WotWot?

SpottyWot, the male blue WotWot (although he didn't photograph very blue because he's in front of this stunning new image from the recently-repaired Hubble Telescope). His female partner, DottyWot, is bright pink. The faces are kind of reminiscent of Bart Simpson. Based on a new CGI animated television series, "The WotsWots" are new toys, some with detachable body parts to help them impersonate zoo animals after their spaceship's landing in the zoo's grounds.

Gabriel and the Blue Planet

On Monday night, I was able to use two free double passes to take three friends to see the preview of "Gabriel", a new independently-produced Australian movie which officially premieres on Thursday.

I'd seen a trailer for it a few months ago, but had no idea at the time that "Gabriel" was an Australian film. It certainly looks interesting, but the story failed to keep me enthralled. The storyline didn't seem all that innovative. Fallen arch angels battling Lucifer's minions on the level playing field of Purgatory has been done before, and better, by many other films.

Too often, I found myself analysing the filming techniques, the actors (it was a little distracting that one near-death arch angel is currently an alcoholic doctor in "All Saints", and the woman trying to heal him is a doctor in "Home and Away"), the script and the special effects. It reminded me a bit of a moody, almost monochromatic, long music video, although thankfully the music was used sparingly, and was actually quite good.

We recognised several cast and crew in the cinema, and there were some very funny moments as guffaws, from various darkened locations, floated through the air whenever certain two-line extras mumbled dialogue at each other.

The executive producer had congratulated us all on winning a contest to get the tickets - hey, I just picked up mine from a bookshop counter! - but my guests commented wryly that they were glad I didn't have to buy the tickets, or do anything too strenuous to "win' them.



Tonight, it was back into the CBD once more: for the 40th anniversary of IMAX cinemas. There was champagne - and wonderful canapes (oh my diet!) - in an effort to bring more teachers and their excursion groups into Darling Harbour. The screening was a revamped version of "Blue Planet", with stunning NASA photography from various shuttle missions, Earthbound footage of glaciers, hurricanes African animals, and amazing CGI effects.

I sometimes "bliss out" watching IMAX documentaries, but this one was riveting. I have no need of travelling in the space shuttle now. I feel like I've already been there.

I have seen the Big Blue Marble with my own eyes.

The goodie bag was fun too: miniature squeegees, for one's computer monitor screens, a pen, lots of pamphlets, and a strip of real IMAX footage. Not bad for a free night's entertainment.

Captain's Log: Supplemental. The ABC's "The Movie Show" did an interesting pair of reviews on "Gabriel" this week. David hated it, and gave it 1.5 stars, saying it was tedious and unoriginal; Margaret loved it and gave it 3.5 stars. I think I'm still somewhere in between.

Double dipping

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.

Do you know the way to ShiKahr?

American television audiences channel flipping for random episodes of original Star Trek (TOS) in syndication are enjoying all-new special effects footage, which is being recreated/repaired/enhanced with CGI in remastered, high definition versions of the episodes. Although current syndication advertisement ratios require extensive cutting of popular lines and (sometimes) whole scenes, there is an intention to release uncut HD DVDs of the "remastered" TOS.

TOS was made on film, not videotape, which means that it looks amazing on HD TV, but the FX made in the 1960s are simply not up to scratch, due to the number of composite film layers required to produce SPFX footage of transporter effects, phaser beams, ship passes and matt paintings. The episodes still look good on regular TVs, but DVD already shows up problems (the joins on Nimoy's pointed ear tips, for one) and HD TV and DVD will show up many more faults, especially in the old SPFX.

While some fans have been angered by any attempt to meddle with a cultural icon - especially the attempts to recreate CGI versions of the Enterprise's rotating nacelle caps, and the artists putting miniature, moving versions of themselves in the new computer-drawn matt paintings - the CBS SPFX team are doing an amazing job, from the still and moving examples I've seen so far.

But last week, CBS unveiled its remastered version of "Amok Time". Suddenly, that well-known scene of Spock and Kirk's battle for T'Pring, Spock's intended bondmate, has been elevated, literally, onto an impossibly precarious land bridge, similar to those seen in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"! And, in the distance, we can now see a CGI recreation of Spock's home city of ShiKahr, which had previously been named and visited in the Filmation animated episode, "Yesteryear" (TAS).


Left: ShiKahr in TAS; Right: a distant ShiKahr in TOS-R.

While most of Filmation's TAS was shunted out of "canon" via a Star Trek Office memo in 1989, several names and events from "Yesteryear" (plus Captain Robert April of "The Counter-clock Incident") are embraced by the "Star Trek Encyclopedia" and the "Star Trek Chronology", with Gene Roddenberry's approval. Unfortunately, Spock's city of birth is misspelt "ShirKahr" in those publications, and that pesky error has permeated TAS mentions in other licensed Star Trek products.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the moon-like object in the sky over Shikahr in the "Yesteryear" still, that is "T'Kuht", coined in the 70s by fanzine identity, Gordon Carleton, to explain the misleading TOS quote, "Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura" (in "The Man Trap"). Jean Lorrah once wrote Sarek & Amanda fanzine stories for T'Kuhtian Press.

The TAS error in "Yesteryear" (ie. Dorothy Fontana had scribbled "remove moon" on the art she approved for Filmation, but it wasn't noticed by the animators) was retconned as "Vulcan's twin planet" in the booklet accompanying View-Master's "Yesteryear" adaptation, "Mr. Spock's Time Trek". The planetary body was also shown to dominate the Vulcan sky in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (TMP) in 1979 (below), although it was eliminated for the director's edition DVD.



Several years later, the planetoid turned up in a Pocket Star Trek novel as T'Kuht in "The Vulcan Academy Murders" (below) by Jean Lorrah, acknowledging Gordon Carleton for the name and explanation. The planetoid is even on the cover of "The Vulcan Academy Murders" (below left) and Michael Jan Friedman's "New Worlds, New Civilizations" (below right).



The name is spelt "T'Khut" in Diane Duane's "Spock's World", Jeri Taylor's "Voyager: Pathways" and the books "The Worlds of the Federation" and "New Worlds, New Civilizations". It's called "T'Rukh" in AC Crispin's novel, "Sarek", with an explanation that the name changes are seasonal. It's T'Kuht again in "The Needs of the One" a DC Comics story in its TOS Special, Series II, and Geoffrey Mandel's book, "Star Trek Star Charts".

With the animated series often considered the bastard child of the Star Trek phenomenon, it's always a thrill to me to see TAS acknowledged. With the new version of "Amok Time", ShiKahr and TAS take a new step towards legitimacy and acceptance!