Original Star Trek Getting CGI Makeover

Tony Pascale writes "Star Trek is the latest sci-fi classic to get the CGI 'special edition' treatment. According to rumors picked up by TrekMovie.com, CBS and Paramount have been secretly working on a new version of Star Trek: The Original Series for HDTV. The shows will feature the original episodes with brand new state-of-the-art CGI visual effects, including a a redone title sequence (with re-recorded music). The effects are likely to be limited to the space scenes and not effect the live action scenes, so Edith Keeler will not shoot first. The HDTV Star Trek series will begin broadcasting this fall just in time for the 40th Anniversary of Star Trek."

City on the Edge of Woodspock

The effects are likely to be limited to the space scenes and not effect the live action scenes, so Edith Keeler will not shoot first.

It's true that Edith Keeler will not shoot first [wikipedia.org], however, let's just say that when Dr. McCoy "accidentally" injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine his trip down to the planet is a little bit more like the 60s. If-ya-know-what-I-mean.

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NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo!

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I never trusted CGI... and I never will. I can never forgive for what they did to Star Wars!

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Because new things aren't guaranteed box office. Rehashing previously marketable ideas is far safer.

After all, it's about money, not entertainment.

But don't blame the Hollywood establishment, blame the viewing public for paying over and over to see the same hackneyed ideas and insultingly shallow plots.

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> the same hackneyed ideas and insultingly shallow plots

Hey, I for one enjoyed "Spock's Brain"!

"'Brain' and 'brain'... what is 'brain'?!"

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Come to think of it, they'll have an easier time with those because the directors are dead and can't object to their masterpieces being whored out to line the studios' pockets.

Wait, I thought copyright protection was evil and that an artist really should have no control over his work once he releases it? Or are mash-ups and re-cuttings only fair when they are posted to YouTube instead of released on DVD?

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One thing is whether the artist should have control over his works.
Another thing entirely is whether the marketing company should have these rights.

In some countries, certain rights of the artists are inalienable. I think this is a good thing.

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Maybe the current generation of TV viewers deserves something original

They deserve a swift kick in the groin, is what they deserve.

Gorram sports and "reality"-TV watching maroons... Why in my day [we apologise for the curmodgeon, your regularly scheduled thread will now resume]

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KHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNnnnnn!

It's Dead Jim

...

Going Boldly

Star Trek, going boldly where they've gone before because they can't come up with anything new.

history repeating itself

Morons. Guess they didn't learn from the Star Wars debacle. Never, ever, ever fool around with the originals.

Re:history repeating itself

Morons. Guess they didn't learn from the Star Wars debacle.

I'm guessing they learned that fans will line up to be fleeced even while they complain about the originals being spoilt.

*sighs* if people put their money where their mouth was, we wouldn't have to put up with this shit.

Re:history repeating itself

"Guess they didn't learn from the Star Wars debacle."

Do you mean the Star Wars debacle that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales and sold tens of millions of videocassettes and DVDs? If they're going to learn anything from that, it's that pissing off whiny SciFi geeks is an easy way to get free publicity.

interesting idea, my favorite ...

This is an interesting idea. My favorite bits from the later Star Trek series were the times they showed the original enterprise in re-done FX -- the DS9 "tribbles" episode, the "mirror universe" episodes of ENTERPRISE.

I love the original series as is, but this would be a neat reason to re-watch them.

boxlight

Old news, surely?

I downloaded a sample CGI demo from some company about 5 years ago that was supposed to be a 'what if' they were doing. It had the TOS titles redone in their entirety in CGI and a separate scene getting similar treatment.
It looked fine but really, why? I LIKE the way the SFX clips of the Enterprise are complete with nose hair, fluff and other sundry gunk. It's supposed to be like that!

New Voyages did it.

New Voyages, [startreknewvoyages.com] the fan-film continuation of TOS that's running with the tacit approval of Paramount and which has Roddenberry's son as a consultant, has done some neat things with CGI in the original Trek universe.

That said, though, I really hope they won't try to replace the originals like when Red Dwarf tried to. It's an interesting novelty, but it's not worth trashing the original for.

And in another 10 years

They'll redo them again, except this time in 3d. Finally, you, the audience member, will personally feel and understand what the Crewman in the Red Shirt went through every week.

Although I do look forward to the re-mastered space hippies. :~

Remakes?

Instead of spending money on remastering startrek, why not spend the cash on producing a new, good series? Yeah, seeing TOS in new, 3d graphics is appealing, but i would much rather see a new show of the same quality of TOS but with the new eye candy.

Re:Remakes?

Because the evidence suggests that they are incapable of a good new series.

Stop Complaining

This might actually not be a horrible thing. The effects in the original were bad at times and I am willing to except that; however, Star Trek is turning 40 and with that age come a great many people who have probably never seen all of the Original Series (or maybe not even parts of it). The only Trek even fewer may know is those two most recent atrocities. Instead of complaining, this about how this could possibly turn Star Trek on to a whole new generation of people.

So long as the effects changes have no real impact of the story or the idea of the show I do not see a huge problem here. If the shows old film is getting cleaned up too, then that is also something to cheer about. I personally would feel better knowing that they are actually caring for the old film and not letting it just rot in some warehouse.

And in other news...

...It has been reported that famous Hollywood producer and director Steven Spielberg has begun work on updating the groundbreaking summer blockbuster "Jaws". Inside sources confirm that Spielberg will be replacing the old scenes of the shark and also any scenes of yellow floating barrels with new and improved CGI versions of the shark. According to insiders "This will blow away the old version". It has already been acknowledged that the original version was not his original "vision" of the film. Spielberg has stated that the only reason the shark was not in most every scene was because of all the mechanical failures. But now with the miracle of CGI we will finally be able to see his original "vision". Spielberg also confirmed that all the original negatives of the 1975 classic will be destroyed after the new original is released.

Re:And in other news...

That's funny I was under the impression that all the blood and violence would be edited out and the shark would be replaced with a Radio taped to a flashlight.

This new 8 disk box set will include the new 20 minute feature and 5 days of Spielberg rabling about various topics.

Crushed childhoods not included for those under the age of 25.

Re:And in other news...

In addition to this, the new CGI shark will have a frickin laser beam attached to its head.

Insider sources claim that a Special Edition of this re-release is also planned in which the laser beam will be replaced by a walkie-talkie.

In short, because we can.

Which is not a good reason to do anything.

I recently rented the remastered DVD of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", which to this day is one of the great science fiction movies of all time. What makes it a great science fiction movie? It is credible. It presents the story in a way that compels you to believe it on some level.

The producer was Julian Blaustein. He says in an interview that he decided to do a sneak preview, a Hollywood practice that allows the filmmakers to find and tweak problem spots in a movie. Blaustein's biggest concern: Gort's knees. Gort the robot was just a very tall man in a foam rubber suit. It was very convincing, except when Gort walked away from the camera: the backs of his knees didn't look robotic, they looked like a man trying to walk in a stiff foam rubber suit. Every time he looked at a scene in which Gort walked away, it bothered him.

A few minutes into the movie, there is a scene where tank after tank skids around the corner, racing to confront the flying saucer. The audience reacted in a completely unexpected way to this: they laughed. Blaustein recounts sinking lower and lower in his seat until his eyes were level with the seat in front of him. He knew to the precisely how many seconds it would be until the audience would see Gort, and exactly how many seconds after that Gort would turn around and the world would see his cheesy foam rubber knees. If they laughed, he was finished: no Gort, no movie.

Naturally, nobody laughed. He found out later that the reason the audience laughed was the absurdity of confronting the advanced technology of the flying saucer with tanks and guns. Nobody every thinks Gort's knees are cheesy. Lesson learned: the audience will accept anything once you make them believe. Ang Lee did a movie of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in which Emma Thompson played a character almost twenty years younger than she was when she made the movie. Lee managed this by avoiding closeups until well into the movie, after Thompson had managed to sell the audience on her performance.

So -- I'd conclude this. If a TOS episode works, it doesn't need CGI rework. The CGI work might help a less credible episode.

As a side note, Robert Wise, the director of The Day The Earth Stood Still, died last September. So far as I know this was not commemorated on /., which given the stature of the moview probably should have rated him an obit here. Robert Wise was also the director on a very different movie: Star Trek the Motion Picture. The commentary on TDTESS makes it clear why: Wise was originally a cinematographer, and as a director he studied each script and meticulously planned each shot before the first frame of film was exposed. On STTMP, he never had a full script. The script was being written as the movie was shot, and as he received more script he'd shoot some more. This accounts, I think, for the remarkable difference between the two films. TDTESS is notable for its brisk pace, strong characterizations, clean story telling and restraint (technologically and budget driven to be sure) in the use of special effects. STTMP is exactly opposite in each of these areas. Under the circumstances, it's remarkable that the film wasn't an utter fiasco. Robert Wise later did a Director's Edition, which I have not seen, in which he reportedly was able to impose some order on the film. This is regarded by some as the best of the film series, wheras the theatrical release version is widely regarded as, not the worst, but close to it.

It's worth noting that nobody says the special effects for the theatrical version were wanting. On the contrary, they were excellent, but there was too much of them and not enough story.

Because this worked so well in Britain...

I just hope the remasters are as good as the Red Dwarf remasters [wikipedia.org]. It was so good they put the unremastered ones on the DVDs instead of the remasters nowadays.

A proof of concept CGI update for TOS

From the early '90s, this is VERY rough proof-of-concept footage from when Paramount contracted Digital Stream to insert computer-generated effects into the original Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine". Nothing ever came of the project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HSYC6Wlbv8 [youtube.com]

*slams head on desk*

I don't get the need to do this. People like the show as it is, why go muck with it? Same thing with Star Wars.

I was over at the starwars.com yesterday looking for information about the release of the unedited versions in a week or so. They have a side by side comparison of many frames they changed from the film. With something along the lines of "Many people don't realize the technical capabiltiy that went into this!"

Stop right there. I'm an engineer and I appreciate technical achievement as much as the next geek. But you're trying to SELL ME ON YOUR TECHNICAL MERITS?

Most people who don't like the edits don't like them for one of two reasons. 1) You're messing with something they remember and liked. This almost always pisses people off. 2) The CGI doesn't look right in the movie with late 1970s effects.

Star Wars was one of the highest grossing movies of all time without any mucking about. Star Trek is insanely popular. I think it's pretty arrogant to go messing with a historical show that's stood up for 30-40 years and expect people to like it (or not be outraged) because it's a technical feat.

I guess I better run buy a copy of the original series DVDs before someone at Paramount decides I don't have the privilidge to see them in their original form again. :-/

*beats head on desk some more*

Six Words Of Warning:

Do NOT fuck with the Gorn.

If I see anything other than that rubber suit with irridescent eyes that terrified me when I was eight, I swear I will burn my Starfleet Academy underpants.

I don't want to see any crap like that goofy thing wrestling with mirror-Archer.

And nobody crack wise about me burning the underpants with me in them.

"Can you fashion a rudimentary lathe?"

Well, maybe...

This would be a good chance to retcon the Klingons into Klingons that look like Klingons.

The Changeling Special Edition

"Star Trek is the latest sci-fi classic to get the CGI 'special edition' treatment."
Rumours have it that the producers were a little upset about Kirk shooting his mouth off at Nomad and killing it with its own logic. After the Special Edition edit, Nomad is shown to self-destruct due to a hardware error and not by Kirk's cruel mind games.
Capt. Kirk: I am the Kirk, the creator?
Nomad: You are the creator.
Capt. Kirk: You could be wrong....
Nomad: Oh no, not again...my capacitors are leaking, and I feel a sudden power surge. Please hold on Kirk, I must reboot...
Cut to Nomad being beamed into deep space and exploding with a ring of fire.

Oh, wow

This could be even better than the Japanese version of Red Dwarf.

Leave. It. Alone.

Cripes - half the fun of watching old sci-fi (hell, half the fun of reading it too) involves the whole attempt at special effects given for that period in time. It gives an intelligent viewer as much insight into things at that time which are incidental --but just as important-- as how they thought about the future. The visuals are a vital part of that. Sure, it's cardboard and glue (and small plastic models on fishing line), but that's just as important to the stories, written right at the same time, as the story itself.

Seriously - leave it alone so that anyone in the distant future who stumbles across it can actually learn about the ones who wrote it. While Trek isn't exactly a classic like, oh, something by H.G. Wells, it may someday become something akin to a classic, given its popularity. We can learn a lot about Wells' time and society from our century-plus future vantage point by reading the stories and seeing period sketches and prints illustrating it, if possible. Sure, it's not exactly eye candy, but it's worth it.

/P

Noooo!!... ohhh who the hell cares??

I mean, why not... let's be honest you WILL watch it just for curiousity even if you hate it. At least it's not Enterprise.

HDTV Star Trek sounds cool to me anyway.

won't work

What annoys me about TOS is the way the technology looks outdated even by 1990s standards. It'd take an awful lot of CGI to fix that.

Additional Star Trek CGI ideas...

These are for TNG, IMHO the best series of all the Treks:

How about some CGI boobs for Tasha Yar to go with that smokin ass?

Can they CGI Troy looking like she can actually walk in heels without tripping?

CGI Force Fields that if touched more than once, start burning off fingers.

Can we get a CGI of Wesley Crusher's head flying off, thanks to Worf's Batlef after fucking up the Enterprise computer once again?

CGI Borg sex! "Can you assimilate THIS, baby?"

CGI Data killing everyone in a cyber-dream: "Why the fuck do I keep saving these people, when they never let me drive the ship?"

CGI some sweaters for the crew that dont require constant readjustment.

Please, PLEASE CGI Picard kneeing Dr. Crusher in the groin for disobeying orders. I would PAY to see that.

Next thing you know...

Next thing you know they'll be colorizing old black-and-white movies!

Oh, wait...

Re:Hey

Can they edit out Wil Wheaton?

Interesting... put Wesley Crusher into TOS digitaly and then digitaly remove him... You may be on to something there!

:-)