Boo…It’s The Catspaw Preview

| October 25, 2006 | By: Anthony Pascale 35 comments so far

(download WMV / pics of the new spooky castle)

thanks again to our ChiTown Reader for scaring this up for us

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Check out the Enterprise’s coloring:

It’s bluer.
It’s whiter.
It’s shinier.
It’s brighter.
The nacelle caps are muted.

WELCOME THE NEW CGI AND IT’S GORGEOUS!

Sylvia still rocks in that little “keyhole” platinum blonde outfit!

this is not the ‘new’ model. Any improvements would be due to the team getting better at it

how come they did not fix the seperation in the skull of the skeleton that was hanging in the dungeon with them. That always bothered me when i saw it before.

Thanks for linking the preview!

It just goes to show you how malleable and easily influenced human perception is.

That is the same CGI model yet now its “glorious.”

There never was a problem with the model, one person complained, and in stock human behavioral response, everyone and their brother had to jump on the bandwagon.

When the new CGI Enterprise does indeed appear, I will go on and on about how bad it sucks. And watch amazed how that notion catches on.

it’s laughable.

Oh, boy!

Wow Josh. Who’s jumping the gun with a small sample? One guy says he likes the cgi. So what? It looked the same to me: baaaaad. Frankly I’m looking forward to my HD DVDs of the non CGI versions mentioned in the previous post.

Something I don’t get… It wasn’t ever the model that was the problem really, just the way it was lit (well except maybe the nacelle caps :) ). So now to make it easier to light it better they are getting a new model which is less detailed even though it probably won’t be noticible on the model itself. Why not just set up the lighting and scene with a simple model, I mean you could even get one off the internet. Then when the lighting is set up just import the detail model in its place, I know you can “replace object with” in Lightwave I assume something similar could be done?

Boo… they didn’t fix the skull of the skeleton in the dungeon. A prisoner who’d rotted in chains in the dungeon wouldn’t have a sawed skull cap like this obvious medical school specimen does.

After all the previous promos clearly featured FX elements NOT in the actual episode, why anyone would expect anyt FX from this promo to be in the episode is beyond me. You’re not really going to know what they changed and how they changed it until this weekend. I bet this promo was created and in the can weeks before the actual episode was even finished.

Josh,
I think you’ll find it better for your blood pressure if you gracefully concede defeat and move on with your life.

Being a good loser is also part of the “lessons” of Star Trek. I think those who appreciate and welcome the new lighting (yes, of the old model for whatever that is worth…) have been quite gracious winners. So to speak.

Now, please, let’s hear some of your thinking on other topics. I am sure it will be considered valuable and contributory!

Wow, I’ve seen that episode maybe a dozen times, easily, and never noticed the “medical school” style skull on that skeleton! That’s a riot! Thanks for pointing that out acb and MagicAl — now I’ll never be able to enjoy this episode again LOL!!

Maybe they performed medical experiments on the prisoner before he died — yeah that’s the ticket…

If you go on, Josh, about how bad the as-yet-unseen CG Ent. “sucks,” you’re going to make a bigger fool out of your self than you already have.
The human mind can be lead, but humans have eyes that don’t lie.
CBS wouldn’t be spending time and money changing it if they thought it looked fine and figured no one would notice and blindly shell out big bucks for the future DVD release.
Get your head out of….. the sand.
There. That’s my human behavioral response.

The medical school skeleton…shouldn’t they go back and CG-fix every visible zipper and seam in the show?

I say Sylvia and Korob just scanned Kirk and McCoy’s minds for some cheesy childhood Halloween memories and put them in the castle. McCoy’s crazy, Halloween-loving uncle could have owned that fake skeleton…

exactly…

:)

Anyone give this a thought? There are 22 animated Star Trek episodes, all with the voice talents of (almost) the original cast.

Some enterprising (pun intended) 3D animation studio should take the voice work for that and make a re-invisioned “Star Trek: The 3D Anaimated Series”.

I know it will never happen, because it’s not profitable… but what the heck… all this remastered stuff has me falling in love with Trek all over again, so why not have a little wishful thinking?

Anyone else want to chime in? Good idea? Horrible idea?

Did I just see a REAL cat? Wicked.

Thats a pretty good idea actually.

Thanks for reinforcing my point with a perfect example of rhetorical hyperbole “Dr Image.”

You’re a funny lady, are you a comedian by chance? Inquiring minds wanna know.

ok that is enough of the petty bickering…and please stop the personal attacks.

My apologies Anthony, merely exercising the law of reciprocity.

You are correct however, responding to baiting is a lowering of oneself to the status of obtuse flotsam and stool samples equal to the baiter mentality.

It won’t occur again.

Did I miss something, or did Josh just throw in two more insults at the end of his “apology”?

uh Josh….perhaps you were unclear on the concept of no more personal attacks. calling your fellow posters ‘stool samples’ is not exactly ‘rising above it’ is it?

and people I do not have the time or inclination to police these boards…I have been gettting a lot of complaints and I think I may just start banning people instead of trying to settle things down

this is not your typical cesspool site…dont try and turn it into one

They have these same remastered 30 second spots on the Star Trek website in the episodes section.

BTW, thanks for the feedback Roger. I think that if done by a talented group, it could be very interesting. The original show reused a lot of stock footage, and simplified set design. I think that 3D animation could really open up some possibilities.

Having said that, I haven’t seen these shows in ages… I recall the voice work being a little wooden…

Regarding the animated series (TAS), the voice work suffers greatly since many of the main actors simply recorded lines into a tape recorder at their leisure – they did not record lines interactively. I do, however, like a number of the innovations of TAS, such as the force field belts and the inclusion of alien species that only recently could be achieved in live action through the use of CGI. And it did have the first appearance of a holodeck. Roddenberry later disclaimed that series as non-canon, but I feel that was a disservice to the loyal fans who watched it and also belittled the effort of some very fine contributors to TAS such as D.C. Fontana, Larry Niven, etc.

Regarding Catspaw, I would be interested in an exterior ship insert displaying what afflicts the Enterprise when the model ship is put into the flame and later encased in Lucite. But that might be detrimental to the plot device of unexplained phenomena. This episode is interesting in that Kirk and company immediate dismiss any supernatural causes to what they observe – they are instead constantly looking for a scientific explanation, which is a nice modeling of rational thinking. Sometimes I think it is a shame the series wasn’t more rational in its take on ESP, mind-reading, etc. But several episodes utilizing such scientifically implausible ideas were quite entertaining.

This has always been one of the all time favorite episodes. I doubt they will have made many changes to it. There are few effects. Perhaps showing a forcefield enveloping the Enterprise would be nice if done properly, but that is probably too much to hope.

I really never mined the alien pupputs used at the the end. They just need to get rid of the strings that can be seen clearly on the DVD version. I loved this idea of completely non-human aliens. sort of tiny, plant-like, and fragile. It is wicked cool.

John N…

I have thought that very same thing… how great it would be to see completely new animation using the soundtrack. I didn’t consider making it all CGI, but that would be cool too.

I think it would be neat to see selected episodes done and release that way, as specials. No need to do them all, just a few and release them to DVD for us fans.

But like you, I think it will probably never happen.

A lot of people said CGI enhanced Trek would never happen and lo and behold…

Its a great idea, but as stated, the voice work is a little flat. Plus I don’t think they’re quite at the point of being able to do convincing humans in CGI. And I don’t think I could sit still for “performances” from rubbery Kirk, Spock and McCoys. Give it two or three years and they’ll probably have it nailed tho.

Probably a pretty small market for it at this point, but if ST:R does well and the new box sets of the animated series sells, they just might consider it.

Thanks for the feedback gang… perhaps Lao3D is right… if the box set sells well and Trek gets some new life from the new movie, then who knows?

And you’re right, by then, the 3D work would have improved all the more… :)

I think the flat voice work could really be minimized by some good acting work from the animators.

Hey John N, over on the trekbbs there actually is someone working on this very idea. Re-animating TAS using the audio from the episodes themeselves. While its not actually the studio I have been watching it, looking forward to how it turns out. Allways thought it would be a neat idea, while I’ve only seen an episode of TAS (Yesteryear) it was pretty good. Even if the animation wasn’t that great… Its under the Fan-Films section there.

Hey Skippy…. thanks for the tip! I’ll be sure to keep an eye out on that thread… :)

jonny