First Image from “Wink Of An Eye” [UPDATED: Video Preview Added]

CBS just sent over this cool shot of Kirk and a doomed red shirt on planet Scalos.


click to enlarge 

Another fine matte painting from CBS Digital. This new painting of a Scalosian city replaces the recyled painting used in the orignal "Wink Of An Eye" (of Eminiar 7 from "A Taste of Armageddon").  


click to enlarge (cap from TrekCore.com)
 

The Remastered "Wink of an Eye" airs this weekend, the first Star Trek Remastered episode from Star Trek’s 3rd season.

UPDATE: Video preview:

 


(WMV version)

UPDATE 2: Closeup on Scalos Matte Painting

 

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Looks good. Matte replacement is an area where CBS Digital certainly excells. While I don’t find much in TOS that’s jarringly bad, it is annoying how much of the visuals had to be recycled for budgetary reasons. It’s a near certainty any of the original artists would have done a new city for this episode, had the bucks been there. Of course, I guess in this one, there’s no opportunity to put people into the matte. (I think you’ve got a great merchandizing tool if you can stick fans into actual trek episodes. Send me my cut when you get rich off this idea.)

Who’s macinthepants™? CBS-D is macinthepants™!

Could someone from the team who is reading this PLEASE send me some remastered stills of the Sally Kellerman episode CGI’d out and a hot naked chick placed in? I think I mentioned this previous. hitchworld1969@aol.com. thank you.

best!!

=h=

#2 — You’re confused. You want the digitially remaster print of Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H.

Excellent work. Wonder why the statue was left out?

Stygian landscape to match a dour Kirk. 3rd season already?

Wink of an Eye is a fun episode, but wrought with major inconsistency.

Fans, please help with 2 questions:

I’ve always wondered, wouldn’t Scalosians would die of old age in the transporter cycle or turbo lift.

Or why Kirk & co. wouldn’t give antidote to Scalosians in the end?

Good stuff. It would be cool to see ships flying in the background too. I still think Space Seed was the best looking one yet though.

Can’t be any ships over the skyline. Everyone’s dead. Of course, we never find out what happened to the other millions of Scalosians. Did they speed up? Wouldn’t some still be around, just like the ones we meet in this episode?
Anyway, it’s all worth it to watch Kirk pull on his boots… after knockin’ boots with the alienette of the week.

All right! Color looks a little drab for TOS but I wholeheatedly applaud the redo effort. #6 Dan — the answers to your questions are, I fear, that it was just a badly written episode.

It remains highly memorable though for the infamous “pulling up the boots” scene, and the superfine Kathie Brown. Can’t wait to see her half-there outfit digitally remastered!

Something bothered me about the new matte for a few minutes before I realized what it was … it’s bleak.

That’s a tad unusual for TOS, but it is entirely appropriate for this episode.

Now I’m not bothered at all.

A bleak cityscape? Perhaps. Me, I couldn’t help but notice the “blocky” apartment buildings to the left of the security officer. I guess the good folks at CBS decided to pilfer a bit of architectural design from 20th century Canada! ‘Cause those buildings are IDENTICAL to the famous ones built for Expo 67 that still exist near the port in Montreal.

: )

#12 you are so right — Habitat, yes? And it’s a totally appropriate choice: a location Trek could have actually shot at given time and budget. Good eye!

# 13. Yes, it’s the Habitat. And I agree it’s apropriate. The coolest thing about its use here is that when it was designed, it was considered “The way of the future”, much like anything else at Expo 67.

I like the retro-future look of TOS, and I’m glad the remastering team are respecting it.

In fact, I’m hoping the Abrams movie will service that very same esthetic (ENT’s “In a Mirror, Darkly” proved the TOS look can be very cool”, but I kind of doubt Trek XI wil be so gutsy as to go that far. Most films treat the past’s visions of the future as camp.

This pic just popped up on Ain’t It Cool News, with a review of CBS’ work on the remastering. I didn’t expect to see this over there.

surely instead of trying to rotoscope around the original statue, a new CG statue could be included in the new matte

#16 – Lti – I was just thinking the exact same thing…

I had forgotten how much more bushy Shatner’s wig was in season 3

That is an excellent matte painting.

I just saw the remastered trailer on Star Trek.com. Looks like the phaser beams are re-done again.

#12 – Wow…. good eye.

I just looked it up… for those who are interested, here’s a link to a picture of Habitat:

http://www.thecityreview.com/arcnowx.jpg

Isn’t this the episode when you can see the special effects guy holding the sparklers?

Man, I hope they fix that.

Shatner’s got the swagger in that pic. Is that a mac in your pants or are you just glad to see me, redshirt?

You know it’s funny how a picture tells us a thousand stories as they say. The implication being of course that without direct and explicit visual that there are many other things that our completionist minds tell us to complete the story. Rotoscoping works alot that way too. The pixel variant is an optical illusion, of course. Mathematically there is no Algorithm to demonstrate this factor – it’s all tediously calculated at the sub-atomic level in the microprocessors. Truly, digital compositing is much too complex a topic for me to expound upon with the laymen of this site. I digress and whatnot.

Ok I’m kidding I have no clue what I was talking about. But it sure sounded cricket, eh dochterman????

best!!

=h=

Sparklers? I love sparklers!

“Rotoscoping works alot that way too. The pixel variant is an optical illusion, of course. Mathematically there is no Algorithm to demonstrate this factor – it’s all tediously calculated at the sub-atomic level in the microprocessors.” – h69

A photograph of that, written on a dry erase board IN the offices of CBS-D, with Okuda and Rossi and The Zero Room Posse™ is all I wants for Christmas, baybeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

thank you in advance,

=h=

I know people always speak of Shatners wig – lack of hair but what I’d really like to see is him without his so called wig….sure I could do a web search but I’d like to see someone post something here as I’m sure it would be better.

Love the new 3-D “matte” (I don’t think it’s really a matte painting, is it? It looks more like a 3-D model), but unfortunately it doesn’t really match the color, intenstity or angle of lighting on our heroes in the foreground.

Beautiful work, CBS-D.

I love the way the uniforms have been color-altered as well to match the mood of the scenery. Filtering out the bright colors helps to affect the mood of the shot tremendously. Look at Shatner! It’s like he’s just been told his horse ran away. Coolness.

Hope it looks more alive in the episode. Here it looks as if they’re standing in front of a travel poster. It is unusual to see them amp down the colors. Maybe it’s just the file.

The main problem with those mattes…both in the original and the remaster (and nothing to do about it) is that the lighting on the actors is so obviously stage lighting…

Even though the new matte is far superior to the original, the stage lighting kind of kills the credibility of the shot.

TTM

I’ve looked extensively for images of Shatner sans hair without success. This entailed going back to early pics of him in Judgement at Nuremberg, etc through the Twilight Zone. Pictures of him in his youth show a wavy, but not very thick head of hair right back into his youth.

He was definitely wearing by the time of Trek – Joan Collins’ tells an anecdote about it and there is an on set cartoon in Solow and Justman’s book. In seasons 1 and 2 it looks very much as if the cartoon is right and he wore a “chignon” style piece at the front (close ups show what looks like his own front hairline blended in), but in season 3 it is considerably fuller. S & J mention that his wigs regularly vanished from the make up room, presumably into Shatner’s pocket and I would imagine these kept him going through the lean years after Trek, Summer Stock, etc.

By the time of Barbary Coast, he was wearing a fuller, curlier, wig seen also on album covers, in convention pics, etc. of the early Seventies. The Devil’s Rain gives good exposure to it. Not surprisingly, for ST TMP he acquired a new set of wigs, with a conspicuously darked and thicker, curlier, hairstyle. This trend was followed in the movies and through the 1980s, he seems to have been wearing a full wig of the sort best thought of as a hat made out of hair – exemplified best by the TJ Hooker curly top. This style is not just glued but has ties woven into the remaining hair to stay put, and requires regular maintenance. Take a look at its sides for instance.

Interestingly, in ST VI he debuted the greyer thinning hair style of wig which he has moved progressively forward with today. The best example of this would be in Boston Legal. Some even imagine that this is his own hair and he has had hair plugs, but no, it’s a wig – the best defence in old age for the bald actor is to wear a wig with recession.

Sometimes he still seems to wear a more bushy and curly style – in the recent advert for Dish TV. I have even seen a documentary in which he swam with manatees in which the wig went underwater “live” so to speak – unlike his celebrated dunking in ST IV, which was brief and managed.

I find it odd and interesting that Shatner has presumably worn a wig for something like 40 years now. No doubt he will be buried in it. I suppose it is second nature to him now. I wonder who, if anyone, ever sees him without it? In reality, I imagine he is easily as bald as Patrick Stewart – and don’t forget that when Stewart auditioned, it was first wearing his rather ratty wig (it was flown over from England especially.)

For my next essay, I will discuss how tall is William Shatner…

Looks pretty good to me. Too bad this episode was so badly written.

I really don’t think Shatner wore a hairpiece in TOS. I think the rumor got started because of the sideburns that he wore to give his haircut a more 23rd century look. The make up department called them hairpieces and Shatner was natorious for ruining his.

Is it just me or does this still look like they are standing in front of a painting? Ok, I agree its a better “painting” and its a new one, but it still looks like a back drop to me.

Thanks THEETrekMaster, that’s exactly the culprit. I’m not sure what could be done to the backgrounds to make them more closely match the obvious stage lighting, but that is indeed what the problem is.

Oh and btw, the reason there are not more Scalosians is that “acceleration” has made all the men sterile. That’s why Kirk and Deela were bumpin’ uglies in his cabin… to get a head start on repopulating the Scalosian race.

(That, and to help Kirk get that 1,000th notch on his bedpost he’d been working towards.)

Shatner definitely wore a piece during TOS. Read the Justman/Solow book. That’s definitive as far as I’m concerned.

But I think he’s had hair transplants in recent years. He’s got the dough and he’s been wearing it awfully short for a long time.

That background looks pretty good. I hope they rotoscope out that annoying soprano singer this season. She overpowers the title music.

Nice to see some new city backings… but.. It is disappointing that the color palette that the original designers put behind the actors is being thrown away. That painting was basically shades of grey and white… and they specifically put blue lights on it to denote a time of day, I believe… so we’re seeing a bit of the “original intent” changed for no apparent reason.

Shatner just doesn’t have enough donor hair for a transplant to achieve the sort of “short greyhair” head of hair he shows in Boston Legal

Some people think he didn’t wear a piece in TOS because he still had a hairline to blend it with (at least the first couple seasons) and it looked much better than the more obvious wigs of the 70s and 80s which looked nothing like his previous appearance or even each other. Since the 90s he’s managed to keep it somewhat more consistent and similar in color and texture to his “classic” 60s look. He looks good and at this point if he suddenly decided to be bald I’d wonder if he’d lost his mind.

With actors such as Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery, wigs are just part of the costume and makeup when called for, not a personal accessory. If Shatner can’t give in to nature, it’s totally consistent with his evident drive to keep working and doing as much as he can, as though maybe he’ll never die as long as he’s too busy to die.

It’s a strange thing to be fascinated by but I think it’s an inevitable aspect of Shatner’s status as a hugely successful and iconic entertainer, and childhood Capt. Kirk idol to many, that people naturally wonder what it’s like to be him and what any of us might do if we could be in his place. It’s very human.

I doubt we will ever see his chrome dome. There’s an old story about Lorne Greene goes into a water tank on Bonanza and while he’s under water, what looks like a silvery rat comes floating to the surface, before the actor comes up. Then a hand appears popping out of the water and looking around like thing looks for and grabs the silvery rat and pulls it under the water. Then Greene returns to the top of the water and gets out of the tank holding his head. I sense Shatner would be no different.

All this makes me wonder what I was doing during the “Shatner with curly brown wig” era of human history.They should do a segment on this period of time on VH1 as a retrospect.Ya know , break down pop culture trends to correspond with his different wig phases.

The Trek master, that’s where a program called Lustre by Autodesk comes in handy. It’s s color grading software suite designed to do EXACTLY what you are referring to.

Just wanted to say that I pimped you guys over AICN, hope you get some good traffic from there since they have mentioned this teaser image as well. Also, as a first-generation TOS dude, the discussion about The Shat’s hair nearly made me spew my beverage all over my CRT (no LCD yet, unfortunately)…I love the technical information you guys pass back & forth here after each remastered episode, but it’s fun subjects like that which truly make this a great site :)

“In Search of Shatners Hairpiece”…. I have an original series budget document from May 26, 1966 signed by Bob Justman and under STAR TREK Series Preparation Acct. #900 one of many items is: 3 Hair Pieces for William Shatner $546.00.

That put to rest any doubt I had prior to this that Mr. Shatner needed some fill-in on his head during the period of the original series. If you need a detailed history of this subject please see #30 above.

An aside: I just read that Paramount exec Gail Berman handed in her resignation. Any chance of this affecting our beloved film?

42. Sean4000 – January 10, 2007

“The Trek master, that’s where a program called Lustre by Autodesk comes in handy. It’s s color grading software suite designed to do EXACTLY what you are referring to.”

Very interesting, Sean! Thanks for the info. While everyone else seems enthralled with hairpieces you are providing some comment on the lighting situation with the new digital matte painting. Sounds like CBS digital needs to purchase this software! LOL

Anyone else wonder whey they chose THIS episode as the first one to remaster from the third season? LMAO!!!

I mean, c’mon….

TTM

A few quick notes…

“Wink of an Eye:” Not an effects-heavy episode, but the ones that are there are challenging (i.e. the Scalosian force field and the wide angle and slow-motion phaser shots). The CGI city in the shot above looks great. Looking forward to seeing the episode.

“Shatner’s Hairline:” While he obviously wore a hairpiece during TOS, I believe he must have had some kind of folicle transplant sometime in the 1980’s. My evidence for this are Shatner’s underwater scenes at the end of Star Trek IV. Kirk is in the cargo hold trying to manually open the cargo bay doors and release George and Gracie. Shatner clearly does all of the underwater work himself; we even see him submerge and swim to the manual release handle. During this whole scene, Shatner’s hair stays quite firmly attached to his head. In close ups, his hair seems a bit thin, but it is clearly a part of his scalp, not an appliance. Finally, in the scenes with the crew after the whales escape the BoP, Shatner’s hair is plastered closely to his head. It doesn’t have that “fake hair” look at all. Yeah, I know he’s a wealthy guy and can afford top-of-the-head…I mean line…hairpieces, but I’ve never heard of a toupee that can stand up to that kind of scrutiny.

“Hitch1969:” I just realized who’s voice I hear when I read your posts…”the Todd” from the TV show Scrubs. Can I get a Vulcan High Five!

here’s the definitive proof…