Star Trek came out in 1966, so not only were special effects pretty primitive, but so was our knowledge of space. It really wasn’t until the Apollo 17 astronauts went to the moon in 1972 and took a picture of Earth from a distance that we started thinking of Earth as a big blue marble. So maybe it is forgivable that Earth from space was usually represented as we would have known it, a globe: no clouds, no atmosphere. We would watch Star Trek in college and I would always say “Clear day on Earth!” when they would orbit Earth, which wasn’t that often I guess.
Yesterday I won a $25 iTunes gift card and I was looking for movies I could get. iTunes usually has the best deals on 4k movies and I did see a few things I might like to get including 4k upgrades of The Princess Bride and Alien. But I took it as a message from Star Fleet when I noticed I could get all three seasons of Star Trek in HD for $24.99.
In 2006, Star Trek, now called Star Trek: The Original Series, was remastered from the original film to show on high definition TV’s. While they were at it, they re-did a lot of the special effects, including most of the shots of the Enterprise and shots of planets. Usually it is a stand alone shot, but sometimes they will show something on screen of the bridge, so they updated that too. They weren’t overly ambitious: the Enterprise still looks like a plastic model, just a little better.
I read about the restoration and was hoping that version was what iTunes was selling, but wasn’t sure at first. Eventually I confirmed that it was the newer version, which made me want to check it out and I went ahead and purchased it. I already had all of the Star Trek movies on iTunes as well as the complete series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I have never watched, but thought I might if I bought it. There are a ton of Star Trek series now, which I have no intention of buying or watching until I can knock out TNG. Looking at early episodes, I wanted to pick out an episode with Earth and found “Miri,” an episode where the crew finds a planet exactly like Earth, but inhabited only by children and zombies. It did show the planet from space, which makes for a good comparison.
I got these screen captures from a website that judges the restoration of every episode, which of course happened a long time ago now, but it was new to me. They always need to be careful how they change original works, but it seems like most people (including me) feel like these changes were done well.
Yesterday I watched the last episode of Season 2, so I am making good, but still kind of slow progress. That’s 55 episodes I’ve watched. It is fun to see who some of the guest stars are. In yesterday’s episode, Teri Garr showed up, which was a surprise. I’ve also learned to look for Eddie Paskey, who frequently played an extra on the Enterprise bridge, Lieutenant Leslie. He usually doesn’t have a speaking part and sometimes shows up on the planet being explored. He was even killed once. He is on almost every show, appearing on more episodes than Sulu or Chekov. George Takei (Sulu) missed a lot of Season 2 while making The Green Berets. Chekov (Walter Koenig) was only brought in to fill his seat, so he missed all of Season 1.