The complaints have begun. CBS Consumer products has announced that the first season of the 1960s Star Trek on DVD, with the recently-enhanced special effects via CGI, will have a US recommended retail price of $218. Now, we all know no one will be selling them for that premium price, but that it will also be a dual high definition (HD)/regular release set, with new bonus features.
Many collectors already bought the first versions of the DVD season sets, with 60s effects made on 16mm film stock, run through multiple passes of a SPFX camera. There will be buyer resistance to the new DVDs, with fans are saying they'd prefer just the regular TV sets, but with new CGI FX, be available separately.
There'll also be resistance from people who won't want HD TV as well, but what happens the prices of HD TVs fall so low they can't resist buying one? Then they'll feel a need to buy the HD TOS sets to play on it, but they'll already have the regular version. They'll yell at CBS for "double dipping".
Don't want HD TV? Eventually, when everybody else has had one for a few years, the more stubborn viewers (or technology laggards) will start to notice that their expectations - of what an acceptable level of clarity is - have changed. When colour TV came to Australia in 1975, you know, my paternal grandmother used to say that colour TV hurt her eyes - until we bought her one of her own.
I really don't understand the anger towards companies who "double dip" their DVD releases. That only infers that the producers of all DVDs should make people wait much longer for any DVD to become available for sell-through, as the various studios scramble to make the first (and only) issue of each movie and TV show a once-only double-disk-multi-commentary-100-bonus-extras version, and then promise to never ever release a second version in our lifetimes.
When i hear the complaints, I find myself thinking: divide $218 by the number of episodes in the set, and then contemplate how amazing HD TV is. Deduct the cash you make selling your old set on eBay. Think about the wages of the SPFX guys who've been churning out the new CGI FX sequences for syndicated, repeated TOS episodes on a weekly basis for the past year. And, remembering back to the bad ol' early 80s, I remind them that a double episode of TV TOS on VHS (or Beta!) was over $70 each.
Showing posts with label Art of Star Trek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art of Star Trek. Show all posts
Friday, August 03, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Origins of Filmation's TAS: 1969!
Titan's latest "Star Trek" magazine (Aussie version #90 JUL/AUG 2007; UK #132) features a bonus section, including "The Secret Origins of 'Star Trek: The Animated Series'" by Andy Mangels.
Andy's article includes reprints of official comments, from Paramount to Filmation (dated October 15, 1969), about Don Christensen's 1969 "concept paper" proposing for TAS: a training ship called Excalibur; Scotty's moustache; new characters called Tun-Tun, Stormy, Ploof, Steve and Bob; and a suggestion to eliminate Chekov and his paired cadet, Chris, in favour of finding a cadet pairing for Uhura.
Excalibur (originally proposed as 6D12 Lightly) would have been able to break up into smaller pods. It sounds like Tun-Tun was already slated to be replaced by the moustachioed Scotty - and his cadet counterpart, Stormy, was to be dropped. Steve was Spock's cadet companion, and Bob was McCoy's. There was concern that Kirk's companion looked too much like "any boy in the world", and Sulu's and Uhura's companions were not decided yet (although a preliminary sketch of the female cadet paired with Uhura is in "The Art of Star Trek" by Garfield & Judith Reeves-Stevens, so she did see further development).
From "The Art of Star Trek" - Note the pre-TMP moustache on Scotty!
Three early story outlines were "The Space Cocoon", "The Impossible Rainbow" and "Klingon Attack". Some "crab/spider" business in "The Space Cocoon" was deemed unacceptable for a kids' show, but there was an effort to boost up the educational angle of each TAS instalment from even this earliest incarnation. There were aliens called trogs.
Perhaps "The Space Cocoon" inspired the story about the pod ship of "Beyond the Farthest Star" (That ship was built by an insectoid race, and there was already talk of the TAS cadet ship being able to break into smaller pod vessels?) "The Impossible Rainbow" was about "a quiet boy" and fantasy becoming reality - perhaps inspired by "Charlie X"? There was concern there was "no real point" to "The Klingon Attack" and it needed work to draw out the interrelationships and to add an educational message.
Very cool trivia from the archives! Thanks Andy Mangels, Filmation animator/historian Darrell McNeil, and Titan!
Andy's article includes reprints of official comments, from Paramount to Filmation (dated October 15, 1969), about Don Christensen's 1969 "concept paper" proposing for TAS: a training ship called Excalibur; Scotty's moustache; new characters called Tun-Tun, Stormy, Ploof, Steve and Bob; and a suggestion to eliminate Chekov and his paired cadet, Chris, in favour of finding a cadet pairing for Uhura.
Excalibur (originally proposed as 6D12 Lightly) would have been able to break up into smaller pods. It sounds like Tun-Tun was already slated to be replaced by the moustachioed Scotty - and his cadet counterpart, Stormy, was to be dropped. Steve was Spock's cadet companion, and Bob was McCoy's. There was concern that Kirk's companion looked too much like "any boy in the world", and Sulu's and Uhura's companions were not decided yet (although a preliminary sketch of the female cadet paired with Uhura is in "The Art of Star Trek" by Garfield & Judith Reeves-Stevens, so she did see further development).
From "The Art of Star Trek" - Note the pre-TMP moustache on Scotty!
Three early story outlines were "The Space Cocoon", "The Impossible Rainbow" and "Klingon Attack". Some "crab/spider" business in "The Space Cocoon" was deemed unacceptable for a kids' show, but there was an effort to boost up the educational angle of each TAS instalment from even this earliest incarnation. There were aliens called trogs.
Perhaps "The Space Cocoon" inspired the story about the pod ship of "Beyond the Farthest Star" (That ship was built by an insectoid race, and there was already talk of the TAS cadet ship being able to break into smaller pod vessels?) "The Impossible Rainbow" was about "a quiet boy" and fantasy becoming reality - perhaps inspired by "Charlie X"? There was concern there was "no real point" to "The Klingon Attack" and it needed work to draw out the interrelationships and to add an educational message.
Very cool trivia from the archives! Thanks Andy Mangels, Filmation animator/historian Darrell McNeil, and Titan!
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