Brikar

Just like last time, one episode at a time:

2x01 "Amok Time" - Spock gets so horny if he doesn't bone he'll die, so the crew heads to Vulcan and Kirk ends up in a fight to the death with him. Aside from greatly expanding the mythology of the show and one of its primary characters and races, "Amok Time" gave us the greatest fight music in the history of everything:
It's a good episode, with some interesting production design and, of course, the cool centerpiece fight sequence between Kirk and Spock. Nimoy sells Spock's rather shocking behavior really well in this episode, but Kirk at times comes off as a bit of a jerk, pushing his way into sacred Vulcan ritual and demanding his friend tell him his deepest, most painful secret.

CG enhancements to the episode are relatively minor - a few shots of the ship in space, in orbit over Vulcan and a really cool new establishing shot of the arena on Vulcan. The episode looks great, with well saturated colors and good detail. It's not up with the best of the episodes I saw in Season 1, but this episode has certainly never looked this good, and may never look any better.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Sam Cogley

Of course, if Kirk had played nice with Spock, Spock would have been dead.

Brikar

It's more the way Shatner plays it that makes him come off kinda douchey. His line readings are harsh - less a concerned friend and more, "Tell me right fucking know cuz I wanna know, damn it"

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

2x02 "Who Mourns for Adonais?" - This is a well-written episode, if a bit silly in terms of its production design. A giant, glowing hand reaches up from a planet and grabs the Enterprise. Then, a man claiming to be the old god Apollo demands that Kirk and the crew worship him. The concept of aliens visiting Earth long ago and posing as gods is one with a lot of possibility (hell, "Stargate" has fashioned an entire franchise out of it). It's really the production design that brings this one down - it's almost exceptionally cheesy, from the actor playing Apollo to the sets and costumes, and even the giant hand that grabs the ship in space. The CG enhancements are decent, if minor - the ship orbits the planet, for the most part. The hand that grabs the Enterprise looks terrible in its first appearance, and then, despite it's intense cheesiness, looks fine afterward. Clarity, detail and color are great, still. Cheap though it may be, there's a lot of fine detail visible on Apollo's glittery gold costume and on the Hot Blonde Lieutenant of the Week's pink dress.

2x03 "The Changeling" - Great episode, which comes across now as a sort of precursor to "The Motion Picture", with the probe that's been repaired by aliens and sent off on its new mission; there's talk of a 'creator' and 'biological infestations'. There are a couple of cheesy bits - Uhura's mindwipe is a little silly, especially her "re-education", where McCoy states that she's already back to college-level by the end of the episode. At any rate, the episode looks great. There are no instances of excessive noise or grain that stood out to me. There's not a lot of fine detail to be seen here, beyond what we've been seeing all along with characters' costumes. The Nomad prop is a fairly straight-forward metal box with blinking lights, so not much there, and the entire episode takes place on standing Enterprise sets, which are fairly plain as well.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

2x04 "Mirror, Mirror" - A goddamn classic. 'Nuff said. The episode looks solid - most scenes look great, but there are a few, darker scenes in Kirk's quarters for example, that look soft, but not in the sense where they were shot that way. Oftentimes, closeups of female characters are hazy, giving an almost magical or fantastical look to them - but here, it just seems plane soft, without the blooming haze off skin highlights and such. It varies within scenes, too, from shot to shot. I can only assume it's a problem with the source and not the transer, but I found it slightly distracting. CG enhancements are good - the transition between universes looks pretty cool, but still very faithful to the original. A subtle effect has been added to the agony booth, as well, that looks really cool.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

2x05 "The Apple" - A solid episode, but frankly it takes a bit too long to get going. The first half is mostly the crew wandering through the woods, slowly being picked off. It takes too long to really do much of anything, but oh well. The episode looks great - very sharp, with good detail save for a few extremely grainy stock shots of rolling thunderclouds. CG enhancements are minor, but well done. The ship's phasers hitting Baal looks pretty good.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

2x06 "The Doomsday Machine" - Another effing classic. This episode looks a little different from previous ones - Colors aren't quite as saturated, and the lighting is a lot harsher. As a result, some of the detail is blown out. Still, the episode hasn't ever looked this good, and there are some closeups that are just astonishing. This episode probably features the most drastic CG enhancements of the entire series, as well, with huge, dynamic shots of the Enterprise, the Constellation and the planetkiller in combat. The Enterprise moves much differently than it does in other episodes, making more obvious maneuvers than in any other episode. There's lots of fun here, a great episode overall.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Cymro

You know, I'm looking at the remastered shots from this and other episodes and I'm wondering now what it'd be like if they were to re-do them the old fashioned way with real models and film effects. If anything it might make it fit more with the source material, even using crappy models like the Doomesday Machine originally was - though I have no idea how expensive that would be.

__________________
"Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.

"But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."

Brikar

Model photography never really got any more advanced than it did when DS9 and Voyager were using them in the 90s. I imagine it would look something like that.

2x07 "Catspaw" - What a lame episode. Anyway, it looks great. Good detail and color. The sets and costumes all look great. The... giant cat.... doesn't. Not really much more to say... I was having a hard time paying attention to this dull as dirt offering.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Cymro

Which would be pretty good, as the original purpose of doing the effects again was that the film looked so bad from constant re-use.

__________________
"Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.

"But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."