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Star Trek - Special Edition
Deathlizard writes "Confirming rumours from last month, Trekkies will finally join their Star Wars brethren and get a taste of the 'George Lucas Treatment' this year. CBS will be rebroadcasting The Original Star Trek Series for it's 40th anniversary. The catch? New Digital Graphics." From the article: "Digitally created images will replace the miniature-scale models used for exterior shots of the various spacecraft on the show, including Kirk's Starship Enterprise and the enemy war vessels of the alien Klingons and Romulans. Shots of distant galaxies and planets also will be touched up with computer graphics to give them greater depth. The flat matte paintings used as backdrops on the surface of the strange new worlds visited by the Enterprise crew will be digitally enhanced to add texture, atmosphere and lighting."
Next up for 'improvement': The Honeymooners in Color. Where will it end?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
n/t
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
How about walkie talkies instead of hand phasers?
As long as Kirk shoots first (or only, as applicable) I'll still be happy.
But it was with the green alien lady.
Next they'll be digitally editing Shatner's hair and waist lines.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's no intelligent posts down here.
So are they also going to digitally enhance the Klingons so that they have the the right forehead texture ?
ooops, wrong star thingy
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
They're going to digitally insert "Sprint" onto all the communicators to help recoup costs.
I think that changing any of the older shows on TV is just a waste. Sure, it will bring in tons of money but when a show gets changed it does not have the same impact as the original. They change what was a main feature of the series. Can't they get a new idea instead of ruining a good old one.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.- Douglas Adams
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
The flat matte paintings used as backdrops on the surface of the strange new worlds visited by the Enterprise crew will be digitally enhanced to add texture, atmosphere and lighting.
Obviously the dorks at CBS/NBC/ABC or whomever seem to have missed the point: It's the cheese that makes Trek taste so good after all these years.
TOS is a classic, in part, because we get to sit back and see the innovation Roddenberry and crew had enough insight to bring to the surface but not enough FX abilities to make it convincing (even back when TOS was in first run). Aside from Shatner's bad acting what else will we have to cheer for?
Frankly, this blows. If people like it I have nothing against it but I will not be party to it either. This is akin to updating all the antiquated language and references in, let's say, War of the Worlds and try to make it new and accessible to a new fanbase... Oh, sorry! (See! I've proven my own point)
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
At least we still have the motivational posters...
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Are they going to digitally alter the scripts to make them less cheesy?
And to improve the acting, Kirk will now be played by Jar Jar Binks. Thanks to the wonders of digital compositing.
"Mesa shout, Kahn?"
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
dupe of url, url, url
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/29/123021 3
I hope it's a labor of love where they replace the crude effects with superior ones without letting themselves get carried away. Hopefully they won't go the Hollywood route and let the effects overwhelm and upstage the episodes. The real test will be if the episodes look better, but someone has to point out the changes.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
Anyone who saw these episodes when they originally appeared (I was 10 at the time - I got a special dispensation from my parents to see the third season even though it was past my bedtime) knows they came out on NBC. How did CBS get to show them, much less get permission to tart them up?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
TOS is still available via DVD, it will be rebroadcast in its original form on TV LAND... there's just no comparison to Lucas' repeated muddling of the Star Wars plot and effects. The only reason Lucas has decided to sell the original unmodified trilogy is because so many people downloaded or bought used laserdisc copies, rather than buy his recent updated box set.
I mean, I grew up with TOS and think it's kinda cool CBS will rebroadcast it in HD - but I'm not clamoring for it either. I just think the comparison between Paramount's changes tp TOS vs. what Lucas did to the original Star Wars is just plain unfair.
*shrug*
What is wrong with these Hollywood shitheads?
Would you go back to "The Scarlet Letter" and update it so Hester Prin had her clothes updated to the Scarlet Letter had a higher threadcount?
Maybe we should tweak "The Last of the Mohicans" so we get speeches about how much purer the water would be if people don't pollute it?
Or let's take "A Streetcar Named Desire" and colorize it, then digitally drop Brando by 5 pounds to make him more modern.
The reason why "Star Wars: A New Hope" was cool was by pure accident of love and attention to detail with the resources they had. Now, it's an altered piece of shit that tries to moralize how Han Solo wasn't a bad man - he was just "sort of bad" (which makes his ultimate redemption and turning to the "good guys" pointless, and loses the power of showing that anyone can change for the better).
"Star Trek" for it's time was cheap, and cheesy, and even silly - but they were serious about what they were trying to do: show a future of humanity where people of all races could work together. Sure, it had its flaws. Yes, the costumes and sets were, by today's and possibly even that time period, hokey.
But that's what made it work! If you want to make a new "Star Trek" series a la "Battlestar Gallactica", by all means do so. Want to release a new DVD set that doesn't rape the fans with 2 episodes per $30 DVD? I'm all for it. Add in commentary? Sure. Why not. I even like the fan-made Star Trek idea where they had two versions: one in color, the other in black and white to show how people back in the 60's would likely have seen the episodes back in a time when few had color TV's.
Don't go changing things just because you think you can. I still have no plans on buying the "Star Wars Remixed with Crappy Laserdisk rips" for that reason. Things work sometimes *because* of the flaws, not in spite of them. So sorry, Universal. As George Takei said to William Shatner:
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I think the bigger news is that they're finally releasing the animated series on DVD. I have good memories of these cartoons from when I was a kid, but I never had a chance to watch more than one or two. I'm looking forward to renting them - it's almost like having new episodes of the original series to watch.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Will the new digital phasers still point away from each other, yet somehow converge on their target?
Because it's not real TOS Star Trek if they don't.
I'm not sure which to do...
either way, nerds around the world will unite and make this a succesful venture. Guys, there has got to be something better to waste time on.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Ugg they did that for Red Dwarf and ruined it :/ Some thigns are supposed to be cheesey
I guess they have not figured out that the campy-ness of the show was a big part of the appeal. That and the fact that you were sort of forced to use your imagination to buy into some of it.
It sort of seems to me like they are saying: "We want to make that Klingon more realistic." Um...
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
I think this will suck the soul out of the thing. It was exactly these low-tech touches that make it what it is. The imagination required to watch and enjoy these shows will be stunted. They'll be come the same old eye-candy type of sf show that's already prevalent. Granted it's the same dialog and all... but it will distract from the essence of the experience.
Or so I believe.
George Lucas has such a great record of improving classic SF films, doesn't he.
Dave Edwards.
Log Buffer
Well, then probably they're going to follow in Lucas's footsteps by waiting several years and releasing a new edition with the untouched and retouched versions side by side. Suckers.
Slices, dices, eats your lunch.
Well, that's cool....hehee...I can't remember who it was, I think maybe Dennis Miller who asked "Did you ever get really stoned, and watch the beginning of Star Trek, and try to figure out which star became the Enterprise?"...hehehe...priceless.
I like that and his idea for a more existential setting for the phaser...instead of just 'stun' and 'kill'.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Is there a society that preserves TV and movie media like archive.org preserves the internet? Will a distributed P2P Storage Area Network ever be possible, like a huge ongoing TIVO?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Let's give the mona lisa more modern clothing and make her thinner.
I'm sure this will give that old classic more "modern appeal".
"You have liberated me from thought."
Are they ... going to ... fix up ... the choppy audio ... coming from ... Shatner's ... microphone?
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They should improve the communicators pins on the crew's chests... They are sooo ugly!
That is the way it should be. Clean things up, enhance colors, tweak minor items, but in the end, LEAVE THINGS THE WAY THEY WERE! (You hear us George!?)
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hear that it is indeed a labor of love.
e /25055.html
The person I spoke with says they won't touch the plot or dialog. It's just to clean things up in a way of honoring it.
Also, the syndication episodes, he said, run about 43 minutes, while the whole episodes were originally 51-52 minutes.
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/articl
It's also remastered from the original 35 mm prints. It looks a heck of a lot sharper... you know you want to see Shatner sharper...
Yeah, but the difference here is that real Trek fans won't get their panties in a bunch about it because they embrace technology at every turn. That's what separates the men from the boys. Errr... I mean the Trekkers from the Jedi.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
- This will somehow (unlikely) be an absolutely brilliant edit job that enhances and artistically reimagines the amazing wonder of the original classic series.
- (More likely) It will suck donkey yamsack.
One of these two scenarios is going to happen. Unlike Star Wars, if item #2 comes to pass, then we can simply ignore it. Gene Roddenberry isn't around to "tape over" the originals and absolutely refuse to sell them, hell they're still shown on TV. So if it sucks, we can go about our day.I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
So... now that, for the first time since 1987, there's no commercial Star Trek shows in production, they've to "bring back" the classics? I'm not actually upset by them retouching the backgrounds, etc. so much as that after the fiasco of Enterprise, I was hoping for something more progressive, rather than going back and retouching footage from my parents' generation.
On the other hand, one could argue that, at the very least since DS9, Trek has gone downhill with every successive series. Maybe they think they just need to get back to their roots? If they can combine the original story with enough modern SFX to keep viewers happy, this re-run might even beat out the original showing for ratings.That would certainly be good news for trek fans; if the show still has following, we're a lot less likely to go through a repeat of the '69 to '87 dark age.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Does this mean they ride in the short Enterprise?
I'll take a CGI chop job over the Spock Market any day.
I hear this argument about Doctor Who all the time and I call bullshit either way.
You like to think that you like Star Trek (or Doctor Who) because of the cheese, but you didn't. If you saw these shows as a kid, you fell in love with them because of the memorable characters, engaging plots, the strong moral messages, and (yes) a sense of wonder at the imaginative settings, creatures, and situations. Seriously. You fell in love with these shows because you liked them -- don't try to intellectualize your way out of it now that you're all growed up.
Breakfast served all day!
I'm all for them doing a slight overhaul on TOS. As long as its only the ships/planets/space scenes, then I call it an alternative improvement. As long as they keep the originals and have them available as well, theres no harm done. Now, if they start adding creatures running around in the background of planets, Kirk shooting second, or changing the way characters looked (Klingons for example), then I'll probably still watch, but with a bad taste in my mouth. Of course, I'd not mind if they change the viewscreen to make it look less like a crappy splice job. Heck, maybe they can even tweak phaser shots to look like they were actually pointed at the spot where the beam hits, instead of the beam magically changing direction right out of the phasers tip. I know a lot of people don't want these things changed, because it's the cheesiness that gave the show much of its charm. But think of the people who will be introduced to the show for the first time. They will be much more likely to watch the show and become fans if the show is a bit less cheesy feeling. This in turn will hopefully lead to a stronger Trek following, which in turn will hopefully lead to a new series or movies with better writing and so forth. I'm looking at the positive side of this, and hoping for a better future for the Trek franchise.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
Star Trek's true value was in its being innovative for that time. The best way to remember it is to preserve it exactly as it is in the best digital form available, not adding fake things having no relation with existing actors and objects. It will become a half-baked-half-fried piece of junk.
Why is it SO hard for movie studios to put out something innovative today? Did cheap+stunning readily available special effects eat writers' creativity?
Here's an hint: go read some scifi books from the late 50s to the early 80s and you'll find tons of ideas still unseen (or badly adapted) on screen.
For the record, the first novel I read about a man who has extracorporal experiences and sees the future of people going to die soon isn't "The dead zone" by Stephen King, but a short novel written by a completely unknown author and published after his death in the late 20s or 30s (yep, I mean 1920 and 1930). Don't remember the name but I'm almost sure it sounded french or belgian.
The revamped episodes start wekly syndication TOMORROW people, it's been all over the 'net for weeks. Check your local listings, it'll typically be where Enterprise was for weekly syndication up till now. Balance of Terror airs tomorrow, tune in THEN decide whether or not to go up in arms. Just remember, they're not gonna stop selling DVDs of the original versions any time soon so it's not like they're pulling a George Lucas on us.
Does the Enterprise still go "swoosh" when it goes by in vacuum?
I think it will be interesting to see what the "new" one looks like. Hey look on the bright side. It is on TV, Cost Nothing, and George Lucas isn't getting money from it.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
A travesty! A shocking disregard for our ...
>>Extra CGI appendages will be added to each attractive alien go-go girl
Hold on now. Just what appenda-thingies are we talkin about here?
I watched the trailer they put together with some samples. Whereas some of the effects look different and definitely more modern. For the purist the real perk is that they remastered all the episodes from the original filstock they were filmed on. Doing a half and half shot of the same scene you see one half which is sharp, clear, and the colors jump out well, and the other half looks like someone filmed it.. through lard.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Don't let him get his hands on the Mona Lisa. He'll probably add whitener to her teeth.
One of the things that I appreciate about these older shows is how much they are able to present of a story with such simple sets. All the glitz just leads to neoronic distractions. Of course some of the alien babes were a bit of a distraction too, but that's also part of the characters of the original show.
Go back and watch some of the pre-WWII movies and you'll find a fantastic lost technique in movie making. How to make a good movie without 50 gallons of blood, 5,000 gallons of gasoline, and 3 naked babes with 30% silicone by weight. Pretty cool stuff. Too bad people would rather watch digitized snakes on a plane than The Big Sleep.
"Broadcasting it"? Can I get it on DVD?
Actually if they're re-mastering it in HD, this may be the series that would convince me to make the jump to HD-DVD...
Anyone know if they are going to be broadcast in a 90 minute time slot like scifi did awhile back?
spot on
"Synthetically created materials will replace the original wooden boards used on the exterior of the historic Queen-Anne style house, including the front gable which is trimmed with detailed plaster ornamentation. The street view will be significantly changed with the application of modern latex paint in trendy colors. New windows will be hung at locations other than where the originals were, disregarding the proportions of the structure and its period."
http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=star+trek+tos &orderby=se
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Isnt this like touching up the smudges on the mona lisa. Some things just shouldnt be done.
I think the best Special Edition commentary can be found on Penny Arcade. I think for those of us who loved the original series it sums up what we think of Lucas's 'improvements' pretty well.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Spock: "Jim...Edith Keeler must live."
It could be 1969 all over again! Wooooooooo.... wooo... woo woo.
At any rate I'll be pleased to see it on prime time again, possibly reaching a new generation and possibly garnering good will towards others.
Will they make the phasers converge? Never could figure out why the shots of the enterprise firing had the phasers going out at a ~20 degree angle while they managed to converge to a point on the surface of a planet. (as an example think of when they shot Apollo's throne.)
Who, I wonder, are they marketing to?
Whether they do a good job or not, this whole "digital remastering" idea has to appeal to somebody... at the VERY least their advertisers. But then, the advertisers must think it's going to bring in more money than broadcasting it untouched.
I can see why a lot of fans would complain. Perhaps they figure that fans will watch it anyway, but that they really will bring in new audiences who really are turned off by the lack of uber digital hollywood prettiness. Being a geek, though, it's hard for me to imagine these audiences.
I'm kind of neutral on the idea myself; it all depends on how they do the remastering.
Actually, that's the exact reasoning they use to arrest teenagers for posting pictures of themselves on the internet.
e /2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlif
"They state that they are making extra careful attention to not change the plot or feel at all."
I'll believe that if they leave in the scenes in one episode where Kirk and a 12year old girl are sexually attracted to each other. The degree of social acceptibility has changed over the years....
In one of the many "about Star Trek" books there's a hilarious synopsis of a generic episode, with a line that went something like, "Meanwhile, Kirk hasn't been laid in 30 minutes and he's getting twitchy." I nearly died.
By the way, there's a video you can view from that URL I posted.
e /25055.html
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/articl
Look for "Remastering Star Trek video preview."
According to David Gerrold, CBS got first shot at Star Trek, before NBC, and turned it down because - get this - "We already have a science fiction series. We have Lost in Space."
ooops, wrong star thingy again.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7TJIQ1krA .
A List of stations that is carrying this can be found here.
Alternatively, you can go to TVGuide, set up your local guide, and then punch in "Star Trek".
So long as they don't change the color of the Red Shirt guy who dies each episode, that's okay.
Get a life, people! It's just a TV show!
Hey... you! Yes, you. You don't even have a girlfriend, do you???
"Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
How wude."
I think it might be better with updated effects just as long as they don't change the music and Shatner's cheesy intro to the show. That is my favorite part of the show. I grew up on the next generation and now i think the old episodes a ten times better
If it's dead, you killed it.
or calling the new version "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
I remember Roddenberry's original explanation for the new look of Klingons in the movies was that Klingons were always intended to look this new way; they just didn't have the budget to do them right in the original series.
Or afford to pay for artists of sufficient skill capable of doing them that way for the animated series either, apparently.
("Heart rate too high, internal organs all wrong, pronounced ridges on the cranium-- Jim, this man's a Klingon!")
If it weren't for the retconning of DS9 and Enterprise, then I'd expect that in this remastered version, not only the Klingons, but also the R-r-r-omulans would have r-r-r-idges on their foreheads if these were "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
Will they be fixing the flying pizza bats in "Operation: Annihilate!" as well?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Is there a listing of local channels, dates and times this will be showing by market? I'm in Chicago, cant find any info.
I'm a bit of a fan of TNG and Enterprise, but never could sit through even one episode of TOS because it just looked so awful. Personally, I'm really looking forward to this. Improving some of the cringe-worthy bits sounds like a great idea to me. If you hate the thought of watching this updated version then don't watch it. Simple as that. Why should your personal preferences override mine? What gives you the right to demand that I don't get to see just because you don't want to? There's plenty of room for both. I've watched countless hours of TNG, and it's easily my favourite Trek series. But if they announced they were updating it in an equivalent way I'd not mind one bit. I'd try one episode and if I didn't like it I'd not watch any more.
The popularity of Star Trek was not really down to special effects. It was down to story lines and the chemistry between the characters. Touching up the eye candy won't effect the story line. Trekkers will remain trekkers. Non fans won't like it any more just because the pictures look prettier. In short it's an ok thing to do , but why bother messing with a winning formula?
Obviously, the phasers work with the warp technology to cause space-time to be curved in such a way that they ultimately converge, you insensitive clod! Gosh!
-Clio
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Star Trek has a list of schedule of episodes and local affliates showing this remastered series. Also, note that there seems to be NO HDTV broadcast due to the hardwares not being ready as reported in my newsgroup thread.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Here is the trailer (QuickTime and Windows Media formats) for the remastered version.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article /25835.html
Preview is very limited. But what I see looks like this was done right.
I am sure you were just joking around, but, just wanted to make sure you knew- Mona Lisa does not have teeth showing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mona_Lisa.jpg
I have the 2001 "Director's Edition" of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and they cleaned up quite a few of the not-quite-realised (but storyboarded and planned for production if they hadn't run out of time) special effects in that, with the proviso that it *all* had to look like it could have been done in 1979. They actually did a pretty good job of it, and didn't change the feel of the movie much; it's not like the special editions of Star Wars, where the movie looks completely different.
-lee
The most important enhancement will be that Khan now gets a tail. No wait, that's for the second movie.
And don't forget: Kirk shoots first.
How about we reshoot the acting and keep the old effects shots? No reason to toss out the best part..
C'mon!
Without the seven Mona Lisa's (never mind the "This is a fake" in felt tip on the canvas) Count Scarlioni would have never come up with the resources to travel back in time to warn himself not to engage his hyperdrive, thus causing his space ship to explode and trigger the existence of life on Earth.
be seeing you.
Which decade do we get to see it, and on what channel?
"There's nothing down here but papier mache and aluminum foil."
"But Cap'n, wha' aboot reports heard o' some loon, with an 'acoustic screwdriver'?"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You cannot compare this to Lucas. Lucas is still alive and was so when he tinkered with HIS movies. The same cannot be said of Roddenberry. This is no different than colorizing black and white movies. It's all about money.
I mean seriously, just how spectacular can they make the Enterprise enter into orbit? Are they gonna whip the camera around it like some vomit-inducing machinima? Add a bunch of suns so they can have multiple solar flares?
I shudder to think what they may do to the Horta.
ahem, that's "Trekkens."
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Slashdot is replacing its miniature-scale models used in an earlier story with digitally created near-dupes!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Unless they can digitally digitally enhance the acting too, it seems more likely that the "upgrade" is simply going to remove character from the show...
I just watched a couple last week. Anyone who's looking forward to these as "new episodes of the original series" needs to do themselves a favor and get on BitTorrent. Some of the writing is ambitious, but even by the standards of Saturday-morning cartoons of the era, these are pretty lame.
Breakfast served all day!
NO!!!111
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I guess I'm more traditional. Give me a fun story, and I'll watch it. Give me eyecandy and nothing else, I'll go elsewhere. But the reason that
The green Orion women looks so much more 'snappier' in HD!
Must have been retouched on a Mac.
The colorized movies. Part of the "appeal" of Star Trek the Original series are the campy graphics. Sometimes you can actually see the wires holding things up, where the matte images doesn't line up etc. Leave it alone. Personally, if they want to "revive" star trek, TAKE IT OFF ALL MEDIA AIRWAVES for about 5-10 years, THEN bring back a new movie, without Bergman et al.
Since the soundtrack is the heart of the animation, and the animation secondary, perhaps in the future they can remake the animated series using the old soundtrack with new 3D CGI recreating the animation scene for scene? The animated series has all the original actors doing the voices along with Roddenberry's direction, good writing, original sound effects, and original background music. All we need is to CGI in some new animation now that CGI can look as good as photography (as in the all-CGI Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean).
Cocks.
Enterprise shoots first!
That they preserve the feel. I felt about StarWars that it was pretty irrelevant, since they were basically just the same.
:)
I want them to change ALOT - make it all seem different.
Guess thats not comming anytime soon
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating