We have the usual assortment of old versus new and remastered shots for your pleasure.
Click the pictures for larger versions.
New Effects Video
(wmv)
Old versus New
New Orbit
Old Orbit
New Orbit Pass
Old Orbit Pass
New Castle Far Shot (notice the castle door is opening just as the original)
Old Castle Door Opening Shot
Castle Medium Shot
Old Castle Shot (equivalent to the new medium shot)
New Transmuter Effect
Old Transmuter Effect
New Cell Door (notice the new cat mouth)
Old Cell Door
New Alien Shot (mostly free of wires)
Old Alien Shot
The Enterprise Departs the new CGI Pyris VII
Leaving the old Pyris VII
Various New Shots
The Trio is confounded by what they see
The Witches warn them away
A closeup on the excellent witch makeup
Scotty and Sulu: the unwitting pawns of Korob and Sylvia
Kirk and Spock ponder their fate
The bewitching Sylvia
Korob irately proclaims he has the power! (decades before He-Man does)
Kirk doing what he does to the ladies ;-)
Not bad, not bad…but just think of all of the Enterprise shots left out due to syndication editing. Sure hope someone someday broadcasts these uncut or maybe the dvd’s will come out ($ ouch). Can’t wait for next week and especially the week after.
Thanks Much Matt,
A number of these did slip past me. The Cat outside the door and the Transmuter effect — I missed. Not on top of my game this week!
What’s different with the transmuter effect? Looks about the same to me. The rainbow colors might just be the new transfer. Love the planet, by the way.
In action you can see a difference. The whole thing whites out and then forms. The old way was like a little sparkle that disolves to show the gems.
There was also a great deal of “dirt” in that original effect when slowed down. Appears as black spots or scratches within the effect. Yes, the new sequence really fills the screen ultimately whiting it out. The original did not go that far.
so nothing was done about the witches bodies…
they should definitely erase the skull line on the skeleton head for future releases!
The new castle was still the best idea for this episode. But what about the aliens? Have they simply digitally removed the cables and Sylvia and (what was his name?) the other one still jumping around as they were attached to cables? Or have they redone the complete scene with more smooth moves of the two of them.
Either way. I would had liked it if they had changed the whole appearance of the aliens. They still do look a little funny.
And the space scenes. The Enterprise still looks to smooth to me. And they still simply copy the old scenes without doing something fresh.
And yes, as dmack said before. The skeleton looks like it’s coming right out of a classroom.
#8 all they did was remove the wires. However there are still a few instances where you can see a wire since it crosses into the body of one of the puppets. The wires outside of their body have been removed.
And yeah I totaly agree: the obvious science classrom skeleton needs tweaking.
Does anyone else get a kick out of Kirk’s expression when Sylvia is saying “Deciever, you used me!”
Kirk knows he has the poobah smoothie pimp style.
James T. Kirk: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
I loved the new castle and subtle effects they used to enhance it without breaking you out of the story. They have the right idea. I also loved the planets.
The Enterprise itself looked horrible, imo. For a new CGI animated series, or something along those lines, it would look great, but this is the original live action series. It’s too obvious and very jarring to see an Enterprise that looks like it came out of a high-def animated cutscene from some video game.
I really hope they improve it for the future. *sigh*
Seems most all of us agree that the Enterprise still is in the most need for work, and, that is supposed to be taken care of very shortly. I’m anxious to see the result. What gets me is…at one angle, I think it looks pretty darn good but then at a different angle…YIKES! I guess I’m not nearly as anal about some of the other stuff several of you mention. How do we know that the skeleton SHOULDN’T look like it’s out of a classroom. Rememeber, Korob says, “But, I read…” and Kirk replies that whatever he read, it was wrong. Maybe Korob read/looked at skeleton pictures from a classroom so he had hoped he got it right, too. Perhaps it was all intentional, just not quite correct. It seemed everything Slyvia and Korob did was quite intentional but not quite correct, so it makes sense to me. I still like the alien form they have for them at the end. As a kid, it really spooked me that little tiny things like that could do everything that they did. Who is to say that their movement should be fluid anyhow. They were starting to die and did die. Maybe they don’t move like that anyway…no sensations and so on…
My two cents!
What I’ve always loved about ST Fans is how they fill in the “blanks” created by episodes with logical reasoning. It’s nothing new, we’ve been doing it for decades. Have a look at Jeff’s from another thread which is a fine example:
Jeff Bond – October 26, 2006
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…
Aside from the usual complaints, the Enterprise and it’s engines, I loved everything else, including the decidedly “alien” aliens. I’m glad they left them alone. I was, however, hoping for some type of “force field” surrounding the ship. What I missed most was the wondeful Spock moment in the beginning where he remarks how bad the witches’ poetry was. And it couldn’t have shaved more than 15 seconds off the show, I’m not sure why they cut it. Tis the life in syndication I suppose. All in all, a very enjoyable Halloween treat.
Notice how the planet was merely horizontally flipped when you look at the different shots of the Enterprise passing it? I thought that was the sort of thing they were making the new shots to eliminate.
Oh well, other than that minor glitch it’s all good.
jonboc, you made the same comment about Spock’s dry wit, “Very bad poetry, Captain,” (I recall, it’s been years) that I made on yesterday’s thread.
I didn’t catch all the changes — they were subtle, and that’s good, I think.
Regarding The U.S.S. Enterprise I think not only did they duplicate the exact motion, I think they even duplicated the “blue screen” spill. Why not think about more realistic light reflected from a ship? Well, we’ll see if the new CGI model — does it debut with Tribbles next week — is improved?
Again, perhaps if they had just built a miniature and digitally composited it as TNG did.
Still, a good experience!
Regarding the aliens, it would take time and a designer to change them, so they just removed the black threads.
I was hoping they’d be redone, perhaps based on the little puppets, but I didn’t mind, except how such creatures would have a “transmuter” and such powerful minds, I don’t know.
Now here’s an alien race never used again in the “canon”, and perhaps that’s too bad.
I really have my doubts that the ‘new’ Enterprise model is going to make that much difference. If they can’t light and texture it properly now…what difference is an even lower poly version going to make? Unless they’re putting the details into the texture, it’s going to look worse.
Hopefully I’m wrong….but it just feels like they’re not up to the task of doing this properly, and that saddens me to no end. I was really looking forward to this being something special…but I just don’t get the feeling that they have a firm grasp for the original series.
After thinking back on Catspaw, as well as looking at the above comparisons again of the old and new Enterprise in orbit, I’ve come up with a solution.
Can we please just have our old Enterprise back? Make the new planets, fix the effects, update the enviroments and matte paintings…that stuff looks great. But please, please….leave the Enterprise alone? At least until it looks as good as the model, with the same level of detail, texture and realism.
You would think in 2006 the technology would be here to at least get pretty close, but I guess we have quite a ways to go. Slow but steady progress, I suppose.
Oh, and why does the CGI Enterprise looks so “blurry”? I noticed this when watching last night also. I know it wasn’t transmitted in HD, but I was watching on my HD channel (on my HD set) and everything else looked crystal clear (great job on that, btw).
Maybe that’s another part of the problem. Very odd.
#20 that’s just a smidge of motion blur, some of that is from my screencaps, and some of that appears to be stylistic.
Man, I hope the newer Enterprise has the darkened ring around the front of the engineering hull. It isn’t there so far. It was added later on during the time when the 11’ model had additional ‘weathering’ done. Perhaps they’ll add it when the new CGI model appears. So far, the irony is that as the show is looking better overall, one of the main ‘characters’ isn’t looking quite right.
#12 – I think the trouble with the new CGI Enterprise is it’s too perfect, too smooth, and too clean. Just my thought, but maybe they need to give it more depth and some character.
Another issue, is that they just weren’t given enough time to prepare the model. The whole damned project is a rush job and CBS should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, a lot of the work is ‘pretty good’, but it’s certainly not up to current standards. I don’t think the CBS team should be fired, but they should re-run the episodes that they’ve completed up until now…and get take some time to get things up to snuff. They’re just blowing through things and making stupid mistakes. The lighting coming from the wrong direction in “City” for example, and the inverted orbital shot of the planet in the screen shot posted above.
Yeah I don’t know much about the process, but one week?! Seems awfully rushed to me also. But I suppose that’s how long they had for TNG, DS9, etc.
Although they typically do a nice job on the appearance of the planets, they are all rotating much too fast. One day on this planet would last less than 5 minutes!
And this is not just a result of the motion of the Enterprise. Look at the last shot with the Enterprise approaching the camera as it is leaving orbit and planet rotating in the background. AHHHHHHH!
In general, the rotation of Class M planets should not be noticeable from the brief shots they show in the series.
So Tribbles is next? Remember that DS9 episode More Trouble with Tribbles where Sisko, Odo, and Worf were added to the original scenes? You don’t suppose…..Nah, they wouldn’t….would they?
I thought this was a good episode I love the new opening credits and the new shots of the ship!
I don’t think the witches’ bodies being left in is a mistake. The clue would be the fact that the lighting is not limited to their heads, and no professional would have thought that wearing all black in that light would make their bodies invisible. They’re supposed to look like ghostly forms, not disembodied heads.
EBAR: no kidding! I’m not sure the planet and the ship even have the same light source.
If they want the spinning planet “look” if they could do it more realistically by panning the starfield in sync with the planet to show it’s the camera moving with the ship and not the planet actually rotating. People might still argue about the ship’s maneuvers being Newtonianly impossible but a sci-fi excuse would cover that.
Good lord, folks… this isn’t NASA footage… this is Star Trek… the planets rotate that fast because that’s what they did in the original show… it’s not supposed to be a damn documentary!! Loosen up and have some fun here…
#24: Every TV show ever made was a “rush job”, including the original Trek. That’s because they’re spending THEIR money, not yours. There are economic and production factors to these things that fans never consider. I doubt CBS has been given a blank check to spend all the time and money they need to meet fans over inflated expectations — expectations that naturally vary from fan to fan.
Not to start an argument, Dip Thong (#32), but this IS Star Trek. And CBS Paramount is expecting us die-hard fans to pony up for DVDs of these newly enhanced shows in a few years — so it WILL be our money. :-) They should indeed take their time with them and make them as bulletproof as possible. Otherwise, I probably won’t buy them. (Let me state, I have been wanting Paramount to re-do the effects for about a decade now, so this whole idea has been just fine by this old fan.)
My guess is that these broadcasts are a bit of a test-run. It’s clear that they are responding to fans’ reactions. They’re “fixing” the Enterprise, for instance, based on a lot of comments fans are in general agreement about. I fully expect them to keep tweaking these shows, doing their best to get it right, and going back and making changes to the episodes already broadcast before releasing them on DVD/Blue Ray/Media X. Maybe I’m being an overly optimistic about their commitment to artistic integrity, but I do think that these hacked-up, middle-of-the-night-broadcast, throw-the-effects-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks shows are like an extended market test before they release the REAL money-maker version of these in a couple of years.
Man, I really hope I’m right about that.
Scott B.
I agree with you Scott B., and I also hope you are correct. I too am willing to buy the remastered DVDs (which would be my third complete set of this series) providing they fix the bad effects shots they’ve done.
They do appear to be getting better, so I’m hoping that after about 10-15 more episodes they will have most of the bugs worked out and they can go back and fix the previous episodes before releasing
them on DVD.
It would also be nice if they did some work on missed opportunities. Like the hand phaser in “Devil in the Dark.”
Does anybody else agree with me when I say that EdenFX should have gotten the commission to restore and remaster the show? I am not at all impressed by this effort. Eden along with DTS digital images could have made this show look better than Enterprise.
Is it just me, or were the spinny lights on the nacelles significantly improved this week?
I don’t agree that Eden FX should have been awarded the job.
I like the style of the effects, maintaining the uniqueness of TOS from it’s inferior successors.
I don’t wan’t Star Trek to look remotely like Voyager, or Enterprise.
Eden FX made Star Trek look entirely too much like Star Wars.
I like the Enterprise to look clean and smooth, not junked up or muddied.
the enterprise on trekenhanced.com
THAT’s the way to do it…
:)
imho…
First “nacelle dome caps,” then “non-blue illuminated U.S.S. Enterprise”, ( when it was never blue in the first place)
now “too fast spinning planets”.
I for one have NO desire to see a Trek that “pleases” THIS demographic.
Scotty! Emergency beam out, we’ve materialized in a pile of excrement induced anal retentiveness!
I can’a beam ya out sir! The nacelle dome caps have malfunctioned causing the hull to appear blue even though it’s not blue, and the transporters is’na working as a result!
I KNEW it…tick, tick, tick….KABOOM!
Josh, please focus on what you like and don’t like in the show, rather than insulting others’ opinions. You have some interesting perspectives, but they are discredited when you make snide ad hominem attacks.
The issue of spinning planets brings to mind the numerous physics flaws in the Star Trek series, mostly made for dramatic effect. Fast-spin planets are joined by a ship that on impulse power can miraculously reach a good fraction of light speed in seconds without reducing the crew to jello – those inertial dampers are very mysterious indeed. The impulse engines are also very puzzling – usually they seem to impart no momentum to the ship, the Enterprise on several occasions seems to coast to a stop for no reason, and how you put those impulse engines into reverse remains a mystery.
Focusing on the orbit shots, they can certainly be torn apart for more than the planet rotation rate. Presumably our fair ship needs to stay somewhat above a beam-down site, yet they are far, far too close to the M-class planets for a geosynchronous orbit. Are they running the engines constantly to maintain a low orbit due to a limited transporter beam range?
How much these things take away and how much they enhance the enjoyment of the show varies for different folks. I, for one, love how the new Battlestar Galactica incorporates attitude jets and momentum in its Vipers, and its version of warp drive (FTL jumps) is simple but effective. But that much newer show still honors many classic conventions like having their big ships “right-side up” as they cruise through space, which is of course quite silly. And while I like jump-drive FTL plots, they do lack the fun run-up through the warp factors that make for great chase sequences in Star Trek.
is it just me,but i miss darren whining bout what he woulda done on this sight. bugged me at 1st but now its kinda boring lol…..come on doc….say something lol
The original and best Star Trek with contemporary effects… I’ve wished for this for a long time. Thanks guys.
ah, a second: tick, tick, tick……KABOOM!
Ah, the latest CGI makeover to divide a passionate fanbase… Great site and forum everyone. As an avid fan of the original Star Trek effects work and appreciator of myriad movie and tv special fx in general, I am excited that the classic series is being upgraded for High Definition.
However, I only wish that the time, budget, and will was there to go that little bit further with this worthy project. While we all know that there are obvious limitations in certain areas, I do wish that the also badly dated hand phaser beams and disintegrations were being spruced up too, along with some effort to liven up any low-budget “rock set” shots with integrated planetary backdrops, moons, ( some flying alien-style birds, insects, or critters would bring some life to the proceedings ), clouds et al. I can only hope. But keep up the good work anyway guys.
As for the proposed J.J. Abrams movie reboot, if its ( thankfully, in my opinion ) to be set in the classic era this time, then give us some reasonably faithful big screen versions of the classic DESIGNS, COLOURS, and SOUND EFFECTS of the best ENTERPRISE, BRIDGE, CAPTAIN’S CHAIR, TRANSPORTER PAD, VIEWSCREEN, and HAND PHASERS this time, that have been sorely missing from previous incarnations. And let’s have the fun and adventure of a truly alien obstacle of impossible odds, crew beamdowns to unknown planetary danger, and hand phaser shootouts aplenty. GIVE US THE BEEF!
And dare I ask, can we get some Alexander Courage MAIN or END THEME, along with some of the perfect Fred Steiner cues that made the original so memorable!
Overall I was impressed with the changes in this episode. Absolutely loved the new castle, though I was wondering if they would create a new “master shot” with the landing party near the door embedded within the wider angle shot of the castle.
The planet rotation bugged me as well… I would LOVE to see some behind the scenes documentaries on these changes… or perhaps a book. I think it would be fascinating to know some of the discussions and thought process that lead them to change some things, but exclude others.
If anyone from Paramount is listening, think ahead to those DVD extras! :)
Jim J… if you’re referring to what I THINK you’re referring to, then you crack me up…. :)
Thanks, I try…and I am!
The new shots of the castle were very well done. The show was missing
about ten minutes over its first run time slot. This was I think Chekov’s
first appearance and the character was cut way back. Missing also
was the orbital shot with the drum roll Enterprise theme that was only
used in this episode. Syndication being what it is we’ll have to take what
we can get.
That new effect of the castle was way cool. Nice to see the strings
gone at the end of the episode. Great shots of the ship too.