1 post tagged “the original series”
Following up my earlier post complaining about the pricing of ST:TOS on the iTunes store, I first ought to admit that I got my pricing info for the DVD sets wrong. I may have looked at the prices when there was a special offer going on, but the price per season at Amazon is now about US$68 - about US$10 more expensive than the iTunes price.
However, what is more eye-opening is that some of the episodes being sold on iTunes are the newly-remastered 40th anniversary versions.
Yes, some. And while the iTS can claim some vindication on their pricing, they've really botched it again by not indicating which of the episodes on sale are the remastered versions. Fortunately, numerous fans have posted info the iTS reviews regarding which episodes are, in fact, the remastered versions.
It isn't entirely iTunes' fault, because the remastering is a work in progress and Paramount isn't doing the episodes in order, so they simply can't sell the entire first season in remastered form because most of the episodes haven't been done yet.
But you would think they would have done one of two things : either clearly label the remastered episodes or - and this would probably be the preferred solution - only sell remastered episodes as they become available, regardless of season. Of course, that would mean they can't sell season sets, but they could instead sell a 'series pass' for the entire set of 80 episodes.
Still, it appears from the customer reviews that people are buying these episodes. Including me, because I just downloaded the remastered versions of 'Balance of Terror' (my all-time favorite Trek episode of any of the series) and 'Space Seed'. And, for all my gripes, they were worth the US$1.99.
When I first heard about the remastering project and saw clips of the first few episodes, it struck me as fairly minimal tweaking. Nice to have, and certainly a good idea with HD on the horizon, but nothing earth-shattering.
However, having compared the remastered versions to my old DVD copies(1), the difference really is pretty impressive. It's not so much the redone special effects as the general cleaning up of the image quality - rich colours, finer detail (even at iTS resolution). Can't wait to see these on my plasma over an AppleTV connection.
Also, judging from the excellent sub-site on the remastering at StarTrek.Com, it looks like they are gaining in confidence and doing more to the episodes. Check out the gallery to see some of the changes they are now making to backgrounds, in particular - including one ridiculous example where, in 'Arena', the sky in one scene is inexplicably filled by an image of crumpled metal, which has now been replaced with normal sky.
The new version of the hollow asteroid world Yonada from 'For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky' (clunkiest episode title in the history of television) is also really nice.
(1) Not the current season sets, but the ridiculously expensive two-episodes-per-disc version from several years ago, although I understand that the season sets are no better in picture quality. When they released these in the early days of DVD, I bought all forty volumes as they were released, at a total cost of over US$700...and these don't have any extras whatsoever, unlike the newer season sets. Sigh, the price of fandom...
