It’s the 40th anniversary of the original Star Trek series, and it’s coming back to broadcast TV for the first time in 16 years. That makes me feel old – when I was a kid I used to wait up to watch Trek at midnight on Channel 11 WPIX, and would curse when the football games would run long and they would just squeeze an episode of the Odd Couple into the remaining time instead.
The show is being cleaned up and remastered and whatever else – probably all shit they did for the DVD anyway – but that’s not what makes it newsworthy. What’s amazing is that they’re replacing the special effects with CGI. Yes! Harry Mudd shoots first!
This is funny on many levels. The Enterprise will now be state of the art CGI on the outside but still cardboard and blinking lights on the inside. Also, I think the show had a total of five space shots they would use again and again, so did they just make five new CGI shots, or will every planet now look different? Finally, are they going to ruin Star Trek’s proud history of shitty monsters – like smudges on the film as energy beams – with CGI? Will the Horta no longer be a guy underneath a rug but rather a 3D rendering? Even if they don’t go that far, they’re going to be replacing the painted backdrops of alien planets and adding more CGI people to crowd scenes and the like. The theme song is also being rerecorded in stereo, with a new singer ululating.
Personally, this all seems stupid, but I guess it’s keeping the unemployment rate down.
The reruns will air in fan-chosen order. The first one will be Balance of Power, where the Romulans were introduced.