You can update TOS aesthetics to today. Honestly the Discovery Uniforms are bad, legitimately from a framing perspective, they all just bleed into the background because everything on Discovery is dark and blue. Easy fix, colour code them. Another way to update TOS aesthetics, just put TOS colour highlights in the environment. Orange around doors, Orange beams etc. Another way, have characters have 1960s Retro Futurism style haircuts. Another way, you know that terrible party scene in Episode 7 that was copy-pasted out of a frat party movie from 2002? How about you have people listening to 60s style music, in 60s retrofuturism style clothes? Showing that while this is the future, the fashion aesthetic of the era is 60s futurism. 60s futurism still looks sleek and futuristic till this day so I don't know why they haven't done this widely through Discovery. What makes it even weird is THEY HAVE done this at one point in Discovery, Stellar who looked like she stepped right out of TOS, but they've done it nowhere else. The party scene for me was such a missed opportunity to do some visual tie into TOS.
I'm curious to know what sets, costumes and models were reuses from earlier productions. I always thought most of it was designed exclusively for The Original Series.
one thing that immediatley comes to mind was the Western town they used in the OK Corral episode, probably on loan from Bonanza or another show like that. The often used togas were reuses as well, I assume
I don't think so. IIRC, the minimalist sets for “Spectre of the Gun” were specifically designed for the episode by set designer Matt Jefferies. I'm not saying TOS was above re-using stuff from previous productions, but by and large they seemed to be working with their own props, sets and costumes. I don't know where Sullivan got that idea.
In TOS - "City on the Edge of FRorever" - a number of the scenes where Edith and Kirk are walking around town were filmed on sets used for "The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry R.F.D" . There's a shot where they're standing in front of Floyd's Barber Shop.
The Budget was really tight on ToS. It is known. FHS, just watch the ToS DVD's with virtually any cast member. They tell all kinds of stories about how cheap the studio was and all the rabbits they pulled out of hats on short funds at costume & props. Spock's ears. All kinds of stuff. Instead of acting like whiny schoolgirls/fanboys about someone insulting ToS, understand the truth. ToS was cheap and mirroring their sets and such would be silly 50 years later. Heck, our conception of how computers work has increased so much in 50 years. ToS has HARD DISKS in their computers and printouts. That stuff is out of date NOW. Not so mention cell phones/communicators. Holograms. Virtual reality.
No, TOS had "tapes" in their Computers (Tapes pre-date Hard Disks BTW) But again, TOS WASN'T cheap, and like virtually every Star trek series of it's time - had (again for the time period it was made in) motion picture level SFX. There are effects shots in TOS that compare very favorably with effects shots from 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, the production designers are always saying "We didn't have the budget for what we really wanted/could have done...but that's Hollywood. IE It's RARE for a production designer to say - "Yes, I had ALL the money I needed..." Again, for the time (and compared to other genre shows like "Lost In Space", "Time Tunnel", Quinn Martin's "The Invaders, etc.) STAR TREK was the most expensive show with the largest per episode budget at that time - so no, it wasn't done "on the cheap..."
Good grief, they fly a producer all the way from LA to NY each week just to participate in an "After Trek" discussion? No wonder TV is expensive to make. ;-) Along which lines... No, it really wasn't. The show was budgeted at $190,000 per episode in 1966, making it one of the most expensive shows on the air at the time. It received multiple award nominations for design, cinematography, and effects (among other things). Compare its visuals to comparable shows from the era (say, Lost in Space or Wild Wild West or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), and it definitely stands out. Have TV (and film) budgets and production values improved since the late '60s? Of course. But there's no reason those improved production values couldn't be applied to design choices that reflect the original Star Trek aesthetic. (Certainly the recent Star Wars sequels have taken that approach to the original SW visuals, for the sake of preserving an aesthetic that is — purely IMHO — far less interesting, less thought-out, and less deserving. Lots of grime, lots of greeblies, lots of wraparound tunics, lots of deep cavernous pits in the middle of otherwise ordinary starships and space stations...) If you ask me, some of the design choices on DSC are solid (I particularly like the engineering set, for instance), but others are simply inexcusable, on the grounds of "updating" or anything else. Pretty much everything to do with the Klingons, for instance, from the makeup to the ship designs, has IMHO been a disaster.