Star Trek Revamped: New CGI Exterior Shots

[Janus]

I was flipping through the channels this evening and came across an old Star Trek (original series) episode. Since I hadn't seen one in while (It is shown at 10pm, and lately I've had to get up early Sun AM, and I am in bed by then), I decided to watch it.

I had just recently purchased a 47" HDTV, and the station was being broadcast in digital, but I was still surprised how nice and clear the picture was, and how much detail was visible. The exterior space shots looked particularly good.

When the climax of the show arrived I saw something that really surprised me!

In this episode, the Enterprise has to fly in towards the Sun and then pull away. They showed the Enterprise flying in toward the Sun and then the Enterprise skimming the surface of the Sun. I didn't remember this second shot ever being in the episode! As I watched the rest of the episode, I noted even more differences in the exterior shots than from what I remembered (Now that my attention had been brought to them).

After the show ended I got on the web to see what was up or if my memmory was just playing tricks on me. I found out that it wasn't my memmory. It seems that they have just recently released Star Trek on HD-DVD (apparently this station was showing the HD-DVD episodes which explained the extra detail I noted) . The kicker is that they went back and replaced the exterior space shots with CGI shots. The reason that I didn't remember the shot of the Enterprise skimming the surface of the Sun was that it was not in the original episode.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done with the other episodes. It's like watching them new all over again.

 

[imabug]

That was one of the Remastered episodes you saw. They've scanned the original negatives using the latest tech and reprocessed the resulting images frame by frame to do colour corrections, remove scratches and other flaws and replaced a lot of the 60s era FX with CG (mostly exterior shots).

The first season of the Remastered series is available now on DVD/HD-DVD combo disks. Second season should be hitting the airwaves (or coax) soon if it hasn't started airing already.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/TOS/article/28095.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Excellent! Now I have an entirely new excuse to watch the series all over again.

 

[out of whack]

Cool.

Did they manage to enhance the acting as well?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Did they manage to enhance the acting as well?

If they did that then it wouldn't be Star Trek!

 

[out of whack]

If they did that then it wouldn't be Star Trek!

Yeah really, cheap FX were part of the original "cachet" of the series so CGI detracts from it. But really the acting is what sealed it so you don't want to screw around with that!

 

[henxan]

WOW! This is amazing! I love startrek TOS! :D.. Finally with them graphix up to date..

Hope they'll do the lot..

But.. hey.. wait a min. Isn't it a danger they'll destroy the beauty by cheap effects? Sharpening up the images is cool.. but, obvious digital arts are bad.. :(

 

[imabug]

Some hardcore ST purists are definitely not fans of the new CG, some saying it looks too artificial, lacks the texture of the original models, etc. To me it seems somewhat incongruous seeing 60s stage FX (kind of hard to replace some of that with CG) mixed with 21st century CG. I still like it though. It's changed visually, but it's not like the plot or underlying themes have been altered.

A few weeks ago The Menagerie was shown in theaters in all its HD glory. It was pretty cool seeing it on a big screen.

 

[Janus]

Here's a link that shows an example of the difference between the original version and the new tweaked version.

http://www.startrek.com/custom/include/feature/bst/tos-enhanced/tos-019a/pop.html

 

[arunma]

Wow, I had no idea that they'd remastered Star Trek. Sounds interesting. So is the first season on the air already?

Incidentally I can see why some of the "purists" might be upset about this. Alas, we all love Star Trek, but the special effects were downright horrible compared to what we've got today.