Star Trek's cheesy creatures
The first season of Star Trek: The Original Series has just come been released in a combo box set including HD DVDs and standard DVDs. To celebrate, Wired News put together a package showcasing the "10 Cheesiest Classic Creatures" that caused Spock and Kirk a variety of headaches. Seen here, the beautiful beastie of "A Private Little War."
Link to Wired, Link to buy Star Trek: The Original Series (HD/DVD)
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...The Mugatu was *cheesy*?? Janos Prohaska would be turning over in his grave over that one, kids.
I find that picture oddly erotic.
Yes, would somebody paint a big penis on that Mugatu, please?
That's mobutu, not mugatu. Like the Congo dictator.
...Penis? What do you think that thing on the top of his head is, Iveeka? :p
Why bother with HD-DVDs? Sure, the show was filmed on . . . film, but it was designed for broadcast television:
"Gosh, that set really looks crappy."
"Man, you can really see the seam where they glued on Spock's ears."
frusorter- Wikipedia (among other sources) says that's a mugato, pronounced mugatu.
It should be noted that the new DVD release is the digitally remastered version of Classic Trek. The sound has been cleaned up, every frame has been scrubbed, and new visual FX have been put into place. As an old-school fan, I've been very pleased with the results, as they've avoided the intrusive "long, unneccesary pans across Mos Eisley" syndrome that George Lucas fell into when redoing the original SW trilogy and make the original series look modernized without losing the charm.
WOW! Look at all the sheep following along! That is funny! Hey man, after years of scrutiny Star Trek monsters have some notable imperfections, but they were original, thoughtfully divergent, and invoke a scientific speculation of alien life when thought of or referred to. Picking on Star Trek Monsters is like slappin your friggin granma for not wiping the snot off your nose. Nanu nanu, or whatever.
I've already seen a number of these "enhanced for HD" episodes and I disagree with Kevin Church - they look like crap. They've replaced every model shot of the Enterprise with a bland, inexplicably "lit", amateurish CGI sequence. Once again, Paramount turns what could be a positive into a disaster by doing the work on the cheap, cheap, cheap. They also reframed every reverse angle shot, not for artistic reasons, but an engineers obsession with consistency.
It lacks the artistry in cinematography and lighting of the actual model work done for the show.
To avoid "stretching" the HD image, they pixel-averaged every frame so that every episode looks like it's been run through a Vaseline covered lens. The uniforms, especially, glow like they spent a day in Mr. Burns' nucleon plant. There's no more "cleanup" of the frames that wasn't done when the negatives were mastered for the first DVD package release.
You'd be much better off to find the original DVD-sets release and playing them on an HD machine. You can always rent the new release to take a look at the extras.
Don't waste your money. As with the "improved" releases of the Star Wars movies, more is definitely not more.
www.theskinofmyteeth.com
David B.
Geesh -- $133 for the first season?? Are they nuts?? When I was a kid we used to turn on the TV set, and it would display Star Trek shows for free. IMO you also have to take into consideration that roughly 2/3 of the episodes were just absolutely awful. I think I'd be willing to pay $20 for a greatest-hits collection of the 10 best Star Trek episodes ever.
I feel a certain sense of ownership for Star Trek that extends beyond that of your typical Trekkie (though I was a life-long Trekkie before I worked on TNG) and I had very high hopes for these remasters.
However, I have to agree almost entirely with David B. While I don't have as much of a problem with the "clean up" as he does, the new CGI effects are absolutely abominable. The Enterprise shots, especially, look like they were done with equipment and aesthetics from 1995, and I found them so distracting, I told my DVR to stop recording the new HD episodes.