Noooooooo!!! Has the TV and movie industry learned nothing? This is a complete bloody disaster.
Today I found out that CBS plans has digitally “resimulated” key elements the original Star Trek series. Special effects, exterior shots, and scenery are on the list of changes.
“We smoothed out the motion of the Enterprise. It flies more dynamically now,” Rossi said. “It occupies real space. It doesn’t look like a model anymore.” (from Wired.com)
Don’t they understand? Star Trek is supposed to look cheesy. We’re supposed to see poorly-lit cardboard sets and grainy images of plastic Romulan warships. The scenery is supposed to be a blurry matte painting. The Enterprise is supposed to look like a model. We like it that way. That’s what makes the show so appealing.
I blame George Lucas. With his Star Wars Special Edition, he started a disturbing trend where filmmakers mangle a popular work with computer effects. Was Star Wars really improved by adding cutsie little droids and mooing dewbacks in the Tattoine scenes? Was it more exciting to the Death Star explode with an inexplicable exanding ring than the original effect?
Should we expect Paramount to animate the tribbles the way Lucas animated the dewbacks? Imagine googly-eyed tribbles bouncing around — maybe even conversing with each other! Or maybe they’ll do what Spielberg did to E.T., and replace everyone’s weapons with walkie-talkies.
Like many people my age, I grew up with Kirk, McCoy, and Spock as gods in the pantheon of popular culture. The show’s production quality — every grainy shot and styrofoam rock — is familiar and appreciated. Re-editing Star Trek would be like changing DaVinci’s Last Supper to include Jar-Jar Binks. Certainly, it would add something new to the scene, but would it make it better?
OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme. Granted, it’s not fine art — it’s just a cheesy old TV show, for crying out loud — but it’s as comfortable and as familiar as the bum prints in our old sofa. I feel that Star Trek doesn’t really belong to Paramount in the sense that they can cut it up and glue it back together as they see fit. It belongs to popular culture. Once it was finished, broadcast, then re-broadcast endlessly for four decades, it because a part of us all.
George Lucas made this mistake. Steven Spielberg made this mistake. Fans hated the changes almost universally. Now Paramount is butchering a beloved show. This is a tragedy for Star Trek fans.
And now I’ll go set up my DVR to record the entire series. But I refuse to enjoy watching it.