To Boldly Re-Create What Has Gone Before
I have been an admirer of Star Trek for a long time. I am not as big a fan as some of my friends - I tended to prefer Star Wars, but I wouldn't argue one is better than the other. They both are wonderful and imaginative worlds in which I enjoyed playing as a child.
When I was young, Star Trek (the original series) was being played in re-runs on Sunday afternoons. My dad watched it pretty frequently and, therefore, so did I (usually while playing with Star Wars toys - you have to admit, Star Wars did beat Star Trek on the toy front). I enjoyed the shows and the special effects were great (remember, I was a kid and easily impressed), as I would also think when I saw some Dr. Who shows from the 70s. It wouldn't be until later that I began to realize that the effects were not as good as I remembered.
I have no problem with that. Movies and television shows are always a product of their time, both in their use of technology on and off the screen. That's probably why Star Trek: Enterprise had such trouble. It is hard to look like your stories happened before the original Star Trek show because it is really hard to go back and retrofit a set to something that was somewhat cutting edge in the late 60s.
I still enjoy Godzilla movies and great Sci-Fi classics like War of the Worlds or Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Those effects aren't that great either. But I still enjoy them.
So, a few weeks ago, I decided I would go back and watch the original Star Trek shows on Netflix. I hadn't really watched them fully - the last time I watched them with any regularity was when I was 9. And I sat back and started watching.
But then I noticed something. It took two, maybe three episodes for me to be sure, but there it was. The shows had been tampered with.
Here's how. The planet surface and the bridge and Enterprise sets were all the same, but whenever the actual Enterprise was shown from outside orbiting yet another planet, the graphics were great. One episode had a shuttle craft leaving the Enterprise. The scene was really well done - but it clearly wasn't part of the original show. The graphics were too good.
I looked closely and sure enough, the scenes of the Enterprise had been "updated." The updates were good - beautiful and sleek, actually. But I found them to be somewhat jarring. They were too good and then the show jumped back to the "old" presumably poorer effects. It was enough to be a disconnecting transition rather than a seamless one. Even the opening credits had been re-done with a sleeker Enterprise instead of the old, "almost see the strings" Enterprise from the original original show.
Apparently this was done in 2006. CBS remastered all 79 of the original episodes. To describe what they were doing, then president of CBS Paramount Domestic Television John Nogawski said that "Nothing really has changed except for the fact that it's just prettier to look at." He then said that "Right down to placement of stars, it is being resimulated to be exactly what was there in the first place."
Which is funny when you think about it. Because to resimulate something to be exactly what it was in the first place would be to leave it alone. I mean, look at the two pictures. They aren't exactly alike at all.
Ah well. Since it happened 12 years ago, I'm sure the Trekkies have already spent a great deal of time debating the pros and cons of the resimulation. What I recognized is that sometimes it becomes obvious that we have tinkered with something the more we try to make it contemporary. In so doing we can certainly make it look better, but then it also loses whatever it was that so charmed us in the beginning.
When I was young, Star Trek (the original series) was being played in re-runs on Sunday afternoons. My dad watched it pretty frequently and, therefore, so did I (usually while playing with Star Wars toys - you have to admit, Star Wars did beat Star Trek on the toy front). I enjoyed the shows and the special effects were great (remember, I was a kid and easily impressed), as I would also think when I saw some Dr. Who shows from the 70s. It wouldn't be until later that I began to realize that the effects were not as good as I remembered.
I have no problem with that. Movies and television shows are always a product of their time, both in their use of technology on and off the screen. That's probably why Star Trek: Enterprise had such trouble. It is hard to look like your stories happened before the original Star Trek show because it is really hard to go back and retrofit a set to something that was somewhat cutting edge in the late 60s.
I still enjoy Godzilla movies and great Sci-Fi classics like War of the Worlds or Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Those effects aren't that great either. But I still enjoy them.
So, a few weeks ago, I decided I would go back and watch the original Star Trek shows on Netflix. I hadn't really watched them fully - the last time I watched them with any regularity was when I was 9. And I sat back and started watching.
But then I noticed something. It took two, maybe three episodes for me to be sure, but there it was. The shows had been tampered with.
Here's how. The planet surface and the bridge and Enterprise sets were all the same, but whenever the actual Enterprise was shown from outside orbiting yet another planet, the graphics were great. One episode had a shuttle craft leaving the Enterprise. The scene was really well done - but it clearly wasn't part of the original show. The graphics were too good.
I looked closely and sure enough, the scenes of the Enterprise had been "updated." The updates were good - beautiful and sleek, actually. But I found them to be somewhat jarring. They were too good and then the show jumped back to the "old" presumably poorer effects. It was enough to be a disconnecting transition rather than a seamless one. Even the opening credits had been re-done with a sleeker Enterprise instead of the old, "almost see the strings" Enterprise from the original original show.
Apparently this was done in 2006. CBS remastered all 79 of the original episodes. To describe what they were doing, then president of CBS Paramount Domestic Television John Nogawski said that "Nothing really has changed except for the fact that it's just prettier to look at." He then said that "Right down to placement of stars, it is being resimulated to be exactly what was there in the first place."
Which is funny when you think about it. Because to resimulate something to be exactly what it was in the first place would be to leave it alone. I mean, look at the two pictures. They aren't exactly alike at all.
Ah well. Since it happened 12 years ago, I'm sure the Trekkies have already spent a great deal of time debating the pros and cons of the resimulation. What I recognized is that sometimes it becomes obvious that we have tinkered with something the more we try to make it contemporary. In so doing we can certainly make it look better, but then it also loses whatever it was that so charmed us in the beginning.
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