Gaffer Tape said:
I have to disagree that Remastered was necessary. Just because it wouldn't have looked good on an HDTV doesn't mean it had to be updated. King Kong's effects, even though they were made for film, wouldn't look too good on an HDTV, but they don't need to be changed either. I don't believe that Star Trek Remastered needed to be done or even should have been done.
You may be right, but I think the original film masters didn't have the effects, as the effects were made for the prints being aired on TV, or something like that. I really have not idea what I am talking about to be honest, it has been a long time since I read about it, but the short of it was something along the lines of everything looking fantastic in HD, because it was filmed in a higher resolution than HD, but the effects having been for tiny TVs would have looked really rough in comparison to the rest of the picture. Maybe Zombie or Chainsawash or someone could step in and straighten me out if they know. I respect them and the changes they made, because it was done in giving a classic series the highest quality modern viewing experience possible, and not that they were making changes for the sake of making changes.
SW SE on the otherhand went through great lengths to make changes for the sake of making changes, to the point of being ridiculous and redundant. We have the Jabba scene repeating information we already got from the Greedo scene, and then we have Han stepping on Jabba's tail as a way of forcing an out of place scene, that simply doesn't work, fit into the film. Had SW SE simple been a remastering of the films, masking some of the old effects (like orange blob under speeder), modernizing some effects (re-retroscoping sabers and lazer blasts), and adding in some lost scenes like meeting Biggs in the hanger before takeoff, then it would not bother me anywhere near half as much as it does (though it would still infuriate me if we didn't have the originals on DVD, something ST fans do have in reagrds to TOS).
And Hunter, that was a good post. I agree with you. Just as we can go through history and look at vehical designs and see how they changes over the ages and for what reasons they changed, style, practicality, rising gas prices, shortage of material due to war, or needing to use cheaper material due to economic decline. It makes since for Starships to go through these phases as well. In First Contact we see the Pheonix has a design very similar to TOS ships. the Pheonix represented bringing mankind out of the ashes of its old civilization, which had at this point all but been destroyed by constant warring, and bring it into a new age of science, technology, and discovery. Basically we are looking at a technological boom coming out of a post-apoctaliptic Earth. I think that simple, practical, submarinesque design of the original is a good representation of this. And as the series goes on, we see the designs changing styles, from the TOS design, to what we see in the STMP refit, to the Enterprise A to the Excelsior style Enterpise B, eventually getting to the more bulky designs of the Entrprise C and D as seen in TNG, to the more sleek and stylish Voyager and Enterprise E. I think ST Enterprise kind of messed this up a bit, since the NX-10 (that what it was called right?) is much closer to the style of the Voyager and the Enterprise E, in my opinion, and yet it is suppose to fit between the Pheonix and the original Enterprise.
I do, however, like how Enterprise used the exact old designs for everything, instead of trying to modernize them in any way. That episode was a lot of fun to watch.