Who said anything about The Phantom Menace?

Hey, thanks for beaming aboard! I’m in Astoria…where are you??

This is something that has previously been commented by previous posters on various threads here, and I am still uncertain myself about the situation, however it SEEMS that CBS Digital mainly have to enhance or adjust beam effects that are already set in stone, rather than being able to completely redo from scratch. That’s unfortunate, but I’m fine with that, as their efforts DO add a zing to them… My gripe is that I just wish they’d improve them ALL consistently across the board.

So my question is this in addressing hand phasers: Does there exist the true, original film negative? You would think that for effects such as hand phasers would not be burned on to the original negative, but rather, a copy, just in case the director/producer didn’t like the look even then and would ask for the effect to be redone before the episode went to air.

Is that why there aren’t any screenshots or an FX video for this episode yet? Usually they’d be up on Sunday, or Monday if they were late. But it’s already Tuesday. I’m getting worried.

Did some CBS/Viacom buttboy flagger snitch?

-cs™

Welcome aboard the good ship Trekmovie.com.

Out of all the missed effects opportunities unrealised so far in this remastering, the aspect that “makes me sigh” the MOST personally is the lack of consistancy in the enhancements to the handphaser beams. It seems that CBS Digital can only ADD to them, rather than ideally replace them altogether, but when they do add to them it is usually terrific, and VERY jarring when they choose to leave other poor ones as they are. I really wanted redone handphaser beams THROUGHOUT this thing.. Although the team HAVE done some fine stuff along the way, this alone would have made up for some of the “misses” for me.

I’ve never commented on this site before, but I read what that 33 Hawkeye had to say and felt compelled to respond. I apologize that this may be as long as what Hawk wrote.

I say I have to agree with him/her. I do notice inconsistancies in what gets changed and what does not for a number of the episodes. I also think that some of the remastered effects should be redone again. After all, TNG effects were 20 years beyond TOS, and we’re now 20 years beyond TNG, so logically, ALL the effects for Remastered should, in theory, be superb. Unfortunately, I would have to say that Hawkeye was right; a number of them are not. Some specifics he mentioned:

The cloak/decloak of the Romulan ship in Balance of Terror: This is actually a BIG oversite on the effects team by not having the ship fade in and out wavy and distorted. After all, one thing cloaking does is bend and distort light rays in order to render an object invisible to the eye. It would stand to reason that the engagement and disengagement of the cloaking device would involve the bending/unbending of light rays, therefore, making the object look distored. So that does need to be readressed. I mean hey, after all, Star Trek V got the Klingon cloak right.

Hand phasers: I do see what Hawkeye says when s/he mentions the inconsistency and the quality. They were great in Wink of an Eye. But the vaporization was rather poorly done in Friday’s Child. They didn’t even have a beam in spock’s Brain. In one show, the vaporization wasn’t even redone (and the episode slips my mind at the current momentThe effects guys should look at Trek movies and TNG era shows (or even “In a Mirror Darkly pt. 2) for the proper vaporization look. The colors are fine: green for stun, blue for heating, red for vaporization. Please be more consistent.

Ship phasers: I think Hawkeye’s grasping at straws here. They seem fine to me. But I agree that the proximity phaser explosions could be redone. I agree with him, and lots of folks, that thought that battle scene and the Enterprise shields was not well done in Errand of Mercy.

The “rubber band stretch” & flash/streaking stars for warp effect: I honestly have to say that was something that didn’t even cross my mind till I read what Hawkeye said, and I realize that Hawk is absolutely RIGHT. Previous shows have shown ships travelling at/going to/coming out of warp. It would stand to reason that the 1701 is going to react roughly the same way. So go ahead guys, streak those stars,stretch that ship, give us a warp flash. I certainly don’t see that as an “abomination” as I saw someone say. Idont really understand how someone could think that. Again, see In a Mirror Darkly pt. 2 for the Defiant travelling at warp.

Tractor beam: I’m suprised at the person who said it should be invisible. Star Trek fans are among the most deatail-oriented people I have met. They definitely look for inconsistencies in dialogue/scripts, etc. and it’s relation to other episodes, and even other Star Trek shows. The lack of showing a tractor beam when dialogue states it is activated is an inconsistency to me. But Hawk did miss something with the tractor beam: docking the shuttles. What do I mean by that? (Again, we look to Star Trek V) when the shuttle returns to the Enterprise, Sulu states he’s never manually docked a shuttle before. It stands to reason that if Starfleet’s best pilot of that time had never manually docked a shuttle before, than neither would have anyone else.

One last thing of note: I get the irony of when Hawk says: Budget restraints are hampering efforts of redoing and fixing the effects… which suffered from budget restraints then too…