I was gonna make a really snide comment and say that I put as much effort into this blog entry this week as apparently they put into “City on the Edge of Forever”. If I had I would have ended my entry here.
But I won’t.
I thought this week was ok... but I want more. The space shots are getting better... although they still don’t look like TOS. Come on, guys... fix those nacelle caps! And why are we looking at the guardian’s planet with oceans? Seems to me that the original was pretty barren. Why the big change? I can see putting some better atmosphere on there... but really. I think the dramatic license is being a little stretched for non important reasons.
That said, the subtle effects were the best...including the “futzing” of Spock’s tricorder viewer and the constant steaming of the Guardian over the end credits. These are nice little changes... but with all the attention on the minutiae of shots that “bugged” people, there are a lot of shots of the Enterprise that are “bugging” people now.
The idea of taking two shots and integrating them into one is good. I heartily endorse it. But I feel that the dynamism is lost in this instance. When the two shots of the enterprise orbiting the guardian planet were replaced with one, we lost the integral dynamism of the angles. Lost is the wonderfully splayed angle of the Warp engines as the enterprise moves away from us. This is a scale cue... and now it’s lost. Making the same mistake as Lucas did in the Star Wars Special Edition... favoring a ho hum melding of shots to two visually exciting ones.
Is it too much to ask for a more interesting reveal of the landing party in the valley of the guardian? Even in the Animated series we get a much more interesting ruins. With a little creativity a very engaging vista could have been generated with the elements that exist... just something more... The producers fear of changing anything is really making each episode of this remastering seem needless.
And for those of you who think I’m just out to bash this project... I’m not. I love Trek, and just hate to see a great opportunity like this squandered.
