Star Trek TOS Season 3- Remastered coming in November (1 Viewer)

[Nelson Au]

Thought I'd post this information for those interested. Star Trek Remastered Season 3 is announced for release on November 18th, 2008. And as some know, Season 2 will be out on August 5th, 2008

The news can be read here: Star Trek DVD news: Announcement for Star Trek - Season 3: Remastered DVD Edition | TVShowsOnDVD.com

I know this SD release strategy is not popular for some HTF members and Trek fans because the first season was out on HD-DVD and then not continued on Blu Ray.

Wished I knew what the plans for the BD release is. Since Star Trek 2009 is released in theaters in May 2009, we know the TOS Remastered sets are not out to coincide with the film. Maybe a BD release is set for the Holidays in 2009 at the time the JJ Abrams film is out on DVD/BD. Well see I guess.

I'll be one of the few to buy this set and the S2 set.

Nelson

 

[Carabimero]

I'm gonna wait on these for a long time...having spent several thousand dollars on nearly 30 seasons of Trek, I don't mind picking them up used somewhere far down the line.

While some of the episodes are truly wonderful (Doomsday Machine, Amok Time), others are uneven at best. Still, given the amount of work done, and the budget, I think they did a tremendous job updating the set without changing any of the live action. Really, really well done.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I'm surprised they're getting them out so soon. I'd also be very surprised if these didn't start coming to blu next year, along with at least some of the movies.

 

[Carabimero]

Did I mention I hate the re-mastered grey Enterprise? According to the blueprints, the Enterprise is "ceramic white," so where these digital guys get off making it grey is beyond me. Watch unaltered TOS episodes--it's white, just like the original model kit was white. It got grey in the movies; it was NEVER grey in the TV series.

Oh--and did I mention I hate the grey Enterprise?

 

[Jay Pennington]

The enterprise shooting models were not ever white. They were a greenish grey.

CultTVman: Model Articles > What Color Is The Classic Enterprise? by Paul Newitt

 

[RickER]

Yep, he is right. Just look at some stock shots made for the 3rd season to see...its grey. It just depended on how much light they threw at the model, and how the film was processed.

And, i am waiting for it to show up on Blu-ray before i buy again.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

It was white in the movies though, ironically.

 

[Carabimero]

Let me put it to you this way then--if it looks white on the film, it's white. In showbiz things are never as they are--they are as they appear. The Enterprise appears white in TOS so it is white. Period. That's the way it is. To say "Oh well the model was really greyish green." Okay. Maybe it is. But it's white in the episodes.

And as a side note, the first remastered episodes...the Enterprise appeared white...I still have copies of them. Why? Because they were trying to match how it actually looked. It was only after some radical perfectionist said, "Hey, even though it never actually appears greyish green...let's make it that way" that they went back and "corrected" the previous shows.

Given that logic, they should've tried to more accurately render the true color of sawdust during transport...

 

[Jason_V]

Yup. With the caveat I'd really REALLY like the original versions in the same package.....

 

[Nelson Au]

One more thing on the color issue of the Enterprise. True, there are two camps out there in the Trek modelling community. There's the ones who build it and paint as they recall seeing it on TV. I remember in the 70's a lot of models painted a light blue-ish grey because it looks that way on TV from the bluescreen color washing onto the model. And then there are the purists who want to capture the model as built. With a wealth of recent images of the model before it was restored, you can see the colors.

Here's an image, for fun, of the Enterprise when it was on display at a Southern California college for a space related event back in 1972, IIRC. And below it is a screen capture from Balance of Terror Remastered, the first episode they remastered with a brand new Enterprise CGI model.

So with respects to the IDIC page and William McCullars where I nicked his image and to Carabimero, I present the image for the interests of the color discussion.

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/4/4f/htf_imgcache_33311.jpeg] [/url]

This is a bit off-topic, but for a few posts, it's a fun little side topic.

 

[Jay Pennington]

David, I will agree with you that the model in person did not look the same as it did on film. However, I would disagree that it ever looked white on screen. Not unless your TV contrast is set way too high or something. In the processing, the green tinge was lost, and, if anything, it got MORE grey, with some blue thrown in. But not white.

Here's something I did for fun when I got my Master Replicas model. I took some photos against a green screen, some with lights on, some with them off:


And then I created this composite, adding grain and dirt and a blue shift, all over a starfield from the opening credits:


With this simulated "optical printer processing", it really became the Enterprise to my eye.

Yeah, I'm a geek.

 

[Nelson Au]

Cool Jay! Before I read your post, I thought the image was a real CGI image that Darren Dochterman did for his version of The Doomsday Machine. Great job!

I came this close to buying the MR Enterprise.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Actually most people perceived the Enterprise as being a light blue on TV. Because of this, when they created the Enterprise-D for TNG they actually painted it a duck egg blue to match. Ironically, that model was always color corrected to appear grey on TV.

At any rate, it's not white, never has been, never will be.

 

[Carabimero]

The model I bought and built as a kid was white; the first remastered episodes, as I said, had a white-looking Enterprise. So yes, it has been white, and in my heart, at least, it always will be.

And, I would further argue, the remastered Enterprise doesn't look, in color or texture, like the Enterprise in TOS, whether or not it's technically corect, to me it looks wrong.

 

[Curtis F]

I gotta say I've never seen it as white, nor have I ever even thought of it as white. It's always been grey to me.

 

[Carabimero]

I wish I could say the seame; it would be easier to watch R-TOS.

Someone one another site compared a still pic of the ENT from TOS and the same still from the same episode of R-TOS and it was night and day in terms of the look of the ENT hull.

I'll see if I can find that site if the post hasn't dropped off into the abyss yet.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Well the overall look of the hull isn't made exactingly, they've tried to make it look more metallic and realistic, while still staying true to the original. Here are some comparisons I put together quickly from Trekcore.com. They're just random examples and not done to match (they don't really "match" shots for the remastered scenes).

The first two columns are original shots, and the last is remastered. I wouldn't call any of them "white," and I put a great example at the bottom from "Doomsday Machine," featuring the ERTL model in the background that is very much "white." I think you can clearly see the difference.

Overall I think the CGI ship is a fine match, I think it would be silly for them to alter the ship based on "bluescreen spill-over" or the faults of the FX technology at the time.

 

[Nelson Au]

Zack beat me to it!

I think it's fair to think the Enterprise can be interpreted white. The ship was painted grey, but the bright stage lights washed away all the detail and weathering and made it look white, or so light, that the mind registers white.

Not to gang up on Dave, here is a scene specific comparison from Space Seed. I think this is one of the finer examples of the Remastering team efforts.

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/6/60/htf_imgcache_33317.jpeg] [/url]

One more, this is one of the stock shots often used that the brain can interprete as white:
[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/0/0c/htf_imgcache_33318.jpeg] [/url]

 

[Carabimero]

The picture Nelson just added really helps to make my point. The hull color/reflection/light quality--however you want to explain it--isn't even close.

I guess what upset me most was watching the first few R-TOS episodes and thinking how cool the more "white-looking" remastered ENT was, then all the sudden it went gray and metallic (and while I can admit to a slight gray tint in the original, I never got a metallic feel at all).

But I have the original series on DVD so it's not like I begrudge the R-TOS episodes. I think if they would have started of gray I would have swallowed it better. But starting off more white, then going gray--it was hard for me to take.

If I was more computer-picture-literate, I would do a frame capture of the first R-TOS episode where the ship was white-looking and then an exact frame capture after they changed it to metallic gray.

It would take your breath away.

 

[Nelson Au]

David, I did post an image from Balance of Terror above, the first remastered episode and the ship was grey there in post #10. Do you think you could have mis-remembered it as white in the earlier remastered epsidoes?

trekcore.com has screen captures of the HD-DVD's, so you can look there for what you refer to.