TOS Remastered




TOS-R HD-DVD To Preview At Comic Con – Includes New 60’s Behind Scenes Footage

Included on the new Comic-Con schedule for later this month is a panel just for Star Trek Remastered on HD DVD. The schedule does not list any of the TOS-R producers, and TrekMovie.com has confirmed that the Okudas and Dave Rossi cannot make it. However the panel does include Billy Blackburn [pictured] who appeared in 61 TOS episodes without any lines (as  Mr. Hadley). Why? Because Blackburn carried a camera and got a lot of great shots around the TOS set. Some of this footage was seen in the ITV "After They Were Famous" episode on Trek (available on YouTube). The panel info for the TOS-R DVD says the disks will contain this "never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes 8mm footage."





Image From Charlie X Remastered

StarTrek.com have put up a new image from next weekend’s "Charlie X." It shows a new design for the freighter USS Antares which was never shown in the original. CBS-D based the design on the USS Woden (although it looks a lot like a TAS cargo drone) This is another example of what is great about the Remastered project – putting a ship into the establishing shot that should have been there in the first place but wasn’t due to time and/or budget issues.


Review – “The Omega Glory” Remastered

Once again it befalls me to offer the defense of a not-very-well-thought-of episode of original Trek. When most people bring up “The Omega Glory,” it’s to do their impression of William Shatner’s inimitable (well, actually, VERY imitatable) delivery of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution at the episode’s infamous climax: “WE…THE PEOPLE…of the unitedstates…do ORDAIN and ESTABLISH this Constitution–!!” It’s a groaner of an ending that quantifies Gene Roddenberry’s somewhat flat-footed idea of a rampant biological war between parties on an alien planet that effectively throws them into the Stone Age. That in itself isn’t bad (if having already been done in a sense in episodes like “Miri”), but Roddenberry (who was supposedly inspired to write this episode after viewing the actual Constitution on a trip to Washington D.C.) turns “The Omega Glory” into a Cold War parable that’s strangely racist, with warring “Yankees” and “Commies” descended from yet another culture apparently identical to ours right down to language both spoken and written.



TOS-R Is Turning Japanese

The digitally remastered Star Trek The Original Series is about to take its first trip overseas. Starting July 21st TOS-R will be airing on the satellite channel BS2 (part of Japanese Broadcasting Corp. – NHK). The show will be using the same airing order used for USA syndication.   The announcement (translated from the Japanese) on the NHK site describes the show:






Rossi Talks Upcoming TOS-R Episodes

In the latest issue of Star Trek Magazine (out now in the UK and elsewhere, in the US next week) TOS-R producer Dave Rossi talks about progress on the project. He says that the team are ‘really proud’ of the work and jokes that ‘the mini skirts look really good’ in HD. Rossi acknowledged that the biggest challenge is time, but noted that now that they have a ‘cache’ of 90 new shots of the Enterprise they can re-use (more than the 17 TOS used), they can focus on episode specific shots. Regarding those he talked about a number of episodes (some of which have already aired), but also gave some hints at what we can expect in four unaired episodes…detail below.


Review – “Plato’s Stepchildren” Remastered

It’s one thing for television producers to torture their fictional characters, but it’s quite another when they torture their hapless viewers. Unfortunately, that’s the result of this pointless, turgid, plodding episode. “Plato’s Stepchildren” is among the “bitter dregs” of the third season, if not the entire series. Here’s the plot: The intrepid Enterprise crew responds to a distress call from a small society of aliens with psycho-kinetic powers who torture Kirk and Spock to force McCoy to make a permanent house call. The crew discovers the chemical source of the aliens’ power, juices themselves up with a super high dose, and beats them at their own game. The end.










Review of “Bread and Circuses” Remastered

“Exactly in some ways, different in others.” So describes the similarities to Earth of planet 892-IV (also known as Maga Roma). The Enterprise has found a 20th Century Roman Empire and Hodkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development strikes again. “Bread and Circuses” has it all: a high concept plot, richly drawn characters, humor, suspense, action, a blonde bombshell with a name ending in the requisite letter “a,” and great acting. It is also notable for plumbing the depths of the Spock-McCoy relationship and dealing directly with religion, which makes it unique among TOS episodes. Now it is new and improved and remastered…with double the moon goodness. The episode also has enough plot holes to swallow a dozen starships, but more on that later.




Review “Shore Leave” Remastered

From the opening moment of “Shore Leave” you can tell this will be a different type of Star Trek episode. Kirk’s mistaking a backrub from the lovely Yeoman Barrows to be one from Mr. Spock shows the whimsical and subtlety sexually charged nature of one of the more fun outings for the Enterprise’s crew. Down scouting out a rest stop Sulu exclaims “no animals, no people, no worries,” seemingly shocked to find a planet that isn’t overrun with gangsters, Indians, or Nazis. What they have found is an idyllic planet full of misadventures that looks ever better now fully remastered in living color. It is a good thing that Kirk ignored McCoy’s report of spotting a large white rabbit, not a Florida White Rabbit, a human-sized one (with Alice of Wonderland trailing) or we would never get to visit this “Shore Leave” Planet.