In case you aren't SF-inclined and hadn't heard the news, Paramount was going back to restore and enhance episodes of Star Trek in honor of the show's 40th anniversary. They restored the picture, re-recorded the theme, made the soundtrack stereo and updated the special effects, planets, ships, etc. with CGI animation. The preview looked very intriguing, and the theme song sounded great with full orchestration, although some of the fans were in a swivet that the show would somehow be "changed."

The channel showing the first of the "new" episodes here in Atlanta was WSB and they showed it at 2:35 a.m. on Sunday. So I recorded it and we just watched it.

Everything looked quite nice: the picture was bright and clean, the effects enhanced but not overly-so; the ships looked quite good.

But the frappin' thing was still edited. Just for the heck of it I used the trim feature on the DVD recorder and cut out all the commercials and the episode clocked in at 43.49. A Trek episode in 1966 probably would have had a preview, so let's say that one clocked in at 45.00 (although 60s previews probably didn't go over 30 seconds). Television shows in the 1960s clocked in at 51-52 minutes; I checked out one of my uncut episodes of Wild Wild West.

So what's the use of restoring something if we still get five to seven minutes of story cut out? Grumble. (Unless Channel 2 did it, which I wouldn't put past them; heaven forbid they should have to edit their repeat of Entertainment Tonight...)

Labels: television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 7:41:00 PM

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