Assignment: Earth

The Enterprise in Orbit Around An Earth Parallel Planet.  Oh Wait, That Really is The Earth This Time!

 

68)  “Assignment: Earth”  Original Airdate: (03/29/68)  Remaster Airdate: (05/03/08)

 

Evaluation: “Assignment” is riddled with anachronistic devices, computers and sound effects, most of which haven’t been cleaned up in the RM version of the episode, much to its detriment.  Gary’s servo, the blinking computer and transportation portal inside Gary’s apartment all emit goofy sounds that badly date the episode.  Ironically, when the action moves into the NASA command center, the technology and accompanying sound effects seem not only more appropriate to the milieu, but don’t seem any less advanced than the devices employed by Gary (supposedly on loan from the technologically superior, though ostensibly altruistic, aliens who trained him in the 24th century).  The effect when Gary touches the force field (a white starburst with zapping sound) inside the Enterprise’s brig hasn’t received a RM touch-up.  More visual effects that were left alone include the green phaser bolt that renders Gary unconscious in the transporter room, the superimposed roiling blue haze inside Gary’s transporter and the unaltered blotchy, pulsing green effect when the replicator is activated in Gary’s apartment.  Gary’s technology aside, the only other major FX fixes to consider are the half dozen shots of the Enterprise orbiting Earth, some with the moon in the upper portion of the screen.  Overall, the RM team did an excellent job with their various renderings of Earth, but a shot in Act I features an unflattering vista of northeastern Africa and Asia (the original episode dramatically framed North America, of course).  Although the RM team finished their assignment, there’s still plenty to fix in this episode.

 

Money Shot:  Any of the shots featuring the Enterprise in orbit with the moon in the background.

 

Wish List:  Updated sounds and FX for all of Gary’s technology.

 

Remaster Grade:  B

 

Screencaps:

 

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Court Martial

New Ringed Planet Added to the Old Matte of Starbase 11.

 

69)  “Court Martial”  Original Airdate: (02/02/67)  Remaster Airdate: (05/10/08)

 

Evaluation:

There’s only one reason why the RM “Martial” isn’t a solid A—the horrendous matte painting that can be seen through various windows on Starbase 11.  The fake-looking matte, featuring towers silhouetted against a similarly fake purple evening sky, appears in nearly thirty shots.  This raises a serious question as to why the RM team overlooked this rather crucial visual when updating this episode’s FX.  On the praise-worthy end of the spectrum, some effective touch-ups were made to the original exterior matte paintings on the surface of Starbase 11.  The night shots are particularly well-executed and now feature people visible inside buildings or walking outside on sidewalks with a gorgeous ringed planet hanging in the evening sky or peeking over the horizon.  The only detractor/distraction here is that the central skyscraper is only about ten paces wide on each of its four sides—this would make for extremely cramped offices or cubicles.  From what we can determine of the structure’s scale, a pair of bathrooms would take up an entire floor.  To be proportionally accurate, the CG people walking inside the building would have to be much smaller—so small, in fact, that the audience would have to strain to see them, which would invalidate the rationale for animating them in the first place.  There are a handful of shots involving the Enterprise which are all finely-rendered.  The opening shot features another Constitution-class starship below and behind the Enterprise, an Antares-style cargo vessel above the Enterprise, two shuttlecrafts flitting about the heavy cruisers and a moving crew member in a window above the circular breach on the Enterprise’s hull.  At the top of Act I, the camera pans down from the starboard nacelle and pushes in to reveal the same breach on the aft section of the secondary hull (with another shuttlecraft flyby).  The near 180 degree tracking shot of the Enterprise leaving orbit of Starbase 11, with the ringed planet in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, is a superb effort that just can’t rectify this episode’s RM oversights.

 

Money Shot:  The touched up CG matte of Starbase 11 at night, complete with a ringed planet hanging in the purple sky, and the panning shot that pushes in on the hull breach.

 

Wish List:  New CG matte for all window shots on Starbase 11 and a more convincing prop for the “white sound” heartbeat recorder…uh, microphone.

 

Remaster Grade:  B+

 

Screencaps:

 

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A Private Little War

Don’t blink!  A CG Klingon Battle Cruiser Orbiting Sigma Mugato III.

 

70)  “A Private Little War”  Original Airdate: (02/02/68)  Remaster Airdate: (05/17/08)

 

Evaluation:

As a largely landlocked episode, “Private,” with its thinly-veiled parallel to Vietnam and the subsequent arms race, had scant visual effects in its original presentation.  There are a few newly-rendered shots of the Enterprise in orbit or in space and the majority are five seconds or less.  The finest addition to the RM show is a mid-range aft shot of a Klingon battle cruiser in orbit of the planet.  It’s a creative flourish that’s a testament to the RM team’s ability to think outside the box while preserving the integrity of the show’s original artistic vision.  However, this episode still has its share of blemishes.  The hand phaser effects, which somehow didn’t make it onto the RM team’s list of shots to fix, are exceedingly poor here.  There are three scenes where phasers are fired: when both Mugatos are killed and when McCoy heats some rocks in Tyree’s cave abode.  Though the disruption fields that consume the two Mugatos are the same color (green), the Phaser type-1 beam effects are inconsistent: blue beam with red sprites at the point of impact when fired at the Mugato and red beam with blue sprites when McCoy fires at the stones.  Are these different phaser settings, and if so, would they really have alternate color schemes?  Again, unified (and updated) hand phaser effects should’ve been essential to the RM project.  And regarding the silly simians…if ever there was need of a CG overhaul for a dopey creature design it’s for the glorified party store costume used to represent the fierce Mugato.  Updating the look of the Mugato should’ve been at the top of the fix-it list for this episode, so why am I still looking at this butt-ugly space ape with faux dorsal ridges and a unicorn horn?  Unfortunately, it seems as if the RM team had neither the time, nor the money (nor the inclination?) to build a CG Mugato.  A profound disappointment!  All in all this was an uneven effort by the RM team, which had a lighter workload than usual and could’ve used that extra time to build a more convincing and menacing CG creature.

 

Money Shot:  The new Klingon battle cruiser orbiting the planet.

 

Wish List:  Improved hand phaser effects and a CG Mugato.

 

Remaster Grade:  B

 

Screencaps:

 

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Whom Gods Destroy

Phasers Striking the Mint Green Surface of Elba II.

 

71)  “Whom Gods Destroy”  Original Airdate: (01/03/69)  Remaster Airdate: (05/24/08)

 

Evaluation:

Morph, baby, morph!  On several occasions I’ve launched into a tirade over the RM team’s outright refusal to utilize morphing technology to smooth over poorly matched shots of characters (especially shape-shifters like the salt vampire in “The Man Trap”) in TOS episodes where imprecise stop-motion photography or special camera techniques were employed to achieve the semblance of physical alteration.  In their original presentation, these shots are a major distraction…the illusion of “reality” the show hopes to convey is quickly shattered by badly dated FX.  Illusion plays heavily into the narrative of this episode: Garth of Izar learned about cellular metamorphosis from the masterfully transitional Antosians.  Since the most repeated visual effect in the episode is Garth’s shape-shifting, you’d think that it would rank at the top of the RM team’s fix-it list, but the effect was inexplicably overlooked.  The original effect was achieved by quickly zooming in on an out-of-focus image of one character, stopping motion, switching out characters and then zooming out while refocusing on the second character.  The effect appears five times in the episode and looks utterly ridiculous by today’s FX standards, even for TV.  Applying the morphing technique to these shots could’ve revolutionized this episode (and made some of its hokier elements a little more bearable).  The point has become labored by now, but the question still remains…why didn’t the RM team use morphing technology on these transformation shots?  Another goofy element in the episode is the rehabilitation chair, which boasts two circular emitters with spinning yellow/blue neon lights (think mini neural neutralizers).  This is the kind of contraption that reveals just how cash-strapped TOS was, and, as such, makes its renovation all the more imperative in light of the array of technology at the RM team’s disposal.  It’s “exquisitely painful” that this apparatus didn’t receive a CG overhaul.  The inconsistency of phaser beams throughout the series also plagues this episode—when phasers are discharged, no beam emits from the tip of the weapon and the victim is enveloped by a green field of energy.  The RM team left these shots alone, which is disappointing, but instead of merely updating phaser effects on a show by show basis, it would’ve been nice if the RM team had made all of the phaser effects uniform throughout the series.  The shot where Spock taps the force field in the brig also required some RM attention but was conveniently ignored.  There are a number of new shots of the Enterprise in orbit around the CG chocolate chip mint Elba II, which were all diligently envisioned and executed, but the standout shot is when the ship fires phasers at the far side of the planet, creating a rippling pool of blue energy on the surface.  Unfortunately, it’s a fine effort that nearly gets lost (like a shuttlecraft in a quasar) amid the bevy of shots that needed some serious CG revitalization.  Fortunately, the RM team didn’t tamper with the finest visual in the episode—the seductive, green-skinned Orion woman, Marta!

 

Money Shot:  The shots of the Enterprise firing phasers at the planet’s surface.

 

Wish List:  A CG makeover for the rehab chair, better FX on the brig force field and, of course, morphing on all shots involving the shape-changing Garth.

 

Remaster Grade:  C

 

Screencaps:

 

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The Mark of Gideon

Close-up Starboard Pass, Similar to the One In ST II.

 

72)  “The Mark of Gideon”  Original Airdate: (01/17/69)  Remaster Airdate: (05/31/08)

 

Evaluation:

At this point in the third season, the need to use preexisting sets and props became paramount (pun intended), and so we have episodes like this one, where Kirk finds himself on an exact duplicate of the Enterprise.  This plot device would’ve worked better had the ship been constructed on a planet with adequate room for the undertaking of such an enterprise (pun…).  However, while it’s wildly illogical to erect a to-scale, fully-functional (that’s what Data said) duplicate of the Enterprise in the first place, it’s utterly inane that such a ship would be built on a planet with overpopulation issues.  This rant has absolutely nothing to do with my review, but it’s cathartic to rail on one of the most utterly absurd hours of Trek ever produced…and it would look rather odd if I only wrote four sentences for this episode.  Other than an assortment of shots of the Enterprise in orbit around Gideon (now a sharply rendered white and brown orb in contrast to the original rust-tinged globe) and the handsome breaking orbit shot, there’s a dearth of FX shots to consider here.  In one scene we get a glimpse of the new pseudo-digital counter on the helm console, which was introduced in the RM “The Naked Time.”  Similar to the observation deck sequence in the RM “The Conscience of the King,” moving stars have been added to the open viewing port shots (the original starfield was static).  Though the RM team did a serviceable job of updating the original episode’s visual elements, the reality is that no amount of FX surgery could’ve salvaged this utterly ludicrous tale.

 

Money Shot:  The close-up starboard pass of the Enterprise’s primary hull, a la the shot of the movie Enterprise pulling into orbit around Regula I in Star Trek II.

 

Wish List:  CG assistance for the cheesy throng of green-hued people milling about on the surface of Gideon.

 

Remaster Grade:  B+

 

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The Lights of Zetar

The New, Improved Memory Alpha…Based on the Old Chrysler Logo.

 

73)  “The Lights of Zetar”  Original Airdate: (01/31/69)  Remaster Airdate: (06/07/08)

 

Evaluation:

The RM rendition of “Zetar” is the perfect storm of everything the RM team has done wrong on other episodes: neglected shots that needed FX surgery, new shots that are reused with abandon and unaltered graphics and signage which should’ve been updated by graphics expert Michael Okuda.  The multi-colored glow on the faces of the woman inside Memory Alpha and Lt. Romaine in the decompression room are examples of shots that should’ve been fixed but weren’t.  With today’s technology, these shots would’ve been fairly easy to touch-up with CGI.  The repetitious shots in the episode involve the space storm as seen on the viewscreen’s fore and aft (with nacelles) sensor aspects and the storm’s splotchy, sparkly effect inside Romaine’s eyes.  As for the graphics snafus, the tactical graph on the viewscreen that uses white blips to represent the Enterprise, the space storm and Memory Alpha was acceptable by 60s standards, but any kid with a laptop can do far better today.  Also, the simple graphics of Romaine and the alien’s juxtaposed brainwave patterns are poor inserts and should’ve been enhanced by an Okudagram.  Not all is lost; however, as a few nice FX additions help to balance out the RM team’s many oversights.  Chief among the new alterations is the superb, near 180 degree pan of the Enterprise falling into orbit of Memory Alpha—a brownish planetoid with a series of gray domes on its surface.  What an incredible shot, and what a vast improvement over the original burnt orange globe!  The shot of the Enterprise rapidly retreating from the planetoid is also a noteworthy visual.  Although the space storm has been mildly modified, it’s a far cry from being awe-inspiring and should be sent back to the CG drawing board posthaste.  The shots of ship’s phasers passing by and then through the energy field have been touched up, but the results are marginal at best.  Other than a few decent shots of the Enterprise attempting to evade the storm and a gorgeous long take along the ship’s ventral axis at the top of the show, nothing else is all that memorable here.

 

Money Shot:  The Enterprise entering orbit of the new dome-dappled Memory Alpha.

 

Wish List:  Updated FX for the multicolored glow on possessed characters’ faces, better CG varnish on the swirling space storm, less repetition of new effects and updated graphics for the viewscreen tactical images and the computer’s brainwave graphs.

 

Remaster Grade:  B-

 

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The Way to Eden

A Gorgeous Vista…That Looks Nothing Like the Set.

 

74)  “The Way to Eden”  Original Airdate: (02/21/69)  Remaster Airdate: (06/14/08)

 

Evaluation:

When it comes to TOS, no episode is as far out as “Eden.”  Fittingly, the RM team has provided some groovy new FX for “the one with the space hippies.”  Right off the bat we’re treated to a sumptuous, near 180-degree flyby of the new Aurora shuttle (the original simply attached pylons and warp nacelles to the Tholian ship model featured in “The Tholian Web”).  A sequence of shots depicts the Aurora, which is taxing its engines in a desperate attempt at outrunning the Enterprise, swaying from side to side in space while its nearly-critical engines glow with increasingly brighter shades of red the more they superheat.  The new firework-like explosion, though scientifically infeasible, is a thrill to behold…if you’re into ships blowing up in space and that sort of thing.  There’s a nice variety of original and new angles of the Enterprise in space, all of which are finely rendered.  The new Eden (a vernal, green orb with two moons in the upper left corner a la “Bread and Circuses”) is an absolutely idyllic world—exactly what you’d expect from a purportedly paradise planet.  On the surface of the planet, we have a case of the good, the bad and the ugly.  The good (or great) is the jaw-dropping new CG matte of Eden, which comes complete with a river, a distant mountain range and the two moons hovering in the sky.  Simply gorgeous!  The bad is that the remaining shots on Eden retain the same faux set walls sans mountains, clouds, birds, etc from the original show.  It’s a colossal cop out to create this stunning new CG matte for the establishing shot without doctoring the backgrounds as well.  The disparity in aesthetic quality is jarring.  The ugly is either the unaltered reversed shot of Kirk on Eden (Starfleet insignia on the wrong side), Dr. Sevrin’s ears or Adam’s singing—reader’s choice.  Thanks to some newly modified shots, the RM “Eden” is real now.  Yea, brother!

 

Money Shot:  The destruction of the Aurora and the new CG matte of Eden’s landscape.

 

Wish List:  Clouds, mountain peaks, flying targs…anything to break up the fake blue/gray set wall representing Eden’s skyline.

 

Remaster Grade:  A

 

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Requiem for Methuselah

Flint’s Castle…In All of Its Jaw-dropping Splendor.

 

75)  “Requiem for Methuselah”  Original Airdate: (02/14/69)  Remaster Airdate: (06/21/08)

 

Evaluation:

In an ideal universe, shows would never use recycled shots.  Unfortunately, the RM project doesn’t exist in that universe.  To be fair though, even prestige series like TNG consistently reused exterior shots of various spacecraft, planets, etc.  The vast majority of stock or reused shots in the RM TOS center on the Enterprise—either in space or in orbit.  The latter occurs in abundance in this show.  The RM team’s yen for two moons (used most controversially in “Bread and Circuses”) recurs here in several orbit shots where two moons appear in the upper left-hand corner of the screen…the finest of these are when the Enterprise fades from view at Flint’s bidding and when the ship breaks orbit in the final shot.  This same CG template (for lack of a more precise term) appears in several episodes including another late third season episode, “The Way to Eden.”  Even more unforgivable than recycled establishing shots in space is a reused matte painting (see my comments under “The Gamesters of Triskelion”).  In the original “Requiem,” the same matte of a castle, placid lake and colossal, craggy moon hanging in the sky was borrowed from “The Cage” (sans actors) as a stand-in for Flint’s castle.  For those aggrieved by such a repetition of backdrops, the new CG matte is a startling, breathtaking revelation.  Flint’s castle, which boasts an expansive bridge (with tiny figures moving across it in the first shot), several domes and turrets, a pinnacle topped with a flag gently fluttering in the breeze, a hillside observatory and, of course, two moons hanging in the touch-of-pink sky, is an eye-popping, jaw-dropping marvel.  I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I dub “Flint’s Castle” the finest CG matte in the entire RM project.  In fact, just thinking about the two vantages of Flint’s castle has put me in such a great mood that I’m reserving all of my negative comments for the Wish List section.

 

Money Shot:  The first shot of Flint’s castle, which gently pushes in on the mansion, revealing four tiny CG figures walking across a bridge a la the RM “Amok Time.”

 

Wish List:  CG surgery for the M-4 robot (which, due to budgetary challenges, was cobbled together from various props including the cloaking device from “The Enterprise Incident”); CG airbrushing on the pink set wall sky; better FX on the multicolored shimmer effect when the model sized version of the Enterprise appears/disappears on Flint’s lab table; streamlined FX on M-4’s blue death ray, Spock’s blue phaser beam (with blue sprites) and the green field that envelops M-4 before it disintegrates.

 

Remaster Grade:  A-

 

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The Savage Curtain

Terraforming in Seconds…The Excalbians Must Know the Secrets of Genesis.

 

76)  “The Savage Curtain”  Original Airdate: (03/07/69)  Remaster Airdate: (06/28/08)

 

Evaluation:

The centerpiece of the RM “Savage” is the planet’s newly designed surface (the original looked like a giant ruby red grapefruit), which is comprised of charred landmasses, lava runnels and a freshly forged habitable zone that instantly springs into being in the finest RM shot in the episode (something about the shot reminds me of TNG’s “The Survivors,” especially when the main viewer goes to magnification level four).  A couple of questions about the new habitat: 1. The terraformed area is the size of a small continent…isn’t that overkill for a four-on-four, good vs. evil melee (Spock refers to the virginal territory as “a small change” but then, confusingly, states that the area is a thousand square kilometers), and 2. The fabricated region appears as a giant sheet of gray granite (almost metallic in appearance), but shouldn’t we see some surface detail and color—especially green—since ample trees and foliage inhabit the forested terrain, as clearly evidenced from the action on the surface?  The medium range, high angle shot of the Enterprise in orbit at the top of Act II is a picturesque vantage of the ship and planet that’s truly superb…in fact, though few in number, this episode contains some of the finest orbit shots in the entire RM series.  Yarnek’s transformation from monolithic outcropping to rock-based entity and back again—depicted as a red glow animated over a faux boulder with heavy fog effects—is still a bit dicey.  The overall visual looks badly outdated and makes one wonder why the RM team didn’t use morphing technology to smooth out Yarnek’s transformation.  The sequence only required one render since the shot could’ve been reversed to represent Yarnek’s transition back into its inanimate state.  Though a couple of minor details could’ve used a RM fix, like the red outline of Lincoln sitting in a chair before the image comes into focus (though, thankfully, the starfield has been touched up) and Yarnek’s blinking light eyes, the RM team took care of this episode’s big-ticket items.

 

Money Shot:  The beautiful new CG planet with its patch of habitable surface.

 

Wish List:  Better FX on Yarnek’s blinking eyes, Yarnek’s transformation from boulder to living being and the bold red outline around Lincoln in his chair when he first appears in space.

 

Remaster Grade:  B+

 

Screencaps:

 

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The Cloud Minders

Behold Bespin…er, Stratos.

 

77)  “The Cloud Minders”  Original Airdate: (02/28/69)  Remaster Airdate: (07/12/08)

 

Evaluation:

Long before Bespin, the Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, there was Stratos, the cloud city on Ardana in TOS’s “Minders.”  The original FX on Stratos were decent when considering the constraints of late 60s technology and the concept of a city in the clouds was, obviously, way ahead of its time.  The first (low angle) shot of Stratos has received a minor alteration, but the second (close-up) shot reveals much more structural detail than the original model.  A new CG matte of Stratos, as seen from an aerial perspective, reveals a similar aesthetic to Bespin, but the shot is so quick that (save for hitting the pause button) discerning specific architectural elements is extremely difficult (a longer take of this shot appears during Spock’s mental log, but details are obscured by the white haze of the Vulcan’s musings).  So here we have a cosmic curiosity…even though “Minders” predates Empire by eleven years, the RM version of this episode takes visual cues from Empire, which precedes it by twenty-eight years.  It’s a temporal paradox that would give John Connor a headache.  Shots of Stratos aside, there are some subtle changes that make a big difference in the episode, such as: the addition of a handrail to one of the shots where characters look down at the surface from Stratos, better animation on the silhouette of the falling Troglyte and cleaned up cloud formations in certain instances.  While on the subject of moving clouds, why wasn’t this effect employed in other episodes where the sky was obviously a set wall (refer to my comments in “The Apple” and “The Way to Eden”)?  The Ardanan answer to the Mirror Universe’s agony booth (simply dubbed “the rays”) hasn’t been updated from its original multicolor grooviness, and both Ardanan (amber with red starburst) and Starfleet (green stun field or blue beam) energy beams could’ve used a touch-up.  The Starfleet standard filter mask is an utterly ludicrous apparatus and hardly instills confidence (in viewer or Troglyte) that it can protect against a noxious, odorless gas.  Admittedly, there’s very little the RM team could’ve done to salvage this hokey prop even if they’d tried—but they didn’t even make an attempt, so the eyesore endures.

 

Money Shot:  The new matte of Stratos as seen from a higher vantage.

 

Wish List:  Better FX on the Ardanan torture chamber, disruptor/phaser FX and a more realistic filter mask.

 

Remaster Grade:  A

 

Screencaps:

 

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