Bread and Circuses Remastered Airs This Weekend June 2, 2007
by Anthony Pascale , Filed under: TOS Remastered , trackbackOur heroes get captured on a planet with a 20th century Imperial Roman civilization
New image just released (note the new moons):
Well Hodgkin strikes again and gives the show a chance to explore a classic sci-fi ‘what if’ theme…in this case: What if the Roman Empire survived to the 20th century? The CBS-D crew don’t have a lot, but some new establishing shots with the two moons, and (as seen above) those are also added to a beam in shot.
UPDATE: Rick Kelvington was inspired this weekend
And in honor of Star Wars 30th….a found youtube video of Star Wars…in LATIN:
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Cool, two moons, about time they did something like that.
two moon yeah it looks ok but what the point dose it add to anything? now if the sun shot are better!! i love this episode
Two moons. Kirk couldn’t control himself with Drusilla, hence the late sleep-in.
Thanks for the Star Wars Latin add. Amazing that its been 30 years already since the film was originally released.
I can’t imagine a world without Star Wars or Star Trek. Both franchises have changed the course of my life, in a very positive way.
How time does fly! I actually like the two moons thing.
I thought this was a planet that was, according to Mr. Spock, exactly like your Earth” The two moons, while cool to look at pretty much removes the whole notion of “Exactly like your Earth”
Two moons =Cool, but not for this Episode.
Nice touch with the moons! Good work, CBS-D! Hopefully, we will see more of this kind of thing…
TTM
2 moons or 5 moons it can stillbe exactly like your earth, dont be rediculous
Off-planet elements have no impact on the statement “like your Earth,” technically speaking. I like them cause it adds an alien feel to it.
Note the aspect ratio here of a live action shot, without measuring it, it appears to be 16×9. I’ll have to compare this with the original and see if the rocks and plants are added to the sides.
It is great to see two moons!
Just checked, altered on the upper left side and the framing is tilted upwards to show more sky. The rocks and plants on the upper left are alterations. This shot then pans down as they climb down, should be interesting to see how this is done.
^^^ It”ll probably be cut for all those”great” commercials. :-(
Awesome moons! Perfect and simple enhancement. Love to see as much of this kind of thing as humanly practical…
Rick-Thanks for the music related gag reel. I can appreciate it. I also can appreciate how hard it must be for you and Spockboy to come up with something weekly.
#8 *My* Earth? What planet are YOU from? LMAO!!!!
OMG-They did it again. Mrregular-our rerun on KXVO in Omaha is “Patterns of Force” and not “Shore Leave”????? What ARE they doin’? LOL
Nice one Rick!
The whole point of the episode was that this is a planet that could have been Earth: What if Rome survived into the 20th century? This was not supposed to be an ‘Alien Planet’ it is supposed to be our planet. They tried to make it as much like Earth as possible with many references through out the episode. The writers – Gene Coon and Gene Roddenberry – wanted the audiance to believe that this is what it would be like if Rome had survived in to our time.
For CBS-D to add two moons is a subtle, but never the less, destructive addition to the nature of the story being told.
I LOVE the look of the moons, they did a great job and there are 78 other episodes they could have done this to but this episode was not one of them. It is a perfect example of how easy it is to get carried away with the eye candy and as a result undermine the very point of the story.
I know, I know a big deal about a little effect…but still a valid one.
#15: we were quoting what Spock said.
I asked in a previous thread, but I don’t think I got an answer….
Is Bread and Circuses the first mention of the Prime Directive, or is it just the first big speech about it? I think it’s the intro for that theme in TOS.
#18-I respectfully disagree. Two moons has no bearing at all in the story, and, at least CBS-D didn’t just sit there doing nothing but the same old planet orbit with nothing new at all. I like it and it has nothing to do with the story.
#18:
Didn’t Spock say that the landmasses were different than that of Earth? So, it’s NOT Earth. So why can’t there be two moons?
That’s no moons! They are space stations.
Loved the moons, more please and loved Drusilla’s moons even more. Kirk banged the night away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by the way guys….want to give a fair warning that the screenshot/vids will not be up until Monday
What’s the big deal about what’s in the sky? That has nothing at all to do with the planet’s similarities to the planet earth. If that were the case you would have to start comparing the Sun and everything else up there. Spock said “exacly like your earth” . In this case, Earth means just that…Earth…. not the sky and space around it.
I just finished watching this episode: There are now bullet holes on back jail cell wall after the guards shoot their machines guns while our intrepid trio beams up.
Thank goodness for that fix; it’s bugged me for years!
Not a scientist or anything close, but the Moon does affect Earth, so two moons, I would think, would affect a planet differently, albiet, perhaps not significantly. I did observe that they seem quite close together… and that seems unlikely. ;-)
DaveR (#18): “Destructive”? That’s a strong word, implying that the entire premise of the episode falls apart because there are now two moons in the sky of this planet. A bit of a drastic notion, don’t you think?
I always thought that Spock’s comment about this world being “exactly like your Earth” was a kind of generalization. The size, atmosphere, temperature and land mass-to-water ratio was all very similar to Earth. I never considered this planet to be a “copy” of Earth, like Miri’s planet was, just a very close approximation. I think we’re being a bit too critical about this. One moon, two moons, no moon…no big deal.
What I always thought made this planet like Earth was the amazing fact that not only do the inhabitants look 100% human, like so many aliens in TOS, but that they actually developed a civilization based on an Earth civilization without any Federation interference. But of course, Spock was speaking from a scientific point of view. He was saying it was an M class planet that was closer to Earth than other M class planets, like Vulcan. And Vulcan has no moon.
If having two moons undermines the whole story, then they shouldn’t have had a magazine advertising the “Jupiter 8″ car, too. On our Earth, no such car ever entered production!
Wow, I’m glad I thought of that…..I used to like this episode, but now I can learn to hate it.
#20 (CmdrR)
> … Is Bread and Circuses the first mention of the
> Prime Directive …?
No.
The Prime Directive is mentioned in a first season ep,
“Return of the Achons”, which aired on February 9 1967.
(Spock: “Captain, our prime directive of noninterference –”
Kirk: “That refers to a living, growing culture.” …)
(Note: The phrase “prime directive” is used again
several more times in that episode, but in those cases
it is in reference to the Landru-system’s “prime directive”.)
Although B&C was produced earlier than “The Omega Glory”,
that episode aired on March 1 1968, two weeks before B&C.
The Prime Directive is mentioned 4 times in “The Omega Glory”.
(Irrelevant trivia note: The term “prime directive” is also
heard in “The Changeling”, which aired Sept 29 1967;
but in this case Kirk is referring to Nomad’s policy of
sterilization as its ‘prime directive’.)
So again to answer your question — AFAIK,
The Prime Directive was first explicitly mentioned in
“Return of the Archons”.
Spock never says the planet is exactly like Earth. He says the ratio of land to sea is exactly like Earth’s.
Speaking of 16X9 (somebody was), has anyone here already addressed this: how is Paramount/CBS going to make all the TOS eps 16X9 for their new HD releases if the production footage was originally 4X3? The space shots, sure, that’s their new CGI stuff; but what about everything else? Are they going to pull what Warber Bros. did with the 1st season release of Kung Fu and chop off the top and bottom of the footage to make it look like 16X9? We’re loosing image if that’s the case.
Is it ever explained how there could be an planet (so far away from our own) that has a very similiar history as ours, and even has the same names and such (like ROMANS, and the Roman gods MARS, JUPITER, VENUS, and even the SON)?
The only thing that I can come up with is that aliens upducted people from the Roman Empire era on Earth and transported them to this planet. It’s not the only Star Trek episode to have that concept. Otherwise, it would be impossible that the history would be exactly the same (before the change in direction – for the Roman Empire), as well as all the same names.
It just bothers me that we’re just supposed to except that this society exists without any kind of explanation for it.
I have a different theory for “Miri”.
A lot of framing up until the late 80s on TV was quite ‘loose.’ Compositionally, a lot of stuff shot back then can look better for the tighter framing. The problems arrive when they get lazy with the reframing, merely cutting off the top and bottom of the picture and not repositioning the image within the 16:9 frame.
I worked on a programme a while back that had to be re-framed into 14:9 (it was meant to be 16:9, but, due to an oversight was shot in 4:3, leaving me to sort it a compromise in the online edit) and it probably took about six hours to frame correctly an hour’s worth of fast-cut, hand-held material. Something like Star Trek could probably look very good if carefully, sympathetically adapted into widescreen.
jmagda – 16X9′ing TOS would require either zoomin in on the image to fill the widthe (thus losing top and bottom) or doing a vertical letterbox (blank screen to image left and right)
Niether would be perfect, but at least the LR letterbox would preserve the entire image.
Dom – good points – I’ve done 16X9 pan and scanning myself, but it’s horribly time consuming and moving shots, zooms and the like pose all sorts of trouble. Additionally, there are resolution issues to consider, even though TOS is remasterd from original 35mm broadcast prints, I’m concerned that resolution may suffer with HD releases.
Then of course there’s the issue of actually losing image from the frame, possibly more contreversial than losing footage from syndication cuts.
I brought up the issue of 16×9 framing. The last news I read, and I think I read it here, is that the new HD DVD’s will be 4×3 or OAR, original aspect ratio. They did the new CGI in 16×9 for safety and future useage if they reframe the show.
I hope they don’t. It won’t work. As an experiement, I scanned an actual film clip of Star Trek. I drew a 16×9 ration box and tried to see how it could work. The original filmclip does have a very small amount of image all around when I compared it to the same frame on the DVD, but it’s not enough to make up 16×9 images. On close-up, you’ll cut off the top of actors heads, or you’ll cut off the bottoms of images.
In Bread and Circuses, they did reframe the opening shot when they beam down, they zoomed in a little and tilted the frame up so more sky is visible to add the moons. But they did add more rocks to the left. Or perhaps it was already there on the image and they got away with it. But they must have replaced the titles as the shot pans downward as they climb down the hill.
How can it be “exactally like earth” if the history is different?
Suppose, at some time back at the time of “The Son,” something happened to the moon to cause it to split in two? Maybe that is what prevented Christianity from developing.
Too bad they couldn’t have spent some time digitally erasing the red squibs visible on the trees just before they’re captured by the Romans. You can tell exactly where the “bullets” are going to hit before they’re even fired. I’d rather have that fixed than a couple of irrelevant moons added to the sky.
Nelson – the other issue of using more of the 35 mm frame – is u get more than occasional boom mike or light stand or cookie – usually this things were masked by the 4:3 aspect, but would all have to removed digitally by CBSD in 16X9
#16:
KXVO is up to it again…hmmmm, somebody in master control must have been in a pretty nasty mood becuase two of the more darker Trek episodes put together is a bit intense. Two hours of police state does not a happy camper make.
But Rhodes Reason as Flavius..the actor makes the role come alive into a character hard not to despise.
Should have aired “Shore Leave” after the trip to the Roman empire, to lighten things up.
Effects will be in 16×9, live action will be 4:3 with Black bars on the sides.
Xbox live alread has a number of High water mark episodes like Space Seed, and Tribbles in HD. Effects in 16×9, live action in 4:3 with black bars. This is how the HD DVD set is to be released. Trek remastered is to be released around X-mas on HD DVD as well as the Movies in HD (according to the authorites at Digitalbits) So if you haven’t made the leap to HD yet now you have another reason to do so. You can pick up HD DVD players for $200.00 and trust Lord Gath and Marta the difference is just astounding!!!!Plus it upconverts your standard dvds and makes them look near HD. I don’t believe Trek is set to go on Blu-Ray. I watched the Matrix HD Trilogy in HD this weekend and I was blown away.
The procounsel sure presented himself as a man’s man. But put him in the arena and he would be blubbering like the magistrate in “All Our Yesterdays.” Nice interview with the actress who played Drusilla in a recent Starlog magazine.
I’m just glad this Roman society isn’t the result of more Earth contamination. Good old Hodgkins’ Law of Parallel Planetary Development at work here!
I actually meant to comment on the acting skills of Logan Ramsey in my previous post. His portrayal of the procounsel is one of the more memorable characters in all of TOS.
re: post# 44: I don’t think there’s been an absolute statement from CBS Paramount about the final aspect ratio the HD DVD’s will be. Mike Okuda was quoted that the HD DVD’s will be 4X3 and I believe that the effects will be cropped to 4X3 as well.
It was reported elsewhere that the Xbox videos jumped the gun and released videos in the wrong aspect ratio, that is mixing the CGI in 16×9 and live action in 4×3.
I don’t think The Digital Bits has reported any final specs yet. And he usually knows what’s going on.
Agreed. I can’t see watching an episode and having it jump back and forth between 4X3 and 16X9 every time we get a scene transition from live action to space shots and back.
DaveR- that planet is only similar to earth ( not exactly copy of Earth ).
That planet have different shape continents.
Two moons don’t change anything, but they look great.
Great job CBS-D!!!
Nelson and jmagda – mark my words the HD dvds will have 16×9 effects and 4×3 live action. They remastered the effects in 16×9 for a reason. We see the cropped version on standard tv each week but HD is the future and the future is now. Xbox didn’t jump the gun but I’d wager it is a preview of things to come. I sure hope so I don’t want to see cropped FX on my 65″. The 16×9 effects on Xbox, especiaaly in Space Seed are just gorgeous and cinematic.
The final specs should be known in several months for the HD DVD’s. I’m placing my bets that the CGI will be cropped to 4×3 though. :-)
I am watching the recording of Bread and Circuses now on the computer. I am surprised they made a change. They added a commercial break right after Kirk speaks to Scotty and asks him to scan them to convince Septimus that they are not Romans and if they can’t accept his explaination, then they could kill them. What is not expected here is they added music here at fade out that wasn’t there before!
I love it CBS -Digital. Good job on the new moons!! Makes the planet feel a lot more alien.
There’s something else I noticed in the remaster, they added bullet holes on the stone walls behind Kirk, Spock and McCoy after they beam out at the end, cool!
The view screen images of the planet and moons looked great, but the motion looked a tad fast as the moons rose from behind the planet.
CBS Digital have truly hit their stride on space shots – every one was gorgeous, with good angles on the Big E and consistent showing of the double moons throughout the episode, helping making it clearly an alien world even though it is, as usual, very much like southern California in vegetation and climate. Since they were usually omitted in the reruns I saw as a kid, I’d never seen the teaser, so I don’t have a basis for comparison…but the ship dodging the Beagle debris was an interesting open and also quite effective.
And I too was delighted to see them add the bullet marks to the cell upon beamout – another nifty little fix we get as a bonus.
Great work!
My local affiliate got their colors straightened out (they were bleeding all over the place), so I was really pleased to see the planet the way it should.
55 I couldnt agree more, the space shots here are some of the best yet
OK, enough about the moons and apsect ratio. Here is a question that you guys can help me with. For years hubby and I have had an inside joke about the line from the slave girl to kirk that goes something like, “at the first sign of pain you will tell me.” For years, he thought that was from a different episode, so when we watched “Bread and Circuses” on saturday, he was surprised (and didn’t at first believe me) when I told him that line was in the episode.
Now he is convinced there is a similar line in another one. I don’t think so. Do any of you super-trekies know?
The moons looked great though and didn’t ruin anything for me.
Pretty sure you’re right. Drusilla was the only person to say those lines to Kirk in TOS.
The moons did make me squirm a bit during the “exactly like your earth” dialogue (although Kirk’s “similar in some ways, different in others” argument while looking at the viewscreen could have been an acknowledgement of the moons…but you’d think Spock would have noticed!). But overall I loved the effect, especially as Scotty’s preparing to initiate the blackout–the oribital shot on the viewscreen really added some anticipation there. I thought the bullet holes were a result of the finer detail of the transfer but they were so dark they must have been added too–nice touch, and it was cool to see CBSD back at work on these little details again.
I love this episode–Logan Ramsey is one of the great Trek villains, truly infuriating, and the Merrick character is very well handled with a great redemptive payoff and sacrifice. And in an episode full of great character moments and lines I still love McCoy’s speech about wanting to beam down somewhere and claim to be the Archangel Gabriel–that’s a fascinatingly postmodern moment.
Ugh…good ‘ol Ch. 44 out here in San Francisco again bumped this show to the 2AM on Sunday slot so they could air everybody’s favorite show, “American Idol Rewind” at 11PM on Saturday instead.
In case it isn’t totally obvious, the last comment is 100% sarcasm :) .
Jon, I emailed Ch 44. They told me their schedule is as follows: June 2 and June 16th, Star Trek airs at 2:00am. The rest of the season is at 11:00pm. They even had it right on TVguide.com and Titan TV.com’s schedule guides for DVR’s.
I find it a wicked tease that CBS releases a live action still in 16:9 if they’re not going to offer a wider-screen version for the DVD release! Come on, CBS, let us know definitively what the plan is!
As others have said in this thread, it sounds like it’ll be 4×3, because hopping back and forth between 16×9 CGI and 4×3 live action would be horrible. But I want to see a release that’s wider throughout… 16×9 may be too tight for ST’s compositions, but around 1.60:1 would work. So any plans for a release that’s wider than 4×3? Please?
I have reported that the DVDs will be in 4:3, which means the CGI will be cropped for HD. This is also in on the TOS-R info page (see tabs at the top of the page). Many questions that get asked are answered up there….i suggest everyone study them….there will be a quiz later
Nelson,
Thanks for the input. I will tell hubby that I am right and hence the uber-trekkie of the house. Actually, it had been many moons since we watched and were happy to find it on a local station at a decent time (6pm on saturday here not in the wee hours) a few months ago. Our kids are now getting trekified.
58- lol the line that always went over my head untill recently to my shame is the Kirk line when he escapes the arena and rescues McCoy and Spock “They threw me a few curves” shame on me, shame shame
They shoulda remastered that awful exchange about “something they used to call video” out while they were working on this one. That’s so groan-worthy.
Thanks Nelson for the update.
My TIVO/Direct TV schedule did not catch the change…I happened to be watching at 11PM and had to manually change the TIVO to record at 2AM for what was billed as “Paid Programming” on the on-screen schedule.
So this weekend’s show is at 11PM then, but not the week after.
Still, if American Idol were to go the way of the Dodo, I would not exactly be shedding any tears…at the risk of showing my age, where o where has any real musical talent gone? Or do I have already answered this question with my Dodo reference?
I think those double moons are an excellent addition which help greatly to make this Earthlike planet seem to be more like an alien planet that it acually is. Well done to CBS for adding them, and I only wish we would have seen more of this kind of background additions to enhance other bare alien backdrops along the way.
As has been covered here before, the end of the year remastered High Definition DVDs will be initially released on “HYBRID COMBO” Discs which will play not just on HD-DVD players, but ALSO on plain ‘ol standard DVD players too…so anyone that hasn’t decided on which High Definition format player to buy yet can STILL watch them till they do decide.
I would say though that Bill Hunt and the rest of the gang at the highly respected and informative site http://www.the digitalbits.com have just this week FULLY thrown their advice to consumers to go with the BLU-RAY format rather than the HD-DVD one ( sorry Lord Garth, and I hope Marta doesn’t sulk) and have just written a terrific piece about the reasons why under the heading “SOAPBOX” on 1st June. I would urge those interested to read it. Finally, though ALL of the footage in these initial releases will be in 4×3, I hope for some kind of cinematic 16×9 version EVENTUALLY, even if it is sometimes like Siergio Leone!
Er…that first line should have read – …help greatly to make this Earthlike planet seem to be more like an alien planet WHICH it actually is. ( as in it’s meant to be an alien planet )
By the way, here’s the link for that High Definition article -
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/soapbox/soap060107.html
For some of us at the Home Thear Forum, and Bill has contributed there, the mantra is OAR. There was some very unhappy people when Kung Fu was released on DVD, they reframed it to be fake widescreen, cutting off the top and bottom of the 4:3 frame. I have not seen it, but that was the implication.
I hope that never happens to TOS, the composition of shots would not work some of the times, like close-ups on actors.
Thanks for the link to the Digital Bits article. I guess he’s declaring a format winner. I’ll read that now.
#71 Nelson
Yes, if we only ever get Original Aspect Ratio of 4:3 for the live-action footage, that’s fine, but I would love to see an ALL 16:9 “Widescreen” ratio too if possible purely for it’s cinematic look. I don’t REALLY want it done if it’s just a lazy butcher job of “cutting off the top and bottom”, what I want, IF it’s possible to do this, is for the profiteers to get someone with a good “compositional eye” to do this in a MIXTURE of ways: some scenes that can get away with it would just be cut top and bottom, other more difficult scenes would be sympathetically “panned and scanned”, and the most unusable footage that will look TOO “Siergio Leone-like” where face close-ups etc. are concerned, would need to have sides ADDED! If it’s a cheap basic routethey go for, it will look bad, and I too say forget it.