[TK Doom]

Ok, so its not 181", its the 4:3 area of that 2.4:1 screen...

But anyway, so I'm watching the remastered versions and its SOOO big..and SOOO clear...its quite amazing.

I am slightly saddened my father isn't alive to see this, as he obviously got me into Star Trek (I'm 45).

I'm almost guessing they didn't expect someone to watch it this big, as there are scenes where they DID NOT clean it up and I watch carefully thinking my lens is dirty, then next scene, its clear.

But at any rate, its a superb thing to behold, for a Trek fan anyway.

I'm watching all of TOS, then the movies, then TNG, then the movies...maybe by that time, DS9 will be out. Heh.

Only negative is the dynamic range of the audio, have to keep lowering it during effects, since all of this is being watched at night when wife/kids are asleep, two rooms away. =)

But otherwise, very enjoyable.

 

[Art Sonneborn]

I agree quite beautiful for the most part. I knew I'll rot in hell for this but I watch them with the updated FX.


Art

 

[TK Doom]

Indeed, the updated effects don't really detract at all, they were done very tastefully.

 

[DavidHir]

Agreed. It's nice they included both options - just like the audio. They are really are definitive sets.

 

[billqs]

The more grainy images are probably where the show has been edited down over the years to fit the ever shrinking showtime vs. commercials.

IIRC each Star Trek TOS episode is ~53 minutes. This has been whittled down over the years so that new network shows running 41-43 minutes. Locally aired content, as Star Trek was for many years, is often allowed a shorter runtime than that. I think many of the less than perfect pieces are ones that were edited out shortly after the change to syndication.

I will agree, however, that they didn't expect many people to watch on the scale those of us with projectors have.

 

[Josh Z]

I'm almost guessing they didn't expect someone to watch it this big, as there are scenes where they DID NOT clean it up and I watch carefully thinking my lens is dirty, then next scene, its clear.

When the show was produced, it was expected that everyone in the audience would be watching on TVs 20" or less.

Watching in high-def on a big screen really can really expose some of the tatty costumes, cardboard sets, and pancake makeup that viewers in the 1960s never noticed.

 

[NemesisII]

When the show was produced, it was expected that everyone in the audience would be watching on TVs 20" or less.

Watching in high-def on a big screen really can really expose some of the tatty costumes, cardboard sets, and pancake makeup that viewers in the 1960s never noticed.

Not to mention that leading lady soft lens shots that were used quite a bit pre-HD era to give women an ethereal glow.

 

[TK Doom]

Not to mention that leading lady soft lens shots that were used quite a bit pre-HD era to give women an ethereal glow.

Yeah, the soft focus is terrible...

Thats what they did with Maddie in Moonlighting (Cybill Shepherd, swoon).

 

[mars5l]

Im not huge on the updated FX. I watched a few on netflix, the scenes were you see the Enterprise are alright. But I was watching the episode about the Doomsday Machine and was really let down by the FX update they did to them machine. Looks good on a 4k tv, but the old format it only takes 2/3 of the screen. And im a younger in his 30s

 

[drcos]

...I was watching the episode about the Doomsday Machine and was really let down by the FX update they did..

The Doomsday Machine is one of my favorite episodes and I kinda like the updated effects in this one. Especially the ending where Kirk and Spock walk in front of the viewscreen and the image is there. Just my take, YMMV. Maybe because I watched it so many times with the cigarette lighter burned AMT model standing in for the "Constellation"

 

[Josh Z]

Im not huge on the updated FX. I watched a few on netflix, the scenes were you see the Enterprise are alright. But I was watching the episode about the Doomsday Machine and was really let down by the FX update they did to them machine. Looks good on a 4k tv, but the old format it only takes 2/3 of the screen. And im a younger in his 30s

The new FX can be hit-or-miss. I think the team creating them got better the more episodes they did. However, because they did not restore the episodes in chronological order, you can come across late season episodes (which were restored first) with weaker FX than the episodes you watched just previously (which were restored later).

 

[LexInVA]

I think the TOS remaster - and the TNG one too - would have gone better if they had hired the CGI VFX talent from the firms who did DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. All of them were available, familiar with what needed to be done on TOS/TNG, had good ideas to use, and wanted to work on it, but none of them were retained, so far as I know.

 

[mars5l]

The Doomsday Machine is one of my favorite episodes and I kinda like the updated effects in this one. Especially the ending where Kirk and Spock walk in front of the viewscreen and the image is there. Just my take, YMMV. Maybe because I watched it so many times with the cigarette lighter burned AMT model standing in for the "Constellation"

Its one of my favs too, but the whole episode feels so analog then you see a digital villian it looks so wrong. I think the original machine fit the soul better

 

[scowl]

I'm almost guessing they didn't expect someone to watch it this big, as there are scenes where they DID NOT clean it up and I watch carefully thinking my lens is dirty, then next scene, its clear.

The first episodes they produced look excellent. They did expect the network to watch these episodes in a theater because they turned in 35mm prints for them to screen. NBC was not convinced that they could produce a convincing science fiction series so every indication of good workmanship is on display in the episodes they made before the show was scheduled.

Once the show got picked up, you can see they began some "cheating" for television. One example is "splitting focus". When they wanted to have actors in three distances from the camera, they simply focused on the middle one and let the other two be slightly out of focus. You'd never notice this on a regular TV.

Some effects like dissolves and phaser blasts will have tons of grain because fine-grain interpositives were a couple years away. They had to print these on a third strip of negative film.

There are several very grainy scenes that looked like they had been underexposed. I guess it's easy to make a mistake when you're trying to shoot an episode in six or seven days. Some look like dailies which makes me wonder if the original footage was ruined.

By the end of the second season they were clearly zooming into the negative for some scenes. This is very obvious in several scenes in "Assignment: Earth", especially one closeup of Teri Garr which has grain the size of golf balls.

I'm surprised there weren't more mistakes, especially in the last season when the stock footage in their vault started disappearing.

 

[NetworkTV]

More often than not, shots that have extra grain are usually the result of optical blow-ups to crop a shot that was looser than desired. For example, if they need that dramatic closeup right before they commercial break and they only had a chest or waist level shot, they would just blow up the shot to create what they needed. Theatrical films often did the same thing.

Obviously, shots where the titles or effects couldn't be re-created would also have more grain or softness due to the layering of images to composite them. Those shots often are dirtier, too, because it's harder to clean them up around the effects and titles.

 

[TK Doom]

Just finished TOS. Overall I'd give it 9 out of 10 stars, with most episodes getting 10s.


Watched TMP last night, and now watching WoK.


Good stuff.