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Old school Trek gets a make over....

Guess i'm alone in vaugley looking forward to these releases then...

On a side note, i watched the first episod of the fan made New Voyages yesterdaty. for all its cheesiness and fan acting, it had that whole old school Trek feel in spades. Must have been the music...
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Nope, I'm also looking forward to it. I watched the clips online years ago from DigitalStream's proposal to Paramount. Oddly, the newer update site www.trekenhanced.com is also an update of the Doomsday Machine. New Yoyages is fun, but also check out www.starshipexeter.com, and go to the second episode. It is spot on.

Also, check out www.startrekofgodsandmen.com. Now that looks crazy.
 
I think this project is misguided. They would be much better off spending their money to do top-notch restorations of the prints, digitizing the sound, turning the old mono sound tracks into true DD 5.1, and doing quality HD transfers. They could put out better DVDs, and be ready for HD. A mixture of old film, and new CGI, would be an awful mish-mash!
 
I don't think we really got enough techinical information to know just what they ARE doing. Detail in the story seemed limited to what was being replaced, not really what would be polished, except for Shatner's vocal track for the intro.
 
I think this project is misguided. They would be much better off spending their money to do top-notch restorations of the prints, digitizing the sound, turning the old mono sound tracks into true DD 5.1, and doing quality HD transfers.
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Most of which (new prints and clean-up) has already been done (it was done years ago for the Sci-Fi Channel broadcasts) and the rest of which is being done for this very release. I think even the soundtrack remix was done for the DVDs.

BTW, the irony of ironies is that it looks like CBS isn't offering the HD feed to its syndication partners. Evidently not many of them broadcast in HD, so they've decided to save themselves the bother of sending a separate feed to the few who do and will only offer the new version in SD for the time being. :)

Regards,

Joe
 
Eugh .. if it already looks CGI in that size, I'm not too looking forward to seeing it at higher resolutions.

I might give in and give one episode like that a try I guess .. but still not very thrilled.
 
Joe,

Ironically for me, even though this is CBS Studios doing this, its being broadcast to me on my NBC Hi-Def channel.

I think the trailer looks pretty good. This should be nice to see.
 
Okay, now I'm a little more interested, from the pure fascination standpoint. I will be curious to see how they deal with some of the more cheesy effects on the show. I'm certainly going to give it a chance.
 
Ironically for me, even though this is CBS Studios doing this, its being broadcast to me on my NBC Hi-Def channel.
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Yeah, the vicissitudes of corporate ownership do odd things. CBS ended up with control of the property through the deal that made it and Paramount corporate siblings. Your local NBC affiliate, like most local stations not owned by the networks, is free to buy any programming it likes to run in off-network hours. But chances are it will run Star Trek in SD, despite being an HD channel, because that's all CBS/Paramount is supplying. (My HD affliliates all run their pre-8 PM shows in SD - various game shows, Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Will & Grace.)

If you want irony, Babylon 5 used to run on my local UPN station from 7 to 8 on Saturdays, basically as a lead-in to Star Trek: Voyager. :D

Regards,

Joe
 
Well, color me underwhelmed. The FX were shit. :mad:
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"Balance of Terror" starts in about 10 minutes here. Naturally it is airing on a station that my cheap-ass cable company doesn't carry in HD, even though they do broadcast that way. It is the UPN station that will become The CW next week. (Thereby combining Paramount's crappy programming with Warner Bros's incredible bad taste in network names. ;))

BTW, the show has started as I write this. Even at SD resolution it seems clear the film has been cleaned up, but the grain is very visible and the "new/old" opening credits aren't that big a thrill. The new digital model doesn't have the pure white look of the original model, and doesn't pick up the "light" in the same way. There is an odd beige look to the CGI Enterprise and the way they duplicate old model shots works against the purpose of the re-do. In those pre-motion control days they sometimes use optical zooms to do camera "moves" that were impractical to do on the stage. Doing the same thing with what is clearly a CGI model actually makes the shots look less real. So far, not thrilled.

Regards,

Joe
 
BTW, the irony of ironies is that it looks like CBS isn't offering the HD feed to its syndication partners.
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Just to clarify this point: I've now been told that CBS is making the HD feed available. The problem is that they transmit both feeds several days ahead of when many stations are broadcasting the show, and many local stations that have minimal equipment for HD simply don't have the storage space to 'store and hold" for that long when they have other shows that come in at most a day before their broadcasts and get deleted right after. (That's also why show reruns, even of recent episodes like when a ball game is rained out, tend to be SD even when the show originally aired on a given station in HD.)

Regards,

Joe
 
You guys are watching this already? Its not airing till the 18th where I am. :(
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By contract the episode couldn't air until today (the 16th), but as with all syndicated shows the individual station can choose the day and time within the broadcast week when it will air. Many stations have plugged the show into whatever slot they using for the Enterprise reruns, often after midnight or early in the morning.

Regards,

Joe
 
The only scene I would say was a real improvement was the top view of the Romulan ship. I had shadow and light reflection, etc.
 
Ok here's a question. And no, by the way, I sitll haven't seen the first one (Balance of Terror) yet, I won't be able to see it until tomorrow after work. How long are they planning on running these new "enhanced" episodes anyway? From what I can tell, it looks like I will be getting about one per week on the Hi-Def channel. At that rate, it would take 79 weeks (a year and a half) to get through them all. I can't see the networks doing that. Any ideas how many we will see, before it ends up the only way you get to see the rest is on HDDVD?
 
At that rate, it would take 79 weeks (a year and a half) to get through them all. I can't see the networks doing that.
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Well, it isn't airing on a "network", so this isn't really an issue. ;) The show is syndicated, which means it is sold to individual stations or station groups, some affiliated with one of the national commercial networks, some not, for airing in off-network hours. As long as the ratings are there, the show will continue to air in whatever time slot each station gives it. (Or it will get moved to a better or worse one, depending on the exact ratings.)

Seinfeld has been airing for four or five years in the same time slot (6:30, I think) on one of my local network affiliates. Unless it starts losing ratings, or viewers start tuning to a different channel once it ends, there's no reason to replace it. Syndicated reruns just work in a different market and on different assumptions than first-run shows either network or syndicated.

Regards,

Joe
 
OK, I'm a little pissed off here.

According to my TiVo, this was supposed to begin at 2:35am on my NBCE HD channel, and last 55min. I was looking forward to getting home today and checking this out. Not only was I real curious to see how it turned out, but Balance of Terror was one of my favorite episodes.

Somehow the damn TiVo screwed up, or the network made a change. It clearly started recording at 2:35am, but the first 10min of my recording were the LAST 10min of the episode, so I hardly got to see any of it. I can only assume that the show actually aired at some weird time like 1:50am, and then ran 55min until 2:45am. But my TiVo guide didn't show that. Either way, I only got 10min of it, and I'm pissed.

Now I wonder what I need to do about next weeks? Maybe I forget the season pass and manually record the show before and after it to be safe? What a pain in the ass. TiVo usually works flawlessly too. Real shitty.

But, from what I saw I liked it. The 2 CGI shots of the Enterprise I saw looked very good. I also could tell they cleaned up the visual images as Joe said. Kirks uniform looked much brighter and more of the "gold" color. I remember it being an almost "dirty" gold in the DVD.

Well, I'll have to pull out all the stops to see next week's episode, Devil in the Dark, and there isn't the space combat as much in that one, but I'm gonna give it another look. Hopefully there will be some good examples of the "matte paintings" used for the underground complex being redone.

Anyone have any ideas of a newsgroup or something I could go to to download last nights episode? Maybe BitTorrent? I'd still like to see it....
 
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