Scott Atwell Star Trek Discussion thread (Series and Films) (10 Viewers)

[Ockeghem]

Perhaps in a thousand years or so, the Organians will meet to discuss an agreement.

Nelson,And they will bring the Metrons with them of course.

 

[FanCollector]

Your quote has given me an unfortunate tendency to giggle. Correct.

 

[Nelson Au]

I'd love to stick around and see how it works out with your girlfriend....I had a really productive afternoon and evening yesterday working on a project and I had fun with several Star Trek episodes playing while I worked, Tomorrow is Yesterday was one of them and I couldn't believe I forgot about Signet VIV. It's like Tarsus IV. Later in the evening, I had the TV on MeTV and the Saturday night movie was Munster Go Home! I hadn't finished the DVD set yet. I was saving watching the movies till I finished the series. So it was my first time seeing the film, well, I spent the entire time staring at my computer, but I did look up at the TV occasionally. From what I saw and mainly heard, it was terrible! It was in spirit with the series, using the same gags. But it had a similar problem later remakes and reunion productions had. The introduction of color and taking them out of their universe, so to speak, just makes it not work. It doesn't feel right. It's like the Brady Bunch movies a little, or the Get Smart Again film. While I thought the Get Smart Again film worked well enough and was much superior to the Nude Bomb, it felt funny to see modern actors in the cast and not have Ed Platt in the cast, similarly with the newly cast Marylyn. it was a nice try. Well, back to work today and I hope I find another planet!

 

[Nelson Au]

I also wanted to add, regarding Signet VIV, like you've said Lee, is an example of an early days episode. I remember my earliest memories of seeing this episode and thinking at first, that's a funny thing, a planet of women. Then later I thought it was like the 1930's Sci Fi pulp magazine type idea with the sensationalized cover art of the female only planet and the male astronaut who discovers it. So while the series made a ton of effort to avoid all the science fiction cliches, a few still got in. I didn't look upon that example as a particularly bad one. It's made into a fun joke.

 

[FanCollector]

I like the fact that when cliches came into the series, they were often just jokes or mentions, rather than whole plots. Going to a female-dominated planet would probably have been dreadful (Spock's Brain is the closest we got), but the computer thing was funny. (Critics often cite the joke as an example of sexism in Star Trek. I suppose it is a fair point, although a lot of the humor comes at Kirk and Spock's expense, rather than the idea of what happens when women are in charge of things.)Sorry Munster, Go Home was a disappointment. Part of the problem is always taking something that was designed to be funny for 24 minutes and trying to sustain it in the same vein for 94 minutes. I remember when Everybody Loves Raymond was going off the air, CBS was eager for an evening-long finale special. But the executive producer insisted on a regular half-hour finale, saying that the show worked best the way it had always been done and a 90-minute or two-hour finale would be totally wrong. Sometimes that's the thing about reunion shows and feature-length versions of shows. It isn't economically feasible to do them at their original length, but they'd be better served that way.

 

[Ockeghem]

Lee and Nelson,

I remember reading years ago about a script for The Gamesters Of Pentathlon (or some such title), an episode that was going to feature a planet that was either dominated by females or by a race different than Caucasians. Do you remember hearing or reading about this? Anyway, I believe that the idea was scrapped (for whatever reasons) in favor of The Gamesters Of Triskelion. Years later we do eventually get the planet that is dominated by females in the TNG episode Angel One, and another first-season episode (Code Of Honor) that touches upon this possibility (albeit peripherally).

 

[Stan]

Was watching an old TOS episode at a friend's house last night, looked great. It was a cable episode from somebody, not DVD, but looked perfectly normal. Particularly none of that weird square outline as they show the Enterprise moving.

It was full wide screen, not that deformed, squished look or the tall/skinny look when things aren't done properly. But how did they get a TOS episode to look so good? Didn't look cropped in anyway, no pan/scan stuff if people were to far apart. It looked like a perfectly normal widescreen show, but wasn't TOS filmed in the old 4:3 ratio?

Maybe asked and answered many times, but it was a new experience for me.

 

[Nelson Au]

Holy Cow! There's a Beverly Hillbillies episode airing now with Lt. Kevin Riley guest starring, and I saw Mr. Hengist on an episode of Bewitched earlier. I think that was one of Bruce Hyde's early acting gigs, looked it up on IMDB and it was the same year as TOS season 1.

Scott, I can't say I ever read any story ideas like that for TOS! But I agree, Angel One must have been based on that age old idea of a planet dominated by women. That was an awful episode! I saw it recently on the new blu-rays.

Stan, what you are probably seeing is a remastered episode of Star Trek from the newly redone work from 2006 with CGI effects. What I understand is that for the overseas markets, like Japan, the episodes where pillarboxed as the series is 4:3. I read that the japanese market is all widescreen at the time and they preferred any material be zoomed and the tops and bottoms of the images be cropped.

The blu-rays maintain the original 4:3 aspect ratio fortunately.

 

[GregK]

Regarding classic Trek's aspect ratio and the remastered episodes- This may have mentioned already, but there is a third variant available on some of the Netflix S3 episodes here in the States. It obviously is an accident, but a few of these episodes have the new special effects shots in full 16x9, along with the (now all CGI) opening credits. The original footage is still 4x3. Surprisingly, the aspect ratio shifts at least for me are essentially seamless. So for anyone with Netflix, check out "Day of the Dove" or "All of our Yesterdays". Again, only a few of the Netflix TOS S3 episodes (six at the most) are formatted this way, but it makes for an interesting watch.

 

[FanCollector]

Super interesting stuff on the aspect ratio. I didn't know about the Netflix thing or the Japanese market requirement. The only thing I can add is that I had a HDTV that had an additional aspect ratio option that filled the screen without stretching the picture. It was essentially "panning and scanning" on its own. When there was a lot of camera motion, you could tell it was altering the image, but otherwise you wouldn't know unless you compared it to the correct image. Stan, did you watch anything else on your friend's TV that was in widescreen but shouldn't have been?

 

[FanCollector]

Scott, I am not aware of a female-dominated planet story that was planned, apart from Spock's Brain (which is not to say that it wasn't the case), but I do know that Gene Coon was very interested in doing a story that showed a planet where white people were subjugated. Both David Gerrold and DeForest Kelley have referred to the idea; Kelley went further by describing a plot wherein McCoy and Uhura would experience the social order there, creating an ironic counterpoint to the segregation going on in many Southern states at the time. They said that Coon kept trying to work it out, but could never get the story to the point where either he was satisfied with it or the network would accept it. My guess (and it's nothing more) is that Let That Be Your Last Battlefield may have been his last, much-simplified try at the idea, as Coon is credited with the story for that episode.

 

[Stan]

Super interesting stuff on the aspect ratio. I didn't know about the Netflix thing or the Japanese market requirement. The only thing I can add is that I had a HDTV that had an additional aspect ratio option that filled the screen without stretching the picture. It was essentially "panning and scanning" on its own. When there was a lot of camera motion, you could tell it was altering the image, but otherwise you wouldn't know unless you compared it to the correct image. Stan, did you watch anything else on your friend's TV that was in widescreen but shouldn't have been?

Some commercials looked fine, others had the short, wide look as they formatted it to widescreen, very obvious. Didn't notice anything pillarboxed. TV must have a generic setting to fill the screen when possible, or do the widescreen, squished and chubby look rather than pillarbox.

I'm still on a 15 year old 36" Toshiba, every time I try to replace it, have a bunch of medical expenses come up so it's still on hold. Luckily many channels letterbox now, so it's not bad.

I'll have to search out some TOS episodes to see you they look on a true 4:3 television.

Kind of like GregK above, I found the pan/scan and other movements essentially unnoticeable. Nobody's heads were chopped off, everything looked perfectly normal, Will be interesting to compare it to the original 4:3 ratio.

Watched a DVD that looked perfectly normal.

 

[Nelson Au]

You may have seen an episode where the pillarboxing wasn't generating any issues. I remembered the 2007 article on Trekmovie that mentions that in Japan, that market was the first to get Remastered Star Trek TOS and in widescreen. it was done with cropping of the image above and below the image area. I have some of the old film clips that Lincoln Enterprises used to sell and in looking at the exact shot on DVD before remastering, you can still see image information to the left and right before it was originally cropped for 4:3 broadcast. so there is a little room to widen the image and crop less above and below. If that is indeed what they did.

For the remastering, they've recropped the 4:3 image for some reason and are showing more then the original 4:3 image showed as you can see in Errand of Mercy. On a wide shot of the bridge as the ship is attacked by the Klingons, you can see the wood edge of the bridge floor at Spock's station. In Elaan of Troyius, you can see a lighting rig to the upper right during a bridge scene.

Here's a screen shot of what Star Trek looks like in 16:9 that Trekmovie published in 2007. Scotty's head is cut off, this shot is from Balance of Terror.

There is another article on Trekmovie that says any widescreen shots of the effects that are on Netflix are mistakes and were supposed to be fixed. I guess they haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[Ockeghem]

"... but I do know that Gene Coon was very interested in doing a story that showed a planet where white people were subjugated."

Lee,Yes, that's exactly what I recall having read many years ago. I may have mixed up the script idea you speak of with a title that never came to be (e.g., The Gamesters Of Pentathlon, Joanna, Paleface, etc.).

 

[Stan]

You may have seen an episode where the pillarboxing wasn't generating any issues. I remembered the 2007 article on Trekmovie that mentions that in Japan, that market was the first to get Remastered Star Trek TOS and in widescreen. it was done with cropping of the image above and below the image area. I have some of the old film clips that Lincoln Enterprises used to sell and in looking at the exact shot on DVD before remastering, you can still see image information to the left and right before it was originally cropped for 4:3 broadcast. so there is a little room to widen the image and crop less above and below. If that is indeed what they did.

For the remastering, they've recropped the 4:3 image for some reason and are showing more then the original 4:3 image showed as you can see in Errand of Mercy. On a wide shot of the bridge as the ship is attacked by the Klingons, you can see the wood edge of the bridge floor at Spock's station. In Elaan of Troyius, you can see a lighting rig to the upper right during a bridge scene.

Here's a screen shot of what Star Trek looks like in 16:9 that Trekmovie published in 2007. Scotty's head is cut off, this shot is from Balance of Terror.

tosrusavjap1w.jpg

There is another article on Trekmovie that says any widescreen shots of the effects that are on Netflix are mistakes and were supposed to be fixed. I guess they haven't gotten around to it yet.

Very obvious that it looks like they just did a zoom-in and cropped the picture. A little off the sides, and very noticeable they chopped off Scotty's head. I have no idea what episode I watched, but they did a really good job. Probably a little side cropping, but it wasn't noticeable. Probably some top/bottom cropping also, but nothing as glaring as the shot with Scotty.

 

[Nelson Au]

The creation lithographs from Centauri VII?Of course a Sten from Marcus II, a very popular system in the third season.

 

[FanCollector]

Talk me through them. We know from Metamorphosis that the Federation is less than 150 years old. (A bold interpretation of Whom Gods Destroy actually places it at about 15 years old, but I'm not sure I subscribe to that.) Given Flint's unique past, I don't know that we can be sure those are Federation planets. Canopus in Where No Man Has Gone Before is in a similar situation. I like the idea--just fill in the step I am missing.

 

[Nelson Au]

Lee, I'm afraid I am likely going to fail to convince anyone that the Centauri VII lithographs could be verifiably from a Federation planet! It's a fair point that we don't know how old those lithos are in Flint's bookcase that impresses McCoy so much. The Gutenberg Bible was printed in the 1450's.

If Flint was the artist to create the lithos on Centauri, then he'd have to be around at the time mankind spread out into space. But it's not clear if he left Earth before or after the Federation was established. Or if Centauri was a Federation planet. But if Centauri was a Federation planet, and the lithos were not by Flint, why could they not have been done by someone else? But I suppose Flint was likely Gutenberg as he was Braums and DaVinci and everything in that house was created by Flint in his earlier life.

I'm happy to accept that Centuari cannot be positively confirmed as a Federation planet. I'll keep trying!

 

[Ockeghem]

I watched a little Webb last night. It had been quite some time since I had seen that episode of TOS. As usual, it had some awesome music in it and a wonderful script.

 

[FanCollector]

I also think the use of music in there is great. A lot from Conscience of the King and The Enemy Within, as well as some of that lesser-used first season library stuff.