Like I have. There's nothing anyone say in this thread which is going to deter me from enjoying CBS Digitals' efforts to update the series I love.
do you think TOS should have been remastered?
- Thread starter Clym
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Having seen TOS-R, yes, I long made up my mind that I find most of their efforts disappointing. I'll stick with the originals.
It isn't that I don't think it could be done, but that I know it could be done far better and more convincingly than what was done.
Dude, I don't watch those shows and couldn't care less what they have to say about a production that ended in 1969. Revisions to the original don't interest me. If they interest you, knock yourself out.
I prefer the remastered for the sole reason that I can finally see the alien ships they are talking about, instead of looking at an empty starfield.
TNG at least had an uninterrupted production cycle, rather than getting some of the people behind TOS back together again 4 years later to work on a new show in a completely different medium. TOS and TAS were hardly the same show.
But everything is part of the same timeline. While we can examine some stuff separately, it's meant to follow. For example, you can take the Hobbit on its own and examine it by itself. But if you want to understand everything, you also need to factor in Lord of the Rings, since that trilogy completes the book series (also so with the movies).
Nah. There's just way too much Trek material out there to include everything. I accept the good stuff and discount the bad. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me.
I understand but reject your analogy. Middle Earth was the creation of one person, Star Trek and the various spin offs were made by many different sets of people. You really can't even compare season 1 to season 3 of Star Trek reliably because most of the behind the scenes people were replaced or quit, or called themselves executive but didn't do anything.
Btw, I consider TAS in the same era as TOS. IMO, era means a span of time that can include several years, so 67 to 74 is within and era for me, 67 to 87 not so much. Using a design from 74 in a 67 production doesn't seem like a bad idea. Maybe it's not the best, but certainly not the worst decision or execution of the R project.
I still say the thing I hate the most about TOS-R is the stupid Tholian ship design they substituted instead of the really nice original model. The Tholian ships looked like they might have been carved out of crystal, then they turned them in to some grey shit with yellow on them. Very disappointing, the Klingon is really not very good either, as Maurice pointed out. There's other things, too, but those really stand out.
My counterargument would be that Star Trek, as a TV show, was always by design a collaborative effort by many people, so changes in staff do not affect how the final product should be treated. Case in point, the Prime Directive wasn't one of Roddenberry's ideas. Also, Roddenberry initiated the TNG show himself and passed the job of continuing the franchise to others, so there is a chain linking linking everything together except the reboot movies, anyways.
I actually like the original Tholian ship design and would've preferred a crisp, cleaned up version of that. But I do respect the intent for visual consistency with ENT (and I do like that design in and of itself), so I accept the difference. I actually like to believe that the Tholians use both designs.
^^ I don't respect such "intent" as it is blatant revisionism to erase the intent and creative integrity of the original producers. It amounts to "fixing" something that wasn't really broken in the first place.
It can be a fine line, but too often TOS-R vaulted past that line.
It can be a fine line, but too often TOS-R vaulted past that line.
Revisionism how? The old versions are still getting new home video releases (heck one of the selling points for the two-in-one Blu-Ray sets is that you can toggle between both versions). Nine times out of ten, the new new effects are just CGI versions of the old ones (or the addition of more TOS ships and designs).
This isn't Star Wars, where the theatrical cuts have only gotten a couple of rereleases since 1997 and the stated intent is that the new stuff is supposed to replace the old.
It's revisionism particularly when the originals are no longer readily available unless you're willing to fork over more money. And even the originals have been tampered with with added sound and visual f/x that were not there originally.
Star Trek season sets have always been spendy and the point is that both versions have had equal exposure on the market.
Really? Where did you hear that?
It has long been known that the sound mixes we have now aren't the original broadcast audio. On any version.
I'm sure Justman gave the remastered VFX a brief glance, but I doubt he turned much of a critical eye to it.
There are things the original VFX people understood that the CGI peeps don't appear to. A good example of this is Planet Killer antiproton beam: in the remaster it's this not-bright particle/flame effect which looks more fluid than energy. In the original it's a beam that cycles through a mess of colors so that it strobes bright and powerful. The TOS-R guys could have learned from that and made their version of the beam look a lot hotter and more dangerous than what we got. Likewise, the original "vomit" effect isn't great, but you get the sense of all this material/gas blasting out of the funnel, selling the power of the explosion, whereas the remastered one looks like the machine is barfing up blue Kool-Aid. No "oomph" at all.
There are things the original VFX people understood that the CGI peeps don't appear to. A good example of this is Planet Killer antiproton beam: in the remaster it's this not-bright particle/flame effect which looks more fluid than energy. In the original it's a beam that cycles through a mess of colors so that it strobes bright and powerful. The TOS-R guys could have learned from that and made their version of the beam look a lot hotter and more dangerous than what we got. Likewise, the original "vomit" effect isn't great, but you get the sense of all this material/gas blasting out of the funnel, selling the power of the explosion, whereas the remastered one looks like the machine is barfing up blue Kool-Aid. No "oomph" at all.
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I could reduce this to something simple. In the case of adding or changing something (only when necessary) I would ask myself: what might have been possible in 1966-69 under ideal conditions of the time? What sort of things might they have thought of and how could they have realized it?
Even if someone envisioned a starship flying around like a bumblebee they knew without question that the resources of the day--even with unlimited time and money--couldn't manage that.
And so, what if they had had the needed time to work up a nice model of the Antares for "Charlie X"? They go to Matt Jefferies and ask him for something that looks like a small survey/cargo ship and give him sufficient time to get it done. One thing we know with certainty: he wouldn't likely have come up with something envisioned by cgi artists forty years after the fact or even animators from seven years in the future unless the concept for the TAS freighter was actually sketched out during TOS.
Adding alien ships to an enhanced TOS? You put yourself back in the mindset of the original production people. You look for clues and inspiration dating from that era.
You want the Klingon battle cruiser to look better? You imagine what a nicely built physical model would look like nicely lighted and well photographed. You want a Romulan version of that ship? You envision the Klingon design painted appropriately.
You want the Constellation and other Federation starships to look more like the Enterprise rather than an obvious model kit? You imagine them having the time to build the required models and filming them appropriately.
You want the bridge and other sets to look more active and operational? You take a clue from "The Cage" and insert period looking graphics and visuals into the bridge overhead displays.
Every step of the way you envision how they could have done it back in the day and make it look like that. The result is TOS looking like it had the budget it should have had rather than what it actually had.
Even if someone envisioned a starship flying around like a bumblebee they knew without question that the resources of the day--even with unlimited time and money--couldn't manage that.
And so, what if they had had the needed time to work up a nice model of the Antares for "Charlie X"? They go to Matt Jefferies and ask him for something that looks like a small survey/cargo ship and give him sufficient time to get it done. One thing we know with certainty: he wouldn't likely have come up with something envisioned by cgi artists forty years after the fact or even animators from seven years in the future unless the concept for the TAS freighter was actually sketched out during TOS.
Adding alien ships to an enhanced TOS? You put yourself back in the mindset of the original production people. You look for clues and inspiration dating from that era.
You want the Klingon battle cruiser to look better? You imagine what a nicely built physical model would look like nicely lighted and well photographed. You want a Romulan version of that ship? You envision the Klingon design painted appropriately.
You want the Constellation and other Federation starships to look more like the Enterprise rather than an obvious model kit? You imagine them having the time to build the required models and filming them appropriately.
You want the bridge and other sets to look more active and operational? You take a clue from "The Cage" and insert period looking graphics and visuals into the bridge overhead displays.
Every step of the way you envision how they could have done it back in the day and make it look like that. The result is TOS looking like it had the budget it should have had rather than what it actually had.
So, they should've limited themselves to what was possible in the past, rather than trying to make the best possible in the present?
Why does it need to look like something Jefferies came up with? I'm sure Starfleet had more than one engineer designing stuff.
Why?
In regards the later, I take it you didn't watch "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS-R).
You want the bridge and other sets to look more active and operational? You take a clue from "The Cage" and insert period looking graphics and visuals into the bridge overhead displays.
Every step of the way you envision how they could have done it back in the day and make it look like that. The result is TOS looking like it had the budget it should have had rather than what it actually had.[/QUOTE]
CGI is just another tool for making movies and TV. It's neither better or worse than models (and there are a lot of things that models can't do that CGI can do better).
^^ What is apparent is that you evidently don't understand the essential point trying to be made. And it couldn't have been made more clearly.
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.
Make it look like it is all of the same production in a seamless manner rather than what is obviously two distinctly different productions separated by forty years and spliced together.
I, and others, have explained it enough. If you don't get it at this point then we're wasting our time.
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.
Make it look like it is all of the same production in a seamless manner rather than what is obviously two distinctly different productions separated by forty years and spliced together.
I, and others, have explained it enough. If you don't get it at this point then we're wasting our time.
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