Season 3 Jewel gets a new polish
Star Trek Remastered is back from Christmas hiatus with “Day of the Dove,” one of the better episodes from TOS’ 3rd season…and not just because Chekov gets zapped by a Klingon agonizer. Jerome Bixby’s script deals with war, peace, racism and throws in some cool sword fights for good measure. In what becomes a Trek tradition, it also reveals additional dimensions to a recurring villain. Apparently Klingons love their wives and enjoy a good belly laugh as much as the next sentient species.
This CGI highlights of this episode deal with the Klingon D-7. In this case the CBS team went straight down the line and mostly did exact duplicate shots, but in the case of the destruction of the ship added some very nice details not seen in 1968. The Beta XII orbit shots were crisply done, but once again we get a very blue Earth-like planet from space even though it has a very un-Earth-like green sky…oh well. In the case of the digital transfer some of the colors in this episode (especially when around the alien light ball) seemed over saturated. But the Enterprise continues to look good (especially in the TNG-ish high warp shots) and all in all the remastered episode is a welcome addition to the catalog.
SFX Video
Screenshots
Remastered & Original
Assorted
I am Kang…have you seen Kodos?
cue the theme from “The Bodyguard”
Once again Spock doesn’t get the joke
A note on TOSR previews
Until the end of last year previews for each week’s remastered episode would be put up on StarTrek.com. Since the layoffs at StarTrek.com TrekMovie.com has been trying to find a way to bring those here every week. Hopefully something will be worked out in the near future.
Is Kang a great villian name, or what? :)
Thank you, Obi Wan Pascale. You have come through for us again.
Any news on the release dates of seasons 2 and 3 on DVD?
…Someone out there in reader-land has to work at a local TV station that’s airing TOS-R, and can cap these.
(Frack? First Post? Let’s hit “Say It!” and see…)
Good to see new caps again, and the Klingons. Looks like some nice shots there, looking forward to the vfx reel. Something I am curious about, semi-related to the pics above. I have the HD release of season 1 and while I haven’t watched thru them all I have picked thru the discs to see how they look. I was showing “The Squire of Gothos” to a friend and the picture looks great but when it switched to a viewscreen shot it seems theres grain/scratches? The same shot of the viewer above doesn’t seem to have them and I was wondering why this steady shot wasn’t easy to fix before or if they aren’t just using the same image and putting the new fx in?
Just curious if anyone else noticed/knew? Going to go see what ep is up next.
Loving it…one of my favortie season 3 episodes.
Can’t wait for the VFX remastered video; saves me from having to buy the ridiculously expensive remastered sets! Sorry, but $200 to see a couple minutes (or just seconds in some cases) of changed VFX is just fan gouging! I’m shocked so many people are BUYING these damn things! I love Star Trek very much, but c’mon! It’s the STORIES that keep me watching classic Trek after 40 yrs! With all due respect to the Okudas, who’ve obviously made this a labor of love (and the CGI work is great), but I will NOT pay that much money for ONE season of any damn TV show; least of all one I already spent a small fortune collecting in the first place! The fixes are well made, but unnecessary; “Day of the Dove” will always be the best Klingon episode of TOS; with/without a digital facelift! The entity in this episode reminds me of the bean counters at CBS Paramount; feeding off the emotions of fans longing for anything new for the Star Trek franchise. We buy Trek DVDs; and..they just…laugh, and make us buy them all over again! (To paraphrase Spock) “All buying must end, to weaken the hucksters before all of our money is gone!”
KTLA in Los Angeles broadcast was screwed up! Entire Act One was simply missing… after the opening credits and a commercial, it jumped right into an Act Two swordfight. What the hell happened…?
#4
Dude, I hear ya. I’m behind the re-master effort, but sometimes there’s little things that just seem like it could be easily fixed and they don’t. I’m not talking about things that *seem* easy, but about stuff that is. Using a stock shot of the viewscreen that is less scratchy and grainy is one of those things. Or at least make the new CGI match the grainyness of the older shot.
Also, if you VFX guys are reading this……how’s about when you do the very last shot of the Enterprise in “Turnabout Intruder” (the last original series ep) you do a reverse Bridge zoom from the one in “The Cage”. Sort of tie the very first and very last shots of the Enterprise together man, like a bookend or a really cool rug. ;)
Just give it some thought…and keep up the good work! Re-mastered “Court Martial” is the shit and is now one of my fave eps. You guys really did an outstanding job with that one!
#6-Dude, Amazon had them for, like, $130. I know it ‘aint chump change, but it ‘aint $200 neither. And I spend my money in the most ridiculous ways when it comes to Trek. Don’t ask how many different releases I have of TOS. Including the VHS tapes I recorded myself.
Lil’ help here.
I am in Pittsburgh and it looks like they have taken Trek Remastered off tonights (Sunday) schedule. What up? Yeah, its a pain to stay up till 2:30 AM on a Sunday night, but now the Guide says they’re putting the Tim McGraw show on instead???!!!
Must be the same WPXI sadist that decided to put ST TOS on at 2:30 am, weekdays, while I was in high school. My H.S QPA took a smack down because of that.
What up WPXI???!!!
The warp effects in this episode were AWESOME! One of them reminded me of the Defiant from “In a Mirror Darkly” at warp. This is the first episode where the warp speed feels really fast, ala TNG. Yes they kinda TNG’d the warp flybys…and it’s waaaaaaay better. I’m only pissed off that they haven’t been doing the warp flybys like that to begin with.
Just watched the episode. The opening shot of the Enterprise was glorious! So colorful, with that bright sun in the background. Excellently done!
The views of the Klingon Battlecruiser, on the other hand, were disappointing. You get a much better look at it in the original FX and it’s destruction was unspectacular. A missed opportunity there.
Some other random notes:
The remastering of this episode is especially sharp. Man, the colors really pop. Unfortunately, it also shows off just how rudimentary the Klingon make-up was. The prosthetic seams and the heavy use of grease paint are painfully evident.
Syndication cuts the scene where Scotty finds his ornately tassled sword in the armory. A real shame because that scene is a highlight and a wonderful character moment.
Why didn’t CBS-D fix the graphic of the Enterprise that the Klingons view in order to plan their attack on Engineering? It’s a stand alone close-up shot of the viewing screen, completely non-interactive. Updating it would have been a cinch. A more accurate representation of the ship would have been a cool treat there.
And one final observation; one I never noticed before. After the entity takes control of the Enterprise, Uhura states that most of the crew (almost 400 by her count) is trapped “on the lower decks.” I always assumed this meant the secondary, or engineering, hull. Yet the Klingons manage to get down there and take Main Engineering with little resistance. Where exactly were all those people trapped?
Of course I know that the exact layout of the ship was never truly specified during the show’s run. Locations of places like Main Engineering were never shown explicitly. Still, if Engineering is located within the secondary hull, it really begs the question of where the rest of the crew was being held.
Oh well, just some light-hearted fanboy rambling there, but if anyone can concoct a viable explanation, I’d love to hear it.
Man!!!!
WPXI pulled the ol switcharoo on me. It aired at 1 AM instead of 2:30 am.
UUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To Rura Pente with you damn WPXI programmers.
It would’nt hurt to advertise the show once an a while.
TrekMadeMeWonder (#10),
WPXI showed this episode starting at 1:05am, a bit earlier than usual. I caught it completely by accident while I was flipping channels.
In other words, they juked you out, dude. Pulled the old switcheroo on you. Actually, I’m hoping they keep at at 1:00am. Staying up until 2:00am (or later sometimes) to watch Trek was killing me.
12
The crew were on those bottom two decks in the secondary hull. They were told that there’d be cake there. Fans have speculated for decades as to whether or not the cake was actually there, or if there was nothing.
IMHO, the cake is a lie and they got screwed.
TrekMadeMeWonder (#14)
Now, that’s just weird, you and me using the same phrase like that, since we were obviously posting at the same time.
By the way, you spelled “switcheroo” wrong. I should know. I have an MA in English. ;-)
Buckaroohawk
I though Main engineeing was also part of the Saucer section (at the rear of the saucer in front of the Impulse engines.)
We all know they did not make ANY error in TOS ; )
Call me when the show aires next time unexpectedly.
I’ll do the same for you. Got’cha!
Lensman (#15),
That’s as good an explanation as any. I’ll accept it.
TMMW (#17)
If you go by Franz Joseph’s original blueprints, then yes, Engineering was in the aft part of the saucer, but that never made much sense to me.
As for the phone call, you got yourself a deal. No more missed Trek on our watch!
16. Buckaroohawk
By the way, you spelled “switcheroo” wrong. I should know. I have an MA in English.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA
Man that’s funny!
Sorry for abusing the board tonight Anthony. But this was a REAL trek emergency.
Definitely the best Klingon episode of TOS, no question.
The explosion of the Klingon ship was not that great. In fact, the original one might have been better.
Ok, now was this was just my dish reception, or the KLSR broadcast, or what, but for the first part of the episode, the color was very vibrant and the film looked great (the downside being noticing the Klingon makeup job that much more) but during McCoy’s rant on the bridge where he says “this is a fight to the death, we better start trying to win it” you can literally watched the color fade from vivid to drab. I even reviewed it on my DVR to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.
This is a serious question: Did this happen for anybody else? If so, what would be the cause? Would that mean they only restored about half the film, and then just peetered out? Or would it be a broadcast or signal issue with either my Dish Network, or the station?
Terrific, topical episode.
“I, too, felt a brief surge of racial bigotry – most distasteful.”
Without the preview, I completely forgot about this episode.
Thank you for the FX reel!
The fix I needed before turning in.
Gotta say I prefer the original on this one. What’s up CBS???
Where is engineering? It may have been completely coincidental and it may not have been, but if you notice, at the end of the episode (and here I’m referring to the original, un-remastered show), everyone is chumming it up and backslapping each other in the engine room, and as the creature leaves the ship, there’s a cut to the exterior and the creature seems to come out of the secondary hull, in more or less the same area that was established for engineering in the first two features. So, take it for whatever its worth – which, coming from me, is practically worthless, I’m sure. There was a great cutaway poster of the original Enterprise released a dozen or so years ago that managed to fit the engine room set fairly comfortably in the secondary hull, so I’m content to imagine that’s where it always belonged.
#11 – Agreed with the warp shot. Its getting better. The stars could have a bit more of a streak to them. It still has a bit of a Windows screensaver feel to it. But also, I think the sould of the ship flying by could be a bit more of a “voooom” than the “fffssshhh” they have now. I just think a bigger, ballsier, more powerful sound should be used. After all, this is a pretty dang big ship.
#12 – Agreed with you as well, Very nice orbital shot with the sun. Makes me pine for more things like suns, moons, other visible planets, perhaps an asteroid belt. Also agreed that there were unspectacular Klingon shots. I think an exterior decloaking rather than the viewer shot would’ve been better. The destruction/explosion was really not that good. Sorry CBS-D.
And to everyone: All cutaways I have seen have shown main eningeering to be about 1/3 of the way back from the deflector dish.
This shot remains superior:
to this:
#25 Kilingon ships in the TOS era did not have cloaking devices.
-cs™
True…
I was referring to #26
Geez marion, that Klingon D7 explosion was just awful. Looks like they really rushed the effects with this episode.
Great!
The ENTERPRISE looks good. I’m sorry that we’ll get a redesigned ship in the next movie.
@4
The reason why those stock shots of Sulu looking worried, etc… is because they were put through an optical printer at least more than once. This was to add the viewscreen special effects in back in the 60’s. Each time you run film through the printer it degrades slightly. Spielberg tried to avoid this in CE3K by getting the effects people to use much higher quality film for the effects to that when it was printed many times it degraded to roughly the same as the other footage.
When the TOS-R team came along, they are stuck with the grainy stock shots of Sulu, etc… but it is a reletively simple job to replace the viewscreen portion with the computer. That is why there is a mismatch.
If you can, look at Operation Anihilate! when Spock shoots the flying pizza. Its quite jarring how the footage suddenly goes from pin sharp on Nimoy to out of focus. This is because when the phaser was added those frames had to be printed more than once. I hope that explains it for you.
The only way I could see of tyring to fix that up is to do a Lucasfilm style frame by frame digital cleanup of those stock shots to sharpen them and remove grain, or to ask the Trek fans whoever owns those shots in the trims that Lincoln Enterprises sold of, to hand them back and then it could be cleaned up and possibly re-added without the look of something that has been through the optical printer many times.
While the CGI effects of the Enterprise are cool to see new views/angles, I still think the ship looks TOO gray and lifeless. Not enough contrast. Looks flat, even though they put colored reflections on her. She needs to have brighter grays (greenish cast) to match her original gray-green color.
Nacelles look great, texture mapping looks awesome, but her color and contrast are off.
Just my observation as an career artist.
#26
I agree–this shot from the TOS has always been a great shot. The slow movement of the Enterprise gives us the image of a large vessel and the lights are beautiful. The CGI look s like a cartoon.
What happened with the planet?! The lighting of the sphere with the huge highlight looks like done by a first time user of a 3d modeler @_@
I think those green cloud-like objects in the orbit shots are supposed to explain the green sky on the surface. You know, they could have replaced the solid green sky with whatever they wanted. I mean, it was halfway rotoscoped out as it was… But thats just picky.
As for the episode, I honestly haven’t watched any of the episodes in a while. Just didn’t seem interesting. This one I watched yesterday morning, and I think it was one of the best episodes I’ve seen. Action, drama, a message… it was great!
I do like the fact that to explain the green, cloudy background on the planet set, the blue, “Earth-like” planet in this episode got some freaky green clouds over the land masses. I mean, why’s the whole planet got to have a green atmosphere to explain green clouds? Why not just green clouds? Eh? Eh?
I miss the crazy 60’s pinks, purples and greens here and there, and I love their inclusion, even if it’s the clouds of the planet, and not the entire planet. In fact, it almost looks like those land masses are smogged with nuclear radiation or something …
Nice coat of polish here. I agree with # 26, the original shot of the Enterprise is better than the pencil-necked CG version, but all in all, everything in this episode looks pretty slick. Especially the high speeds, which do improve the kind of danger level and feel of the whole thing.
I hate to say it, but I like the warp effect. That being said, it doesn’t make much sense to include it now after all the episodes where it was not used.
The Klingon ship coming up from behind is not real smooth.
Overall, I still think they do a great job, but once in awhile they have trouble with ship movement.
What I find distressing, every time I see these episodes of TOS now, is how much they have been chopped down from their original run times. Dialogue cut–sometimes whole scenes deleted–all so we can have more commercials. I realize this has been going on for some time now, but it still irks me terribly, and I wonder if younger viewers are even aware of how they’re being cheated. The cut material often means we lose the sense of a scene, the drama–sometimes you even lose the trail of what’s going on.
I had watched the original Star Trek from the time of its original run, through it’s great syndication phase in the early – late 70s… and through that entire time it was never cut. Oddly enough, with the introduction of the movies, TOS seemed not to be on the air as much…. then I caught it again on local TV in the mid-80s, and the cutting had begun. I was appalled then and still am.
I hope anyone too young to have seen TOS episodes uncut would seek it out on DVD or VHS to see what they’ve been missing.
26
Agreed.
#26
quite true, the cgi is a pretty unflattering angle of the old girl.
i still say the original studio model appears to be a real object, as opposed to the cartooney, massless cgi.
even the imperfect lighting gives the old footage more realism.
the gang responsible for batllestar can manage to create realistic cgi, it’s beyond me that cbs can’t use a similar renderer, or take the proper time.
anyone know of any behind the scenes articles about the new cgi production? i doubt they’re using anything like the brazil renderer. it looks like the native render package in 3ds max.
“DAY OF THE DOVE”… ONE OF THE BEST FROM SEASON 3.
I think I can literally count on one hand the number of flat-out great episodes from Season Three…
-DAY OF THE DOVE
-SPECTRE OF THE GUN
-THE THOLIAN WEB
-THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT
-THE PARADISE SYNDROME
And the two “almost-great”…
-IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?
-FOR THE WORLD IS HOLLOW AND I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY AND I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE.
The CGI still looks bad, sad, sad… one last shot for something interesting with the Ultimate Computer…
Great job on the FX CBS! Can’t wait to see them in trrue HD. The warp effect, while not as blurringly, blistering fast as the original “swishing” across the screen, still looks pretty good. And please..NOT Next Geni-fying the warp effect with those ridiculous streaking stars. TOS has never remotley resembled TNG, I see no reason to start now.
I aslo wish they would once in awhile do a simple cloud overlay over those studio backgrounds. Just superimpose a few clouds here and there. How hard could that be? They stay high above the live action and as in real life, as the camera moves the image closest to the camera moves while the images in the distance (like clouds in the sky) remain static.
And someone complained about the price of the HD sets. THey must have not been around when ONE episode on VHS cost $19.99. Break it down and you’re paying somewhere around $5 for 1 hour of STar Trek, remastered, with 5.1 surround sound, looking better than it ever has before. Add to that new FX shots and on the flip side a standard DVD version that you can take withyou on the road that will play in any portable DVD player. I don’t care what other regular TV season sets are going for, when you get all that for less than it costs to buy a combo meal at Sonic, I’d say that’s money well spent.
Arguably the best of season three! Kang was one of the best adversaries! I loved it when he got an apporpriately heroic end on DS9.
#39:
I got hooked on Trek in syndication in the 70s, and the episodes in my viewing area were cut, usually quite poorly. Sometimes the teaser was eliminated, but often it was the first 5 minutes or last 5 minutes of an entire act. There was a lot of Trek I never saw until uncut episodes began appearing on video.
Today’s cuts for syndication are still annoying, but at least they’re done with some care–the flow of the show is not grossly interrupted, and a first time viewer today can at least follow the storyline without a lot of head scratching.
-32-
What are you talking about? They already do frame by frame scratch removal on the footage…yes, it would take an extra pass or two on those composited shots, but there is no reason…aside from time…that it could not have been done, especially if they’re using a stock shot of the view screen!
I got the hd set for Christmas…. anyone notice in Operation Annihilate (the fllying rubber vomit episode) when Spock goes to the planet to retrieve one… there is noticibly a hair on the bottom of the film frame that someone missed. Id they’re goinng frame by frame on the clean up, they are getting sloppy.
First of all, thanks for the pics and video Anthony.
#47
Actually I have the new HD DVD’s and they most certainly did NOT remove all the scratches and pops. I’d say they removed about 70 percent of them but that’s it.
Since most of the viewscreen shots are STOCK they should have found the ones in the best condition, cleaned them up and used those ones.
I would have suggested creating a nice clean CGI version of the
viewscreen but judging how poorly some of the CGI shots are matched up to the live action ones, I don’t think CBS is up to it ; )
Toonloon is right about the Lincoln Enterprises shots as well.
And yes the explosion was awful. 30 seconds with Particle Illusion (a program utilized by the effects team for Next Generation) would have fixed that up nicely.
I used Particle Illusion to blow up a casino in this video here….
http://www.livevideo.com/video/spockboy/B28686D77E714B278D04055B0D22A79E/batguy-vs-skull-pesci.aspx
: )
#26- I am in 100% agreement with you, though I really like the remastered efforts overall. It’s THAT SHOT that keeps bugging me. CBS Digital….come on, show off, match that shot he posted. The original effect is making you look bad!!!!