George Lucas Meets Star Trek

I was watching an episode of Star Trek (the original) that I hadn't seen in years. I've seen every episode of the original Star Trek (from the late 60s) several times over.

So imagine, to my surprise, watching something that I didn't recognize. In particular, additional CG effects of the shuttlecraft. For those whose memories are a bit rusty, the shuttlecraft Galileo has crash-landed on a planet. The Enterprise is called away for a rescue mission.

On the planet, there are oversize ape-like creatures bent on, well, harassing the crew. One of the character dies, and they must try to escape the planet or be killed by these creatures. As they use the boosters to escape, they realize they will burn up on re-entry. They realize they can only go one orbit before the ship goes back down and burns up.

Spock decides to jettison and ignite the fuel, to use that as a distress signal.

It's here where you see the shuttle from the back, as it burns fuel up, and where I was thinking "um, that wasn't in the original".

I checked out the SciFi channel. They've digitally redone some of the episodes, and this is the first weekend they are televising it, though I see it on DC20 which is not the SF channel.

So apparently, there's some effort to modernize the effects. The odd part of the effects is that they don't look that realistic. Indeed, it kinda looks like the illustrations that you might see in an SF book. It makes it look even more 60s, which I suppose, is not such an awful artistic direction to take.

I don't know what I think of the effect, but it is a bit different. I suppose it's not as awful as it could be. I wonder if Adam's more of a purist when it comes to these changes.