This Saturday in Dallas on KTXA Ch 21 I have Enterprise at 3am Saturday night.

Next Saturday I have "Star Trek", episode named 'Miri'.

I guess thats it. KTXA has HD capability, but who knows if they will show it in hi-def. I can't get anyone from the station to respond to email.

I've been watching some "Star Trek" episodes recently for the first time in quite awhile (picked up the complete series for about $130 from DDD) and I've got to say... some of the ship effects were pretty awful, especially in the first season. Even putting aside the effects that, visually, aren't much different from "spaceships on strings" (e.g., the crew rocking violently back and forth while the ship gently bobs up and down in space), there are shots that are composited atrociously. In several episodes, the shadows on warp nacelles are actually composited as part of the visual effect so that half the nacelle disappears (replaced by a space amoeba or whatever). These shots are probably the most glaring problems.

Beyond that, there are many shots where the perspective of the ship doesn't match its vector at all, some where it's basically moving diagonally.

That said, I think the matte paintings are well-done and fit with the '60s style of the series. Seeing them changed (with added extras, digital creatures, or whatever) would be too distracting.

On a purely personal level, Majel Barrett as the ship's computer's monotone robo-voice annoys the crap out of me whenever there is dialog longer than a few words. I really wouldn't mind if her lines were re-recorded with a more natural voice a la "The Next Generation."

We just got back from the Star Trek convention here in Chicago, and Parmount flew in one David Rossi (sp), who is apparently spearheading this project for CBS TV/syndication.

I know there's quite a bit of contention on this subject, but I wanted to try to convey this guy's attitude. One of the first thing's out of this guy's mouth was "Greedo shooting first" and (his words) "two bad words: George Lucas". All throughout the presentation (and the Q&A), he continuously stressed his love for the original series. One of the points he elaborated was that in TOS, he felt that Kirk alone was the only of the five captains that had a true relationship with his ship, and that made the original Enterprise a character of it's own. That's his intent in this project, to give the Enterprise a chance to shine on her own. He stressed multiple times that they are not changing the story in any episode whatsover. The only changes are cosmetic. He related a story where he was watching an old episode with a young relative (9-10 yo), who would be enjoying the episode (Arena, I think), but whenever there was an outside ship FX shot, it would "break the spell" so to speak.

So, he pretty much said outright that CBS/Parmount is wanting to use this project to get younger fans to watch TOS. When he was approached to do this, his first request was the Okuda's, which was immediately granted. Three nights a week, they all get together and watch TOS, writing the timecodes of the FX to update. As noted they used the model hanging in the Smithsonian to create the digital model. There will be episodes where they also will be updating the backgrounds and skylines. An example he gave was Amok Time (which he was working on in the hotel bar before the presentation, nobody knew who was apparently and didn't bother him). He said there were very few ship shots, but they realized they could update all the backgrounds to really show the planet Vulcan. There's a apparently ~150 scenes they'll have to update, so that's one of them. He also mentioned just watching The Man Trap last night to take notes. The only episodes finished are Balance of Terror and Miri. For any planet shots they'll be rendering full planet images, with clouds and everything. For some of the matte paintings of backgrounds, he suggested that they'll be leaving them mostly alone, but would add things like subtle cloud movements or water shimmering.

He had a video presentation which showed a lot of the changes, the big one being the difference in quality just from the HD remastering alone. There were actually gasps from the audience at the difference in quality in some of the shots. They also showed the opening theme being re-recorded with the soprano singer for the vocals. They went back to the original score sheets to put together the new music. He said they had approached Alexander Courage, but he was unavailable (seemed kinda fishy, like there was some politics involved) but the musicians and singer sounded very good.

He took some questions, and the first question was somebody defending the original works as art, and that this was defacing them. Rossi answered by stressing that this wasn't being pushed as a replacement, but as basically a moneymaker. Another person was a musician who picked up on the "color" difference in the vocalist for the opening theme, and said he wanted to be able to show his children the originals. Rossi again stressed that this was just to get Trek back in the public's idea, and mainly attracting younger viewers with spiffed up graphics.


I want to give my opinion here: I'm still of a mixed opinion about this whole thing, but this guy really seemed to sell me on the love the team has for the original series (or he was a really slick salesman). Regardless, I got *none* of the vibe you get from Lucas regarding his Special Editions. Listening to George, you really get a sense of his loathing for the original versions. The speaker tonight consistently gave off a vibe of love for the original series. I know there are many folks who have said that if Lucas had only updated the FX of the originals without making editorial changes, they might have been able to accept them. This is what the FX team for this project is doing.

He mentioned that the current HD masters being made were 4x3, but there might be tilt and scan masters made down the road. He also had no idea of DVD or Bluray (his words), mentioning it would be 18 months before they had finished all the episodes.

All in all, the audience was pretty friendly towards the idea, and were very polite to the speaker (even the two who criticized the changes).

I think this could be an interesting project, and honestly I could see Paramount leaving both formats for sale on whatever home media comes down the line. They have no artistic objection to the originals, they're just looking for a cash in. Why sell 79 episodes when you could sell 158?

Thanks for the uodate. I would definately like to check it out and decide for myself.

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...&search=Search

Here's some of the presentation from last night. We didn't see the bit about the emulsion
layers last night though.

Here's the listing of stations carrying the remastered Star Trek this weekend:

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/vie...35.html?page=1

Loved it. Looked great, even though I watched it on a channel with subpar picture quality.

Yeah, I don't think people remember just how awful some of the special effects were. There was a remaster of the series a few years ago that's shown on Space here in Canada, and everything looks dandy until they go to the SFX shots with the terrible optical quality due to all the matting they had to do that they simply couldn't fix. Not to mention all the transparent ship shots.

There's one absolutely beautiful closeup shot of the Romulan Ship that really nailed it for me.

And "Balance of Terror" didn't have a singer in the opening credits.

Watched it tonite.
Hit and miss, some of the effects looked ok but some had that early TNG synthetic look. I think doing it in house on the cheap is pretty stupid. The episode, "Balance..." was chopped to hell. At times I felt like I was watching a trailer for the ep. instead of the ep. itself. There was a shot of Kirk with Yeoman Rand behind him on the bridge where he says, "limited range..." in reference to the Romulan photon torpedo, a cutaway for 2-3 seconds to Spock and when it cut back, Rand was gone and Kirk was back sitting in his chair! Very jarring. Also you can hear the cuts because the music suddenly starts, stops or jumps ahead. Music has rythyms and it annoys the hell out of me when they do that.
Anyways, the music in the epsiode was the original, not rerecorded, just the theme but interestingly, no vocal! No singer! In the webdoc you saw them rerecoding the theme with an opera singer. Weird...

All in all, interesting but kind of pointless. The Hardore fans are gonna be pissed by all the editing down and altering, "a new generation" probably won't care and it looks like it's moving to sunday nite at midnite starting tomorrow.
Me, I'm a nite owl but the average person...???

After seeing unedited editions for years now, watching the edited version is pretty jarring.

moving to TV talk. This is show was not in HD. Pretty good episode though.

That doesn't mean it won't ever be, though. There just isn't a good way to reliably distribute syndicated HD content yet. It's coming, tho', and obviously this won't be a stumbling block for future HD DVD/Blu-ray releases.

Moving to TV Talk does sound like an idea, though, especially if the CGI is being used in standard definition broadcasts.

Can anyone in Chicago help with airdates? I've found the two networks supposedly carrying them, but I can't find a listing in my cable box guide.

tks

I'm pretty pissed here in Dallas.

Ch 21, KTXA had it ON THE SCHEDULE for Saturday night at 3am.

What did I get? A paid ad for some make-up, then for something called EyeQ.

Sooo.....I guess we'll try again next weekend.

I don't think they cut anything from the episode. Those jarring cuts are the product of '60s editing and production values.

EDIT: According to some of the posters on trekweb.com, it's the local stations that edit the episodes. CBS is sending out full, unedited versions.

Obviously they recorded the theme twice, since there's two versions of the theme used in the original TOS opening credits.

Yup. Channel 12 here in the Bay area cut about 8 minutes out in total.
Was very annoying and very obvious....
and no HD. Will people really watch this for the next 2 years? (Factoring in a few repeats...) I mean, sunday nite at midnite and I heard 3 am in NYC? Who's gonna watch this, bats?

Tonite is Miri at midnite.

Ohhhh I am VERY pissed, and I tired of KXTA doing this. They would reschedule Enterprise in lew of sports, and now they push it aside over an INFOMERCIAL?!? This is too much, and as soon as I can get someone on the phone over there, I'm talking to them/visiting them. And I'm complaining to their network, and putting their FCC license in question for breaking schedule like that. I mean did they clear this chance in programming with the FCC?

I am mad as hell, and I want someone that wants to be serious about showing this program!

Well, if it's any consolation...

You didn't miss much. Whatever "oooh, ahhh..." moments that occured last nite, (and it was just moments, the comet looked pretty cool, the enterprise looked less realistic than the old model shots at times believe it or not) were far overshadowed (at least here in the Bay Area) by the ruthless editing that someone did on the show. Imagine that for a second. That's someone's (or more than one...) job. To decide what goes or stays and edit these all spiffed up shows down to squeeze in more commercials...

That was mentioned at the presentation at the convention. They're doing the whole episodes, and giving them to the stations that way. The stations themselves are doing the editing.

It kind of pisses me off that they couldn't strongarm the stations to play the whole episodes since they've gone to all the trouble of spiffing them up. I imagine if Paramount had put a little more marketing muscle behind these, they might have been able to get the sponsors to pay a tad more so they wouldn't have to edit the eps.

Eaxactly! Especially since basically it's just a big old coming attraction for the upcoming DVDs and HDdvds and BDs.....
"Uncut! In HD!!!"
It's paramount, you know it's coming.

Using my TVs side-by-side presentation feature, I watched my DVR'ed copy of Balance of Terror against the DVD, and I have a few observations.

First, as some have already noted, it is completely appropriate for the theme to be "voiceless", since that is the way the original first season theme was recorded. The voice wasn't added until season two.

Second, the effects changes. I thought they were pretty well done for the most part. The new starfields, especially on the bridge screen, look much more believable. The ship effects, while not perfect, looked pretty good, and the way they added "film grain" to the new shots helped them to blend in better. I actually like the new "phaser" shots better, because it has always bugged me how "un-phaser-like" the effects were in this episode. Now at least they look like short phaser bursts, rather than pseudo-photon torpedoes. I also thought the comet effects were a vast improvement over the original, somewhat static image.

Third, the cuts. It's only natural that the episodes would be trimmed, since no station would even consider airing a 52-minute episode in an hour slot in today's broadcasting world. as to who made the cuts, I suppose they could have all been done by the station, but if they were, then my podunk local station in Boise Idaho had some pretty dedicated editor working on the project, because most of the cuts were in the form a 2-4 second trim here and there. All told, I would say that there were more than 50 individual edits made to the copy I saw (I didn't make an exact count, but I know I had to pause and re-sync the DVR to the DVD many, many times, usually by just a few seconds). My point is that, although there were some large scene segments that were trimmed in the broadcast I saw, those were the exception, not the rule. And that much editing would take a lot of time. I wonder if the studio offered to provide edit point timecodes to the stations, or if there might be third party editing houses that could have done the work for multiple markets. Either way, I am surprised that anyone would have really expected the full, uncut versions of the episodes to air on TV, but maybe that's just me.

One other observation I have is that I find the color purity of the new versions to be a bit better than the DVDs. Spock's faint green makeup shows up a bit more, general skin tones are better, and the overall look of the sets and costumes seems more in line with the way the show looked when it was first broadcast.

Nothing much to add... just mirroring what others have said.

I watched Balance this weekend (at 2:35am!) A few observations:


1. The worst part was the cuts. It was hacked all to hell. I think nearly 10 minutes was missing from the episode.

2. 2:35am? Who the hell is watching this besides me?!?

3. The new effects for the most part were subtle and fairly well-done. If all of the 'changes' are like this, I really don't have much of an issue with this (assuming, of course, that the untainted episodes are always available).


But, I ultimately have to wonder why they're doing this:

1. There was very little buildup/advertising for this. If I hadn't seen some internet postings a few weeks prior, I wouldn't even know they were doing this. And I certainly wouldn't have found the episode locally without that website showing where/when they were airing.

2. Most markets are showing this during the dead of night. No one is watching.

3. If stations are going to hack 5-10 minutes from each episode, it defeats the purpose of improving them. I would rather see the full 50-51 minute episode show in a 90-minute slot. That actually gives them a chance to add *more* commercials, but it maintains the integrity of the episode.



Just some random musings. I doubt I'll make it a point to watch any of the others, given the editing and silly timeslots. I'm sure there are sites that will detail all of the changes ad naseum. I'll see them live when they come out on HD DVD.

I think this syndication is really just a way to "test" these new versions with the hard-core fan base. Very few people will see them, and those that are actively seeking them out are likely big trekkies (or trekkers). If fan response ins overwhelmingly negative, they can abort the project midway, before they commit to a full season release on video. If response if fairly positive or at least indifferent, they can proceed and then release the revamped episodes on disc with much larger fanfare.

You're probably right. It just seemed like this should have had a much larger "40th Anniversary" spin to it. Look how much buzz was generated for the SEs and the Star Wars 20th anniversary. Buzz and ca$h, by the way. Something that this doesn't seem to be generating at all. I can't imagine how much the syndication package cost local stations, but given that they're showing 1 episode per week at 2am, I don't think anyone's getting rich here.

Just seems like this is pretty low-key for what could have been a big splash. I guess the larger release may be on DVD/HD down the road.

I'm no syndication expert, but I seem to recall a "rule" that stated if a certain program was being shown on cable M-F, it would only get one (or maybe two) showings on a local channel and only on the weekends? Both G4 and TVLand are currently playing TOS.

I don't think such a rule exists, except for maybe specific contracts. Scrubs just went into syndication, and is being shown twice daily M-F both on Comedy Central and my local NBC affiliate.

TOS is only being shown once weekly because that's the rate at which Paramount is doling out the revamped episodes.