star trek: tos remastered boo!

[firecat]

We've been watching Star Trek: TOS on DVD via Netflix. We got through season 1 and partway into season 2 but for some reason we missed my favorite season 2 episode ("Amok Time," of course).

Now Netflix has gotten rid of all the original DVDs of this series and has replaced them with the "remastered in HD, with new CGI" DVDs.

I hate the idea of "new CGI." I'm trying to decide whether to buy the original DVDs (they are discontinued but can be purchased used for an exorbitant price) or to suck it up and continue with the remastered DVDs.

Have you watched any of the remastered-with-new-CGI DVDs? What are they like? Have they spoiled all the wonderfully lousy effects of the original? Have they removed the infuriating soft-focus around every single closeup of an attractive woman? Does Han still shoot first?

Comments

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

oh how annoying....

This kind of thing is exactly why I refused to buy the original Star Wars movies on DVD. Now that they finally listened to what the fans want and have both the 'enhanced' and the original versions on the DVD...I will probably buy them. Before that happened though...I was jealously guarding my VHS copies.

Hopefully fans will holler about this enough that they'll offer something similar.

[firecat]

Before that happened though...I was jealously guarding my VHS copies.

We were jealously guarding two copies of each original Star Wars movie...on laserdisc.

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

yeah...I figured I wasn't the only one that was doing that.

[elainegrey.livejournal.com]

TOS season 1 is streaming, so you can compare easily. I was watching the other night (The carbomite-whatever maneuver) and was enjoying it and realized, during a spaceship exterior shot that it must have been re-somethinged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series#The_Remastered_Series

Sounds like the live action will be close to original while the landscapes & spaceships will be completely different. Ah

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb1mTPC1nQ8

A comment points out the HD issue.

[firecat]

Thanks, I should have thought to look on YouTube.

[asim.livejournal.com]

I'm a TOS fan (it's my first memory, in fact!), and the couple I've seen have been far better that the Lucas re-dos. Not just in terms of quality, but also in terms of how they integrate into the story without being ostentatious.
Mind you, the goal is to dampen down the cheese where they thought reasonable, so if you really think that's critical, you'll want the originals. But they don't, for example, overlay the bridge with totally new effects; mostly it's just the viewscreen, to show the new ship models. Or they did a shot for AMOK TIME that gave us a view of Vulcan's (not) Moon.

So it's not as broad as you'd think, but it's notable. But my love of ST isn't really about the effects, so Your Mileage May Vary.

[firecat]

Thanks! I wibbled when I saw the YouTube video that elainegrey linked to, but when I looked at a couple of other videos, I began to think maybe they hadn't spoiled it by reworking the effects.

I think I am something of a purist though. And I've basically never seen the whole, uncut series in color. (I watched it when it originally aired, but on a black and white TV, and I watched it many times in syndication, but they cut pieces out of it to make room for more ads.) So I think I wanna watch it as it was originally aired.

[jenk]

A local channel was showing the re-done TOS episodes, and it surprised me how little I could tell had changed. Mostly it meant that the old effects aren't distracting.