Star Trek- Remastered.

[Baz]

Yesterday evening Mike, Nick Clark and I were at the Shaftesbury Avenue Odeon to see a premiere of the newly remastered Classic Star Trek episode “The Menagerie”.

Oh, it was beautiful. The quality of the digital transfer is stunning, they’ve done such a good clean up job, getting rid of flaws and scratches. The colour is superb, vibrant, the sound is crystal clear. And the ship effects? Hoo boy. The Enterprise SOARS, it’s a living thing almost. The new digital work has been done with real feeling and affection towards the original. It’s stunning, really stunning. Almost too good in fact, but that will shade back perfectly on the small screen.

There was an intro by Eugene Roddenberry, Gene’s son, showing clips from some of the other first season episodes (you’ll believe a Gorn can blink!) and at the end a trailer for the second season which was fantastic- the Enterprise coming in low over the Doomsday Machine, blasting away with phasers, the Constellation tumbling as it falls into the open maw, the Botany Bay drifting away through space. And, of course, tribbles.

Then I watched Red Dwarf- Remastered.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD!!! AAAARGH!!!

The CGI makes it look like a video game, and not a very good one. I know the budget was limited, I know the technology was not what we have today, but even so, AAAARGH!!! The model work I saw on the docs was wonderful, that movie trial shot, the end title flyover. That was Red Dwarf. And that Blue Midget MkII articulated model was a beauty. Sigh. After seeing what they’d done with Star Trek you just know it could have been done so well, with the right money, the right people, the right attitude.

Oh, and those scutters that run across the front of the screen in “The End”?

AAAARGH!!!

(Nice skutter p0rn in the extras though…)

Topic

[Jonathan Capps]

I’ve been deeply suspicious of the Star Trek remasterings since I heard they were redoing the models in CG. I totally understand the need to do another transfer (to clean it all up and turn it into true HD) but Star Treks models are lovely, and it just seems unnecessary to replace them with something that’s in danger of going completely against the feel of the show.

I’ll tell the one thing that made me boil with rage about the Dwarf remasterings: the Bodyswap chase sequence. The original sequence was completely and utterly beautiful and I am completely at a loss as to why they replaced it all with CG and, as if fully admitting what a limited technology they were using, PUT IT IN A HIDEOUS CAVERN. Oh, god, it makes me vomit just thinking about it.

[Andrew]

I think the Trek remasterings, which seem to have come out very well indeed, certainly prove what we hear on the DVD – it was done a decade too soon.

I still think the remastered Midget is magnificent, though. It’s a great design.

[mick]

>I still think the remastered Midget is magnificent, though. It?s a great design.

Get out.

[Baz]

> I still think the remastered Midget is magnificent, though. It?s a great design.

>Get out.

No, be fair, it IS a great design. But it’s not what the Blue Midget was supposed to be (not for me anyway). Blue Midget is a space tractor, a class 1 space transport and haulage, auxilliary support vehicle. It being a masterfully engineered near-mecha just doesn’t seem to fit with the Red Dwarf ethos.

But it was a fantastic design.

I have to say that. My brother reads this you know.

[Pete Part Three]

Wasn’t the redesign just an excuse to do that god-awful dance thing in series VIII?

[Baz]

As far as I’m aware the re-design was for the Remastered series and only then used for Series VIII. Perhaps Doug did have such a scene in mind for it during the remastering process though.

As for the remastered Trek release, the only thing that would have made it perfect was the option to watch the unmastered original as well. There is a feature that lets you compare the old effects to the new, but as far as I can see there’s no unmastered version included.

[Andrew]

It’s awfully expensive to author a DVD to play two versions of a thing – not that Trek is short of cash.

Mike, of course, got away with it on The Ark In Space the same way we did on Tikka to Ride – by matching duration and audio exactly and just presenting a second ‘angle’ on the disc. (Mind you, showing the old effects doesn’t change the general picture and sound changes on Trek, so there’s probably no way to fully win without offering twice the number of discs.)

The Midget redesign started with the remastering, yeah – and once the idea of mechanical legs for drunk-driving came up (which IS a good concept, IMO), ideas for VIII quickly followed.

[Jonathan Capps]

> I think the Trek remasterings, which seem to have come out very well indeed, certainly prove what we hear on the DVD – it was done a decade too soon.

The thing is, can you even begin to compare their remastering job with the sort of remastering job you’d be able to do on Red Dwarf? Just the sheer weight of money and technical expertise they have as their disposal would render any comparison completely meaningless.

[Andrew]

I do think the advances in time, tech and experience count for something in addition the smaller budget, yeah.

The tech behind film effect has been much improved in ten years, video effects (the simple tracking of backgrounds, even) have leapt on, and I know the models guys believe they could have improved on what they did before.

It’s on a different scale, of course. But I don’t think it’s meaningless to compare. (Also GNP would certainly have benefitted from what we’ve learned over the last decade…and maybe from me being around. :-))

[Dave]

>?and maybe from me being around. :-))

This thread could well become ‘what would Andrew have done differently?’

[Phil]

There’s a Star Trek TOS Remastered Encore or some such thing scheduled to play at my local theater tomorrow. It has a running time of two hours. Any idea what this is? 4 remastered episodes at random? The first 4? The last 4? A 4 episode story arc? A mislabeled remastering of the first film?

I’m tempted to go since I’ve…never seen any Star Trek.

[penny]

The best parts of the Star Trek stuff was Q and the time traveling story lines…

*legs-it before women with beards pretending to be men start throwing stones at me*

[Baz]

Phil, the one they were screening here was a two parter, “The Menagerie”, which incorporates the original (and rejected) pilot episode “The Cage”. There’s also a documentary at the beginning with Eugene Roddenberry and a preview at the end. You should see it, it’s our sci-fi heritage. And remember…

Kryten- Is this the human value you call “friendship”?
Lister- Don’t give me the Star Trek crap. It’s too early in the morning.

TOS is the Star Trek crap they’re referring to.

[Phil]

I think I will go. I do actually have a curiosity for Star Trek (the originals anyway) but there’s so many episodes…and it’s so damn expensive on DVD…this will be a good chance for me to see some of it.

[pfm]

TNG all the mother fucking way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[John Hoare]

The differene between the Trek remastering and the Dwarf project, is that with Trek, they’re not trying to change the show – just improve the general look. Wheras with Dwarf, Doug was really trying to change a lot of things he didn’t like about the show. The Trek approach is a lot more faithful to the original source material.

Obviously, there’s a crossover between the two approaches, and it’s not quite that black and white, but there is a difference.

[Nakrophile]

> TNG all the mother fucking way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am pleased to finally be seeing the Picard/Borg incident after seeing it several years ago in First Contact and remaining confused ever since.

[Baz]

>Obviously, there?s a crossover between the two approaches, and it?s not quite that black and white, but there is a difference.

I’m not unaware of this, hence the inclusion of “the right attitude” in my original post. I know the purpose of remastering RD was to Lucas it about a bit while for ST it was to add a bit of polish to something seen as virtually sancrosact. Perhaps sometime in the late 2020s that latter ethic will be applied to the Original Red Dwarf and we’ll see something beautiful.

[Andrew]

I think it’s that willingness to tinker that makes me think Dwarf COULD have done it well if we’d waited.

[Author]

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