do you think TOS should have been remastered?

[Warped9]

I'm not so sure. They had a TOS ship interacting with more realistic and detailed ENT ships in "In a Mirror Darkly, Parts I and II" (ENT) and they all looked like they belonged to the same world (and they have had TOS movie ships interacting with TNG/DS9/VGR ships in the TNG and DS9 TV shows just fine, too).

Except the aesthetic style of ENT and DS9 is quite different from TOS. This is a point you don't seem to understand.

I tend to think of starships being very futuristic things built in ways far surpassing what we understand today. Hence I think of their hulls generally being like that of jet aircraft or even submarines.

 

[Forbin]

Just like how well TOS meshes with the rest of the franchise?

Well that's a fairly crazy thing to say. What are you thinking was supposed to have happened, prescience or time travel?
"Matt, make the models with a design ethic that looks like the ones that will be made for a spinoff 30 years from now, m'kay?"

 

[WebLurker]

Except the aesthetic style of ENT and DS9 is quite different from TOS. This is a point you don't seem to understand.

I tend to think of starships being very futuristic things built in ways far surpassing what we understand today. Hence I think of their hulls generally being like that of jet aircraft or even submarines.

But all that DS9 and ENT did was have high-quality versions of the TOS ships. There was zero concession to how silly the sets and props could look today (Which is exactly the same thing we got with TOS-R).

 

[Warped9]

I give up.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Yes, but TOS only had one person designing it. Jefferies. He defined the look of TOS sets and vehicles. If you're doing something that is supposed to look like the world of TOS, it needs to look like Jefferies.

Don't forget Wah Chang!

You're right. I was forgetting Mr. Chang's contributions. Thanks for the reminder. I guess I should have said that the look of TOS was predominantly defined by Mr. Jefferies.

Respect the original production. You see that as a limitation when it's not. It could look wonderful and would actually be a more faithful and dedicated effort than the cartoons CBS animators cooked up with TOS-R.

TAS was produced by Filmation, not CBS. And, while the alien ships were really wacky, the Federation ships were all in line with the TOS style.

Warped9 was talking about CBS/TOS-R here, not TAS.

Just like how well TOS meshes with the rest of the franchise?

That's a problem of the sequel series, not with TOS. It's just that there have been so many episodes made with the 24th Century aesthetic that TOS now looks like the odd man out. But that's not a bug, that's a feature.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I hate it when someone says "this looks more realistic" The first time I read something like that was when they, might have been Okuda, was talking about comparing the Klingon ships in TMP to in Star Trek and claimed they were more realistic. Because he looked at the real Klingon battlecruisers and these models looked more like the real one than the original, right? It's a freakin' imaginary thing, there is no realistic! There's a good job and a bad job, like the original and the poor cg ones, respectively, but there's not "realistic" version. I don't care if it's hot pink and has feathers, it's not anymore or less realistic depiction of an imaginary thing.



Hell yes, I can't agree with that more. Don't dumb down the masterpiece with that spinoff crap. That goes ten times for that prequel crap.

The word realistic has become an anointed meaning for, "I LIKE THIS." But completely doesn't have any relevance to Star Trek which were made up.

 

[WebLurker]

Warped9 was talking about CBS/TOS-R here, not TAS.

Okay, I admit I was being sarcastic there.

 

[Vance]

The word realistic has become an anointed meaning for, "I LIKE THIS." But completely doesn't have any relevance to Star Trek which were made up.

I would use the word 'believable', myself. But when I say that, I still consider Walter's Enterprise near the top of the list for believably. She was the only one designed with a Naval and Air Force thinking for space travel, rather than just 'how does it look on the big screen this week'. This is not to say the other ships are ugly, but 'realism' wasn't a goal for any of them - at least not like the original.

 

[Trekfan12]

I apologize. My comment wasn't intended to be hostile. WebLurker actually inspired an idea, hence the "There's an Idea," remark. Again, I apologize if it sounded like I was ripping anyone to shreds. It was a meant as a sincere comment.

Thank you, I know that there are sometimes misunderstandings when talking to other people online (misunderstandings that might not happen if you were talking to someone face to face)

 

[uniderth]

I give up.

Never give up! Never surrender!

 

[johnnybear]

I give up.

Why what were you trying to do?
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Thing is TOS is still the main show in the franchise for me and many others so TOS doesn't have to answer to anyone! It's the other shows that have to make the grade! Better effects don't cover the less than great stories for the most parts!
JB

 

[Maurice]

Having worked on the effects for a fanfilm that tried very hard to only do things that would have been possible with 1969 film technology (given more money and time) and that would match the aesthetic of a show made in that era I feel somewhat qualified to say that the remastered VFX frequently missed the mark in regards to making said effects feel like part of the "whole" of an episode. We did things like simulate optical printer tricks, slit-scans, slot-mask animations, multiple exposures of the same elements, etc., and largely moved the ships by moving the virtual cameras past them as if pushed on a dolly (mostly straight lines).

Even without going to the extremes we did I think the TOS-R VFX could have struck a better balance in that regard. As is, they often feel like footage from a different show.

 

[Mytran]

I think Exeter still feels the most TOS-ish of all the fan films out there. All those techniques used was definitely time well spent
Thank you.

 

[spockboy]

This video is in another thread but I thought it pertinent to this discussion
It was made in my living room with a model and was purposely made with the TOS aesthetic in mind.

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Spockboy

 

[Vance]

Okay, you have a small team, limited budget, under-developed CGI techniques, a little under a year, and 79 episodes!

GO!

All things considered, Mike and crew did a very good job, even as I take issue with some of their choices. I just wish the criticisms of TOS-R were kept in a realistic appraisal of what they were doing, and not the 'endless time and money' mind I see here at times.

 

[uniderth]

Never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it twice.

 

[BillJ]

Okay, you have a small team, limited budget, under-developed CGI techniques, a little under a year, and 79 episodes!

GO!

All things considered, Mike and crew did a very good job, even as I take issue with some of their choices. I just wish the criticisms of TOS-R were kept in a realistic appraisal of what they were doing, and not the 'endless time and money' mind I see here at times.

I think most folks here have acknowledged that they were under constraints.

But if they had stayed true to the original effects, they could've reused a shitload of assets over and over, giving them more time to perfect the models and techniques they were using. We didn't need to see a Klingon ship in "Friday's Child" (for example), that is time that could've been given over to other parts of the project.

 

[Maurice]

I've always been cognizant of the time and budget constraints and I've never said they should have done more. They should have done the shots smarter.

As a fer instance, the script for "Arena" never calls for the Gorn ship to be visible, so they changed that. Okay, I get why they wanted to add it, but as small as it was in the end result they could have had an artist paint a simple digital matte painting of the ship (it could have been painted in literally minutes, as indistinct as it was) and spared themselves building a model at all.

 

[BillJ]

I've always been cognizant of the time and budget constraints and I've never said they should have done more. They should have done the shots smarter.

As a fer instance, the script for "Arena" never calls for the Gorn ship to be visible, so they changed that. Okay, I get why they wanted to add it, but as small it was in the end result they could have had an artist paint a simple digital matte painting of the ship (it could have been painted in literally minutes, as indistinct as it was) and spared themselves building a model at all.

Speaking of "Arena". Did we really need to see the Gorn blink? That is also time and money that could've been spent elsewhere.