If you weren’t aware already, the episodes of the original ‘Star Trek’ series are being digitally remastered and enhanced, with new CGI special effects and things like that. They’re not going overboard like George Lucas, but they’re bringing the show into the 2000’s by updating it.
I haven’t really been keeping up with this but run into stories about it from time to time when a newly remastered episode comes out. This weekend they are airing the remastered ‘By Any Other Name‘.
Due to budget constraints on Star Trek they could only ever put together a couple of sound stages for any beam down to a planet and the rest had to be done by transposing the filmed image onto a matte painting to give some idea of the scale of the area. In this episode they have taken a scene where the crew beamed down to the planet, shrunk it, and neatly embedded it in a brand new and brilliant looking matte painting. Here’s a comparison:
The original beam-down sequence (click the images for a larger version):
The enhanced version:
The crew materialised on the planet’s surface, giving you a much more imaginative idea of the planet’s surface. Sure, in the original series’ time you would have stretched your mind and imagined what else was out there, but because many sound stage settings were so similar you ended up with no sense of identity of any one planet to the next. I think this is great, because it gives this planet it’s very own identity and when you see the crew materialise and look around them, now you know exactly what they’re seeing before their eyes.
I must say these remastered episodes are getting better each time!
Yes, there is a new Star Trek film coming out in December of this year, and people are getting excited about it. Until this was announced, everyone thought Star Trek was dead. I’ve been following certain aspects of it as it goes along, and I think the campaign between now and the release will be interesting. What are the biggest concerns about it so far? Well it’s directed by J.J. Abrams. How one man can work in the industry with such a big name and get such negative press about everything? I suppose that’s because he’s responsible for TV series such as Lost and Alias.
I have seen the entire series of Alias. I don’t think I’ll watch it twice; it was good fun for action/entertainment, and poor for believability and sincerity. I have seen Lost too, and although I like it simply for the fact that it’s a little different, it sure does drag on and milk suspense for all it’s worth, even if that suspense turns into an anti-climax when you watch the next episode. But you still keep on watching.
So the question is, will Abrams do anything good with the next Star Trek or will he kill it? So far everything seems to be good. I trust Leonard Nimoy’s judgement in saying that if the script wasn’t awesome he wouldn’t be in it. What better recommendation to see a film can you get than Spock? But as it’s still in production it remains to be seen what the end result will look like.
We’ve seen the teaser trailer and a few other bits and pieces. Bits and pieces being four little videos released at http://www.ncc-1701.com, which is dressed up to look like some sort of terminal display, showing various camera feeds of the construction of the Enterprise.
The teaser is showing us the construction of the Enterprise with sound bites from NASA, as well as Spock’s “Space… The Final Frontier” monologue. The problem with this is that the Enterprise was originally captained by Christopher Pike. This is canon! You can’t mess with that. So what in the film will bridge the gap between the construction and the voyage with Kirk?
We shall see.
Here’s some stuff:
http://www.paramount.com/startrek/
http://www.ncc-1701.com/
Enjoy.
