Merrick here...


...with two images from this weekend's STAR TREK remastered. The episode is "Amok Time" - it's the one in which an oversexed Spock gets horny and beats up his friends. When I was a kid, I didn't really get it. Now...I do.

Both of these are establishing shots from Vulcan (Spock's homeworld). Traditionally, we show an "original -vs-remastered" shot comparison. Interestingly, there really aren't any accurate comparisons for the new, reamstered pictures - all establishing shots in the original episode were confined to the immediate arena in which Spock is forced to take on Kirk in a hormonally charged, politically motivated smackdown.

The original establishing shots looked something like this:

The remastering significantly broadens the scope of this sequence. Here's a shot from "Amok Time" showing Kirk, Spock, and McCoy crossing a land bridge to get to the arena:

Remastered [CLICK TO EMBIGGEN IMAGE]

And, here's an aerial view of the arena itself. No longer a strange outcropping in the middle of nowhere, it's perched precariously on a mountain top. A city can now be seen in the distance: it's Shi'Khar (where Spock grew up). We first saw this in the STAR TREK ANIMATED SERIES episode "Yesteryear" back in 1973.

Remastered [CLICK TO EMBIGGEN IMAGE]

Notice how the aesthetic now evokes the general vibe set for Vulcan in STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK?

TREK III

Apparently, some consideration was actually given to adjusting the image tint/background "sky" in this episode. It's blood read in the original series, but was presented as copper/golden in THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK and subsequent TREK series.

Alas, the sheer amount of effects required to do this proved prohibitive: too many angles featured the sky (an on-set backdrop when the episode was filmed), and conforming its appearance would have required more FX manipulation than we see in many feature films.

In the end, the team's decision not to pursue this stays truer to the original episode...a compromise I can certainly live with.

"Original" images from TrekCore

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