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Imagine a big-budget Trek movie at that time...

^ Some years back when TOS-R was new, certain theaters did a one-night showing of "The Menagerie." Debates about the new special effects aside, I quite enjoyed seeing it on the big screen.

Kor
 
^ Some years back when TOS-R was new, certain theaters did a one-night showing of "The Menagerie." Debates about the new special effects aside, I quite enjoyed seeing it on the big screen.

Kor

Sweet. How did the menagerie look on the big screen. Did the film look good. Was it clear or fuzzy. Dang I wish I could have seen a TOS ep on the big screen.
 
There are memos indicating an attempt to get Jeff Hunter to come back to film some extra bits to pad out the first pilot to feature length, but that obviously never happened.
 
I don't want to call Roddenberry a "one trick pony," but he did like to recycle themes and ideas. For example, he recycled the Decker/Ilia relationship into Riker/Troi.

Roddenberry also recycled another idea in the form of Genesis II and Planet Earth.

Genesis II: A 1973 American television film pilot created and produced by Gene Roddenberry and directed by John Llewellyn Moxey. The film, which opens with the line, "My name is Dylan Hunt. My story begins the day on which I died", is the story of a 20th-century man thrown forward in time, to a post-apocalyptic future, by an accident in suspended animation.

Planet Earth: a science fiction television movie that was created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Roddenberry and Juanita Bartlett (from a story by Roddenberry). It first aired on April 23, 1974 on the ABC network, and stars John Saxon as Dylan Hunt. It was presented as a pilot for what was hoped to be a new weekly television series.[1] The pilot focused on gender relations from an early 1970s perspective. Dylan Hunt, confronted with a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, muses, "Women's lib? Or women's lib gone mad..."[2][3][4]

Planet Earth was the second attempt by Roddenberry to create a weekly series set on a post-apocalyptic future Earth. The previous pilot was Genesis II, and it featured many of the concepts and characters later redeveloped in Planet Earth.[3] Sets and props from Genesis II also found their way into Planet Earth.[5]

A third and final movie, Strange New World, was aired in 1975. This movie also starred John Saxon as Captain Anthony Vico. In this movie a trio of astronauts returns to Earth after 180 years in suspended animation to locate the underground headquarters of PAX and free the people placed there in suspended animation.

None of these three pilots was ever developed into a series; however, some of the characters served as prototypes for the later TV series (based on Roddenberry's ideas) Andromeda.[5]

Strange New World: A TV pilot based on concepts envisioned by Gene Roddenberry which first aired on March 23, 1975. It starred John Saxon as Captain Anthony Vico (PAX team leader), Kathleen Miller as Dr. Allison Crowley (team navigator and communications expert), and Keene Curtis as Dr. William Scott, M.D. (Team Physician/Doctor).

Strange New World was the third attempt to bring Roddenberry's post-apocalyptic future vision to the small screen. Prior efforts, called Genesis II and Planet Earth, explored an Earth after a nuclear war and focused on an organization called PAX that was working to bring peace and order to the world.

In addition to these ideas, Roddenberry was working on the Questor Tapes

The Questor Tapes: The Questor Tapes is a 1974 television movie about an android (portrayed by Robert Foxworth) with incomplete memory tapes who is searching for his creator and his purpose. Conceived by and executive produced by Gene Roddenberry, the script is credited to Roddenberry and fellow Star Trek alumnus Gene L. Coon.

A novelization, written by D. C. Fontana[1] (another Star Trek alumna), was dedicated to Coon, who died before the program was broadcast.

Questor echos Data from TNG, and V'Ger from TMP.

Since these were the ideas and themes floating around Roddenberry's head during the time period we're discussing, a Star Trek movie from 1969 or the early 70s may not have been much different than TMP. Or, maybe V'Ger would some how be incorporated into a time travel story where the Enterprise gets thrown back in time to either right before WWIII or after, during the long, dark nuclear winter with mutants and rival factions of humanity fighting over the ruined Earth and from this post atomic horror, the Federation will some day emerge.
 
If it were to involve Douglas Trumbull and it were to happen post-2001 then I think it would be very similar to what we got with TMP, just with more of a UFO mod-flavor vs. a disco-70s flavor. Other than Gerry Anderson's people I don't think there was a lot of really A-list FX people capable of doing space shots at the time that was above the quality of TOS.
Even though a decade had passed, I think TMP and Star Wars were influenced by the look of 2001.

Most of the 70s sci-fi shares a lot of that look. Star Wars started the trend away from that quiet and sterile presentation to something more lived in. Alien has an interesting mix, while it's dirty and run-down, it still looks like a dirty and run-down version of that typical 70s look.
 
As for a late 1960s Trek film, Memory Alpha says this:

Late 1967: Gene Roddenberry, Associate Producer Gregg Peters and Leonard McCoy Performer DeForest Kelley discuss among themselves in the former RKO commissary, the possibility of doing a Star Trek motion picture on a number of occasions, intended as a filler for the production hiatus between the second and third season of the regular Original Series. Being the earliest recorded notion of a motion picture, the idea is nixed however, or as Kelley has put it, "Who would ever think of making a motion picture out of a television show?" As it turns out, the series proper soon finds itself fighting for survival, threatened by cancellation. (Return to Tomorrow - The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, pp. 3, 5)

I recall an article where Roddenberry also mentions a Trek movie at a college appearance in late 1960s, speaking that it could focus on Spock or show how the entire bridge crew came together. He also mentions that idea in this article from the 1970s.
 
^ Some years back when TOS-R was new, certain theaters did a one-night showing of "The Menagerie." Debates about the new special effects aside, I quite enjoyed seeing it on the big screen.

Kor

Sweet. How did the menagerie look on the big screen. Did the film look good. Was it clear or fuzzy. Dang I wish I could have seen a TOS ep on the big screen.

It looked very good and sharp. Many people who are used to contemporary media and digital moviemaking think that 35 mm film is "not high definition," but that's quite mistaken. (they also think MP3s sound good :brickwall: but that's another topic altogether)

Kor
 
If you want it to be consistent and be in the same continuity then in terms of how things looked you could add more detail, but you wouldn't make wholesale changes. So costumes, sets and miniatures could be made to more exacting standards, but would look much the same. That's where you could say, "This is what it really looks like." The third season uniforms were made of better fabric and the recreations we see of them in fan productionss shows they could have worked for a '60's era feature film.

I don't know the stuff from Planet of the Titans seems to imply that the weren't that married to the TOS look sense it got a major overhaul and that was even more different looking than what they did with Phase II and TMP.
 
But Planet Of The Titans was conceived long after TOS had ceased production. The OP was suggesting a feature film coming out during TOS' 2nd and 3rd seasons or soon after. in 1968 or '69-70.
 
Before I forget, I think that "better fabric" is subjective. Weren't the first and second season uniforms made of a natural velour-type stuff? But it was harder to take care of and clean.

If I remember right, the third season uniforms were polyester, and they were more fitted. I think they did look better on screen, though they didn't have the same surface sheen as the natural velour.

As far as real-world clothes go, I would rather wear the velour fabric. I have an on-again, off-again interest in vintage clothing, and all the polyester clothes from that time that I've ever seen seemed pretty thick, stiff and uncomfortable.

Kor
 
It looked very good and sharp. Many people who are used to contemporary media and digital moviemaking think that 35 mm film is "not high definition," but that's quite mistaken. (they also think MP3s sound good :brickwall: but that's another topic altogether)

Kor

It wasn't a 35mm print shown though. It was the remastered episode in 1080p.
 
It looked very good and sharp. Many people who are used to contemporary media and digital moviemaking think that 35 mm film is "not high definition," but that's quite mistaken. (they also think MP3s sound good :brickwall: but that's another topic altogether)

Kor

It wasn't a 35mm print shown though. It was the remastered episode in 1080p.

Exactly. It looked very good projected in 1080p.

I'm trying to say that 35 mm film is not "lower resolution" than 1080p digital, like many people think. They keep saying you don't need to buy older films or TV shows on blu ray because those movies and shows "aren't high definition" (their words, not mine) and so the DVD is good enough.

Film itself is not formed from lines of pixels, so it's really meaningless to apply digital terms to it. If the film is scanned at a high enough digital resolution with enough color depth, then it is very hard for the eye to distinguish between the digital version on an HD TV, and watching a film reel projected onto a screen.

I always seek out older films on blu ray when they are available, since I really notice weird digital artifacts and lack of clarity when watching upscaled DVD on an HD TV, not to mention the lack of color depth.

For stuff that's shot on quality film, 1080p blu ray is currently the common home video format that looks best and most natural (HD DVD is dead, and 4k is not yet widespread enough to include in the discussion).

Kor
 
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