Cool. Hope to finally get to see one of these “Remastered” first hand, in order to better judge. The ship still looks too smooth and untextured but the nacelle caps definitely look better. Btw, again, for Dallasites, channel 52 @ 9pm sunday is the place to look for us un-hip fans without cable.

Two words.

Loved it.

The single-frame preview shots I’d seen of the planet were disappointing and I still prefer the old planet’s appearance, but after viewing the episode the new planet didn’t look too lively and worked okay. I wish the CGI Enterprise had more visible texture and some of those tiny imperfections that make things look “real” instead of computer-generated. It just looks too smooth, too perfect - but then again Matt Jefferies designed a smooth hull with maintenance intended to be done from the interior, so he might have liked it this way.

Not much tweaking I could spot in the episode, although I haven’t seen it in many years. They did a fairly decent cleanup of the famous shot of Kirk gazing upward at the empty sky, and I do recall how there used to be a “freeze-frame” effect that plagued the thicker mist coming off the Guardian every time a closing credit appeared. Pity the fix for that also reduced the mist so much, but that is a very minor quibble. But the darn cuts to meet modern timing completely chopped out the bum phasering himself. Such a pity, given the pathos that scene created in the full-length show.

With the clean film image it was very apparent how the original show (and now the remastered version) had several instances of slow-motion/repeated frames to enhance the emotional impact of various scenes, such as Kirk’s slump a bit after stopping McCoy’s rescue attempt. I’d always noticed the slo-mo effect as they stepped into or out of the Guardian, but now I see several other cases as well.

Two things I had wondered about them fixing which they chose to leave alone:
* I kind of wish we could have seen Orion up in the sky in the city shot after Kirk’s gesture to Edith, but they kept the old Brooklyn Bridge shot.
* We still get stock footage from the Guardian, and its creators still evidently preferred sepia tone. Of course it would refuse to colorize even if we asked. No doubt it would just reply “I cannot change.”

So not much in the way of new effects in this one, but CITY remains the best of TOS for me. The storyline is superb and thought-provoking, the pacing is spot on, the sprinkles of humor are very well played by the cast, and Joan Collins as Sister Keeler is everything you could wish for and more.

Loved it too!!!!!

Just seen it and it was quite good with the exception that really chopped it up. One minute Edith Keeler is talking about a flop house and then you see Spock having the circuit board all completed and ready for testing.
Also…besides NOT showing the bum waiting for the horse drawn wagon to depart to get his ill gotten booty of milk..you see McCoy jumping through
the building and so on…and as previously mentioned they don’t show the bum vaporizing himself either….like….what give here anyhow?
Is it the stations individual option to chop up each episode to their own individual liking here or is this how they are being released? I would tend to think thats how their being released for now. Anyone else notice Uhuras
green earrings? I never noticed them before…I guess they tweeked the color of them so now they look - had a glow in the dark hue - tinge to them.
Also….does anyone know when and IF they plan on showing the original pilot of Star Trek (the Cage) in its entirety? If so…will that be updated too?

Well, the episode was still good, but I miss the bum vaporizing himself.

If we can’t vaporize one bum to save the future, whom can we vaporize?

Alas, I guess this is just the side effect of 51 minutes of show and 9 minutes of commercials in the 1960s to 42 minutes of show and 18 minutes of commercials today.

I wonder what other bits were cut out?

So… a plug for the DVDs I guess, remastered or otherwise.

Meanwhile:
Ask The Guardian Of Forever!
http://tinyurl.com/qblpc

It’s torture watching these episodes on broadcast knowing how much better they will actually look on DVD and HD. My local station sends out such a crappy, noisy picture that even over the dish with my expensive video cables the picture still looks like crud. If only Paramount/CBS were remastering these things in order so they could release the DVDs in batches without having to wait another two years!

By the way, looking at the “before and after” pictures above, I think one of the reasons the CG Enterprise looks so “smooth” is the absence of film grain and dirt from the original footage. So far, all the episodes remastered have consisted of mostly wide orbit shots where we wouldn’t expect to see much detail anyway. It will be interesting to see how the CG ship looks when we get to episodes like “The Ultimate Computer” where we get a lot closer. I’m hoping to see some crew members walking past the windows on the inside of the Enterprise!

Lets see here……
A, Dish System - No problem there….
B. State Of The Art Video Cables - Again No Problem
1. Its either your TV - Or Monitor (too old?)
2. Or it could be your Audio receiver that its all running through….
I’d upgrade both one and two. I’m running mine on a 1999 Sony Receiver and TV that were State of the art then and the picture still looks good. 5.1 Surround Sound with 2 self powered Subs and equalizer - etc and with Dish-Network it still looks very good. The only real problem is that the episodes are being hacked to pieces - Oh well.
Actually opt out for the so called (West Coast Package) IF you have Dish Network that way you can watch Star Trek at 2:00 A.M. (Eastern) on KWGN Channel 235 (Channel 2) out of Denver on a Sunday morning. Thats the same picture - station I get and it looks good to me.

I agree with Dip Thong. My fox channel here has the crappiest signal too,. as a local station, you can’t even receive it without cable… Ive got state of the art equipment, digital cable with hd receiver, hd 16:9 tv, 5.1 surround sound, but alas, I may as well be watching on a black and white with rabbit ears and tin foil for an antenna. digital cable is great if your affilliate has the broadcast strength. Unfortunately, mine does mnot and I wish I could reap the benefits of siing the clearly restored pictures and colors. Guess I have to wait for dvd too.

(sigh)

I have to wait until 2:45AM tonight/tomorrow AM. I’ll be there!

Overall I thought the upgraded SPFX were good in this episode. I’m also glad that the original “Good Night Sweetheart” music issue was resolved for broadcast (this music was substituted with something else during the VHS years due to a copyright dispute, but was resolved on DVD releases).

Anyone notice –

- The new shot of the tricorder screen as the circuit boards are shorting out?
- Uhura’s greenish plastic earrings?
- The misting from the Guardian, which is now consistently falling from the top of the unit as the crew beams up and the titles roll at the end of the episode?

Overall, the print is very clean and sharp. I’m even more amazed at Shatner’s toupee… the hairline on his forehead really does look real, even on my big screen High Def TV!

yep….Shatner is awsome..young and old!

}:-)

On the re-mastered toupee: I thought Shatner’s scalp was only at a bald-spot stage during TOS, so the hair in front was still his original. If he could have kept it looking this good during the 70s and 80s, don’t you think he would have? The last 10 years or so he finally found something that looks like the same species as him.

As to overall video quality, I’m afraid many of us are stuck with stations that are incapable of originating digital programming. They can throw a switch and pass along digital network shows from a live feed, but local programming, including syndicated shows they record for playback of their own scheduling, is a simulcast of their analog broadcast. It’s comparable to watching a VHS copy of a DVD. The mandate from the FCC is only that they broadcast digitally, but if they want to keep an analog workflow (AAD and DAD) they’ll keep doing it until competition drives them to upgrade to DDD.

You guys who are complaning about the poor quality local stations, are you watching the digital feeds? If you have a cable HD subscription why aren\’t you watching the HD version of the channel? What you should get there (ideally) is a perfect SD quality image upconverted to 1080i by your local affiliate and then sent to you cable company for rebroadcast.

Of course the better way is to cut out the middle man and use an antenna to receive the digital TV broadcast from your local station over the air and skip the cable system (which usally recompresses the signal) and certainly better then satellite which recompresses and often downrezes on top of it all.

I agree with MAtt, if you live anywhere close to an HD signal and own an HD television, grab a $30 HD antennae and pull in those signals, the picture is absolutely gorgeous and the 5:1 sound is awesome. I’ve seen it locally on cable and on satellite, the over the air signal is by far the best.

Gee.They really had to jump through A HOOP to get Mc Coy back.

Out here in the bay area we have channel 12, no HD, no HD version of the channel…

The problem, at least in my case, is that the digital feed I’m receiving is the station’s analog output converted to a digital transmission. The digital quality is lost because they’re converting digital to analog then back to digital again, because they don’t have local digital storage and control equipment. Although they have a digital channel, it’s only a digital-quality picture when network shows are on. It’s hard to explain because it’s so stupid people don’t believe it.

The digital effects people have introduced an error. The lights on the ends of the nacelles are lit and spinning while the CGI Enterprise is in orbit. The nacelles only light up when the Enterprise is at warp (although there were instances of inconsistency), and remain dark when the ship is around a planet.

No no…that is the result of shots of two different versions of the model–the early orbiting shots were done with the pilot version ship which did not have lighting effects built into the engines yet. These shots were reused throughout the series, so the inconsistency is in the original footage.

I loved the panning orbital shot for the post-teaser credits–I believe the digital effects people have sampled grain for at least some shots of the Enterprise; I still maintain one of the problems with its too smooth and perfect appearance is that they have not reproduced the weathering streaks that were on the original model–these were quite subtle but they really gave the ship some texture that’s still missing in the CG shots.

I was really struck by the fix of the mist from the Guardian at the end of the show–that was a really subtle thing to do and I think this is one of the most effective aesthetic decisions they’ve made so far–it actually made that final shot far more haunting without the jarring freeze frames of the descending mist.

I’m impressed by so many of you fellow posters who have caught the Guardian Mist at the closing credits. I tip my hat to you. Bravo

Very Disappointed with the entire run of this Star Trek ‘ReMastered’. It has become quite sad.

Well, I finally have caught one of these Star Trek remastered, and to be fair, the CGI holds up better than I thought it would. This a great TOS episode, and also quite daring, as it kind of ends on a downer, the necessary death of Edith Keeler. I haven’t seen this episode in awhile so I had forgotten all about the bum phasering himself out. I guess he had no impact on the future or episode plot. ;-D

Does anyone know if it’s possible to get Trek Remastered in the Washington DC area? The station listing on this site is not accurate; none of the local channels are carrying it as far as I know.

JB: I’m also in the DC area (Darwin’s Waiting Room aka Manassas, VA). Channel 20 (WDCA) usually shows it at 2pm on Sunday but aired “City…” at 4pm on Saturday for whatever reason. The only episodes WDCA didn’t air were “Balance of Terror” and “Miri”.

“I, Mudd” is scheduled to air this Saturday at 2pm (according to my TiVo). E-mail me if you’d like to be kept apprised of air times in DC.

I still do not understand. I cannot see the new remastered version of Star Trek in HD until… when? When I buy the whole set on one of the HD formats of DVD?? Ok, but if I do that, you have to put those lost 9 minutes back in. If I’m going to wait and buy it all over again, I am going to see the bum phaser himself. I won’t settle for less.

So far I’m underwhelmed by this whole “enterprise.” My initial enthusiasm has turned to disappointment. The remastered episodes feel like a missed opportunity. I can understand the desire to avoid the pitfalls of “special editions” that change the story and vision of the original creators. (I don’t want to see the Enterprised doing barrell rolls and Kirk shooting first.) But in interviews, the producers seemed to mock the fact that there were only 4 shots of the ship orbiting a planet that were used again, again and again. As far as I can tell, they’re only re-creating those same 4 shots. What’s the point of this exercise if they don’t take the opportunty to add to the mix…in a natural/organic fashion. For the City on the Edge of Forever, why not add to the opening sequence of Act I with a pan of the ruins on the surface of the planet that “go as far as the eye can see.” Show a CGI beam in from a distance as part of the shot if they feel they can’t add any beats or changes to the original edit. The closing shot of the episode would have been another opportunity to do something to give the episode a sense of grand scale rather than the claustrophobic feel of the limited set they were on. The static shot of The Guardian is painfully long by today’s pacing standards and could have come to life with a moving camera across the ruins. Don’t let the original “vision of the creators” limit the potential of Remastered. When Roddenberry got his hands on some money, he produced the only Star Trek movie that actually felt like a movie (that was epic in scale) and not a glorified TV episode. So to the producers…think in terms of the TOS meets ST:TMP. Let’s have some fun with this! Please kick it up a notch before we get to The Doomsday Machine!

Well, I do think it will be kicked up a “notch” before Doomsday Machine; that’s why they’re saving episodes like that and Ultimate Computer for later. There have been missed opportunities but I’ve also been impressed by some of what they’ve done and you still have to deal with the intimacy of a lot of this show–yes, Roddenberry made TMP and TMP does look like a movie, but I would also argue that it’s dramatically inert and the result of paying more attention to the production than story. I can see “opening up” the Guardian landscape to a point, but I also think it could distract from what is probably the most personal story Trek has ever told–you don’t NEED spectacle in this story, that really adds nothing to the impact of what we’re seeing. You can’t change everything and you still have to deal with the sets that were constructed and work within some of those perimeters. That said, there are still things I wish they would do, in particular improve the photorealism of the Enterprise shots. But I loved the design of that first orbiting shot and clearly they’re going to reproduce the classic Enterprise shots we’re familiar with AND add more like the ones we’ve seen in “Devil in the Dark” and “City.” There’s plenty of room for improvement but I like the subtlety of what’s being done so far.

And yes, the episodes ARE being remastered and augmented full-length; what we’re seeing are just the broadcast syndication versions–obviously any DVD release would be of the complete uncut episodes.

My only real complaint (thus far) about the remastered Trek is the “selective editing.” I realize that the TV networks have to make room for as many advertising spots as possible.. but I’m *extremely* disappointed that the “bum-phaser-scene” was cut. People who might be watching TOS for the first time and have no desire to buy the DVDs won’t even know what they missed, which is sad. Now each week I’ll be watching for deleted scenes as much or even more than appreciating the remastering efforts. I feel that such editing butchery is much more of an insult to the original works than these light CGI enhancements ever could be.

Couple of things…

First, it seems to me the color of Spock’s cap and coat have been altered. I could’ve sworn the cap was originally black, but now is blue. The coat seems a different shade as well.

It’s both exciting to see these remastered episodes, and pure torture as well due to the editing. However, the editing is far better than what was done in the 70s, when it was left to the local stations to do it. Back then my local station would just take out a single chunk, and the viewer was left to figure out what plot points were missing. Some of the cuts were just awful–often times they just lopped off the teaser.

The remastered episodes won’t be truly enjoyable until they’re out on DVD.

Nope that is the color his wardrobe always was. You must have been used to watching some awful old poor quality copies

From the DVD: http://www.trekmovie.com/tosrem/dvd_spock_wardrobe.jpg

The pictures I put up do not have Spock in his coat or his cap, his button up shirt is a light blue, mabye your getting it confused with his dark coat?

Okay, so no change to the color of Spock’s wardrobe.

But here’s a change (I think it’s a change) I haven’t seen mentioned. In the teaser, faint rumbles have been added to the soundtrack each time the Enterprise passes through one of the small time displacement waves. In the original, all we saw was a little jiggle; now there’s a little corresponding rumble that goes with it.

I don’t think any changes have been made to the soundtrack–in fact, the remastered edition producers have pointed out that they are “married” to the sound effects in the original episodes and have to make sure any added visual effects correspond to that soundtrack.

I definitely remember some rumbles for the time waves in the original version of the episode, although if you watch here they continue to move the camera for some sublte shaking effects after the big ones, and those do not have sound effects.

I retract all of my previous positive comments about Trek Remastered. Why? Look at the first screengrab above. The light falling on the Enterprise is coming from the far left. The light hitting the planet is coming from the right. If they can’t get something this simple right, how are they going to execute more complex scenes? Even beginning CG modellers don’t make glaring mistakes with light sources like this. The funny thing is, the next time we see the ship, it’s lit from the other- proper- direction! What a shame that on Trek’s 40th, this is what we get. (And those nacelle caps…)
These episodes deserve far better.

I agree with above. Plus, I miss the light on the rear of the secondary hull shutting off as the ship orbits the planet. I always figured that was Kirk turning it off, after using the bathroom!

Noticed spocks hair was jet black and combed straight with alot of hair spray!
Spocks’s face was finally offf-color yellow or green compared to eveyone else red face.
Can’t wait till doomsday machine arrives in feb’07.

At least this episode had very few effects shots, so there was less for these hatchet masters to screw up.

Yeah!
They are really hot.Just look at this.
-http://yourglamourgirls.com/
Girls of you dreams!