Remaster the Animated Series Anyone?

Given a choice, remastering the original film negatives of DS9 and VOY would likely get more customers to make up the cost with.

 

The only alteration I'd be remotely interested in is correcting the errors, such as the use of the wrong character cel, cels painted with the wrong color, misaligned cels, missing cels, etc.

Unfortunately, I would fully expect any such endeavor with more than only a few participants to fall victim to mission creep, veer off course, and introduce what some would regard as "enhancements" and other "improvements," things that would depart from the original vision.

So, to avoid all of that, leave it as is (except that the black sky in "The Time Trap" needs to be reversed back to its original color of maroon).

Besides, I've already posted my opinion before, which is unchanged, that fixing the errors a) wouldn't really add anything and b) would erase what's archived in the original: a record of the human limitations of the creators. Fixing the errors would thus reduce the information content, which would be its own kind of negative.

 

I voted for full redesign...we already have the original version, so what harm can there be to re-work it for an alt release? Not that it will actually happen, of course.

 

Who will supervise the changes so"creep" will not occur? The Okudas?

 

Possibly the best candidates given they appeared to be quite against mission creep regarding TOS-R.

 

If done, I nominate the authors of Star Trek The Official Guide to the Animated Series, Aaron Harvey and Rich Schepis. They have the best background information and research materials at their finger tips.

 

I second that!
FWIW

 

And yet it was full of it.

 

Well they were not in charge of the project.

 

Listen, classic animation is restored and released as-is by Warner Archive and the like. It’s history, warts and all. I mean it’s nice that the majority here is against a special edition, but I wonder why more people don’t recognize and immediately dismiss those as curiosities of the day rather than treat them as something to think about on three pages. If anything it’s unfortunate that the notion of tinkering with someone else’s work has stayed with fans from the late 1990s to this day and age.

If Filmation still existed and the original artists/producers had small, uncontroversial changes they wanted to introduce for a definitive release, maybe, analogous to the way film directors can still create final cuts or showrunners widescreen versions of their series (like The Wire), but bringing in fan experts to help spiff up a Saturday morning cartoon from the 1970s? Not to mention that some here don’t even recognize Filmation’s faithful approach (on a budget) as an indelible part of American animation and argue for reimagining it, like it’s a shame Star Trek got involved with that since the all-important dialogue needs a “better” presentation for posterity.

Seriously, the ideal reply here is a simple “Leave it alone and focus on the future.” It’s Star Trek, not “Star Stuck”.

 

Then who was?

 

The way I understand it the Okudas were supposedly “guides” for the project, but CBS had the ultimate say of what would be done.

 

Problem is, invariably the changed versions end up replacing the originals. All one has to do is look to Star Wars, or even the remastered Star Trek... where the only place the original effects are now available is via disc. All the streaming and broadcast versions are with the new effects.

 

CBS is a corporation, not a project manager. So with whom did the buck stop? /rhetorical

 

I saw a “making of” feature (or some such) about TOS-R several years ago and thats where I saw the Okudas commenting on how they didn’t want to diverge much from the original source material.

 

And yet crazy-banking massless Klingon ships.

 

Yep. So if we take them at their word then someone overrode their ideas about it.

 

I don't know. I liked the remastered episodes of the original series. I thought they were respectful of the original material (and sometimes maybe a bit too respectful). I think the original versions should always be available however. I would never take that away from anyone.

Some things I wish they went a bit further. I remember reading somewhere they were debating about "Balance of Terror" and whether to alter the phasers to the more familiar design we see. Personally I would have preferred that since I'm sort of a continuity junkie. But they decided to keep them as the pulses we see.

And I always liked the streaking star effect of TNG to Enterprise and kind of wish they adopted that--but that would clearly be an alteration and not just a touch up.

 

The "phasers" in "Balance of Terror" acted like depth charges. The episode was The Enemy Below with the serial numbers filed off, after all.

 

Yeah, I can understand that argument. I'd kind of prefer phasers as we know them today but I can understand why they decided to leave them as is.

For the most part I thought they struck a good balance with the remasters. Update them but respect the original (and add some variety to the planets). Really I guess the only think I'd change is adding streaking stars when the ship is at warp. But that's just me and I realize some don't like that effect so at the end of the day they were probably better off sticking to the basics there.

And at least I did get to see an original series era ship with all the frills and streaking stars in the Enterprise episodes "In A Mirror, Darkly". It was really a glimpse into how the original series would look with modern (or then-modern) special effects.