Original TOS fx, good and bad….

[Christopher]

TOS-R was largely done by Berman-era folks

Yes and no. The visual effects producers included Berman-era veterans Michael & Denise Okuda and Dave Rossi, but visual effects supervisor Niel Wray and matte artist Max Gabl, two of the people most responsible for its look, had never worked on any of the Berman shows.

https://trekmovie.com/2006/11/20/behind-the-scenes-at-cbs-digital/

it seemed that there was more interest in making it fit the TNG aesthetic better than being faithful to the source material

That's completely untrue. The goal was to stay true to the original aesthetic in a way that would also appeal to modern audiences. The CGI ship designs they created are mostly very TOS-like, with smooth surfaces and simple shapes, although they also adapted a freighter design from the animated series and a 23rd-century space station design from the Vanguard novels. Max Gabl studied Albert Whitlock's matte paintings as a guide to his approach.

 

[Silvercrest]

In “The Galileo Seven” I have long been disappointed with the visual effect of exhaust plumes coming out the shuttlecraft nacelles when Spock jettisons the fuel and ignites it. First it looks sloppily done. But more so it doesn’t make sense given Scotty drained their phasers as a substitute fuel, and phasers use energy and not liquid or solid fuel. So wtf was Spock igniting?

That has always bothered me. At one point on this board, there was a suggestion that the phaser energy was used to power a fuel synthesizer or some such thing, and what the shuttle actually used was the resulting product. I can't remember if that was my idea or someone else's!

Does the episode have any dialogue making that unlikely? The more vague Scotty is with the technobabble, the easier it is to handwave.

 

[Warped9]

That's completely untrue. The goal was to stay true to the original aesthetic in a way that would also appeal to modern audiences.

It is true. They failed. And it’s even more obvious now given they haven’t aged well at all.

 

[drt]

That's completely untrue. The goal was to stay true to the original aesthetic in a way that would also appeal to modern audiences.

Ok, it was probably better to say TOS-R aesthetics fit how the "TOS look" evolved over 40 years. The Vanguard space station you mentioned is just the 80s Spacedock with a K7-inspired veneer, it doesn't look like any of Jefferies' space station concepts.

So there was more emphasis placed on having TOS-R fitting 40 years of Star Trek evolution, and changing things that were "wrong" like inserting that aforementioned Vanguard style station into "The Ultimate Computer" for no reason, instead of remaining faithful to the original vision.

 

[Lord Garth]

I haven't bought TOS on Blu-Ray yet, I still have the DVD sets, but I'm glad they have both versions on there.

What they really need to do is take the original footage of the exterior shots and clean it up. It's hard to do today, but as AI software advances, it should become easier. I'm a video editor myself and have found AI very useful in fixing bad footage I previously couldn't use on an independent film. I don't want to use it too often, but it can help in a sticky situation if you have bad footage but can't reshoot it.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Or hire someone like @Chris PikE to whip up some production quality models, add a space backdrop and some "film grain" and boom: new effects done.

 

[drt]

What they really need to do is take the original footage of the exterior shots and clean it up.

They did do this for the blurays. I think it looks pretty good, but some folks might be put off by sloppy mattes, noticable graining from too many optical overlays, etc., that are still present, so your mileage may vary.

 

[Christopher]

So there was more emphasis placed on having TOS-R fitting 40 years of Star Trek evolution, and changing things that were "wrong" like inserting that aforementioned Vanguard style station into "The Ultimate Computer" for no reason, instead of remaining faithful to the original vision.

That wasn't "the original vision," it was recycling stock footage from "The Trouble With Tribbles" because they didn't have the money to build a new station miniature. It's disingenuous to attribute budgetary and logistical compromises to "artistic vision." The people who made TOS would laugh at the idea that everything in it was their preferred ideal, rather than what they had to grudgingly settle for given the limitations they worked under. Nobody who makes TV wants to settle for reusing stock footage to represent something that's supposed to be new and different. It's a compromise, not a "vision."

And that's the spirit with which TOS-R was made. For the first use of a shot, like the Rigel VII fortress or the lithium cracking station or the Botany Bay or station K-7, they used or recreated the original image, so all of those designs are still there; but in cases where a stock shot was reused in a later episode (e.g. the fortress as Flint's mansion, the cracking station as Tantalus Colony, the Botany Bay as the Woden, K-7 as the "Ultimate Computer" starbase), they replaced it with something new, which is surely what the original creators would have done if they'd had enough time and money. And so, for example, instead of having to settle for Flint's mansion looking exactly like the Rigel VII fortress right down to the same landscape and heavenly bodies in the sky, we have Max Gabl's truly gorgeous matte painting creating a distinct look for Flint's mansion. We get both the original designs and new ones alongside them, instead of just the recycled stock shots they had to settle for. I see that as coming closer to the original vision. Because no created work is ever exactly true to the creators' vision; it's just as close as they could get before they ran out of time or money.

 

[Warped9]

You can explain it all you want. They blew it.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

TOS had some award-winning VFX, like the Tholian web, or the giant protozoa from "The Immunity Syndrome."

True; some reference 2001's EFX as if that was the only "good" method of producing work, but TOS had its own EFX language and universe style to build, creating work that's still iconic to this day--the two examples you cite among their number.

The Delta-Vega matte painting in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" still holds up very well in HD. It's almost a crime that it was made in the noisy, low-res era of '60s television.[/quote]

So many of the TOS matte paintings still retain their quality and otherworldly power, while the substituted landscapes from TOS-R (designed to replace repurposed TOS mattes, such as Rigel VII fortress also used a Flint's home in "Requiem for Methuselah") were inferior when originally produced and are painfully cartoonish when viewed today.

I think were I to laud it for anything, first and foremost would be the Enterprise herself. Not just a little rocket on wires, but a massive model, filmed with an early version of motion capture against a blue-screen... I'm not sure but I guess that was unheard of on television at the time?

The blue screen process was not unheard of in the 1960s, but the vast majority of space shots (e.g. re-used footage from Forbidden Planet, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, Irwin Allen's Lost in Space and Land of the Giants TV series, etc.) were achieved with miniatures in front of physical space backdrops. The TOS producers were not going to achieve the effect of scale, detail and believable movement if the largest Enterprise miniature had been suspended by wires, so their solution was quite innovative for the demands of a continuing series, considering how the majority of space sequences filmed in the decades to follow all used a similar, evolving process.

 

[Jadeb]

I’ve always been fond of the fx work on Balok’s ship, the Fesarius. Seems very alien and intimidating on screen, and the design works really well in the context of the story’s twist. One of the best alien ships in the whole franchise.

 

[Henoch]

This will be controversial, even as a kid, I always thought that firing two phaser beams with diverging angles at one distant target was confusing ...it makes more sense for either one beam or two beams closer together. The beams are almost parallel at impact as seen in The Apple, Who Mourns for Adonais? and The Paradise Syndrome to name a few. <I guess they tried to fix these in the TOS-R, but that's another thread...>

 

[blssdwlf]

Unless the beams could get a final trajectory adjustment to converge after traveling some distance away from the Enterprise

I had thought TOS was the only show that did this but then I saw this behavior in some versions of the Space Battleship Yamato series...

This will be controversial, even as a kid, I always thought that firing two phaser beams with diverging angles at one distant target was confusing ...it makes more sense for either one beam or two beams closer together. The beams are almost parallel at impact as seen in The Apple, Who Mourns for Adonais? and The Paradise Syndrome to name a few. <I guess they tried to fix these in the TOS-R, but that's another thread...>

 

[Metryq]

Shock cannons are one thing, but no one messes with the Wave Motion Gun.

 

[drt]

Shock cannons are one thing, but no one messes with the Wave Motion Gun.

*dons goggles*

 

[johnnybear]

With the Naked Time I've always felt that Scotty burning through the bulkhead door without the phaser beam being visible was because he had fine tuned the weapon to that setting so that he could cut through as quick as possible. I still have the DVDs and not Blu's so it's still the best reasoning I have for the lack of effect.
I liked the glowing Klingon ship in Friday's Child. I think it makes the D-7 which first appeared in the third season even more formidable for the Enterprise to take on in combat.
Kras told Kirk he was from a small scout ship but that wasn't the vessel that Scotty and Chekov identified on screen! no, they said it was a Klingon warship and it was trying to provoke the Enterprise to come closer so it must have had sufficient power to take Scotty on! It's glowing nacelles were great I thought. Like a flat pair of scissors legs slightly akimbo at the edge of their viewer!
JB

 

[publiusr]

I could actually see that scout craft as a V shape with a Lief Erikson type fo'c's'le.

 

[Qonundrum]

I've not seen TOS-R in a while, but the new effects - having their own pros and cons with the rendering farm used at the time and related costs - did flesh out scenes far better and not just shove into the frame whatever they wanted for a thrill (e.g. Star Wars, Red Dwarf). Those hold up far more, despite the limited shadow-detail/low-polygon CGI count, for me anyway.

From recollection:

Stellar:
The Doomsday Machine (the planet rubble bits bouncing off the hull was genius)
The Enterprise Incident (using both enemies' style ships)

Great:
The Galileo Seven
Space Seed


Good:
Where No Man Has Gone Before
Who Mourns for Adonis
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
The Way to Eden

Bad:


Why bother as there was no real way to improve:
The Immunity Syndrome (I recall they added 3d perspective while inside protoplasm and peptol bismol, but what they replaced was far scarier - even if they couldn't do the "depth with space fluid" effect outright.)

 

[Christopher]

This will be controversial, even as a kid, I always thought that firing two phaser beams with diverging angles at one distant target was confusing ...it makes more sense for either one beam or two beams closer together. The beams are almost parallel at impact as seen in The Apple, Who Mourns for Adonais? and The Paradise Syndrome to name a few. <I guess they tried to fix these in the TOS-R, but that's another thread...>

I would assume that those are supposed to be tricks of perpsective -- the beams are actually parallel, but we're seeing them at an angle so they converge with distance. Although the angle is wrong for that in the lower left image.

 

[TIN_MAN]

I think that generally, all the effects of TOS were good, but where they suffered was from time/budget limitations necessitating reusing matte paintings, which is where the remastered version really helped out a lot by "fixing" that. Also, reusing stock footage of the Pilot version of the ship and/or weapons fire which didn't match the dialog was often an issue for me.

Another remastered FX "fix" that I think makes sense is at the end of "Day of the Dove" when the entity leaves the ship. In the original FX its shown exiting from the leading edge of the secondary hull, but in the remastered version its shown exiting from just behind the base of the nacelle support pylons, which as we know now, is most likely where Jefferies wanted his engine room to be, and it also fits better with the pressure compartment diagram seen earlier in the episode, which shows this same area as being one of the locations (highlighted in red in the diagram) as accessible to both factions, whereas the area at the leading edge of the hull -corresponding to the original FX shot- is not one of the accessible areas (shown in blue/green) on the same diagram.

But on the other hand, I think the remastering team really dropped the ball by not using Jefferies original space station concept in "The Ultimate Computer", and instead opted for the Vanguard station, which kinda went against their stated mandate of trying to stick with what would have been doable in the sixties -if there had been time and money to do right.