have shown the ape throw the shield---
then shown the huge prop falling in front of the actors and then have them approach it. But they showed them with both versions and that wasn't technically neccessary.

There was no reason that couldn't have been done right. Except time.
 
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There was no reason that couldn't have been done right. Except time.

Which was one of my points. They had seriously short shooting schedules (today's actors have it insanely easy, by comparison), and often mistakes would slip in. But, then, it was made for 1960s TVs, so you'll miss a lot, and even if you did catch something, you'll see it in a quick scene and then not see it again for several months...

No one then was thinking "Damn, in forty years, some guy on the internet watching this on BluRay is really going to bitch!"
 
Yeah, but as i said this is not something that needs to be 'freeze-framed' on Blu-ray to be seen. It's a 'small thing' that turns into a 'giant thing' a few seconds later.

I noticed it in syndication in 1975. And I'm not bragging---I don't 'see everything' by any means.
 
I noticed it in syndication in 1975. And I'm not bragging---I don't 'see everything' by any means.

Sorry it ruins the episode for you, then. But, really, I understand the 'making of' issues, and can look past a badly done prop switch to overall enjoy it. It helps when you think to yourself "Science Fiction Television: Circa 1966"... and realize the competition in that department largely consisted of live-action kid's space cowboy morning shows, Lost in Space, and some Batman episodes. :P
 
I love the banal, "I'm sorry it ruins the episode for you."
It's a hoot when folks try to put words in other people's mouths for some reason. I guess it fills some need.

I like the episode as an average 1st season episode, but it was directed badly as anyone can see. Probably most episodes were as rushed as this one, but the 'action' sequences were shot at a below par level even for 1966 Trek.
Not be able to figure a way for Spock to be 'pinned' by the rock in any other fashion than him very obviously holding to him when he's supposed to be pushing it off his leg is not a problem that required hours of set-up--prbably just turning the styrafoam rock around until he found an angle where it would just stay put for a few seconds without falling away from him---is just weak.

In any event there was some reason he only directed one TOS episode and it wasn't becasue he went on to a caerer in action movie directing.
 
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I'm not saying TOS wasn't the best thing on TV back then---I think it was. We're here talking about it 43 years later. I love TOS more than any TV show ever, but it's fun pointing out all this stuff to some of us.

Just thought of another one........

In Squire, McCoy, Desalle & Jeager beam down wearing little air masks. then they put them on their belt when the air is okayed. But Jeager's falls off his belt and dangles at his knee until Desalle calls them over as he runs around the corner it magically jumps back onto his belt.
 
I'm not saying TOS wasn't the best thing on TV back then---I think it was. We're here talking about it 43 years later. I love TOS more than any TV show ever, but it's fun pointing out all this stuff to some of us.

Just thought of another one........

In Squire, McCoy, Desalle & Jeager beam down wearing little air masks. then they put them on their belt when the air is okayed. But Jeager's falls off his belt and dangles at his knee until Desalle calls them over as he runs around the corner it magically jumps back onto his belt.

I totally agree..don't let them damp your enthusiasm for finding this stuff in HD. I love star trek tos too. I think it was and always will be the greatest STAR TREK production ever...

But that doesn't mean we can't have fun like this. I have seen some of these episodes, and movies, hundreds of times. Now I am more into the 'how did they do it' phase of my life..so keep it coming!!!

Rob
 
Yeah, I read the 'nitpickers books' and he said the same thing. Finding nits isn't trying to tear down the show---it's a tribute to how good it is and that if ANY show was as watched as this one--you'd find dozens of nits in those shows as well.

And I'm proud I found plenty of nits that weren't covered in those books or that other folks didn't explain to me on threads like these. That's because as said before i often just drop off into the drama when looking for nits!

I'll keep 'em coming and hope others contribute too.
 
I suppose I'm the least perceptive person since I fail to notice tiny minute details when transferal too a digital medium is mentioned. Case in point, in reading reviews for the 25th Anniversary restorations of the 80's Transformers cartoon (A show I watched religiously as a child.) they spoke of degraded quality between previously restored footage from the earlier Rhino DVD release and newly added TV grade scenes that Rhino inexplicably cut. I never really noticed the dip in quality at all when I watched the DVDs recently. I've never been allured by Hi Def because I just focus not on the look of any given movie, TV Series, etc. but it's overall narrative content. Pretty pictures don't mean anything if there isn't an engaging story to grab my attention.
 
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