Re: Star Trek TOS Special Edition Starts Sept 16th.
Here's my review, and I took notes during the broadcast.
The new titles and title music were okay. Not a bad effort at recreating it and they did it with the correct first season musical arrangement. I did not like the new whoosh sound effect as the Enterprise flies by. Shatner's "Space, The final frontier.." monologue had an echo effect added, I didn't like it, too in your face. But of course we've heard the original for 40 years.
I'm glad they left the viewscreen graphics alone on the Enterprise view screen where Spock puts up the map of the Neutral Zone and the line of Outposts.
The live action shots did have a nice solid and dense color saturation. The red uniforms look very dark now, I like it.
On the CGI, some shots do look quite fake and flat. Some of the lighting on the Enterprise is too severe. It looks like CGI. The Romulan Bird of Prey has some well done shots with lighting that matches the original. But I thought the fade out of the Cloaking Device looked like a cheap video effect of a lower level CGI software package.
The Romulan plasma weapon also looked fake. The original weapon effect looked realer and had some imaginative effort in creating it.
The comet actually looked very nice.
Some of the Enterprise fly-bys looked as whacked as the original, in terms of how it looks far away and alters perspective as it grows nearer. Odd that happened as they said they'd remove that and make it's motion look truer. I did like how the Enterprise now appears to drift as it lies motionless.
I liked the newer shots showing high POV of Romulan BoP and Enterprise. The phaser shots look good too.
On our broadcasts here in the SF Bay Area, the image looked dark and as mentioned above, some shots seemed to be very high contrast during the last reel. I was viewing this on a plasma HDTV and an OTA signal. However, I am watching a recording of it now on my Macintosh with a Cinema Display and the picture looks a bit brighter. Probably my screen adjustments, I hope.
I liked the end credits were left alone. And liked the vintage Desilu logo.
Regarding the editing done, I hate how they now edit small snippits through out. Scenes were there is time between dialogue is trimmed and the show looks cut up, disjointed. This is why I don't like to watch syndicated Star Trek. Bring on the DVD's.
Overall, a mixed bag. I wonder if the HD version will look better. While my digital reception was perfect, it did look a bit dark and a tad soft. I attribute that to some shots were done soft and some to the SD nature of the broadcast.
