Star Trek - Arena - fixed visual effects comparison 

Balance of Terror, Shore Leave and The Galileo Seven...episodes that still hold up.

I watched them in black and white. I was thrilled when we got a color TV.

The Doomsday Machine is my favorite. Some I like more that others (though I like most of them): City on the Edge of Forever Space Seed (Khan!) As mentioned - Arena, Galileo Seven, Balance of Terror, & Shoreleave Devil in the Dark The Changeling (inspiration for V'GER) Mirror Mirror (bearded Spock) The Corbomite Maneuver Who Mourns for Adonais The Gamesters of Triskelion The Ultimate Computer Metamorphosis Assignment Earth The Apple Elaan of Troyius Amok Time Bread and Circuses Charlie X Where No Man Has Gone Before What Are Little Girls Made Of Tomorrow is Yesterday The Enemy Within The Man Trap Operation Annihilate! The Paradise Syndrome Spock's Brain

I agree about having the originals, but only to a point. The remastered episodes are truly stunning, and enhance the great writing /acting of this iconic show. If only Babylon 5 could get such treatment . . .

The CGI doesn't always improve the original. Often the ship in space looks more like an animation.

@@kevinmorgan_truth - and the interior people shots are a bit higher-key , and give more of a sense of presence with the characters .

I'm not a fan of some of the new shots of the ship, but at least they didn't George Lucas it and alter plot details and try to suppress the originals. The stories are still intact and you can still watch the older versions if you prefer them.

Wish you coulda mentored George Lucas...

Because CBS respected the source material in the remaster, instead of trying to change it to be more "modern" like Lucas did in destroying the original Star Wars films.

Lol the CGI Gorn on Enterprise possibly looked even less realistic than the man in the green rubber suit with the glittery eyes seen here. And of course, it also couldn't do slow motion arm swings at Archer so there's that strike against it too lol

@@chrismiddleton4733 The baby Gorn of Strange New Worlds looks amazing! It is practical effect + CG enhancement

What are you talking about? There was no respect at all to the original. It was completely re-rendered from scratch into an obviously (and bad) cgi version, destroying all the charm of the original model. There’s nothing good at all about these edits. And the original is going to be impossible to access at some point. Throw away all the hard work of the original artists who made the series everyone grew up loving. It’s a travesty.

Ya gotta love the Gorn. But re the planets: In most cases they're still visibly rotating. It doesn't work like that!

but his mouth still doesn't move

Reminds me of the Ewoks blinking in the Blu-Rays for Return of the Jedi.

Yes, he's much more realistic now >D

I prefer the original special effects. I’ve never seen the point of Paramount redoing those to the show, just because of all they had nearly 55 years ago. Even before Star Wars was first released back in 1977 with special effects that looked more realistic than even the ones used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968.

Doesn't hurt much, though. I love the Gorn the way he is (in a heterosexual way--not that there's anything wrong other ways!).

Great catch!

Picard had a vehicle in Nemesis...I still think there are cars in the future.

They can't have vehicles on a colony?? I don't see the problem.

Ha ha!

@@2150dalek We don't talk about Picard's dune buggy

It was "the look." Perhaps the best demonstration of this is the big arch scene in "Amok Time". It looks really, really out of place. Well, some things needed to be fixed. Like when they're heading straight for the sun in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", and what do we see on the screen? A black sky with points of light moving about. Where's the sun? And one of the shots of the ship had some serious blue/green screen problem: time-varying frizzy edges.

@@betaneptune yeh

Not to mention quality (mostly) writing.

It's mainly a difference in writing quality and direction. It's much better cast, written and paced than the versions being processed now. In fairness when it has a bad episode it doesn't mess around either..

@@rjmacreadyoutpost3121 Definitely "mostly." There are a few real stinkers in the mix, but people really disagree on which ones those are! But for most fans, it probably numbers in the single digits. I do recall a quick reference to Star Trek TOS saying that had about 30 good episodes. Well, I wouldn't agree with that!

I was thinking the same thing. I wondered about those choices.

@@goodtoGoNow1956 In reality, there would be some light pollution making it not quite black but yeah I feel that the background was a bit bright.

CGI can't draw the stars properly

Reduced saturation. The color depth has been adjusted to seem more "realistic". Very obvious in the actor's faces and the red shirts, etc. More naturalistic, but lacks the vibrancy of the original. It's kind of like the difference between the 1938 _Robin Hood_ and one of the more recent historical films where everything has a dull gray tint - As if history had no color or contrast. This is the fad in recent years....

They also gained a warp factor in S3. Warp 9. They never ordered anything higher than 8 in the preceeding years...and anything above 6 was a struggle to maintain. Maybe the kept some of the Kelvin refit.

Well there were Klingons so you need more torpedos 😆😆

Great episode

CGI has NO place in the original series. Only a true dipshit would replace any aspect of the original series.

Well, yes and no. In the CGI version, the stars actually move when the ship steers. Point, CGI team. And the star pattern actually changes when the ship wooshes by in the opening credits in seasons 2 and 3. Now, regarding the ship images: What's lighting up the ships in the first place? It's dark in outer space! All you have for lighting the exterior are distant stars.

Well i see the benefit of the more realistic movement of the stars,the lighting and the the somewhat more argil camera movement in the cgi version. But still, the ship itself looks terrible in cgi and prefer the old one. Iwould have like to see repainted phaser/torpedo graphics, a little sharpening more detail on the outer hull and new starfield backround.

Not a chance. Unless you rather see a toy being driven along with a string.

Space should have much more stars. But CGI doesn't have a model to copy. They could at least add a few more stars than original.

The owners of the TOS had another mercenary reason, new special effects, newly recorded versions of the original musical scores, etc., result in a "new work" and extend the copyright protection, and by way of Walt Disney ruling, Trademark. Steamboat Willie should be in the public domain, but the people with money argue Mickey Mouse is a Trademark and any other than Disney merchandise is a violation of said. Leonard Nimoy's image as Mr. Spock is no doubt owned not by Nimoy's estate but by Paramount.

And now the directors edition is in 4K! Huzzah

"not creating new, over-the-top scenes," Well, they made many things worse. Consider "The Doomsday Machine". The new version is basically a flamethrower. A flamethrower! Comes from ANOTHER GALAXY, and it's a flamethrower. Well whoop-dee-do. Well, here's my saved write-up: I'll go with the original. Yeah, it has some defects, but they are grossly overshadowed by the defects of the CGI version. The original had an irregular shape, rough and craggy, esp. the rim. The new one looks like a telescoping monocular. Yeah, real scary . . . NOT! The CGI version is a flamethrower. A flamethrower! Comes from ANOTHER GALAXY, and it's just a flamethrower. Well whoop-dee-do. Wikipedia mentions use of flamethrowers back in the 7th century A.D. Decker told us it was made of antiprotons. Antiprotons don't look like flames. IN the original, the weapon is an abstract beam that flashes, which is much more consistent with being composed of antiprotons. We have flames in the kitchen, in the barbecue, in the forests. Yeah, how exciting for something that comes from ANOTHER GALAXY. When we look down its throat, what do we see? Flames. Looking inside in the original, we see an abstract optical effect, not ordinary flames. Much more likely. The explosion at the end is much more exciting in the original. The exhaust is more intense in the original. Yeah, the _Constellation_ looks pretty bad in the original on its way to its destruction. But the rest makes up for it. The phasers look bad in both, but in different ways. Another sin: The thing droops when it dies. It droops! There's no up and down in space! It's bad enough we have 1-G gravity in ships, even badly damaged ones, on asteroids, in asteroids, almost everywhere. And now something totally unnecessary. In the original, the thing just quickly turned to an icy cold, dead appearance. If the CGI people would have just redone most things as they were, it might have been pretty good. But no. They had to add stupidities into the mix. The CGI effects have only a few pluses: the space battles are better, the background stars actually move when the ship steers, and the planets look better except that they are still visibly rotating in most cases. Oh, in "The Ultimate Machine," the energy beam from the machine to the port looks better in CGI. There are other dumb things they did in this and other episodes. Being ignorant of the most basic astronomy is another problem. Yes, the imagery is superior, but not most of the things they changed are, well, not improvements!

TMP is incredibly boring. Why would you want any version of it? Well, Ilia isn't boring, but the rest is.

I still prefer the original effect. At least they are "different" from the samey CGI shit we are immersed nowadays.

Thanks, glad you like these!

+Revan2908 Vic Perrin who did the opening/closing narration for The Outer Limits also was the voice for the Metron. Vic also would do the voice of Nomad on The Changeling episode of Star Trek,& he would appear as an alien in Mirror,Mirror on ST.

He was also the voice of Nomad in "The Changeling", and played Tharn in "Mirror, Mirror". I didn't know he was the voice of the Metron.

whoa, it's an angel.

He was in old westerns on TV, like Wanted: Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen. Usually playing a bad guy. You'd never know it was the same guy. I guess that's why they call it "acting"!

+Tolland love your comment.

blender is just a freebie rendering program. Not considered the highest standard. Plenty of appropriate software available when this was done - Blender today isn't an improvement over what could be done at the time. It's up to the level of artists hired for the job. These guys did some stuff ok, but the studio should have paid more and gotten a better team.

Good catch, I have not noticed the sparkles before!

While some changes may be pointless, overall I think it adds to the experience and especially makes it easier for new people to go back and watch the original series. Obviously the story is more important and it’s what makes it worth watching, but the dated special effects and basically everything else in the show does prove to be a hurdle for new people. I’m speaking from personal experience. As for Star Wars, people really cherry-pick the worst stuff while most changes were either good or fine. Greedo shooting first and Jabba’s palace plus appearance in A New Hope were all terrible and pointless. The added scene with Luke talking to Biggs before the battle or the song change from Yub nub at the end of Return of the Jedi absolutely improve their respective movies on top of the improved effects and smaller details like the buildings on bespin actually having windows.

@@Ferro_Equus Actually Matt Jeffries original sketches have been public knowledge since the 1970s, the original designs of more than a dozen or two ships had no resemblance to the saucer secondary hull and nacelles connected to the secondary hull. The first main hull was a round ball secondary hull above and the nacelles connected by pylons to the main hull. Try a google search with the words Matt Jeffries original sketches to discover how totally wrong your reply is. The Enterprise that we know and love was his last concept.

They have reappeared here and there in non-canon materials. Books and most recently a comic book story. The problem would be figuring out a good story to tell that required them.

Yes- the Metron-sexuals do show a lot of potential. Who knows, maybe in several thousand years they'll appear again!

My question with the Metrons is: Why is the one we see at the end paralyzed from the neck down? Yeah, probably running out of money and time to get the show done on schedule. Still, it's interesting.

Andrew Chapman I always figured the Gorn had cybernetic eyes. And some ship! A little dot on the screen. Bit of a disappointment.

In my opinion, they made Enterprise's main hull color way too dark, especially with the darker star field.

If you buy the box set you can switch off the remastered effects, they’re not lost, this isn’t Lucas.

yeah, I'm the same. I think the CGI looks like it was done by a kid on his home pc.

the fx took away from the experience, they were lousy and now look more dated than the originals. I agree, the interior scene clean up is very nice.

@@dthorne4602 I don't think they took away from the experience. They were improved but I don't think they made much of a difference. For example, in the original Trouble with the Tribbles you never saw the Klingon ship. I noticed that deficiency the first time I watched the show. They added the Klingon ship in the remaster. That was an improvement that added a bit more realism to the shot. The rest of remastered shots were better than the original but didn't really add much to the story. I could have lived without them.

@@fearlessfreap8093 yeah, its funny, they ruined it for me but some people liked them. Everybody has different tastes and appreciates different aesthetics. I'm a professional 3d artist myself, I didn't like them and didn't find them necessary at all, and I know from personal experience that there is no reason that they were poorly done as they were, they just hired the wrong art director for the project.

There is apparently a 3rd version of the series, where the old footage is in 4:3, and all of the new / changed footage is in 16:9. I read about this version many years ago (I think it was aired in Japan) but I have never ever found any evidence of it.

@@TrekkieChannel They show this version over here too on one of our channels. Obviously the old 4:3 footage is cropped to fit the 16:9 format, meaning the top and bottom of the image is out of frame. Except of course for those shots I mentioned.

The reason the Enterprise, and other ships, are darker is the HD transfers have a much higher dynamic range (brightness to darkness) than the original SD version. Also the studio special effects required more lighting to create the compost effects. The HD version doesn’t have an exposure problem so the CGI can be created at a lower level, to make windows and lights visible more clearly. Since they were redoing all the Enterprise shots, it also allows correction for the phaser problem. There was no standard, sometimes red, other times blue, and the beams would originate from several different locations on the saucer section. The remasters set a standard of blue and from one location near the center of the saucer.

Naval ships are gray because it makes them harder to see. That, of course, is before radar made visual target acquisition largely irrelevant, but traditions die hard. In space, the correct color for that would be black, but again, targeting would be by instrument in most encounters.

+paktype You mean Sean Kenney?

yes

Apparently, so did Leonard Nimoy. I guess they both got too close to the explosive effects!

Mine too

It was just rendered by a "B" team level of artists. It's a shame, but probably cost a lot less than getting some really good guys to do it.

Sparkly?

ha ha, you`ve got the point

Well, according to the official blueprints, the photon torpedo tubes are on the top part of the saucer section. So, I don't think they were too concerned about accuracy with the CGI effects.

That's what I was hoping they will do when I first heard about this project cca 10 years ago.

I like the Gorn suit. Blinking, no blinking, not a biggie.

They might not have developed it themselves: perhaps it was violently co-opted from another species...

Might as well also ask how a wild savage race like the Klingons evolved to travel in space.🎉