Patterns Of Force Screenshots and Video

SFX Video


(WMV)

Side by Side Video

Coming Soon

New and Old


Approaching Ekos

Rocket heads to ship

Firing on Rocket

Rocket go boom

Jail Break

In orbit

About to leave orbit

Chekov prepares to leave

Leaving orbit

And off we go

Assorted


Passing Zeon on the way to Ekos

Spock and Kirk are captured

The trio in uniform

John Gill found…

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They punched up the rubidium (?) crystal laser, too. Rather, they added a focused beam amidst the wide swath of light.

For what little there was to do, I liked it.

Loved this epp! The rings are so cool around the planet! That was a first for TOS right?

Aaron R.

Loved this epp! The rings are so cool around the planet! That was a first for TOS right?

Aaron R.

Great looking show. The remaastered print really brought out the colors, including the Nazi uniforms. Loved it!

sorry for the double post internet acting funny!

This was always an interesting Earth parallel story. Developed under the
series limited budget and time constraints it turned out OK. We also got
to see many area of Paramounts studio lot. The remastered effects fit
right in and made for enjoyable visuals.

Zeon Swine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last pic of the new vfx reminds on a typical ‘TNG’ first season planet! All in all awesome!

Liked the choice of an unfocused beam better; makes more sense coming from such a crude setup, but I guess something had to get punched up. Nice work, though.

#2 The planetoid in I, Mudd was also ringed.

-cs™

Good visuals added here. I like this one.

I liked what they did overall: the ringed planet, adding the sun to the leaving orbit shot, super-bright nuclear explosion, etc. There was something a bit whiffy about the Enterprise in the first shot though, can’t put it into words exactly other than it seemed too fast and the scale seemed off. Loved the impulse engines throughout, though!

How did they remove the original beam to replace it with a new one?I thought that type of thing wasn’t possible??

This has never been at the top of my favorite episodes list, but I really enjoyed seeing it this time. It’s fun just to watch for the effects and how they may have been tweaked or changed. I also thought the remastered print looked very good, but then I’m used to watching my old vhs versions.

I have more or less taken the show for granted for quite a few years, because I have all the episodes on tape.

The remastered project has made it fun again to anticipate watching an episode, much like when I first began watching and eagerly awaiting the next one.

Is it me or have they really brightened up the lighting of the big E… the final shot seems to be a departure from the heavily shadowed E. It instead looks like the flood-lit model of the original model. I think I like it, at least in the departing shot at the end.

Is it me or have they really brightened up the lighting of the big E… the final shot seems to be a departure from the heavily shadowed E. It instead looks like the omni lighting used for the original model. I think I like it, at least in the departing shot at the end.

#12 Yeh, that shot … there something about the way it “drifts” with it’s nose up ( sort of like an airplane landing ) , this has happened in a couple of episodes, just doesn’t seem quite right. Compare it to the end shot ( which is loverrrrly ) which looks more natural.

Always one of my personal favorites, “Patterns of Force” is still topically relevant after 40 years. It’s scary that even the scholarly John Gill failed to learn the lessons from human history. In many ways, we can still see him reflected in today’s leaders as they “stumble” through “encore” performances of historical, cultural and social problems that have repeatedly plagued human leaders.

Impulse engines were lit up (yay!), Zeon now has beautiful rings, Spock’s primitive laser effect is sharper … and we even got to see the sun. In all, another fine CGI update of the VFX.

The only remastered effect I didn’t care for was at the very beginning, as the Enterprise flies past Zeon on its way to Ekos. The angle from which we see the Enterprise is new and refreshing, but the lighting on the model was terrible . It *looked* like a CGI model. There was no texture … just this stark gray “thing” flying past the screen. Before the DVD release, I hope the CGI folks will revisit this and tone down the “bright” gray … perhaps instead bathing the Enterprise in the yellow sunlight or something.

It’s too bad there was never any VFX “slot” into which the Ekosian “space fleet” could be inserted today. A “mutual flyby” of Enterprise and the fleet wouldn’t work for Prime Directive reasons. Perhaps the CGI folks could revisit this prior to the DVD release and stage it so we can see Enterprise leaving the system in the foreground with the Ekosian fleet in the background, going in the opposite direction. Just a “nice to have” thought, but by no means crucial.

The new warhead explosion was terrific … but I gotta say that the original effect was pretty darn unique. It was used only once, but is noteworthy for its animated, colorful, “blossoming” explosion effect.

The only ‘ding’ is that the rings should have been shadowed by Zeon, itself.

/pick…pick…pick

But, a nice touch nonetheless… :)

#10:

Also, in the sky above Starbase 11 in “The Menagerie” there is a ringed planet, seen both during the day and at night.

Hmmm… is it my imagination, or do Zeon and Ekos appear to be lit from two slightly different directions?

I like that they put a little more distance between the two planets, because in the original they looked way too close.

What?

No screenshots of the lovely Valora Norland/Noland as Daras?

Btw her final acting role, shae wasn’t in the game for long anyways, mainly did TV for 7 years and disappeared off the face of the Earth.

-cs™

Had a crazy idea that I thought I’d suggest here.

Would, could trekmovie.com have the power to suggest to CBS Digital or Paramount a contest of sorts to design ships and submit ideas for designs that appear in upcoming Star Trek episodes? The Okuda’s could judge them.

Charlie X is coming up and it might be too late for that, but we never see the Antaries in this episode. It could appear in the first few seconds of the episode as the Enterprise comes along side it. There’s a lot of talent here. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could submit ideas and the winner gets to be a small part of Trek history?

There’s the space dock in Court Martial, the Denovan ship, the ship for Space Hippies in the Way to Eden (Instead of the redressed Tholian ship), the ship from Spock’s Brain, etc.

What do you think Anthony?

Anthony, I’ll second Nelson’s ship contest suggestion. It’s a very, very cool idea.

Nice effects in this episode. So glad they added the brighter core to the jury-rigged laser Spock cobbles together. I always hated that dim, smudgy beam from the original shot.

The opening flyby bothered me a little, too. It looks like the Enterprise is sliding across a sheet of ice rather than flying under her own power; almost like she’s in a skid. It looks to me like they may have rendered the background as a separate element, then matched it to a simple camera-pass of the Enterprise mesh, only they didn’t quite synch up correctly. It’s a common time-saving trick, but it doesn’t always work exactly as it should.

Personally, I’m a little bummed that every time we shoot at something, CBS-D chooses to replace the “Making of Star Trek” cover shot angle with the shot from behind the bridge looking forward.

The shot on “The Making of Star Trek” cover is dang near the iconic shot of the ship, and they are excising it from all the episodes because they are so compelled to see the phaser hit something.

Well, I’m glad that I have trekmovie.com to rely upon for the F/X reel… the stupid Washington affiliate decided to let coverage of our crapola baseball team run over into Star Trek’s scheduled time period, and they joined the episode “already in progress”, about ten minutes before the end of the episode.

Grr.

I *hate* when TV stations join shows “already in progress”.

Anywho, it doesn’t look like I missed anything on the “V-2 rocket” F/X. You can’t even tell that it’s a V-2! I was expecting to *see* a V-2 whizzing by the camera with Nazi swastikas (or at least German crosses) on the tail fins. What a letdown.

Re: # 24

IMDB says that she is still in the SAG under another name. Anybody know what alias she uses nowadays?

#27, Pat…

I couldn’t agree with you more. That “Making of Star Trek” Shot is one of my absolute favorites… and it is a beautiful angle of the ship… which they are constantly replacing with non-dynamic angles of the darn dish. I really wish they wouldn’t do that. The compositions of the original shots are darn good… and the replacements I’ve been seeing are almost never as well composed. there is a reason they were that way… they looked great.

Oh well.

Look at the above “New and Old” side by side pictures. The new E picture titled “In Orbit”..You can see right into the four rectangular windows on the 4 O’Clock position of the saucer’s edge. Is this the first time they did this? Or is this a new, but reused shot and I have missed it all along? I take it this wasn’t a new shot since it’s almost a frame by frame of the original flyby from TOS, which was standard fare in just about every ep. But I never noticed you could see right into the windows! There are some desks or beds or ??. Ah the memories. I recall when those Big Screen projection TV’s were all the rage in the early 90’s. My uncle had one and I was over at his house one time, and Next Gen was on. I asked if he could fire up that big screen and I watched the TNG E fly past in the final shot of the opening credits, and I saw movement in the windows! Whoa! My old TV at the time at my apartment was only 13 inches .. and was black and white…My oh my have the times changed. And speaking of TV’s, modern or projection, what were the displays out on the sidewalks and in public supposed to be? Plasma? Tube? Some other hitech format? What always bugged me about this ep, was that they had V2’s and a fleet and such, yet had black and white monitors..I wish CBS would have colorized that old WWII stock footage they displayed on the monitor. But then that might have been against keeping in the grain of things, as CBS said they would do.

Does anybody else see this?
At the end of the episode, when Ekos is on the viewscreen when Kirk tells Chekhov to leave orbit, the colors on Ekos are changing, like the planet is psychedelic or something. Very strange. Anybody else see this?

^^^ Sounds like someone needs a new TV set!

Good job on this episode; I liked the very bright explosion as well. Question about those windows on the front of the primary hull, the 4 and 1. In the original, they all appear to be the same size. On the new version, the 2nd from the front appears to be a little shorter: compare the In Orbit pictures. Anyone know why?

Very nice.
That last shot was sweet, and its nice to see CBS has finally “SEEN THE LIGHT”

: )

#14 Matt Wright

A big disappointment to me throughout this whole project so far has been the LACK of enhanced handphaser beams fx. Your excellent video capture above shows what a difference the little ADDITION of an “inner core” ( ideally along with some outer haze) can make to the original bare effect. I wish EVERY dodgier example had been done along the way…

#25 Nelson

I hope Anthony CAN propose your design contest to the team. It would be great to have a FAN ART section here nonetheless with the likes of “what if” submissions such as your suggestions.

#27 Pat

While CBS Digital have done some nice work on this episode, I wholeheartedly agree with you where the composition of certain shots are concerned. While I have like some of the new angles and shots, including this one from “behind the saucer”, I hope none get overused throughout this remaster. The classic “Making of Star Trek” cover shot is a fantastic, iconic angle from below, with the Enterprise looking like it’s angled “looking up” when firing, showing it’s full majesty and power, and I hope we see a bit more of it in future. Some shots were just right as they were.

I love the “making of Star Trek” angle as well, but it’s replacement is no big deal. It’s not like we haven’t seen that underside angle already in just about every episode that featured the ship firing phasers or photon torpedos.

Does anybody else think it’s funny that sooooo many of us actually knew immediately about the cover image of this book? I had it when I was like 8 years old, and had it for years and years. Maybe I still do, hmmm…

Doug L.

39.

I thought it was funny too. I remember my dad having a copy, which I never read but always looked at the pictures. Just by doing that, I learned about mattes and models, and the scale of the Enterprise. It was great, I wish I had a copy.

I cannot help bringing up the damn nacelle ball size thing again.
How glaring can it be and why are they not fixing it??
Otherwise, I love the rest of the shots, especially the spiffy approach shot.

In TMP, the Enterprise exhibits sort of a skidding motion in it’s initial departure, but that was more of a function of the motion control programming of the time. Very mechanical. I liked it.
I mean, it shouldn’t look like it’s banking on air currents!

Although I love the shot, the problem with the “iconic” Enterprise firing her phasers shot is that the beams are shooting off in different directions….there’s no way you could hit anything like that! LOL!!!

Hmmm, I will only comment on the one effect that looked disappointing to me- the Enterprise firing it’s phasers. The original looked awesome, cool, fantastic, impressive etc, etc, but the new version looked quite lame in comparison.

Showing the Enterprise firing phasers from that rear angle, with beams so close together, just takes away the allusion that the phasers are a powerful weapon. To me it looks like the Enterprise is using a “laser pointer”!

I’m all for improvements where they are needed, but some original effects were just plain better then these remastered versions. This was a good example. I wish they had instead duplicated this effect as closely as possible to the original.

Well, CBS-D can’t hit it out of the ball park on every effect, but the remainder of the changes look pretty good!

Mike :o

While watching some of original Star Trek episodes on TV Land I noticed
that the running time is perceptively longer than the remastered episodes
now in syndication. I recorded one episode sans the ads and came up with
only 39min.for the remastered episode. The originals ran 51min. Now I know they have to pay for all this but 21min. for commercials is nutz ! Has anyone else noticed this. The TV Land episodes run 6-8 min. longer.

By the way, thank you very much for putting that video up Matt. : )

I personally like the fact that CBS-D is taking the initiative to give us some new angles of the Enterprise while firing phasers. The original angle was indeed fantastic but it was seen every single time phasers were fired. Some new angles are welcomed for me. And as far as I can tell, CBS-D has kept the same iconic image of the Enterprise firing her phasers from the underside in most of the remastered episodes where phasers are fired. I don’t understand the complaints.

If they were giving us a new angle every time we saw the phasers fired, that would be one thing… but they’ve used that behind the main dish shot over and over and over again… and it’s a dull angle. They’ve replaced one “overused” shot with another. And frankly, I don’t think they’ve ever come close to making it look as good as that Making of cover shot…

Regarding the Making of Star Trek book cover, I agree it is iconic! But they have used that angle recreated on Balance of Terror as I recall.

I was lucky enough to have found a used first edition of this book in great condition and I have it tucked away in plastci! It has a different cover as you know. And I have my copy from the early 70’s of the iconic ship image, and a used copy I found of the same cover in better shape!