Scott Atwell Star Trek Discussion thread (Series and Films) (5 Viewers)

[Nelson Au]

Guys,

I've fallen behind with keeping up with the latest Star Trek news. The guys over at trekcore are doing what I think a better job then trekmovie with news outside of the newer movies.

They've been doing a fantastic job following the restoration work on the original 11 foot filming model of the Enterprise. The latest videos from last month are very encouraging. I was nervous at first as what their plans were as they seemed more concerned with preservation then restoration. I can see from one of the videos what the preservation efforts involved and it makes perfect sense they started there from the deterioration of the model.

Check out this first video and if you're interested there's more at their site.



And this video is great to hear about the photos that the Smithsonian was able to acquire for reference for what the model looked like after the series ended. I hope the photos become available for public viewing.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Makes me wonder about the preservation of digital starships such as the Enterprise-E and Voyager. When Disney went back to their original Toy Story digital assets to make the 3-D version, a rude surprise awaited them.

 

[Nelson Au]

Looks like the newly restored TOS 11 foot Enterprise filming model has made its way back to the Smithsonian in Washington. I was surprised to see they are showing it. There was no preview or info on how the paint job was restored. I just knew they were shooting to get the model to appear as it last did in 1967-1968 when it was last filmed for effects footage. From what I can see in the video from Trekcore, it looks like they managed to pull it off. I'm cautiously optimistic it's looking really good! Hope that better images show soon.

http://trekcore.com/blog/2016/06/smithsonian-video-warp-power-online/

 

[Nelson Au]

Here is a still I took from
Boyd Crompton's Trekworks Facebook page. She looks really great!

Some purists may question a few things and nitpick it.

An official Smithsonian photo;

 

[Nelson Au]

Sorry, hard to hide my enthusiasm for the restoration of the Enterprise. .

Here's a link to the Smithsonian blog with photos of the paint work as it was in progress. Would have loved to have been there.

http://blog.nasm.si.edu/behind-the-scenes/enterprise-model-on-display/

 

[FanCollector]

I think it looks beautiful. They had a lot of choices to make regarding questions of preservation and authenticity, and I think they did an excellent job. You may be right about some minor nitpicking, but I really believe this restoration will make people very happy. I think the museum board believes it also, which is why they are placing it so prominently this time.

The ship is a piece of real history, and now it's right at home.

 

[ChromeJob]

Holy warp cores, it's back!! I concur, it looks great again (couldn't bear to go see the last "restoration"). Can't imagine what to nitpick about, she looks marvelous. And it's neat that they are firing up the lights at special times during the day. Make it a visitor's "event."

 

[bmasters9]

So I while I am glad to see the Trek franchise not being colossally wasted anymore, I am very much content to watch my BDs of TOS and TNG. I own the ST I love. At least that won't change.

And I'm content with seeing the full-series condensed release of original-recipe NBC Trek of the 60s, and to a lesser extent, Voyager on occasion (I have all the releases of that as well). The other Treks (TNG, DS9, and Enterprise)-- I dislike admitting it, but I didn't really care for any of those.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Before the restoration, only the starboard side of the ship had any detail. I saw this myself when she used to hang in the gift shop. Did they finish both sides? Sure looks like it.

 

[B-ROLL]

Before the restoration, only the starboard side of the ship had any detail.

That's because the other side is where they mounted it to film the model (as I'm sure you knew )

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Filmed in space it was! In space!

 

[Nelson Au]

The Enterprise was never finished on the port side. From day one, they only finished the Starboard side and filmed it that way. There is one shot you see the port board side in Mirror Mirror and its clearly from the pilot and what they did was apply the decals for NCC-1701 on the engines as reversed decals. Then they just flip the film negative and you have a port side.

The port side has all the wiring exposed from basically a hack job. Not to denigrate the model makers, they were asked after the model was built and filmed for The Cage, to go back and add lights for the production of the series. Thats not easy and they were likely under a great time constraint as usual. The model is made of wood and plastic. the secondary hull was made like a wine barrel of wood strips glued and the cigar shape is sculpted. The dorsal neck is solid too I believe, so it must have been a chore to cut the windows out and get lights behind them.

If you can find the video that were taken at the new Boeing Milestones of Flight exhibit that has it's grand opening today, you can see the Enterprise in its new display and you can see the port side is still unfinished. I'm glad that even back in 1974, the museum had the wisdom to never touch the top of the saucer section so it retains its original finish and colors. What I was surprised by in reading about the restoration is they managed to sand off enough of the layers of restoration paint jobs from the 1990's and earlier, they got down to the original color. Though the project advisor Gary Kerr already knew what the color was, it must have been a great find. And so they are leaving the port as it was, unfinished.

To give you an idea of the miracle they had on this restoration, the museum sent out a call to all private collectors and so forth for any good color photos of the model at the time the series was in production or after prior to 1974 when the museum took the model. The most famous photo of the model was from 1972 at the West Valley College where it was on loan to the college for Space Week there. This is where an individual actually there who had taken good quality color photos of the model and the museum was able to get those photos. Color Ektachrome slides I believe. So they had excellent color reference and how the paint job looked on the model, you can see all the streaks they painted on the hull. This is a huge find and a Holy Grail for the museum and the modeling community who are all trying to create accurate replicas.

Here's one of the photos, never seen in public ever before:

After studying this image, you can see the restoration is extremely accurate and I take back what I said earlier. I think the nitpickers have little to pick at. The other new finding are the warp nacelles, the domes are red tinted! (It's tilted back because the stand the ship is mounted to is bent backwards. Not sure how that happened.)

And here's another official Smithsonian shot. I've resized the images from their high resolution to this smaller forum friendly size:

It doesn't get any better then this! I know that the last restoration from the 1990's was met with so much hate. Myself included. You gotta feel for the guy, Ed Miarecki. He's a professional model maker. He's no hack, I've seen his other work. I believe him when he said he did his best at the time when there was very little reference photos and materials like we have today of what the model looked like. He did go way overboard though. It was lucky Gary Kerr was invited to visit and to photograph and measure the model while it was disassembled in the 1990 restoration. But its terrific the staff at the Smithsonian did the right thing and go beyond preserving the model (which was falling apart) and actually put the effort into restoring it once the model was stabilized and solid again. And it was great that ILM model makers who were involved in past Star Trek films were invited to perform the actual detailing paint job after the Smithsonian staff had stabilized the model and studied the paint colors.

And one more time:

 

[Nelson Au]

Here how the model is displayed and the mount is still in the original location underneath, not the port side.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

 

[Nelson Au]

Thank you, I didn't find the right video.

 

[Carabimero]

And I'm content with seeing the full-series condensed release of original-recipe NBC Trek of the 60s, and to a lesser extent, Voyager on occasion (I have all the releases of that as well). The other Treks (TNG, DS9, and Enterprise)-- I dislike admitting it, but I didn't really care for any of those.

I didn't care for ENTERPRISE all that much either but I watched the new HD transfers of the entire series and have to say I have mellowed a bit in the last decade. By and large, I actually enjoyed many of the episodes. I do still believe the chemistry between the cast was generally weak, and the writing sometimes weaker, but I liked it much more than I did night of original broadcast.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I didn't care for ENTERPRISE all that much either but I watched the new HD transfers of the entire series and have to say I have mellowed a bit in the last decade. By and large, I actually enjoyed many of the episodes. I do still believe the chemistry between the cast was generally weak, and the writing sometimes weaker, but I liked it much more than I did night of original broadcast.

I had a similar reaction - I tried watching when it first premiered, and after a couple episodes, I had concluded (with regret) that this show was not for me. I revisited it in 2013 and enjoyed a lot of what the series had to offer. At its best, it captured something unique about exploring and problem solving that we hadn't seen a lot of in recent Trek, but at its worse, it had all of the worst qualities of the later series amplified. I also had some issues with some of the things they did that didn't feel right in a "prequel" - the major attack on Earth at the end of Season 2 would have been mentioned in other Trek, and the invention of that storyline didn't seem to fit in the same shared past with the other shows. Some things in the fourth season seemed too much of a stretch from what we knew of certain characters or civilizations. But that's one of the difficulties of doing prequels.

 

[Nelson Au]

I realize that I'm probably one of very few members here whose really excited that the original filming model of the TOS Enterprise has finally gotten the restoration and preservation efforts completed. So excuse my enthusiasm. ABC news did a very nice piece on the story as did Popular Mechanics, so the effort is getting a lot of good coverage.

I'm beginning to see some fans who were able to attend the grand opening of the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall last night at the Smithsonian. So it was the first time the public could go and see all the great artifacts of flight and space travel on display. Including the Enterprise. It was nice to see that the glass display case is not surrounded by the fencing the earlier photos showed. So you can walk right up to it and get your camera close for some good shots of the model. Doug Drexler and Mike and Denice Okuda were at the event.

Looking at the photos appearing on model making forums show how nice the restoration turned out. You can still see it's a 52 year old model in some places, but overall, it was surprised how well they did the job. It's hard to tell yet, but the finish looks so nice, I wondered if the cracking paint on the top of the saucer was sealed or not.

The museum curator Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp and Malcolm Collum, conservator at the museum, and ILM's Bill George, John Goodson and Gary Kerr and the many others on the team really did a fantastic job!

 

[Osato]

I had a similar reaction - I tried watching when it first premiered, and after a couple episodes, I had concluded (with regret) that this show was not for me. I revisited it in 2013 and enjoyed a lot of what the series had to offer. At its best, it captured something unique about exploring and problem solving that we hadn't seen a lot of in recent Trek, but at its worse, it had all of the worst qualities of the later series amplified. I also had some issues with some of the things they did that didn't feel right in a "prequel" - the major attack on Earth at the end of Season 2 would have been mentioned in other Trek, and the invention of that storyline didn't seem to fit in the same shared past with the other shows. Some things in the fourth season seemed too much of a stretch from what we knew of certain characters or civilizations. But that's one of the difficulties of doing prequels.

I thought the show was ok but lacking.
I did try to watch them again a few summers ago online.
If they didn't have them on Netflix and prime I would've picked up the blu Ray set by now.
I do plan on watching some of them...eventually.
The set has gone on and off my wish list several times.

 

[Nelson Au]

As many of you know, the fan made films were lee early on by James Cawley efforts making Star Trek Continues.

A friend passed onto me a link to his latest venture, the standing sets he and his crew built of the TOS sets are probably some of the finest replicas, if not the best. So he's making them available for fans to tour!

http://startrektour.com/

What surprised me is that his venture is officially a licensed with CBS now. I hadn't kept up with his films.