Which version of TOS is canon??
- Thread starter Lt. Tyler
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That scene (with Landru) was never on TAS rather it is a TOS scene recreated in the TAS-style for LD, so, it doesn't prove that TAS is canon on LD (, yet).
Boimler explicitly said there was a giant Spock clone on Phylos. We saw "More Tribbles, More Troubles"-style robot freighters in a scrapyard. They've shown a Vendorian and an Edoan.
Also, Riker mentioned the Kzinti in a Picard episode.
ONLY a dozen? (Put two politicians, organists, ST fans, etc. into a room, give them a subject, and you're guaranteed to get at least three opinions!)
Except that according to (if memory serves) Peter David, Arex is not an Edoan, but a Triexian. And according to Kevin Dilmore, Edoans are "more animated" (and I'm absolutely certain the pun was intended) than Triexians.
No point splitting hairs on nomenclature when it's not even certain if they're Edoans or Edosians. And tie-in assertions are irrelevant when we're talking about screen canon. The point is, the species from TAS has been confirmed to exist in LD, regardless of what you call it.
Also, the StarTrek.com video that purports to be "The Official Star Trek Timeline" includes TAS right alongside everything else.
That's great, thank you!
I don't think they add anything substantive enough to even have been done in the first place. For me, who grew up on TOS in the 70s, the new effects are completely unnecessary. A solution in search of a problem.
agreed: unnecessary and often underwhelming (the enterprise often looks so fake to me).
I wish they had just released a restored version of the original tapes. I wonder if redoing the space scenes digitally was a choice, as stated at the time, or if there was actually a technical reason for it not being possible.
For example: on TNG, DS9 and VOY it isn’t possible to do an HD remaster of the FX shots because these were composed at SD resolution, in TNG they went back to the original film of the models and recreated the effect from scratch - with an incredibly faithful result!
I don’t know if the TOS space scenes were only available in TV resolution, but if this was the case I can imagine that most of the models’ footage required to do a recreation of the effects no longer existed after 40 years and they decided that the only option was to go all digital. And the marketing team boasted about what actually ended up being a very unsatisfactory solution.
They weren't made for those of us who grew up on the show in the '70s. They were made to get younger viewers interested in an older show. It's selfish for us older fans to assume we should be the only audience that matters. After all, we're a dwindling audience and won't be around forever. We should be glad that it's able to evolve and attract new audiences.
Yes, that's what happened -- the original, separate film elements from TOS had been lost, or at least had not been located, so they couldn't be recomposited in HD quality. Recreating them digitally was the only option they had available.
I agree that they didn't always have the time or money to make them as good as they could have, but then, neither did the original show. That's just the nature of TV. The original's effects were often bad too, or the makeup was bad or the sets were bad or the scripts were bad. Nothing works 100% of the time. But a lot of the CGI effects were pretty cool -- enough that I feel they justify the overall effort as something worthwhile. I particularly appreciate the cases where they created something new to take the place of recycled stock footage, like Flint's mansion or the Tantalus colony or the "Ultimate Computer" starbase.
They were interesting to see that is true but they are in no way a replacement for the original episodes!
JB
If that was the reason then they didn't go far enough. The show screams the 1960s and no amount of dubious (imo) updated SFX will change that. Maybe people should try to appreciate something what was created in the time period that it was created in and stop trying to fix things that weren't broken.
Again, the issue was largely technical, not artistic. It wasn't about changing the visual style of the show; on the contrary, they tried to be as faithful to its look and intent as they could. It was about achieving HD resolution so it would look good on modern sets. Optically composited visual effects are low-resolution compared to normal film footage, because the compositing process requires rephotographing the film multiple times, resulting in generational loss of image quality. The normal live-action film could be remastered in HD because film is natively HD, but the composite shots were much grainier, and their matte lines and other imperfections stood out more in HD. So the people in charge of the project concluded that the image quality was just too low, and that it would be jarring to change from HD live-action film to much grainier, lower-quality FX footage. (People have gotten the wrong idea that "remastering" means replacing the effects, but it actually means taking the cleanest, best possible print from an original master film or recording. The CGI effects shots were the only parts of TOS Remastered that were not remastered.) They concluded that the only way for the FX shots to be at the same HD resolution as the live-action footage was to recreate them in HD.
And this matters...why, exactly?
Personally, I like the remastered SFX, and I'm puzzled at the objections. Nobody has suppressed the original versions, which exist in DVD format, probably looking better than they ever looked on the air, given the quality possible with 1960s-era television equipment.
And since Arex's species has not yet been mentioned in canon, it doesn't matter in the slightest, other than that it provided Kevin Dillmore with an opportunity for a clever pun.
And since Arex's species has not yet been mentioned in canon, it doesn't matter in the slightest, other than that it provided Kevin Dillmore with an opportunity for a clever pun.
I liked the one in the Novels that had it as a "R_____ is my middle name" running joke between them. I specifically remember "Racquetball" and "Rhinoceros"
Which is why high-end SFX houses have been known to shoot footage intended for optical compositing in a larger format than was used for other footage in the same production, e.g., 65mm or VistaVision.
And what novels jokingly gave "Racquetball" or "Rhinoceros" as Kirk's middle name?!?
I really can't figure out why you didn't take advantage of the opportunity to say "Original footage of the Enterprise is used in "If Memory Serves" (DSC), if memory serves."
#disappointed #once-in-a-lifetime
Thought about it. Though it probably would've been better with "They used original footage of the Enterprise in Discovery season two, if memory serves."
i think this was in shatner’s “collision course” novel.
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