I was watching “The Thoelian Web” (don’t correct the spelling at this point, I’ve been drinking) and noticed some subtle changes. Exterior shots of the ship seemed “pretty damn cool!” and the phasers were “bitchen!”.
Now, this was local tv, off the dish net, and its botherd me for a few days. Then I watched “Immunity Syndrome” (or something like that), where they shoot Spock into the Giant Amoeba in a shuttlecraft. Its pretty obvious that this has been “tweeked” so to speak. There are whole sequences that seem CGI.
I’ve been watching both the original (on TV Land) and enhanced (on local TV) TOS episodes, so I’ve been able to compare the two versions. I think the enhanced episodes are very well done. Not only the CGI shots of the Enterprise, but the overall look of the film remastering that jumps out even on a standard-def TV. And such episodes as The Tholian Web and The Doomsday Machine have particularly blown me away. The remastering team has been very restrained in enhancing the episodes (in contrast with George Lucas’ enhancements of the original Star Wars films) and IMO have improved a show which I have loved for 40 years.
So have they improved the Enterprise’s phaser targeting? Even as a kid, I wondered why the phasers always fired forward in a “V” shape, yet still managed to hit their target. The ship weaponry in ST:TNG always made much more sense for three-dimensional combat.
I wholeheartedly agree. I just wish they’d get around to doing “The Ultimate Computer,” though - seeing four remastered Constitution-class starships zipping around, blasting at each other, will be awesome.
My favorite moments of the remastered episodes:
Mudd’s World in “I, Mudd” now has rings.
There’s a long, elevated shot of the Vulcan wedding arena from “Amok Time” that shows a city in the background, and (a nice homage) it looks a lot like the city from TAS “Yesteryear.”
And in “The Doomsday Machine,” you see a small chunk of planetary debris actually hit and shatter upon the Constellation’s upper primary hull.
My only complaint is that virtually every star is white (still better than the awful star backgrounds
in TNG). TOS used to have quite a few red and blue and orange supergiants…
The subtlety is what really works for me. I saw “For the World is Hollow…” and some of the exterior shots of the enterprise cruising along the asteroid were just ordinary establishing shots. The updaters weren’t try to push the AWESOME EFFECTS in our faces. Just making the old stuff better. I still haven’t seen any episodes with “exterior” sound stages. Is the background stuff well done?
The ships in Space Seed look sharp, and move in different planes.
The annoying thing is that I didn’t have enough room to copy them and the unedited episodes that were showing on G4. :mad:
Actually I’ve noticed on my HD set that some of the stars are other colors than white, at least in the opening credits.
Though I haven’t gone back to compare, it seems to me that the ‘space amoeba’ in the re-mastered “The Immunity Syndrome” didn’t look as alive as the original. It’s more colorful, but looks more like a CGI effect.
:smack: :rolleyes: 
:mad: 
