Not certain if I’m going to watch the HD version of Trek
September 11, 2006I haven’t made up my mind yet if I’m going to watch the new HD-enhanced version of Star Trek when it starts airing this month. For one thing I haven’t seen any ads indicating a local station has picked it up so the point may be moot–it may not be airing in the Louisville market.
But even if it does air, do I really want to see these new special effects? I thought the original Trek did a pretty good job with their effects, given the budgetary and technical limitations of the day. The original effects hold up against many of the shows that aired after they did, like a lot of the Dr. Who episodes for example.
But of course they don’t hold a candle to what’s possible today, and that’s the whole idea behind this reinvention. To modernize Trek a bit for a new audience that’s grown accustomed to realistic effects in even the lowest-budget of shows, like all those horrible monster movies commissioned recently for the Sci-Fi channel.
The thing is, it seems not too different from colorizing black-and-white shows. Same idea right–they didn’t have color capabilities back then, why not “enhance” them with color for a new generation that’s used to color broadcasts? Colorizing was a flop, I suspect that this HD-enhaced Trek may also be a flop.
And that could be very bad for the franchise. Because if it flops then the forces at Paramount that are already talking about ending the franchise will have more reason than ever. We might not get the new Trek movie that J.J. Abrams is working on, should the enhanced Trek series fail in syndication.
So ironically, there’s motivation for even skeptical fans like me to tune in. Anything to help boost the ratings and help poor old Star Trek get another chance.