“The Menagerie” (Part 2) Screenshots and FX Video

Here’s our usual assortment of screen captures from The Menagerie Part 2

 

New Effects Video


(WMV)

New and Old
 
Pike’s Enterprise Conference Room Viewer Display
 
The Enterprise rushes to Talos 4
 
Rigel VII Matte (minor differences?)
 
Assuming Orbit of Talos 4
 
The Picnic Scene (with new matte)
 
Pike’s Enterprise Leaves Talos 4 Orbit

 

Assorted Shots

The scarred Pike

Commodore Mendez glares in disbelief

Vina as an Orion Slave Woman

The Keeper’s smug look

Pike’s Hell

Spock and Kirk have a moment

Number One and Yoman Colt help Captain Pike up

The Keeper tries to scare Pike

…Test This On You

Vina says she can’t go

The real Vina

The Happy Ending

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Subtle for the most part, yet very well done.

I’m glad they didn’t mess with the Rigel fortress or the laser cannon.

The laser cannon and phaser effects were actually nicely done in the original “The Cage.” Nice pulsating rays, with a rough solid core and glowing outer ray.

The phaser effects in later episodes were hit and miss, especially since the lab that did the credits actually did some of them.

I love that they added that wavering effect that all the Talosian illusions had in the pilot footage over the Mendez wink out toward the end of the episode. It always seemed a little incongruous that he disappeared differently than all the other images.

Well, you knew it had to happen sometime — my turn to be a little “negative”. I didn’t care for the laser cannon effects…they were unnecessary and cheesy.

Otherwise, everything else was done well…just not a lot to add to or enhance.

Corbomite Maneuver (Next weeks ep)…now that one should be a visual feast!

TTM

I’m glad they didn’t change the Rigel VII matte. Can’t improve upon perfection.

-cs™

Subtle stuff. Re the still “Enterprise rushes to Talos 4” – why do we always seem to see the new Enterprise from this slightly below angle, eg never with the tip of the dome showing as in the original? Spoils it a bit for me.

I agree about the Rigel matte — one of the most gorgeous images from the entire series, which didn’t need changing. But it does look like there were very minor changes (like the shapes of a few of the foreground rocks, and the placement of some of the rocks in the middle-ground.) The changes are so subtle I’m scratching my head as to why they made them. Any ideas? Maybe this was a by-product of an attempt to flesh out the image into an (as-yet unseen) 16×9 aspect ratio version?

The Rigel matte is an icon. It’s nice to see CBS-D thinks so too.

I can’t wait to see this at 3AM tomorrow!

I swear the old Talos IV in the first comparison shot looks like the planet Dune from the movie.

Wow real subtle stuff this time out, I like!

Hmmm… if I’m not mistaken, by the looks of the court martial scenes, did they replace the old flag with that of the Enterprise chevron insignia? Hmm…. subtle but great!

Nice work on the Pike illusion transitions. So did they use morphing on Vina in her aging scene?

I’m trying to work out if they cleaned up the iffy join between the Monitor’s nose and prosthetic head!

Thanks for getting these up so fast Matt.

Okay,
now as far as the rotoscoping goes….BEAUTIFULLY done.
Flawless, wonderful. The Starbase 11 stuff was incredibly good.
I thought Talus 4 looked a bit bland as opposed to looking somewhat ominous (like in Catspaw-nice job by the way)
Lets face it, we are discussing an ART form here, so taking a bit of ARTISTIC LICENSE to foster an emotional response would be completely acceptable. Especially since Talos 4 is the ONE planet you can be EXECUTED for visiting…;)
IE- In Space Seed when the Enterprise tossed away the Botany Bay like yesterdays diapers. Beautiful, excellent, you actually made me feel sorry for a special effect. Peter Jackson noted that the original King Kong was the first film to accomplish that.

Second, STOP BEING AFRAID TO USE CONTRAST…; )

Third,
When you guys cut from an action shot to a new effects shot you use a fade (like the original) the timing of the music is WAY OFF. I think people would notice a cut instead of a fade far less than the music being off like that. It feels like I’m tripping over something everytime I see it. Especially when I am trying to MARVEL over a new effect that you have created. Unless a fade is being used to suggest time passage, I dont think it is necessary if it is going to be so distracting.

Lastly,
I noticed during the first promos of this endeavor, that someone from CBS DIGITAL stated that you would “see the ship from angles you couldn’t possibly see with a physical model”.
If that is INDEED the case, can you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
STOP using that God-awful “left to right coming at you- left to right going away from you” Enterprise shot that we have seen a MILLION times!
If you want NEW fans to appreciate the show then SHOW them how beautiful the Enterprise(an integral character in the show) can look when seen from interesting and emotionally appropriate angles.

Remember Titanic? The one shot that stood out for me was the really high up far away shot when the ship was shooting its disaster rockets. The ship seemed so tiny and alone in this huge black ocean.

Now I completely understand the daunting task you have as far as time constraints are concerned, so I can’t really blame you guys fro re-using a shot here and there. I guess I’m hoping that the DVD versions will contain a little more variety.
It is ironic and sad that 40 years later we are running into the same NOT ENOUGH TIME problems all over again.
We’ve had 40 years already, why rush it now?….;)

All in all, I think CBS digital is definately measuring up to the task at hand. Their work on SPACE SEED was fabulous. The lighting was perfect, the angles were true to the original but FAR more interesting and fluid.

THAT episode should be the new yardstick boys.

Keep plugging away lads!
and thankyou for making Star Trek new and interesting again.

SPOCKBOY

Thanks once again for the sneak preview, especially for us poor sods who have to wait until 2:45 am Monday…

I’m picking up mixed messages though — THEETrekMaster, in #4 above you seemed to feel there were some unecessary changes made to the laser canon FX? But other reports say no changes? Can we get a ruling from the judges?

Based on the RIgel VII grabs, I think I see what they’ve done — basically just a nice subtle cleanup of some very minor discrepancies. In the original show, there were a couple of slight differences between the wide shot of the castle (probably an earlier state of the painting) and the view with the live action elements added in. They’ve created a new matte which makes everything (i.e. placement of rocks, shrubs etc.) consistent. Very subtle and tasteful edit.

Those of you like myself with far too much time on their hands may like to see the comparison gif I whipped up which highlights the subtle differences:

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r195/lao3d/rigel_vii_comparison.gif

Thanks for all the reports!

I didn’t mind the palace on Rigel VII not being changed. But couldn’t they make the planets in the sky look more real, like they did with the Starbase 11 scenes? I suppose you could say it doesn’t matter, since it wasn’t really Rigel VII and just a fantasy created for Pike from his memories. But still … it just seems inconsistent to give Starbase 11 a major overhaul, but leave this scene completely alone, except for some minor cleanup.

I found the Menagerie shows to be wonderfully remastered. It is hard to imagine a an update job being more respectful of the original. The zoom into the bridge was incredible.

Did anyone notice that the new bridge screen view seems to make bring out the lack of continuity between to the forward and backward shots? Forward looks very dark and shadowy, low light, whereas the standard backward shot is brightly lit. The dark forward shot sure looked cool, though.

Deleted for syndication: the most seductive Orion dance moves were cut. Tragic!!! The phaser cannon animations looked identical to the original, but: we hardly saw any of it! That entire sequence in the original was very dramatic (love the sound effect of the cannon powering up), but they cut most of it for syndication.

What baffles me is why they don’t show the uncut length in a 90 min time slot. You could pack in a ton of ad revenue (as scifi channel did back in 1999) but still have the entire show as it was meant to be seen. Of course, without Tivo this would drive you insane.

Agreed with just about everything said, Rigel painting is one of the most storried matte paintings in the history of sci fi kind of glad. that they chose not to screw with it. I would have liked to see so embellishing on the Talos landscape however, It looked very much like a painted curtain (which it was) I thought were were going to get swirling clouds and minor enhancements to landscapes. Other than that though I think they’ve hit their stride. The Ship looks big and real and waaaaaaay more realistic than any of the next gen era x-mas orniment looking ships. For those with xbox 360 and a big screen high def tv , the widescreen fx from space seed were unbelievable!!!!!!!! To see that shot of the Enterprise from below and aft filling the screen next to the Botony Bay on a 65″ widescreen —–WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! The other few HD episodes feature the first gen model though. (Miri, Naked Time, City, ect) I think the downloads are about $2.00 apiece. May the High Def Visage of Shatner shine upon you all!!!

I think they missed fixing the shot where Veena is tortured in the cage. There is a clip of this at http://www.startrekhistory.com/restoration/cagepage.html (scroll to near the bottom of the page, then press PLAY on the image)– I thought I saw her shadow on the back wall….

Funny how people are seeing changes where there were none made. There was nothing done to the laser cannon scene…

RE: #15 – Lao3D, thanks for the help in seeing the minor differences in the matte! I too am immensely pleased that they only barely tweaked this iconic Trek image. As for the laser cannon, much of the sequence was cut and the only change I noticed in what little remained of the sequence was that once again they overlayed the newer phaser sound effect over the old sound effects.

I wish they could have done something about the incongruous response by the Keeper about how he would give Vina back her appearance “and more.” As viewers of the original pilot The Cage know, this odd line is explained by an illusory Pike walking away with Vina, but in The Menagerie the line just doesn’t make sense since the shot of Pike and Vina is replaced with a repeat of earlier Vina footage, and the original shot is re-purposed later as an illusory version of the crippled Pike re-united with Vina. Oh well, we can’t have everything!

In re-watching this episode, I was struck by the splendid performance by John Hoyt as Dr. Boyce. He was superb, contrasting well to Majel’s emotionless (some might say wooden) performance as Number One. In the end, I’m glad they transferred that personality trait to Spock, which greatly improved his character.

Anyway, kudos to the CBS Digital team for another fine and restrained effort.

To those complaining about CBS reusing some of the standard shots. Do you realize that due to their rushed schedule, this is likely helping them out a LOT in meeting their deadlines? The ship fly by is a standard shot…it was reused in all the series. They could stand to do a few variations with different star patterns..but at least it accomplishes their goal, to enhance the original shot. Keep in mind, they can then focus on ‘special-case’ effects…like the dome fly in shot from last week. I’m fine with them using stock footage, especially if it lets them maintain the quality of all the future shots they have to recreate. Keep it real people.

#20

Well, I have BOTH versions…so I’ll watch them both back to back. But it looked like those animated and diffused rings coming off the door were new.

Either way, I am not impressed with the laser cannon effect.

TTM

#22

Agreed!

It would be nice if they had time to mix up some of the shots though. Hmmm…maybe DVD?

TTM

The new matte for the picinic scene looks very good. I hope they will do something similar for Amok Time!

Perhaps like this:
http://www.trekspace.gmxhome.de/forumdaten/startrek-tos/enhanced_amok.jpg

Somebody send this photo to CBS digital!!
Nice job!!

Man it would be so cool to see that background for the entire show. Hopefully they will have the time to do it.

#25…. That would be a great addition if they did something like that for “Amok Time”. I’m also happy they just tweaked the Rigel matte, let’s hope it won’t double as Flint’s castle as it once did in “Requiem for Methuselah”.

I’m sure it would piss off a lot of folks, but I have to agree with #27 – new matte painting for Flint’s castle. Same with the other reused matte paintings as in “Wink of an Eye” and “Dagger of the Mind”, and the re-used Janus 6 images in “Gamesters of Triskelion”. The Mojave backdrop was re-used on “Conscience of the King” wasn’t it? I hope that’s changed too.

I have not seen the remasterd part 2 yet (time slot keeps changing here in the Bay Area and my Tivo is left hapless.)

But, the original Laser cannon and phasers effects are perfect and classic and do not need any revision IMO. This only holds true for “The Cage.” All the other phaser effects should be changed – many of them were simply title effects done by the lab who did the ends titles.

Flint definitely needs new digs…

And the planet Scalos IV (Wink of An Eye) needs a complete rework as well.

TTM

CGI good. CBS digital makes it go.

Nice job folks. Man, the clarity and color are just awesome!!

The pahaser cannon shots had the coloring tweaked just a bit. Generally the shot is basically the same. Nothing new added.

The phaser cannon is one of my favorite bits of this episode. I’m just sorry it was trimmed down to almost nothing in this version.

What I always thought was interesting about this episode is that the Talosian Magistrate (the taller of the two “buttheads” – The “Keeper”) was a female. Many years ago I was watching an old re-run of Perry Mason and I saw a lady that looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. A little digging on the Internet, and I found her name and then found that she played The Keeper. Her name is Meg Wyllie, and she was in tons of TV episodes over the years. Obviously her voice was distorted electronically, so I guess we can’t know for sure (unless someone out there has another source), but according to imdb, Malachi Throne, (Commodore Mendez here, Senator Pardek on TNG, Noah Bain on It Takes a Thief, and a zillion other characters), provided the voice for the character.

I think Throne was the voice of the Keeper when The Cage was originally filmed, but later, when the pilot was used for the Menagerie, a different voice was recorded.

They need to allow some saturation into the deflector dish. It’s way too monochromatic.
The only thing that really annoyed me were the cuts- and my favorite line no less! (I’m sure you know the one…)
Love that “transmit the ship’s power” animation. Did they mess with it? Maybe. Has anyone checked yet?

Throne’s voice was pitched higher in the final mix for the keeper… it was still his voice. I don’t know how they did it, because the speed of the voice still maintains lip synch… but somehow they did. :)

If they can do what 25 did to the Amok Time image, that would be fabulous! Let’s hope someone at CBS-D sees this image and considers it!

I always wondered why a psychiatric facility (“Dagger of the Mind”) looked like a lithium cracking station. That seemed a particularly poor choice for a reused matte.

aargh! My station in Indianapolis repeated part 1 !!!

very frustrating.

Did anyone notice the pool in the dance scene had crystal clear blue-green water? Was that a new effect? The episode was beautiful with short 1:30 commercial breaks as well. Thanks!

#40, they did alter the lithium cracking station matte painting quite a bit for Dagger of the Mind. Lots of tall scaffoldy looking machinery above the large tanks disappeared in the revision. It still needs replacing IMO, but I just wanted to point out that the producers did make an effort to give it a different look back in ’66.

I’m surprised they didn’t change the Rigel fortress – at least they could have changed the obviously painted sky – the fortress always looked okay.

“#37 No Vic Perrin redubbed the Keeper for The Menagerie since Throne was now a guest star on his own.”

Then how were they able to get the remaining voice work for the DVD release?

The Keeper’s voice in The Menagerie is Throne electronically processed to a higher pitch. In the DVD version of The Cage, they went ahead and processed the up until then unprocessed lines exclusive to The Cage and they sound exactly the same

Just finished watching Part 2 again.

The Rigel VII matte was just changed slightly to fix continuity errors (pillar and shrub colours).

Watching this reminds me of, in 1979, when I was 13, I went to the Ohio Theater in Columbus, Ohio to see “An Evening With Gene Roddenberry.”

Gene Roddenberry gave a talk, and did a Q&A, and also showed blooper reels from the original series, plus a snippet from the still-in-post-production STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. The theater didn’t have the right projector, so the snippet was stretched vertically. Everybody looked twelve feet tall.

Then he showed THE CAGE. It was in black-and-white, because at the time that was the only print he could get his hands on apparently.

You know what seemed an odd simple tweak that was overlooked? (Well, easy for me to say. I don’t know how easy it actually would be)

All of the shots from the Cage being shown on a screen in the courtroom were just projections on a screen back in ’67 and they’re very faded on the viewscreen.
Wouldn’t it be possible today to take the footage and superimpose it over the viewscreen?

Other than that, beautiful all the way through

#25 – Norbert Steinert

I would love that sort of addition to Amok Time…. :)