I’ll agree they went too far with the update.
Some of it made sense, like having a nebula fill their viewscreen rather than a tiny smear in a corner. But the ship flybys do seem a bit unnecessary. And while I wouldn’t say they are cartoonish, they look a bit smooth and dim compared to the “punchier” 60s effects.
I’ll disagree – I like all the updates effects I’ve seen , and don’t think any of it looks “cartoonish”. Indeed, I think a lot of the original effects look too cartoonish, which is the reason they redid them…
(You want to see cartoonish CGI? Look at The Hunt for Red October or The Last Starfighter, both films from the early days of CGI effects. Tron was actually pre-CGI (although a lot of effects were generated by computers, the actual images used in the film were mostly hand-drawn by the people named in those long closing credits), but they could get away with the artificial look because it fit in perfectly with the subject matter.
In fact, I really wouldn’t mind seeing somebody doing a Star Trek and redoing the old CGI to bring the images up to present standards for both movies.)
I’ve only seen a handful of the remastered episodes, but I was impressed by what I saw. The planet killer in The Doomsday Machine was particularly good.
If that’s what people are talking about, I agree. The newer CGI version is awful. The CGI looks like it came from a 2001 video game. It reminds me of the CGI they used in Babylon 5. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Babylon 5 because the stories and acting were great, but every time they showed spaceships or the station the crude CGI is jarring and I have to overlook it.
The original models, while low tech, at least matched the sets, and don’t look like an old school video game cut scene.
I’m 100% with @Acsenray on this one. 
And the sun flyby (absurd, but you can’t fix that with CGI) in the old version was the model being shaken, and is an actual sun flyby - very impressive - in the new version.
I agree. One of my favorite episodes, made much better in the new version. In the old one when they were freaked out about being sucked into the planet killer, you just heard it. Now you see it. The old version’s shots of the Enterprise shoot at the planet killer were just awful.
Sometimes they added CGI for CGI’s sake, like in Amok Time. But mostly the new versions are great. I have the DVD set. And I watched each episode of TOS when it first aired, and I wrote the first online Star Trek column in history - in 1975.
The very bright colors - intentional because of the state of color TVs back then - are a bit garish today, but nothing you can do about that.
There has been enough time since I last watched the series to go back to it. I’ll take a look at the remasters, may have seen some already, just not sure. I’m not all that interested in seeing any changes to the original format and effects, just a cleaner HD image. The special effects were very good for their time and to me the entire flavor of the original show is based on the limitations of the media at the time. It will be interesting to see a rework of the effects, but through enough enhancement it becomes a new version of the series that has to be judged by itself.
Good point. I think it was interesting to watch the innovations they needed to come up with at the time.
I’m not a purist though. I love the newer look of that tech that is in Strange New Worlds.
I wonder what it would look like if CGI technology was advanced enough that they could plausibly reshape everything around the original actors to look like the newer shows. From sets to uniforms to ships to aliens. Without it looking fake.
TOS was done on a shoestring budget, and there was so much finagling and faking that the final outcome was a miracle!
The alien costumes were nothing short of outrageous. The designer did the best he could to make the woman naked, save enough coverage for the censors to be happy. (And no under-boob reveals!) Who can forget the shower curtain hazmat suits in “The Naked Time?” I remember reading the stars hated the uniform boots. Somebody finagled a contract where they were very cheaply made. The didn’t fit right, and they hurt! Pay close attention in scenes where Kirk is running outside, up and down hills and jumping over rocks. He’s not wearing the uniform boots then. He’s got on jump boots!
The cast, the crew, they worked miracles.
And I am so grateful they did!
~VOW
They look more like boxing boots to me. Worn with black knee-high socks. This is especially obvious in the scene where Kirk’s crouching on a rock in “Arena.”
Perhaps they are. You go with what you know. I spent a million years tripping over or stubbing my toes against Corcoran jump boots.
“The Arena” was where I first noticed them. After that, I started looking closely at other episodes.
~VOW
I would high five you, but this is no cause for celebration.
TOS was not low budget.
## STAR TREK – $200,000 PER EPISODE
The iconic sci-fi series may seem low-budget compared to its modern successors, but when it premiered it was a big production. It had an average per-episode cost of about $200,000 which is over $1.5 million adjusted for inflation. One classic episode was particularly expensive. The penultimate installment of season one, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” cost more than $250,000 to produce. The plot entails McCoy traveling back in time and changing history. Naturally, Captain Kirk and Spock follow him through the “doorway to any time” to make things right. The episode is widely regarded as one of the best of the entire series, well worth the almost $2 million it would cost in today’s money.
I clicked on the link. Yeah, the “adjusted for inflation” bit makes it seem like Star Trek had scads of money. But scrolling through the list, Trek’s budget was paltry compared to other series during that time. $330,000 for The Virginian? Westerns were en vogue during the Sixties, so most of the accoutrements were readily available. Trek stuff had to be created out of thin air! There was no guidebook for the 23rd century!
The third season of Trek was the forgotten stepchild. Everyone knew it was circling the drain, and the budget was being cut constantly. Spock’s Brain. 'Nuff said.
What was the budget for TNG? Using the “adjusted for inflation” numbers, I bet TNG’s money made TOS’s look paltry.
~VOW
“The Gamesters of Triskelion” was another where it was blatantly obvious. Watch Kirk dance around that arena and you’ll notice the athletic boots!
Agreed! I just watched that comparo, since it’s my favorite episode.
My $0.02 matches what a bunch of folks are saying: mostly good, some bits should have been left alone. I particularly dislike the shuttlecraft taking off from the floor of the hangar bay–that looks very artificial. I always liked the original, with them being pushed out the door, as 'twere. That seemed reasonable to me, still does!
I happen to like all the “improvements,” but I can appreciate those who favor the original format.
The shuttlecraft leaving the shuttledeck, not so much. I don’t remember which channel I was watching, but the tape was aging badly. When the shuttlecraft lifted from the deck, then rose to exit to the rear of the Enterprise, you could tell that three separate transparencies with drawings of the shuttlecraft were used to create the departing craft. You could see the outlines of the transparancies.
It was painfully awkward.
~VOW
It kinda is, although the not fake looking part is tricky. The simplest approach might be to reshoot modern scenes using a lens with the same focal length as the original series cameras used. They would also have to be position in the same place and direction as originally used, and everything and everybody will have to maintain position and angle relative to important surroundings and other cast.
However, by the time you get it all sufficiently not fake looking then you might as well have replaced the actors, reshot the action, and had their faces morphed into the original actor’s faces.
People’s age in 1966 probably affects their view of the original series. I can’t imagine how such things looked to someone who was -30 years old and had become inured to Hi Def television before seeing it for the first time.
I noticed that the first time I saw the episode 'way back in the '70s. It’s always been that way.
Really? They used a standard New York set I’m sure, and the Guardian set couldn’t have been that expensive. Maybe the money went to Joan Collins. Or to the Vaseline they smeared on the lens to make her look romantic.
They did do miracles, but even at the time I could see where they went cheap. Still, it was light years ahead of the competition.