Star Trek: The Greek Tragedy
SFX Video
(WMV)
Original vs. Remastered
Headed in
In orbit of Platonius
Shake rattle and roll
Alexander’s readings on McCoy’s tricorder
Breaking orbit
Lets get out of here
Assorted Remastered Images
You talk too much
I’m only 35
Seal Spock Seal
The girls
Prelude to ‘the kiss’
I’ll cut you Parmen
Say hello to my little friend
ooh – first!!!
Always has been one of my favorites – Loved the opening scene!
ooh – first!!!
Always has been one of my favorites – Loved the opening scene!
sorry for the double post everyone – internet issues
Seeing it again confirmed one thing for me:
Definitely one of TOS’ bottom five episodes.
No lights on the Enterprise… No stars… Where is the improvement? Another class M looking planet…. Why change the tricorder readings when they were coherent with those in sickbay.
i think this was the worst ep of tos. seeing shatner pretend 2 b a donkey. oh dear oh dear.
i would love to see more live action alterations, like the tricorder effect they changed, but done on ALL hand phaser scenes, and ALL the other attempted FX in the live action scenes where something is supposed to look just as real as everything physically there, but doesnt because it was the late 60’s. sorry, dont mean, to rant but its juzt very weird to me that cbs-d is changeing SOME effects and leaving others that are aweful, like last weeks phaser on the rock to keep warm by chekov. isnt the point of updating TOS is so that is all looks as photorealistic as possible? As if all the live action and special fx shots we see actually happened all infront of a camera. i just hope all these remastered epsiodes we are seeing are NOT being considered final drafts for the eventual remastered dvds that come out. i sincerely hope that along with replacing the first crappy cg model of the big E that we saw in the first few episodes of remastered, but also the cbs-d team replaces any and all noticible effects from the 60’s. now, if i was to type one sentance in all caps it would be this. LIVE ACTION SHOTS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS SHOULD BE MERGED IN THE MOST SEAMLESS WAY POSSIBLE. the key is realism!!….ok i seriously didnt mean to rant. peace out.
The entry into orbit was nice. Yes, why did they change the tricorder readout? They could have just enhanced the original bar chart concept except the new graphic is more realistic when doing comparisons of 2 raw readings.
I think the new Tricorder animation is fantastic!!!!!
The planet look also ok!!
The Enterprise is looking not so fine!!!!!
But the coulors of the hole episode are now much better!!!
dammit, this planet looks just like the roman planet. Where is the variety? At least change the color of the ocean or something. It could have GREEN oceans, or purple land masses. Something!
ok I’m gonna bitch though i rarely have (and I love the work they’re doing) Why does every planet have to be earth colors, you can improve the land masses and oceans and make them copper or something. come on guys.
Oh and since i didnt moan before i’m gonna complain now about the reversed orbit in “Shore Leave”…wtf
The CGI looks impressive, however it would be nice if the Earth-type planet CGI was not consistently repeated for almost every new episodes.
Jon
Shit I thought I was critical. I loved the touches in this episode. That shot of the E screaming into orbit was excellent.. The planet looked beautiful and real. These aliens were Grecofiles it would only be natural for them to settle on a very Earth like/ Mediterrainian type planet with big BLUE oceans. AND the wobble!!!! Finally ship wobble that both looked good and made sense!!!!! I’ll bet they couldn’t wait for this wobble scene to show off their wobble abilities!!! I always loved this episode a beautifully crafted story about tolerance, the intolerance of elite psuedo intellectual Liberal snobs AND Kirk getting God power!!!! very underrated. Not only the first interracial kiss but an I’ll wager the first tv show dealing with tolerance of little people as well!!!
I wasn’t able to watch the episode when it aired here, so I’m grateful to Kelvington and Anthony for posting the FX video.
I love the opening orbit shot. It’s nice to see shots like this opening one where the Enterprise is drawfed by the planet it’s orbiting. In the episode “The Savage Curtain” Kirk mantions to Abraham Lincoln that standard orbit is 650 miles (not kilometers for some reason) above the surafce of a planet. Even from that distance, the planet surface would dominate any shot of the Enterprise in orbit. The opening shot in this episode is much clser to what I’ve always imagined.
I’m also glad they changed the readout on McCoy’s tricorder. The obvious copy of the sickbay readout always bothered by. The new effect makes it look like the tricorder is making an actual comparison between sets of data, not just taking a single reading. A nice added touch.
Trelaine (#10) and Paul Austin (#11),
It’s been my impression that CBS Digital has been taking their cues for planetary surface colors from whatever locations or sets were used in the episode. Since the sky is blue and the foliage green when seen through the windows of Parmen’s estate, I’d assume that the planet was fairly Earth-like in appearance. Personally, I’m glad they’ve toned down the wild planetary colors that were so prevalent in the original FX. For the most part, planets with humanoid populations would logically have to look much like Earth. It makes more sense to me than the brightly colored bowling balls from the original scenes.
And about the apparent randomness of the FX CBS Digital chooses to update. We’ve been through all of this before. The main facotrs are time and budget. Scenes with interactive FX (like phaser-fire) require a great deal more work than the space FX or stand-alone shots (like McCoy’s tricorder readout). They don’t have any of the original film stock to work with, so unless they can work with the already established FX within a scene in the time alotted for production deadlines, they leave it alone. Yes, it’s frustrating to me sometimes, too, and I’m sure it’s frustrating to them. I know the teams are always saying “I wish we could do this to really make that phaser battle great,” but the simple fact is that their timetable often simply doesn’t allow it. Is that a bad choice? Perhaps, but those are the decisions that have been made, for better or worse. I’m just glad we’ve gotten to see the work they have been able to do. And who knows, maybe in a few years CBS will decide to “re-remaster” the episodes yet again and update every single FX shot from scratch. Then we can continue to bitch about what they got wrong and how they’re just milking TOS to make more money from us, because that’s what being a Star Trek fan is all about, isn’t it? :-)
“Say hello to my little friend” !!! LOL That made my day!
Lao3D….yes that was pretty funny. Rick has a wicked sense of humor
the newer shots are so subdued. I prefer the old shots. At least you can see the stars. This so called realistic lighting sucks
#5: “Why change the tricorder readings when they were coherent with those in sickbay.”
Because McCoy is analysing their blood, not their vitals.
#17:
It didn’t look that dark when I watched it on my TV. You could see the stars easily enough.
Our SF Bay Area CW station screwed with the time slot again and this was the first remastered show I missed! Glad to see the effects reel above, thanks for that.
“It didn’t look that dark when I watched it on my TV. You could see the stars easily enough.”
TVs have a different gamma setting to computer screens. These screenshots probably haven’t been adjusted to compensate.
The ship looked good but it varies so much in appearance it’s hard to judge. Thought the lone side view of the E shaking was more effective and less confusing than the ship against a third of a planet; but they had the same angle as the bridge shot. As for the tricorder wouldn’t the bar display be easier to read for McCoy than tiny superimposed plotted points? I miss the physical model; insufferable, I guess.
That first original screen cap of the Enterprise is perfect. A perfect third season shot. No matte problems at all. Funny, but I thought that was the shot the used as the opening shot of the Enterprise in Spocks’ Brain. Then noticed on the DVD and the comparison shots here that an older more problem ridden shot was used (likely from the first season).
Don’t feel too bad Nelson… the dimwits running the affiliate here in our nation’s capital got the tapes mixed up and re-ran last week’s episode of “The Search For Spock (‘s Brain)”.
I always loved Michael Dunn, he was a very good actor, the fx enhancements were good, i want the full unededited version of Plato’s Stepchildren, and I still think Parmen was let off a tad easy, but it was a good show all in all fresher colour too!
;-)
^13 Lord Garth
The Greeks did not have the letter “f” in their alphabet, so that would be graecophil… or more accurately, “graecomania”. A graecophil is a fancier of contemporary Greece, whereas the maniac favors the Golden Age
:-)
As for the tricorder screen, the original would be the more informative display I believe, but perhaps they were going for the “gas chromatography thing” with the line chart. Should have left well enough alone, but I understand thier need to play.
Regarding the planets colorful earth-likeness… I like it! Yes, I wonder how many earth clones are out there but it is a gorgeous graphic and so much nicer than the old monochrome tinted styrofoam antenna balls from the local “76” gas station!
The plot, arguing against the excesses of detached intellecualism (c.f., Karl Marx and any of a host of ideologies usually ending with “ism”), is very interesting in our Post-Modern age of Political Correctness.
In particular, I was taken by Parmen’s statement, “in ours it is the superior mind” rather than the superior physique or superior martial talent.
This is the essence of our time, where the ruling elites essentially bully fellow citizens by constantly berating their ideas and “prejudices” which they cannot defend in an intellectual argument. Usually, this belittling takes the form of, “you must be educated” about the Cause du Jour, which would be self-apparent to “anyone” who was properly “educated”. Uh-huh. Parmen is the perfect example of the primary flaw in that silly logic!
Another manifestation to note is the domination of our civil society by “doctors” whether medical (High Priests in the Cult of the Self), lawyers (high priests of the court) and politicians (who are usually drawn from the legal ranks) and judges. All these impose their will on their fellow citizens through the power of the mind. Of course, it helps that they have big strong men with guns to “enForce” their rulings.
Parmen didn’t need guns thanks to his telekenesis. But wonder horrors at the prospect of a political class — or academic professariate! — with telekenetic powers.
It’s enough to force a man deeper into space.
On the whole, a job well done by CBS-D!
Where in the Washington DC area can you see TOS remastered episodes? Can anyone letme know?
I always thought the original tricorder shot was a cheat…just throw in a zoom of one of the sickbay screens. Even as a kid I was disappointed. Oh well, the limitations of a low budget.
I’m in complete agreement with #29 on the tricorder screen.
They didn’t change much …not the improvements are not welcomed just .same old same old.. I was barely watching since slammed again with a third season Episode but still enjoyable.
For whatever bizarre reason, Ch. 44 in San Fran. aired this show at 9PM on Saturday…right in the middle of prime time!
And even more amazing, the schedule was updated so that my TIVO got it!
Anyone know what time it’s on next week? :)
This reminds me about “who mourns for adonis” when apollo attacks the ship, Will it be the same wobbling shots used from plato? and will they fix apollo’s final scene where you can actually see his feet while saying “take me!” Hmmmmmm…I like everything so far! nice work cbs-D!
Why does every single planet have to be so earth-like? One of the cool things about TOS was the unique looking planets.
The matte-painting backdrop in the windows shows purple sky. The planet should’ve been purple or at least less Earth-like.
Great job for this show. Loved the tricorder redo. The detail-oriented Trekkie in me appreciated that.
In the original reviews for this show, I felt compelled to finally give my opinion on the project as a whole. I’ll do the same here.
I am pleased with a number of the redone stuff, but also disappointed. They really need to redo all the ships in the first few epidsodes they tried again. But it has gotten better, and I am overall satisfied with what it has evolved too. However, I do think that being able to animate actual filmed model shots would be just as easy.
The Romulan ship and the cloak/decloak in Balance of Terror needs to be redone. The cloak doesn’t simply just fade in… in theory it would fade in/out distorted and wavy as the light rays are bent. TNG, the rest of Trek (even ST V) got that right.
I am disappointed at the lack of consistency in the redoing of hand phasers. Some redoing is great, while some redoing is completely neglected. The vaporization in Friday’s Child was not a significant improvment over the original and should be redone… consulting TNG era shows, the movies, or even In a Mirror Darkly pt. 2 for appearances of how vaporization looks. I really wish for consistency in the phasers. Keep the colors (green, blue, red) you dont have to turn the beams orange, but do redo all the phasers, and give them a bit more of that “energy” texture rather than just a simple light beam. Ships phasers are pretty good, but could just use a little bit more of that energy texturing. The proximity phaser explosions I think should also be redone. Having phaser beams appear somewhat similar to how you redid the grid beams for Tholian Web would do the trick.
The Klingon battle scene I think could be totally reworked. The shields did not look right. Should be more translucent, grayer in color, encompass the entire ship.
I’m going to get jeered for this, but hey… why not do a warp effect for us? Give us some streaking starts, and a rubber band stretch/flash. And even give us a little bit more of a treat for faster warp speeds, like time warp or other super warp speeds (Tomorrow is Yesterday, The Naked Time, By Any Other Name)
A tractor beam when dialogue states it would be nice. Heck, someone after me even proposed putting one during shuttle docking scenes. Their reasoning is that since Sulu had never manually docked a shuttle before (ST V) and assuming he is Starfleet’s best pilot of that tiime, that nobody else would have manually docked either.
I think I would like to see more overall consistency in what is changed and what isn’t. Meaning, they add ships for a Klingon battle scene, completly change the Ion ship, add a small Gorn ship… yet, some of the displays (like the solar system in Spock’s Brain) are not redone. City scapes are changed (Wink of an Eye, The Menagarie pt. 2) yet the animation of Loskene (Tholian Web) is not updated.
However I will say that I see the irony that plagues this project: time and budget restrictions… basically the same thing that plagued TOS the first time around. It’s like the Wrigley Field curse. I too, hope that many of these effects will be revised before the DVD releases.
Oh for that fully remastered version of TOS!!!
I guess it won’t happen this time but I am in complete agreement with you Hawkeye
In additional to what you have mentioned I would also like to see the obvious sets for planet surfaces added to with new backdrops, like we saw in “Spocks Brain” last week (although the backdrop disappeared afterwards) I would also love to see the display monitors on the bridge actually display information that ties in with the episodes.
I love what CBS do its what they cant do or don’t do that disappoints. The tricorder update was great, I love these little touches
I just wish all the fine details in every episodes where worked on.
We hear a lot that they don’t have the original film any more only the final print with the old effects on them, making it difficult to replace certain effect like hand phasers but I am sure If this project had enough time and money thrown at it most of what we would like to see could be achieved.
I still hold out hope that this work is a work in progress and that the money men allow the guys at CBS continue to work on this project and get it looking as detailed as possible.
I think the animation on Loskene was just fine as-is. There was no need to change it merely for the sake of changing it.
#38:
I suppose it could be explained that the video between Tholian and Federation ships isn’t quite compatible, so you don’t get a clear picture of what they look like.
#34: “Why does every single planet have to be so earth-like? One of the cool things about TOS was the unique looking planets.”
I did a count. About a quarter (1/4) of all the planets that have been shown in the remastered episodes so far have looked Earth-like from orbit.
Yes, TOS had very unique-looking planets, but each one was used multiple times for different planets throughout the series.
I’ll just add my voice to the annoyance of another earth style looking planet.
Hi everyone!, hows it going?
Say!…tonight we are putting on the late Ron Soble’s facinating comments he made when he played Wyatt Earp… as you may recall……
in the FIRST to be produced for that wildly different but sometimes good as in THIS episode… 3rd season episode….he talks with himour and grace actualy about the goings on between the director and the other
“phantom bad guys”, who usually always played “bad guys” too!..this was all done for “Star Trek Special Edition” on the SCIFI Channel,.
…. broadcast n 1998 for “The Spectre of the Gun” Special Edition Remastered…the surreal “twilight-zonish” episode of Star Trek (TOS)!
I will post the link here for Anthony Pascale’s approval and know you will also enjoy it unless yer a trek-grinch.
cheers!
..”humour, it is such a difficult concept..” Kirstie Alley as the Real and one and only true Savik, in The Wrath of Khaaaaaaaan!!!!! ¬
:-O
#40:
I just said that only 1/4 of the planets so far look like Earth. That means that 3/4 don’t look like Earth.
IMHO, this is inarguably *the* most-embarrassing TOS episode ever made. Shatner and Nimoy are thoroughly humiliated by the various “acts” they’re “made” to perform. If I were to show TOS to a newbie, this would be the very last episode I’d screen – if at all.
However, the remastered VFX of the Enterprise are breathtaking, as is the new tricorder graphic. Great job as usual!
I guess I’m in the minority here again…
This is not my favorite episode of TOS by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.
I think Shatner and Nimoy did and admirable job with this script, and pulled off some very difficult acting sequences. They made it look believable, at least to me…
As far as the remastered version, I do like the new changes for the most part. I especially liked how the Enterprise looked as it was being “rocked” in orbit. In previously remastered episodes this same effect looked “cartoonish,” but here the CGI team nailed the effect and it looked great!
As others here have already mentioned, I think the planets are beginning to look the same in many of these episodes. I think the CBS/CGI team should become alot more creative in how these alien worlds look.
Overall this episode gets a grade of B for the original, and B+ for the remastered version.
Mike :o
Hi Anthony and all!
Heres the interview link with Ron Soble, aka “Wyatt Earrp” he sat for, regarding his exsperiences on the first episode filmed for the third season of TOS, The Spectre of The Gun, I just posted it on on “youtube” under a pen name that I have used for such things just this morning AND as promised!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9g10IRMl7yA
By the way… this episode was filmed when they still thought the show was going to air Monday nights at 7:30 on N.B.C Instead of the graveyard shift of friday nights at ten, thanks to “Rowan & Martin’s laugh In’s” demands.
To All Washington, D.C. viewers:
Channel 20 (WDCA, MNT or “My 20”) usually shows Star Trek at 2PM on Sundays. Check your local listings — I use MSN’s TV listings.
Actually (to Scott Gammans especially), Channel 20 showed “Spock’s Brain” on Saturday night at 7 and then turned around on Sunday at 2PM and showed “Plato’s Stepchildren”.
Next up, “Miri” at 2PM, on Sunday June 24. After that”The Omega Glory” at 11PM on Sunday, July 1 (especially for all you “Starship Exeter” fans — will they use NCC-1706 registry in the remaster?).
Nearly an episode every week… Star Trek heaven…
Great improvement over the original effects! I LOVE the shaking, the Enterprise and the planets look completely photoreal!
The new tircorder graphic is MUCH more convincing than the old pasted on effect
They didn’t update the FX enough,the little FX that they did do only pleases the old fans,it won’t make any new fans from the lack of FX.You wouldn’t be changing the stories by updating the FX,how does it change the story if Kirk actually fights a cool looking lizard creature instead of a guy in a horrible lizard costume,how does it change the story if the phasers actually look like a weapon of the future?