This is not a creative art, as one could think sometimes. It’s just preservation of something others created, and which is worth to be preserved the best possible way. The result counts, that’s all!
The real big thing is to create something like Star Trek, compared to this, we are all small, but it’s always fun and very rewarding to somehow do something good for this worthy content, I think Joel feels it similar.
I agree with you that it is fun and rewarding to do some good for this worthy content, no question. I think of the people who do this kind of work – amateur and professional, provided you really care about it – as being in the field of “art restoration” if you wanted to call it that.
A person who paints paintings is not the same as the person who restores them, but you cannot restore art if you do not understand something of the artist. The creativity in restoration comes in choosing which techniques to apply, and maybe in finding / inventing new techniques that handle something better than a previous solution did.