Someone has previously proposed to re-do, (cgi) the sfx for the original Star Trek series. Would you watch it? Would it enhance anything?

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That would be like beefing up old Godzilla movies with modern CGI. Part of the atmosphere and fun of these movies were the cheesy sfx.
Many super-smooth-sfx-movies proved, that sfx is not the thing that makes a good movie a good movie

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I don't recall that many grit-your-teeth SFX on TOS, but then I was practically weaned on it, so I'm not remotely objective. I'm inclined to think that 21st-century special effects would be rather jarring when combined with 60's-era sets and costumes.

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I suppose it depends on how well it was done. Surely the spacecraft exteriors would look better with modern CGI, but as ToSeek says, you'd still have the very retro-looking control panels and equipment. It would be pretty tough to CGI all that.

But some of the "moments" that grabbed me in the TOS could stand updating. For example, when the alien ship in "The Corbomite Maneuver" approaches, dwarfing the Enterprise, I was blown away. Now it looks a bit cheesy. I wouldn't mind seeing that (and a few other scenes like it) replaced with high-quality modern equivalents.

D'you suppose they could CGI-it out to widescreen format? (Donnie B. is enjoying his new 16:9 capability.)

(Donnie B. is also wondering when CGI became a verb.)

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"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

If the storylines and subliminal jokes are kept the same, I'd watch TOS if it were re-created with sock-puppets!

--hippie

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would it still have Kirk? yes? then no.

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Are we taking lessons from George Lucas now?
Did the original Star Wars get better because Lucas added more and updated CGI?. No, it added nothing to it, and in some places made it worse.

And to even think of doing this to the TOS is sacrelidge!! What would the late Scotty say to this? "Captain, the engines can't any more of this CGI"

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Lets facce it, it hasnt aged well.

The acting, effects and stories are all quite poor compared to what you would watch these days.

A remake wouldnt work either, as it has bascially been done (TNG).

Would like to see Blakes 7 get the treatment though.

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What you all fail to recognise is it's not about CGI, it's not even about SCI-FI.

The Spaceship is just a way of putting the characters into the storyline.

What's wrong with the acting and the stories? they are way ahead of anything I have seen in the last 20 years.

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The special effects are poor by today's standards, sure. But acting and stories? In your opinion, not mine.


Heh. I always get a laugh out of comments like that. Star Trek and Blake's Seven were both great shows. Blake's Seven borrowed a lot from Star Trek. They are hard to compare, because they had very different stories. But if you forced me to do so, I would have to rank Star Trek above Blake's Seven. Aren't opinions great?

As for CGI in Star Trek: It would be fun to see "Doomsday Machine" with CGI. There's are few other episodes that would be fun to see with modern CGI, as long as the original versions were still available. I absolutely don't want to see different actors doing the same stories. It would be horrible to see somebody try to take the place of Scotty, Kirk, Spock, McCoy ...

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The relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy...that is the reason that Star Trek worked as far as I'm concerned. Recent attempts to duplicate that relationship have failed to live up to the original, IMO.

As far as "updating" the FX with CGI...what would be the "point". I like the original FX. I wouldn't mind if the "bleedthrough" (stars showing through spaceships) and the "matte outlines" were cleaned up a bit. But other than those particulars, I really see no need to "fix" something that isn't broken.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Yes. But I'd prefer Star Trek: Animated Adventures with modernized animations. The original ones were so crappy, it really hindered the show.

Definitely. And some of them were really good stories, too! I'm thinking of one that adapted one of Larry Niven's Kzinti stories into the Trek universe.

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I don't think that would add much to the show. Star Trek -- TOS is a classic and always will be. SF connaisseurs know that older classics are often lacking in the SFX department, but that it would be unfair to judge them by the standards of today. In any case, IMO, the strong point of Star Trek were always the ideas and situations, not the setting.

Now, the original Battlestar Galactica might be a different story...

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Nope, I wouldn't. I'd only watch it with modernized plots and accurate science... But then it wouldn't be Star Trek.

I agree, is there someone out there who wouldn't watch TOS unless they updated the effects. People either love it the way it us, or they don't, no matter how spiffy it looks.As I've said before, why do we need to keep redoing Star Trek, there is a ton of good science fiction out there waiting to be made.

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Oh come on...... PLEEEEEASE!!!!

The acting...?

Even taking TNG and Ds9, the stories and acting are far superior.

But when you add in other genre examples, Farscape Firefly Battlestar (TNG) TOS is panto by comparison.

When you think of West Wing, 24, The Sopranos and The Shield, TOS looks like a preschool play.

And the storylines from TOS were fairly reminicent of the first two years of TNG, which initself were the worst 2 years of its run.

I can see you are passionate about the subject, though. So please feel free to tear apart my argument with a reasoned counter.

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"Oh, you'd be surprised at the things you can learn when you're doing alterations."

Every once in a while, in Star Trek -- TOS, there were small bits of malicious humour between Spock, McCoy and Kirk that I've never seen in later incarnations of the show. I'd call that good acting.

I see how you can be passionate about it, too, but I still think you've got something backwards in there.

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"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

In your opinion. That's fine, everyone has an opinion, but don't expect everyone to share yours. I'll note that the "even taking" suggests you don't think much of TNG and DS9 either.

I had to look up "panto" - apparently suggesting a children's show? Well, Farscape was a fantasy show with muppets. Firefly was a Western. Although I sometimes watched Farscape, the stories and the characters didn't impress me much. I couldn't get interested in Firefly enough to watch more than two or three episodes. Better than Star Trek? In my opinion, not even close.

I like the new BSG, but it is different from Star Trek. Different, but not better.

That is all in my opinion, of course. I don't care if you agree.

So now you are going outside the genre?

What argument? That you don't like Star Trek? That's pretty obvious. You seem pretty passionate. My only "passion" is annoyance when people think everyone else should be expected to share their opinion.

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Maybe I think too much like someone who does theater for a living. But the joy of TOS for me is in the scripts, and the Kirk/Spock/McCoy ensemble, and the way they work like a well-oiled machine. No wasted parts, no excess lines or rambling sub-plots -- simple, economical story-telling.

When I think of TV I've seen since, only a few shows like Buffy, or SG-1, come up to that sort of graceful economy. Almost all the later generations of ST struggled to get a story out. Not to say there weren't good episodes of the later shows. Or bad episodes of TOS. And the depth of story and character explored in, say, Wiseguy really shows how much the hermetic 50-minute structure constrained the original Star Trek.

In any case, the SFX aren't an issue to me. With a few wincing exceptions they managed to avoid "look at me" syndrome, instead presenting the information needed then getting out of the way. I'll take that anytime over the long CGI extravaganzas that substitute for actual drama and conflict on the unlamented Enterprise.

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I think if Lucas had confined himself to merely updating the SFX, it wouldn't have been a problem. Most of the things that made it worse were changes he made (Greedo shooting first) and things he added (the ludicrous robot fight and Jawa swinging off a dinosaur thing, both just on the "enhanced" run in to Mos Eisley).

I'd probably watch the old Star Trek if it was re-touched. As it is, it's the only flavour of Star Trek that I can stand at all - even if Kilingons are merely Spanish, with a cornish pastie on their head, and the planetscapes are generally pretty poor.

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Actually...I was just watching "Dagger of the Mind" and as the Enterprise first enters orbit about the Tantalus Colony it makes this sort of odd-looking jerk (and seems to be flying at an angle). Anyhow, that got me thinking that it would be nice if someone with a respectful hand touched up those old FX, and cleaned up a few bits of spotty sound and bad exposure matching while they were at it. I would like to see that old ship moving smoothly with that delicate grace its lines imply.

Only no-one would do it like that. They'd add rings to all the explosions. They'd replace all the old models with CGI things that only resembled them. The end result would be horrid.

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I just reviewed it and you're right. Obviously the helmsman (it wasn't Sulu) skidded the Enterprise into orbit. He must have gotten fired because I don't recall ever seeing him again.

Which is pretty much what I was talking about. One case in particular i'm thinking of...the "Bird of Prey" from the Balance of Terror episode. You can really see the matte lines, and it is a bit distracting. Of course when it originally aired, I couldn't see them at all because I was watching it on a small black and white TV.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Same here. I'm saving up for the DVD's -- and it will be the first time I've seen many of them in color.

Pity we can't hope for a Citizen Kane job here; meticulous restoration and editing, including remixing of all the audio. Heck; I'd love to hear some of that old BGM re-recorded by a new studio orchestra.

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Were you aware that you can buy exactly what you are talking about? I have this volume, and it is excellent! I really need to get the others

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

For those who weren't there at the start, it's hard to explain that the original Star Trek was like an explosion in a fresh air factory. Fortunately, I got to watch it in color (my brother had built a Heathkit TV), and that opening scene where the Enterprise swoops past with - what the heck is THAT? WOW, a DIFFERENT kind of space ship - yeah, that COULD be a star ship, y'know? And - what's this BEAMING DOWN stuff? Hey, it really IS the future!

Changing it to gussy it up would just look silly. Like having a light sabre duel in Hamlet.

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I've seen Richard III done with kung-fu fighting (a local troupe called Impact Theater).

But yeah. Be hard to change the FX without changing the whole look of the show.

Bookmarked that CD. Another thing to save up money for!

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Yes! Sure, you can pick on Star Trek, but compare Star Trek to other science fiction series from that time - or even years later. Think of Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, UFO ...

Reading The Making of Star Trek is interesting. Even ideas we would think are obvious, such as the spacecraft that couldn't land, was something of a novelty then. That presented a problem: How do get people on the planet quickly in an episode? From there came the transporter. And the predictions! There were the medical diagnostics that we use every day. Small hand held but powerful communicators. Even the term "sensors" wasn't in common use then.

The point is that they went to some trouble to think about the background for the series. It wasn't just sticking people in a spacecraft and flying them around. Then add some great character interactions ...

There really wasn't anything that came close to Star Trek on U.S. TV until the late '80s. TV special effects didn't improve all that much through the '70s or most of the '80s, and the series were usually just as silly as "Lost in Space."

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That is a point. But I think it goes beyond recognizing that Star Trek, TOS has historical significance. I think it addresses what is wrong with so many SF shows since.

When Gene pitched his "Wagon Train to the Stars," he was recognizing that this was a new genre; that there really wasn't a language, a set of standards, for the serious SF series. He was inventing a new Western, a new Cop Show, a new Quirky Detective genre.

And when the writers set out to tell stories in this new world they had to think and project and invent to solve the story-telling problems. How to get an episode started without a long and expensive "landing the ship" scene? Why, invent the transporter. How to allow non-violent solutions within a physical crisis, yet keep their people from dripping with specialized equipment? Why, invent a "phaser" that combines in one compact housing all the hand weapon needs of the landing party. None of these were, at the time, obvious solutions. It is hindsight that makes them seem so.

What happened after Star Trek, though, is that these inventions became default assumptions. It seems like everyone has phasers, transporters, shuttlecraft, even cons their ship from circular bridges. Few writers, producers, or props people have gone since to study aircraft carriers or tenders, robotics or university physics labs, military procedures or any other of the million and one assumptions behind those now-familiar forms.

Of course this sort of thinking hit Star Trek worst; through particularly Voyager and Enterprise it ceased to be an exploration of something external (real human societies, real technological extrapolations), and more and more an exploration only of its own inward-turned mythology. I mean; one of the big plotlines on Enterprise was an explanation of what Deep Space 9 meant when they dropped the ball on what happened to the smooth-headed TOS Klingons.

These are not absolutes. Voyager and Enterprise both tried to change the series premise itself -- DS9 definately did that -- and even Next Generation tried to explore their future society and the assumptions behind it and carry the extrapolation of Gene Roddenbury's Utopian dreams further along than The Original Series had managed. And of course shows like Firefly or Battlestar Galactica showed there was room on the plains for more than one style of wagon train.

But to circle wagons back towards the original point; the show and its plots may look obvious, hokay, cliched today. That can blind you to the freshness with which these elements are used. It might be more accurate to say that when Janeway hauls out a phaser and stuns someone, it shows a terrible tiredness on the part of the writer; a writer who is now merely going through the motions with a pre-made solution to their dramatic problem.

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There was a company that proposed updating the FX in "The Doomsday Machine" and released several samples. I thought they were quite good, espeacially the CGI of the battered Constellation.

I absolutely agree.