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."

Comments

Ah, well

[TopShelf]

At least we still have the motivational posters...

Re:I'm easy to please.

[MindStalker]

Luckily if you actually read the official site (startrek.com though the site seems to be down so I can't give you the actual part concerning this show). They state that they are making extra careful attention to not change the plot or feel at all. Mainly they are cleaning up the grainy film and turning it into HD, and taking the models and redoing them to look exactly the same. Several mentions on their site on how they actually had to cut back the effects to match the old style as to not make the changes obvious.

Re:CBS raped my childhood!

[AKAImBatman]

Okay, wise guy. Just relax and take it easy. Paramount is not "raping your childhood", or even improving the effects. (Much.) All they're doing is resampling the film for HD broadcasts. Unfortunately, a lot of the effects shots and audio will stand out as REALLY bad in High Definition, so they're recreating much of it.

What do I mean by "recreating"? I mean that they're matching the original shots (from what I've seen, mistakes and all) so that the jump to HD doesn't make them look like cheap models with sparklers on them. The theme song is being re-recorded to match the original exactly, but using modern sound capture technologies. The sound effects will be redubbed over the audio of the characters, again to take advantage of modern sound systems.

The result is that it will look like Star Trek, feel like Star Trek, and be like Star Trek. It will just look a little better on HD, while SD viewers will notice that the picture is a little cleaner and the audio a bit crisper. Go see for yourself.

Re:CBS?! *splutter*...

[PCM2]

CBS bought Desilu.

Trailer

[antdude]

Here is the trailer (QuickTime and Windows Media formats) for the remastered version.

Re:"Trekkies?"

[geekoid]

Trekkens?

Could you be more lame.

It was trekkies in the 60, it was trekkies in the 70s, and it will always be trekkies.