Hi i just had a quick question. I just came up with a wonderful idea. Since the star trek animated series had pretty good stories but most people disliked it due to it using bad animation. Why cant for a future blu ray release CBS just reanimate the series with top of the line animation while still using the same stories and voices by the actors. So is this possible and whats everyones thoughts on this?
can star trek animated series be reanimated for a blu ray release
- Thread starter tmosler
- Start date
Yeah, you could - but what's the point? Pretty much the only thing you could salvage would be the voices, unless you're planning to keep the chinzy "It Came From The 70's" musical score too. Besides, bad animation never seemed to slow Fat Albert, Flash Gordon or He-Man/She-Ra (from the same studio) down, nor would good animation have helped Filmation's other products of the era.
Trek fans had plenty of reasons for not liking TAS. I loved it! But others complained bitterly about 22-minute stories, a few weak concepts, numerous missed opportunities, no Chekov, Arex's extra limbs, M'Ress being a "furry", a few actors playing way too many voices in some episodes, and so little for the two new aliens to do.
So not just the "limited" animation style of Filmation that made the show able to meet its budget.
I postulated, years ago, padding out the episodes just a little with some new scenes, ie. between Arex and M'Ress, whom we saw lunching together in "The Practical Joker". The novelizations by Alan Dean Foster (the "Star Trek Logs") gave them both lots more to do, including flashback tales to expand their backgrounds.
But TAS is what it is. People are going to reject animated episodes of "Star Trek" for all kinds of reasons. It's really not going to earn CBS a lot more money than they'd get by rereleasing the TAS DVD set every few years, perhaps with new commentary tracks.
ROI.
The amount of time spent reanimating TAS with traditional hand-drawn cells or CGI animation at 24fps would be a lot more $ than the Blu-rays they would sell or the views they got on a paid streaming service.
The recycled music would really feel worse than it is if the picture got an update and not that music.
So much would need updating including adding to the original Effects audio stems with stereo backgrounds and additional ship rumble for the 7.1 audio mix.
CBS Home Video will probably release TAS to Blu-ray but it will be AS-IS and not a new telecine in 4k or anything else.
additional special feature documentaries would be shot and edited but that is all. maybe some storyboards or deleted scenes from scripts read aloud while you see storyboards. New audio commentaries too.
That is all the work CBS Home Video wants to put into TAS.
The next and last we'll see of William Shatner, Nimoy, and the gang will be a remaster and re-release of the first 6 films around 2015-2016. They will all most likely get 4k scans (except STII:TWOK which already did) and remasterings. Those 4k masters will be held onto for eventual release in a yet unnamed 4k download format.
Not a bad idea to reanimate TAS tmosler but I'd rather have a new Trek animated series rated TV-14 (in USA) for adults not for kids. Heavier science in the stories and less action. It is hard to do heavier character stories when they are just animated and not nuanced like live-action. See SWThe Clone Wars for the right direction for animated Trek.
They are woking on it: http://www.trektoday.com/content/2013/01/tas-on-blu-ray/
Yes, but it's not being reanimated, which was the OP's "wonderful" idea.
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^My bad. I need to read more closely
Limited animation, yes. But not "bad" from my perspective - in fact, it was extremely faithful to the live action show - I love it.
I don't agree with this at all. The score is of its time and actually rather good IMHO. The thought of TAS being "re-animated" and re-scored with some painfully dull late TNG era "muzak" fills me with horror.
TAS could be released, as is, on Blu-Ray right now. Although it will probably be tweaked to remove imperfections first.
If they do that, I would hope they would at least try to reanimate one episode. I would love a full-out CGI remake of the entire series, but with the existing voices....
If they do that, I would hope they would at least try to reanimate one episode. I would love a full-out CGI remake of the entire series, but with the existing voices....
Yes. Just try it. But additional sound fx and all new music. Take TOS music and use that. No replaying songs. This would be a great project as a fan film actually. Too bad no clean audio stems available to fans to use of dialogue-only.
Not enough people would buy TAS to do this. what if...what if they reanimated all the episodes with cgi? And released both versions as a set? Go hog wild on the visuals and make it fully widescreen compositions not protected for 4:3 . Cinema-style visuals. Cut to a very wide shot master or moving camera or a tracking shots with dirty foreground. Maybe even faster editing but the same audio.
They could add reverb to the dialogue and make it sound great for 5.1 surround .
This just keeps coming up ! Some people like the idea, some don't.
I'd love it, with both new widescreen CGI and old versions.
I'd have thought a CGI reanimation would find a market on kids TV channels too.
Do we know if clean masters of the audio even exist? This was a cheap cartoon from the 70s. What are the odds that Filmation saved the audio masters? For TOS they remastered the final cut episode, so we don't even know if the original elements exist there. It's only TNG forward that we know Paramount saved all the original pieces.
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