'The Outer Limits'

[StarFuryG7]

So I checked out the Shatner episode of "The Outer Limits" over the weekend as I intended; popped the disc in at 1am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. God, it's been a long time since I saw that episode, but it left me inclined to watch more of them now that I've ripped the plastic off of one of those three sets to look at an episode. I'm not sure which one I'll look at next, but I'll look over the list of titles and will make a decision sometime during the week.

Before sitting down to look at the episode, "Cold Hands, Warm Heart", I had a thought, although I doubt it'll happen. Regardless, I think they should redo the special effects, as was done for TOS, colorize the episodes, and release them on Blu-ray, with the original black and white episodes also available for viewing on the same discs. "The Outer Limits" is not "Star Trek", and is not a part of an ongoing, continually building upon itself franchise, so I can't see the company that owns it being open to spending the kind of money necessary to do it. Some might also view that as a sort of sacrilege, believing that original works of art should remain in their original state (not including remastering in order to restore an already existing work to pristine condition, which is not the same thing (the most recent release of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" on Blu-ray and standard DVD is a good example of restoring a film without really changing it). But tell some people they should colorize Rod Sterling's "The Twilight Zone" and stand ready for the scowls directed at you. It would be akin to saying "Citizen Kane" should be colorized in their eyes, which caused quite a stir back in the 1980s when experimentation with colorizing old films first started using a very inferior method not comparable to what can be done now with computers by contrast. I'm not saying they should colorize "The Twilight Zone" necessarily, but I think it would benefit "The Outer Limits", which will end up being an otherwise largely forgotten series in contrast. So in its case, I think it would be a matter of doing it for the benefit of posterity, and it could also serve in the short term to bring some renewed interest to the show. It's very dated, but colorizing it would help dull some of the aversion some people might have to looking at it in its original black and white form with its primitive special effects work. (The cheesy FX sequences in "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" are still creepily in a few places, but they don't in any way stand up to what people who work in that industry are capable of doing today; even the resurrected 'The Outer Limits' from the 90s which aired on Showtime originally are horribly dated compared to what can be done nowadays in contrast.) Like it or not, the viewing public of today is spoiled not only by color, but CGI, and now, high definition. There needs to be some kind of an incentive to get many of these people to look at an old, dated show like "The Outer Limits", which had some great stories worth viewing, but which will otherwise be lost to the forgotten dustbin of history.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Basil???

[CRAMBAM]

Using modern tech to improve great stories from the past is something I've always supported.

[TrekBeatTK]

You probably know I'm going to say this, but...

I don't think changing things and making them "modern" is the way to get folks to appreciate old classics. Probably the best way is to single out episodes starring now-famous people. but colorizing and redoing all the effects doesn't make people appreciate the older stuff; it just underlines that they won't watch them UNLESS we do that. And that's shameful.

For the most part, I HATE colorization. You shoot things differently in black and white than in color, and colorizing gives everything a weird artificial quality because the lighting is wrong.

But i do agree that folks need to check out some of this stuff.

-TK

[captainbasil]

I agree. I despise colorization. While it's fine to use modern technology to preserve or repair old films or shows, they should not be altered. Re-mastering is great but don't colorize this stuff. We have a whole culture today that is woefully ignorant of its past to its own detriment. My boss, who's a little younger than me won't watch any film, new or old, that's filmed in black & white. I also hate the new special effects added to Star Trek TOS. The Doomsday Machine episode, for example looks horrible. I prefer the original effects, flaws and all. You can be any age and enjoy things that were before your time. Whether it's Outer Limits or Old Time Radio ( one of my passions that my dad got me into ). If you demand everything to be shiny and new, you're only limiting your own experience.

[StarFuryG7]

Jun 24, 2013 15:51:26 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

You probably know I'm going to say this, but...

I don't think changing things and making them "modern" is the way to get folks to appreciate old classics. Probably the best way is to single out episodes starring now-famous people. but colorizing and redoing all the effects doesn't make people appreciate the older stuff; it just underlines that they won't watch them UNLESS we do that. And that's shameful.

It may be shameful, but it's also true, whether good or bad. And did you not notice your own contradiction in what you wrote here? People won't watch the older stuff, unless we perhaps do something that entices them into watching it? Well, if we don't entice them by doing what you're opposed to, then they WON'T watch them, and that's just the plain and simple fact. So what's the solution to that since doing nothing leaves things at the status quo, which is the refusal of people to look at something they deem to be too old and out of date?

I would also add here that you didn't even watch the episode that I looked at this past weekend. I know you're making an argument based on your principle belief, but I'm sorry, the episode "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" not only looks terribly dated, but the special effects there are downright laughable. They used a puppet for Christ sake, and it's abundantly apparent that it's a puppet. How is a viewer supposed to look at cut scenes like that without laughing? This is no longer the 1980s, where we could look at sequences like that from the older shows and just brush them off with the realization that it was produced twenty years or more earlier. If you're going to watch something, the story itself is the most important thing, yes, along with the accompanying dialogue that gets you through the episode, but it's ridiculously difficult to suspend disbelief when you're supposed to be accepting the idea of a sinister alien being making its way toward the spacecraft window of the protagonist, and you can't help but recognize that all you're really looking at is a goddamn puppet.

Watch the episode, TK --watch it online if you must if it's the only way you have access to it, since it's available for free viewing online, and then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

Jun 24, 2013 15:51:26 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

For the most part, I HATE colorization. You shoot things differently in black and white than in color, and colorizing gives everything a weird artificial quality because the lighting is wrong.
-TK

I don't know that what you claim about the lighting is true because I don't have anything to really judge by. What I do know however is that they colorized a full season of "Bewitched" and released it on DVD, and according to what I had heard, no one could tell the difference; it looked as though it had been shot in color.

[StarFuryG7]

Jun 24, 2013 17:28:00 GMT -5 captainbasil said:

I agree. I despise colorization. While it's fine to use modern technology to preserve or repair old films or shows, they should not be altered. Re-mastering is great but don't colorize this stuff. We have a whole culture today that is woefully ignorant of its past to its own detriment. My boss, who's a little younger than me won't watch any film, new or old, that's filmed in black & white. I also hate the new special effects added to Star Trek TOS. The Doomsday Machine episode, for example looks horrible. I prefer the original effects, flaws and all. You can be any age and enjoy things that were before your time. Whether it's Outer Limits or Old Time Radio ( one of my passions that my dad got me into ). If you demand everything to be shiny and new, you're only limiting your own experience.

With all due respect to you too here, Basil, just what is wrong with having both available as an option to you? You don't like the newer effects sequences that were put together for TOS using CGI, so be it, and people should respect that I guess, but that's what you have Blu-ray Sets that make both the original episodes and the remastered episodes with the newer CGI effects available to consumers, so they can decide which ones they WANT to look at when they sit down and pop one of those discs into their Player. The Blu-ray Sets of TOS that were put out in 2009 have both the original episodes with the original effects on them as well as the remastered episodes with the redone effects, and if you so choose, you can actually compare FX sequences, new to old, on the fly when you're watching one of the episodes. The Sets were designed to make that kind of switching back-and-forth seamless if one chooses to do it, and I personally would probably be inclined to do that on occasion simply out of a sense of natural curiosity. You guys seem to think that progress in and of itself is inherently bad, when it isn't necessarily. In this case it's an opportunity for more choice, which is not a bad thing.

[StarFuryG7]

Jun 24, 2013 9:37:24 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

Using modern tech to improve great stories from the past is something I've always supported.

I think it's something that should be done carefully and with the utmost respect, otherwise a company that chooses to do it runs the real risk of turning the work they're trying to modernize into a complete mockery. But that's what you have real professionals for, especially when they're pros who like the original work that they've been assigned to update in such a way.

[StarFuryG7]

I know I alluded to this here previously quite some time back, but I was reading the Wikipedia article on "The Outer Limits" over the weekend, and it has a whole section about its influence on the original "Star Trek".

I don't want to cut and paste the entire section, so just click the Link below to the article Page and then scroll down to it.

The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
Influence on Star Trek [Section 1.7]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outer_Limits_(1963_TV_series)

[captainbasil]

Jun 24, 2013 18:14:38 GMT -5 StarFuryG7 said:

Jun 24, 2013 17:28:00 GMT -5 captainbasil said:

I agree. I despise colorization. While it's fine to use modern technology to preserve or repair old films or shows, they should not be altered. Re-mastering is great but don't colorize this stuff. We have a whole culture today that is woefully ignorant of its past to its own detriment. My boss, who's a little younger than me won't watch any film, new or old, that's filmed in black & white. I also hate the new special effects added to Star Trek TOS. The Doomsday Machine episode, for example looks horrible. I prefer the original effects, flaws and all. You can be any age and enjoy things that were before your time. Whether it's Outer Limits or Old Time Radio ( one of my passions that my dad got me into ). If you demand everything to be shiny and new, you're only limiting your own experience.

With all due respect to you too here, Basil, just what is wrong with having both available as an option to you? You don't like the newer effects sequences that were put together for TOS using CGI, so be it, and people should respect that I guess, but that's what you have Blu-ray Sets that make both the original episodes and the remastered episodes with the newer CGI effects available to consumers, so they can decide which ones they WANT to look at when they sit down and pop one of those discs into their Player. The Blu-ray Sets of TOS that were put out in 2009 have both the original episodes with the original effects on them as well as the remastered episodes with the redone effects, and if you so choose, you can actually compare FX sequences, new to old, on the fly when you're watching one of the episodes. The Sets were designed to make that kind of switching back-and-forth seamless if one chooses to do it, and I personally would probably be inclined to do that on occasion simply out of a sense of natural curiosity. You guys seem to think that progress in and of itself is inherently bad, when it isn't necessarily. In this case it's an opportunity for more choice, which is not a bad thing.

To be fair, I have not seen the blu-ray collections you have mentioned. I suppose there is nothing wrong with a DVD that contains both the original and enhanced editions. If a carrot and stick technique is what it will take to attract new fans, I guess this would be the best way to attract new fans.

[CRAMBAM]

I think today's audiences are so used to brilliant effects that effects from the 1960s, even state of the art, just look horrible and detract from the stories.

I think the writing was very strong back then, and updating the effects enhances the experience.

I don't even mind some creativity with the updates.

Take an episode like Balance of Terror. They could have actually shown the battle. I wish they did.

[TrekBeatTK]

I appreciate if one is going to change stuff to have both versions of it (we didn't get the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD for awhile). But I still question the necessity. It's one thing for the creators of the thing to go back and play with it if they want to; I may not love it, but it's their property. But messing with something someone else made to make it "attractive" just bothers me so much.

I don't consider it "progress" to alter what came before. That's "revisionist".

I will say colorization tech has gotten better than the old Ted Turner days. Black and white television also is a bit of a different animal from black and white film. But many series around 1965 began shooting in color even if their audiences could only watch in black and white. That's fine. Heck, Disney was shooting Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland sequences in color in the mid 1950s. But I don't see that having it in color enhances anything. Like, are the Three Stooges any better in color? I don't think so. I'd actually be very curious as to whether the colorizing of these things ACTUALLY promoted more viewership. But I doubt there are any hard numbers on that.

I know I'll come off as a hypocrite here because I watched colorized versions of The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog as a kid. But I also saw them in black and white. Didn't make a difference to me either way, beyond knowing that Flubber was green. In those cases, I can understand them being colorized because Disney only shot them in black and white to hide the special effects better. But I think they are still just fine the way they were.

As to puppets in The Outer Limits, The X-Files has Scully attacked by a cat puppet in one episode. You have a good laugh about it, but it doesn't change the writing. A good episode is a good episode. There's this Lost in Space episode, "The Golden Man" which is actually one of the better written ones. In one scene, Judy is surrounded by land mines. Only they are beach balls. They didn't even paint them. I'm always weirded out by that. I bet it would look a little more convincing if it was the black and white season, but no it's color. Do I want some guy to CG something else over the beach balls? No, because there's a certain charm in suspending disbelief.

I'm really not against "progress" or anything. For the record, I also hate when modern stuff is shot in color that is then digitally graded to look black and white. It has a completely different feel from real black and white. I think we can market older stuff to newer audiences in other ways besides saying "all those hokey effects look cool now!" It's just as bad as making everything 3D (they're 3D converting the Wizard of Oz for no reason now too!)

-TK

[StarFuryG7]

>>I appreciate if one is going to change stuff to have both versions of it (we didn't get the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD for awhile). But I still question the necessity. It's one thing for the creators of the thing to go back and play with it if they want to; I may not love it, but it's their property. But messing with something someone else made to make it "attractive" just bothers me so much.

I don't consider it "progress" to alter what came before. That's "revisionist".<< --TK

Revision, in the sense we're talking about it here isn't necessarily a bad thing. Television fifty years ago was far more primitive than it is today, obviously. I can refer to the episode of the "The Twilight Zone" that starred Agnes Moorehead here very easily. In that episode they had to use small wind-up toy robots to depict what we find out at the end are human astronauts from Earth that landed in a remote area on a planet inhabited by beings very much like us, except they were giants. Rod Serling spoke about the limitations of both budget and special effects techniques at the time in an interview, and he cited that episode specifically about the extent to which it fell short because of the use of those toy robots and how they completely ruined the illusion of the story they were trying to tell there. "The Incredible Shrinking Man" had already been produced in 1957, although that was a theatrical release, and "The Land of the Giants" came to television just a few years after "The Twilight Zone" had ended its run, but the budget just wasn't there for those sort of optical effects on Serling's show evidently, thus he was left totally disheartened and displeased by how the episode was produced and thereby came across to viewers. I would be willing to bet you that if he were still around today and someone in the industry approached him and told him they could redo the episode and fix that problem by inserting real actors into all of the scenes where the toy robots appear for a special blu-ray release of the series, he would in all likelihood be all for it because how the episode was originally produced following its post-production bothered him that much. In fact, the interview clip I'm alluding to might even be available somewhere, perhaps even on YouTube, although I'm really not sure. I saw it a few years back, though on television. I believe it was a part of the PBS "Pioneers of Television" series if I'm not mistaken. I'll see if I can dig it up at some point when I can find the time, which isn' t right now unfortunately.

>>I will say colorization tech has gotten better than the old Ted Turner days. Black and white television also is a bit of a different animal from black and white film. But many series around 1965 began shooting in color even if their audiences could only watch in black and white.<<

That's usually how it goes; we saw the same kind of transitioning to High-Def, although there may only have been one or two shows that were being produced in color back in '65. The majority would have still been produced in black and white. "Star Trek" didn't make its television debut until 1966, and it was one of the first shows shot in color.

>>That's fine. Heck, Disney was shooting Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland sequences in color in the mid 1950s. But I don't see that having it in color enhances anything. Like, are the Three Stooges any better in color? I don't think so.<<

Some people might prefer to be able to watch them in color, but there again we're talking about a matter of choice and preference. The original black and white editions would still be there for people to view if they wish to, but you're also overlooking something important here. "The Three Stooges" is slapstick comedy, whereas we're talking specifically about Science Fiction in contrast, where selling the illusion is often imperative for the suspension of disbelief. As I said to you yesterday, take a look at "The Outer Limits" episode 'Cold Hands, Warm Heart', and it's abundantly apparent that what you're looking at is nothing but a puppet. How are younger generations, apart from ourselves, supposed to look at that and take it at all seriously? Sure, they'll recognize and acknowledge that what they're looking at is an old show, but they won't be able to take it all that seriously nonetheless, because they're accustomed to a much higher standard. It's not really their fault that it's so easy to take special effects for granted in this day and age given what the film industry is capable of routinely producing. That's just life in the 21st century. "Star Trek Into Darkness", for example, is ALL eye candy, from start to finish pretty much.

Also, I don't look at it as revision just for the sake of revision, or change just for the sake of change. I see it more as correcting inferiority in the production values due to what was available at the time. That is to say, if they were shooting in color back in 1964 ...if that was the standard of five or ten years later, then it wouldn't even be an issue, because the episodes of that series would already be in color. The reason they're not is simply because color hadn't arrived for television yet, so it amounts to correcting an otherwise unintended shortcoming of the time by updating the episodes and making them color instead. And again, no one is saying to destroy the original black and white episodes. You simply make both available to people and leave it up to them which ones they would rather watch. The original first generation DVDs of the original "Star Trek" are still there for people to buy, along with the remastered episodes with new special effects, and both are alternately available for people to view on the blu-ray releases. Nothing is being eliminated, only enhanced and thereby added to.

>>I'd actually be very curious as to whether the colorizing of these things ACTUALLY promoted more viewership. But I doubt there are any hard numbers on that.<<

Hard to say obviously. Where's the market research that attests to either actually? I think the sales of TOS Remastered, both on blu-ray and DVD, can probably provide something of an indication with respect to that though, as I suspect the sales figures are pretty darn good, all things considered, for a show that's approaching its fiftieth anniversary at this point (Christ, that makes me feel old!).

>>I know I'll come off as a hypocrite here because I watched colorized versions of The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog as a kid. But I also saw them in black and white. Didn't make a difference to me either way<<

I think the key phrase there is when you were a kid. The reality is that we have more of an imagination, generally speaking, as kids, and we're able to overlook things like that more easily. Also, I was exposed to black and white productions more often for decades as I was growing up, and for quite a number of years into my adulthood. I remember watching "The Pride of the Yankees" with Gary Cooper God knows how many times. It was a film my father adored and really appreciated. But unless I were to tune in Turner Classic Movies, which I don't by the way, where exactly am I going to find that film on television nowadays?

>>In those cases, I can understand them being colorized because Disney only shot them in black and white to hide the special effects better. But I think they are still just fine the way they were.<<

You're relaying an opinion here though, based on personal choice obviously.

And no one is stopping you from viewing it in whichever form you prefer at the moment you decide to sit down to watch it obviously.

>>As to puppets in The Outer Limits, The X-Files has Scully attacked by a cat puppet in one episode. You have a good laugh about it, but it doesn't change the writing. A good episode is a good episode. There's this Lost in Space episode, "The Golden Man" which is actually one of the better written ones. In one scene, Judy is surrounded by land mines. Only they are beach balls. They didn't even paint them. I'm always weirded out by that. I bet it would look a little more convincing if it was the black and white season, but no it's color. Do I want some guy to CG something else over the beach balls? No, because there's a certain charm in suspending disbelief.<<

That's fine, but you're also acknowledging and admitting that it was a bad idea from a production standpoint and that it comes across as stupid because what they really are is blatantly apparent. So why not have someone CG the beach balls to a color that makes it less obvious as to what they are? If they use computers to change them all to the color black, for instance, is that really such a terrible crime given that budget was apparently the issue there? Meanwhile, the original cut of that episode remains unchanged and also viewable as a part of the same set on disc. Again, I really don't see the harm, although I would point out that "Lost In Space" devolved into a show intended more for kids than adults before long, and that it therefore isn't really a fair comparison to put it alongside "The Outer Limits" in attempting to make your point. And some of the episodes of the latter weren't just creepy in contrast, such as the Shatner episode (parts of it anyway) they were sometimes downright scary. "Lost In Space" wasn't scary, except maybe to a kid in a few places, but not to adults. It was childish, even downright silly at times. Doctor Smith may have started off as devious and sinister, but he only remained so in a comic, mischievous sense following the pilot for the series, so it's basically comparing apples and oranges. They are not the same thing. A fair comparison to "The Outer Limits" would be "The Twilight Zone" obviously, given that the former only came about as something of a reaction to the latter. However, they share a number of things in common.

>>I'm really not against "progress" or anything. For the record, I also hate when modern stuff is shot in color that is then digitally graded to look black and white. It has a completely different feel from real black and white. I think we can market older stuff to newer audiences in other ways besides saying "all those hokey effects look cool now!" It's just as bad as making everything 3D (they're 3D converting the Wizard of Oz for no reason now too!)<<

I'm not big on 3-D, but that's a personal preference on my part of course, but I can understand why they're doing it even though I may not care to watch it. They released a prequel-sequel to it last year, and that was also released to theaters in 3D, so they probably want to package both films together in such a way so that they also compliment each other in that same way, and 3D production wasn't available as an option to filmmakers when the original film was made. I wouldn't want to see truly classic, landmark films from the early days of filmmaking, particularly the silent era, redone to make them more palatable to viewers though. I realize that would come across as an apparent contradiction to people, but "Metropolis" shouldn't be reworked to make the backgrounds and the special effects more extravagant than what they were when Fritz Lang originally shot it. Even the most current release on blu-ray included footage that was lost from the original cut of the movie, so they were only adding scenes that never should have been cut from the film and lost in the first place. In other words, they were simply reintegrating that footage to where it belonged, but doing a complete CGI overhaul I would be totally against because it's such a classic. "The Outer Limits" doesn't fall into such a lofty, high-gravitas category by comparison. It was made for television, on a shoestring budget, especially where the special effects were concerned, and if you can correct the fact that it was produced cheaply using a hand puppet, then you do it. Respect the original work, yes, and from a technical standpoint make the scenes in question as close as possible to what was originally produced and intended, but do so by making it look more realistic for the sake of added believability rather than less. There is definitely a way to do it by honoring all the people who worked on that show originally rather than just writing them off or taking them for granted given the limitations of the time in which they worked, which wasn't their fault.

[CRAMBAM]

There never would be a market for it, but it would be interesting to see the original Twilight Zone scripts, redone and refilmed with current actors, as an anthology series. It would be hard to pull off, but as watchers of the original series die off, it would actually seemingly be fresh. Or at least, a little bit fresh.

Good writing is timeless. But it would be interesting to see these episodes done over with modern tech.

[TrekBeatTK]

Jun 25, 2013 11:53:17 GMT -5 CRAMBAM said:

There never would be a market for it, but it would be interesting to see the original Twilight Zone scripts, redone and refilmed with current actors, as an anthology series. It would be hard to pull off, but as watchers of the original series die off, it would actually seemingly be fresh. Or at least, a little bit fresh.

Good writing is timeless. But it would be interesting to see these episodes done over with modern tech.

I was thinking the same thing. I'd much rather just remake the thing than alter an older version. As long as they kept to the scripts, this could be good. Sadly, anthology series seem to be a thing of the past. I'd also want to be sure that the original writers got the credit/compensation they deserved. I would view this sort of thing as similar to when TV dramas got remade as features, like Marty, Judgment at Nuremberg, or Requiem for a Heavyweight.

-TK

[TrekBeatTK]

I watched the episode this morning. Yes, you can tell it's a puppet, but I thought they did a pretty good job with lighting and smoke effects to disguise it as much as they could. And it was a pretty good puppet save for one or two moments where the wrist articulation made it look puppety. But funnily, where you look at it and say "A puppet! How are people to take this seriously!" I say, "Kudos to them for trying something besides a guy in makeup." It showed more imaginative design. Yes it's shaky in a couple of places, but it's no more unbelievable to me than the space shots or the rocket shots. Maybe these Venusians just have alien physiology that we would consider puppet-like.

Because I know that the Alien Queen in Aliens is a puppet, do I think any less of the effect or the movie? No. Because I know that the villains in Catspaw are really weird bird puppets, do I think of it any less? No (by the way, did they change that in the TOSfix?). What's the alternative, CG? Those effects look dated after awhile too, and often have a shorter shelf-life. People today are saying "the effects in Fellowship of the Ring don't hold up" and stuff like that. So this would become a neverending rabbit hole. Sly Snoodles was a puppet in Return of the Jedi. Then she was CG in the special edition. And I really kinda preferred the puppet version. Was it a little jerky and not as great as it could be? Sure. But once they had the tools to do more with it, they did too much. And that will always be the danger.

For me, good writing is good writing and will forgive lackluster effects. But flashy effects cannot save a bad script.

Also, while watching the episode I realized how much worse the effect would look in color. There were scenes that felt like they were shot intentionally for the film noir atmosphere, to maintain tension. There's a scene with folks sitting around in a room, and if it were colorized it would just look wrong. You can colorize something like Bewitched because sitcoms were shot differently. But Outer Limits was designed to be atmospheric.

By the way, as long as we're updating things for the younger folks with no patience, wouldn't we have to redo the entire Outer Limits opening since televisions no longer have horizontal and vertical hold controls? Personally, it's because I've seen instances of weaker effects in shows of this period that I appreciate it when there's one that's really fantastic. That's why I'm always impressed by The Cage. Those matte shots are perfect and rival anything modern CG wizards would do. Or to use Outer Limits, I think the Galaxy Being effects are fantastic.

-TK

[StarFuryG7]

>>I watched the episode this morning. Yes, you can tell it's a puppet, but I thought they did a pretty good job with lighting and smoke effects to disguise it as much as they could. And it was a pretty good puppet save for one or two moments where the wrist articulation made it look puppety. But funnily, where you look at it and say "A puppet! How are people to take this seriously!" I say, "Kudos to them for trying something besides a guy in makeup." It showed more imaginative design. Yes it's shaky in a couple of places, but it's no more unbelievable to me than the space shots or the rocket shots.<< --TK

If I had watched it on my old 27" TV that died a little over a year and a half ago, it would probably have looked more acceptable to me as well this past weekend. But I wasn't looking at it on that TV. I watched it on my HD flatscreen, where its shortcomings were even more evident and therefore difficult to overlook.

You need to enter the world of High Definition yourself, TK, as much as it kills you.

>>Maybe these Venusians just have alien physiology that we would consider puppet-like.<<

Nah, that's part of the problem with the suspension of disbelief here, because the wrinkly texture made it very clear just what you were looking at, along with those fake, artificial eyes on the doll. It was entirely unbelievable, especially by today's standards.

>>Because I know that the Alien Queen in Aliens is a puppet, do I think any less of the effect or the movie?<<

If we were talking about those types of effects I'd be less critical, but the simple fact is that we aren't obviously. You can't compare the special effects of a big budget theatrical release of more than two decades later to what we're talking about here. Filmmaking had made strides in this area by the mid-to-late 80s.

>>Because I know that the villains in Catspaw are really weird bird puppets, do I think of it any less? No (by the way, did they change that in the TOSfix?). What's the alternative, CG?<<

So you don't recall the noticeable black threads that were used to move those puppets like marionettes in that episode? Do you have any idea the ribbing my friends gave me about that particular scene when I was a kid? And that was WAY BACK THEN, more than thirty years ago! And that wasn't even an episode that I liked. But it was impossible to miss, and yes, I believe that was "fixed" in the remastered edition by their having used computers (perish the thought!) to erase any trace of the threads used to suspend those puppets and move them about. Was that a somehow criminal choice by their having done that, or should they really have left it alone so as to add to the episode's charm? While that is clearly your position, how would it really serve posterity, when we're so far passed such trivial, inconvenient imperfections on the technical side?

>>What's the alternative, CG?<<

In that case, yes, clearly.

>>Those effects look dated after awhile too, and often have a shorter shelf-life. People today are saying "the effects in Fellowship of the Ring don't hold up" and stuff like that. So this would become a neverending rabbit hole.<<

That is also a legitimate argument I suppose which I wouldn't disagree with on its face. One can look at the special effects in "Enterprise" and can notice that we've already moved beyond that in terms of what can be done and how good it can be made to look on screen. But there exists a threshold I believe, where a certain standard has already been met and shouldn't need changing or modification, and the effects in "Enterprise" has reached or surpassed that bar in terms of what was originally done. Tweaking the existing effects to make them look sharper may make them more viscerally and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but what's already there is by no means as primitive as the crude black and white animation seen in "The Outer Limits", particularly with respect to the episode we're talking about, and the FX work in "Enterprise" could in no way ever be considered that crude. Presumably we'll one day get to the point where holographic immersion will take the place of the video forms of entertainment we now know and are used to, but that's still quite a ways off, and not something for us to really be knocking ourselves out over, and who knows how our more primitive video forms of entertainment will strike future generations once it becomes 'outdated' in effect, but that's really a problem for them to worry about and consider, not us. I take it however, that even then there will still be some people who will like sitting down and watching old movies, for whatever pleasure they derive from them, just as there are people today who enjoy looking at or collecting old paintings. And what do you do when you find a worthwhile painting that for whatever reason, as a work of art, has deteriorated and fallen into a sorry state, but can still be restored? Well, you restore it of course. You don't just toss out a Rembrandt if it can be saved, just as you don't haul a classic automobile to the junkyard if it is otherwise a collectible model.

>>For me, good writing is good writing and will forgive lackluster effects. But flashy effects cannot save a bad script.<<

That's not really the point here though; primitive, very outdated special effects that no longer have to be tolerated is the issue.

>>Also, while watching the episode I realized how much worse the effect would look in color. There were scenes that felt like they were shot intentionally for the film noir atmosphere, to maintain tension. There's a scene with folks sitting around in a room, and if it were colorized it would just look wrong. You can colorize something like Bewitched because sitcoms were shot differently. But Outer Limits was designed to be atmospheric.<<

I'm not sure just which scene you're alluding to, but a film noir approach given when that episode was produced, and taking into the kind of series it was shouldn't be a huge surprise.

That strikes me as a straw man argument nevertheless though because it assumes that professionals working in that field won't know enough how to compensate for such considerations when adjusting to color. Like anything else, if the people doing it are good enough at what they do, they will know what's necessary and called for and what isn't. And the simple reality is also that "The Outer Limits" wasn't film noir when you get right down to it anyway. It was science fiction.

>>By the way, as long as we're updating things for the younger folks with no patience, wouldn't we have to redo the entire Outer Limits opening since televisions no longer have horizontal and vertical hold controls?<<

Now you're just being silly and sarcastic, or if that's not really your intent, it's how it comes across just the same. Is there or isn't there a horizontal and vertical view to a television screen? Can it be manipulated via a production that you choose to sit down and view or not?

It's an irrelevant question.

>>Personally, it's because I've seen instances of weaker effects in shows of this period that I appreciate it when there's one that's really fantastic. That's why I'm always impressed by The Cage. Those matte shots are perfect and rival anything modern CG wizards would do.<<

Okay, fine, but you're acknowledging here the extent to which such programs from the 60s fall short by comparison, and clearly the effects in "The Outer Limits" were no match to what was done in TOS, and in "The Cage" in particular. That was also a very expensive pilot for the NBC network back then don't forget. They spent an incredible amount of money on it, and "The Outer Limits" could in no way compete with that obviously. What can be done now, and at modest expense, can correct those flaws relatively easily though. I have no problem with them doing it in a shot-for-shot context either, using the original effects as a guide. That's how it should be done, and I believe it would be a worthy effort on the part of the studio.

[StarFuryG7]

So...I said I would search for the video of clip that I saw on the PBS "Pioneers of Television" series that they did on Science Fiction, and much to my annoyance, the two segments about "Star Trek" from that episode are up and available to watch on YouTube in two-parts, but there's nothing from "The Twilight Zone" segments over there. And as shit luck would have it, the PBS "Pioneers of Television" website itself makes several episodes of that series available for free, full viewing, but not the one they did on Science Fiction, although there is a brief one-minute clip of the Rod Serling interview over there. Nevertheless, I was able to find the original portions of that interview that they used in the "Pioneers" series, though these clips are of poor quality. They clearly did a restoration job on this interview for the PBS documentary, but you can see what Serling says about "The Invaders" (a Richard Matheson episode by the way) about three minutes into this below clip. Notice it says "pt. 2". I'll put up "pt. 1" as well if any of you want to watch both segments, some of which didn't make it into the "Pioneers of Television" SF documentary. I had forgotten that Serling also had a fondness for that episode because of Matheson's script, but notice how and why he felt it fell short and couldn't really deliver.

Remember, it's three minutes in here . . .

Lost Rod Serling Interview, 1970 pt02


And here's pt. 1

Lost Rod Serling Interview, 1970 pt01

[TrekBeatTK]

If I had watched it on my old 27" TV that died a little over a year and a half ago, it would probably have looked more acceptable to me as well this past weekend. But I wasn't looking at it on that TV. I watched it on my HD flatscreen, where its shortcomings were even more evident and therefore difficult to overlook.

You need to enter the world of High Definition yourself, TK, as much as it kills you.

I watched it on my computer screen. And we've got an HD TV in my sister's room, so I watch a lot of old Trek on that. It just doesn't bother me the way it bothers you.

On one hand, you keep saying I need to get with the times and HD is the only way to go. But then you keep saying that HD makes old stuff look noticeably worse, requiring CG "improvements" to help the illusion. Well, if going HD means having to think less of 60 to 100 years of filmed entertainment, then I am in no hurry to do so.

Should we also provide audio dialogue tracks for silent movies? (And yes, I'm just being snarky here.)

So you don't recall the noticeable black threads that were used to move those puppets like marionettes in that episode? Do you have any idea the ribbing my friends gave me about that particular scene when I was a kid? And that was WAY BACK THEN, more than thirty years ago! And that wasn't even an episode that I liked. But it was impossible to miss, and yes, I believe that was "fixed" in the remastered edition by their having used computers (perish the thought!) to erase any trace of the threads used to suspend those puppets and move them about. Was that a somehow criminal choice by their having done that, or should they really have left it alone so as to add to the episode's charm? While that is clearly your position, how would it really serve posterity, when we're so far passed such trivial, inconvenient imperfections on the technical side?

I remember the black sticks and how silly it looks, but since I think very little of the whole episode, it doesn't bother me a whole lot. I was just curious whether they simply removed the wires or completely redid the creatures.

-TK

[StarFuryG7]

Jun 26, 2013 19:56:08 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

I watched it on my computer screen.

I figured that ...in fact I had recommended you watch it online because I figured it was the only way you could look at it. But as I've said here, it's not my preferred way of looking at a show or movie. I've done it in times of necessity, but not very often at all. I try to avoid it when at all possible, although there have been a few occasions through the years where it was the only place I could turn to see what I wanted to look at.

And for all I know, your computer and monitor are as old as the hills by the way. I have no idea what kind of a system you're using over there.

Jun 26, 2013 19:56:08 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

And we've got an HD TV in my sister's room, so I watch a lot of old Trek on that. It just doesn't bother me the way it bothers you.

Evidently, although I don't recall your mentioning your sisters TV previously. You may have, but offhand I don't recall it.

Jun 26, 2013 19:56:08 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

On one hand, you keep saying I need to get with the times and HD is the only way to go. But then you keep saying that HD makes old stuff look noticeably worse, requiring CG "improvements" to help the illusion. Well, if going HD means having to think less of 60 to 100 years of filmed entertainment, then I am in no hurry to do so.

Maybe not, but eventually you're not going to have any choice in the matter, and neither will anyone else, and that right there is the point.

Jun 26, 2013 19:56:08 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

Should we also provide audio dialogue tracks for silent movies? (And yes, I'm just being snarky here.)

When has it ever been either done or attempted? And what did I say my position is specifically as it relates to silent films?

In my view they should be off limits.

Jun 26, 2013 19:56:08 GMT -5 TrekBeatTK said:

I remember the black sticks and how silly it looks, but since I think very little of the whole episode, it doesn't bother me a whole lot. I was just curious whether they simply removed the wires or completely redid the creatures.
-TK

No, I think they just removed the wires, which was probably the correct and best approach for them to take in that instance, although I can check at some point to make sure.

[TrekBeatTK]

I figured that ...in fact I had recommended you watch it online because I figured it was the only way you could look at it. But as I've said here, it's not my preferred way of looking at a show or movie. I've done it in times of necessity, but not very often at all. I try to avoid it when at all possible, although there have been a few occasions through the years where it was the only place I could turn to see what I wanted to look at.

And for all I know, your computer and monitor are as old as the hills by the way. I have no idea what kind of a system you're using over there.

Fair enough. It's a pretty current iMac. A few years old. Maybe not the only way to look at it, but probably the quickest. I hate watching stuff online too and generally avoid it. I suppose I could jump on the Netflix bandwagon and stream stuff through my Wii, but I just can't bring myself to support that either.

Evidently, although I don't recall your mentioning your sisters TV previously. You may have, but offhand I don't recall it.

I have mentioned it awhile ago, but it's understandable that things wouldn't be clear, since I'm cagey about how much I share on the interwebs. I mentioned it back when you were having TV problems because my sister's is a similar model. But I've also talked a lot about how usually I watch TV on my own older standard def, so there we are. Funnily enough, there's some guy who left a huge flatscreen TV out on the curb and I am very tempted to take it but have nowhere to put it really.


Maybe not, but eventually you're not going to have any choice in the matter, and neither will anyone else, and that right there is the point.

Maybe, but who knows, maybe old TV will make some kind of weird comeback, like vinyl records or the old typewriters the hipsters are into now. Ideally (and this is just a pipe dream from a guy with no money) I'd like two separate TV rooms, one with a good standard def TV for playing old stuff and VHS, and one HD widescreen for newer stuff. Among other things, watching older 4:3 TV shows on that size TV will help prevent the "burn in" of watching it pillar-boxed on a widescreen TV. But these are purchases that would only be made with a lot of money and research involved.


When has it ever been either done or attempted? And what did I say my position is specifically as it relates to silent films?

In my view they should be off limits.

I was being facetious. But why is one thing off limits while another is not? Though to be fair, while I don't think it's ever been done with dialogue, Chaplin did release a few of his older films, notably The Gold Rush with an added sound effects track. But then, he was a major hold-out to the sound era, taking 10 years more than the rest of the country. His sound pictures are fantastic though.

No, I think they just removed the wires, which was probably the correct and best approach for them to take in that instance, although I can check at some point to make sure.[/quote]
That is the correct and best approach if they were going to do it. My problem with the remasters is they sometimes go too far for my liking. I'm glad they went back to the original film elements for TNG, and I can understand the need to redo all the phaser hits and such that were done in standard video, and even the necessity to redo the Crystalline Entity since they couldn't find the original files. But now they are using CG to redo things like the Borg ship explosion, and that's totally unnecessary (and I didn't think it looked as good). I'm worried what they'll do with "Galaxy's Child".
To further confuse my feelings on the matter, I'm also okay with the original creators altering things if they are still around and want to do it as long as the original versions remain available. I'd love for Shatner to have been able to rework TFF. I'm glad the moon-laden matte shot of Vulcan was taken out of TMP ("Vulcan has no moon Miss Uhura!"). But my favorite TMP edit is a dialogue fix where V'Ger was originally said to be "over 82 AUs in diameter" it was reduced to "2 AUs" which is still ridiculously large, but FAR more believable. But altering someone else's work 40 years later because young folks demand it really rubs me the wrong way. I am glad of the Blu-ray having both TOS versions, which is a step above the DVD. But it bothers me when the syndicated version that kids will stumble across on television is the altered one.

All shows are products of time and money, some of which runs out. There's always something that could have been better. But I accept bad effects same as I accept bad makeup. "Too Short a Season" has TERRIBLE make-up, but that's never going to be changed. So just as I see that for what it was, I see puppet aliens and such for what they are.

[StarFuryG7]

>>Fair enough. It's a pretty current iMac. A few years old. Maybe not the only way to look at it, but probably the quickest. I hate watching stuff online too and generally avoid it. I suppose I could jump on the Netflix bandwagon and stream stuff through my Wii, but I just can't bring myself to support that either.<< -TK

Well, how else would you have looked at it? You're not going to buy the DVDs, and if you went to the Public Library to take it out, you could be waiting weeks for the copy of that Set to arrive at your local branch.

And what's with the animosity for streaming services like Netflix? They offer a choice that previously did not exist, so how is that a bad thing from your perspective?

And I suspect you could stream from your Wii, just as I can stream from my XBOX 360, although I started looking at "The Mask of Zorro" with Antonio Banderas a couple of weeks ago on Crackle through my XBOX and it looks as though they stick in longer commercial breaks, so I might as well stick to using their service through my Blu-ray Player instead.

But it's nice to have additional choices, TK, rather than fewer. This is why you strike me as being opposed to technological advancements in general when it comes to entertainment. You're too much of curmudgeon on the subject, and to your own detriment obviously because you deprive yourself of availability that's here to stay and isn't going away.

< Evidently, although I don't recall your mentioning your sisters TV previously. You may have, but offhand I don't recall it. >

>>I have mentioned it awhile ago, but it's understandable that things wouldn't be clear, since I'm cagey about how much I share on the interwebs. I mentioned it back when you were having TV problems because my sister's is a similar model. But I've also talked a lot about how usually I watch TV on my own older standard def, so there we are.<<

That's why I had that little nagging question mark in the back of my brain the other day when I wrote the above. Yes, you mentioned your sister having bought the same brand HDTV as the one I had just bought, and you were very critical of their TVs. At the time, however, I thought your sister lived somewhere else rather than with you. But the TV problem I had was that my standard def TV died and I had to go out and buy a new one, and HD was the only way I could go, so I bought one of those.

>>Funnily enough, there's some guy who left a huge flatscreen TV out on the curb and I am very tempted to take it but have nowhere to put it really.<<

It would have been worth bringing it inside to see if it actually worked. My guess, however, is that since he put it outside there must he something wrong with it, and I suspect it's that some of the screen pixels burned out, which happens more easily on TVs larger than forty or forty-two inches. That's why sticking to a thirty-seven or forty inch isn't such a bad way to go when looking to buy a new flatscreen.

>>Maybe, but who knows, maybe old TV will make some kind of weird comeback, like vinyl records or the old typewriters the hipsters are into now. Ideally (and this is just a pipe dream from a guy with no money) I'd like two separate TV rooms, one with a good standard def TV for playing old stuff and VHS, and one HD widescreen for newer stuff. Among other things, watching older 4:3 TV shows on that size TV will help prevent the "burn in" of watching it pillar-boxed on a widescreen TV. But these are purchases that would only be made with a lot of money and research involved.<<

Well, oddly enough, I just gave you some advice as to why sticking with a midsized screen is a good idea and has a real benefit. But where would you buy a standard definition TV now? Aside from which, the newer flatscreen models are cheaper to use anyway and use a fraction of the electricity.

>>I was being facetious. But why is one thing off limits while another is not?<<

Silent films were inherently primitive. It was just the nature of the medium at the time. That should therefore be respected given that it was the early days of filmmaking, although I'm not opposed to remastering and cleaning up a bad original print of a given film. Frankly I thought they could have gone further with the more recently discovered 16mm footage that was found in Argentina that they reintegrated into "Metropolis", although maybe there was no way to really do it and have that footage appear authentic looking. I really don't know because the footage was quite damaged and deteriorated, but they cleaned it up as best as they could and decided to use it otherwise as it had been found, without trying to fix all the artifacts scratched into the footage. It was certainly better than not having that footage available for viewing at all though, because without it people were left with on-screen text describing what it was that occurred in the scenes of the lost footage. With the found 16mm print from Argentina, they were able to restore almost all of the original film cut. There were only one or two places where they provided brief descriptions of the one or two scenes that remain lost. But "Metropolis" was a ridiculously costly film when it was shot, and it has influenced many later futuristic sci-fi movies, such as "Blade Runner" and has had a long-term direct impact on the medium, therefore it should remain intact without in any way being toyed with in my view, aside from which, it's a silent film, so anyone who sits down to watch it knows what they're in for in terms of production values. Now, you can say that viewers of the original "Outer Limits" should be aware of the same conditions when they sit down to watch one of those episodes, and obviously that's true, but it doesn't make it any easier to take in nonetheless. And why do you think all of the episodes are available for free viewing on the Internet? It's lost any value it once had from a broadcast or even home video standpoint because it's as old as it is, and because the production values were so primitive in terms of the special effects. And since it was a science fiction series, the special effects are important and matter in selling the illusions to viewers.

You seem to think that any attempt to update those effects will come across as cheesy, whereas I see it differently because I believe it can and should be done carefully and tastefully in contrast, otherwise it shouldn't even be attempted if that's not going to be the studio's approach.

As I said though, I don't believe it will happen because MGM, which still owns the rights I believe, wouldn't view it as a project with a significant payoff in terms of profit. They would very likely look at it as a venture in which they would instead lose money, even though I don't feel that should necessarily be the case. They could probably sell broadcast rights of the series to the SyFy Channel for special weekend and late night airings on Fridays at midnight and 1am to recoup much of their investment. There was a time when TNT would air Friday and/or Saturday night marathons of the series back in the late 80s and even early 90s. Colorizing the series and redoing the special effects sequences would allow the studio to do that once again for a while, and it might even promote Blu-ray sales of the upgraded version of the series as well by people who were already fond of it (such as me and Basil), as well as by new, younger viewers who hadn't been exposed to the series previously. If I were in a position to make such a judgment call within that company, that would be my approach, and I'd green-light it same as Paramount greenlit that type of an undertaking for TOS.

>>Though to be fair, while I don't think it's ever been done with dialogue, Chaplin did release a few of his older films, notably The Gold Rush with an added sound effects track. But then, he was a major hold-out to the sound era, taking 10 years more than the rest of the country. His sound pictures are fantastic though.<<

Well, it is possible to appreciate the man's talent and his work without particularly liking the man himself. He was a goddamn communist who hated this country even though it made him super wealthy, and he wasn't all that different from a lot of these loathsome Hollywood lefties who think the same way even to this day. So yeah, the man was talented at what he did, and he did come to the world of sound filmmaking later than his colleagues, but he wouldn't have gotten any of my money at the box office. But he was a lot like you in terms of being opposed to change and technical advancement, so it doesn't really surprise that you would be an admirer of him and his work.

>¦That is the correct and best approach if they were going to do it. My problem with the remasters is they sometimes go too far for my liking. I'm glad they went back to the original film elements for TNG, and I can understand the need to redo all the phaser hits and such that were done in standard video, and even the necessity to redo the Crystalline Entity since they couldn't find the original files. But now they are using CG to redo things like the Borg ship explosion, and that's totally unnecessary (and I didn't think it looked as good).<<

Strange; the only thing I can really judge by is their redo of "The Best of Both Worlds", and if anything that struck me as an exercise in restraint. They endeavored to keep the effects as close to the style of what was originally done as possible, while just improving on the overall quality of the work if anything. I had mixed feelings about their maintaining the look of the original effects to the extent they did, but I'm more liberal in terms of such thinking when it comes to such an undertaking obviously.

I do also think the quality of the newer CGI effects work in TOS could have been better though. Yes, it was an admirable, ambitious undertaking, but they didn't hire the best people to do it. Instead of an A team they hired a B or perhaps even C team instead, no doubt in part to save money, and because the best CGI effects guys in that industry were undoubtedly working on new and more important projects and making top dollar for their efforts in the process. But overall, the newer FX are a significant improvement over the original optical effects. I don't think they went out of their way to make the sequences as close to what was depicted in the original optical effects though, and I would take issue with some of that; it also exposed the truth to the BS marketing propaganda they were putting out at the time, such as their paying such close attention to what had been done with the original optical effects that they were making sure random stars appeared in the same place as in the original sequences. Sure --my ass. I also didn't care for how those effects jerks took it upon themselves to insert themselves into various scenes simply because they could. They even looked out of place in some of those scenes because their image quality in contrast to the original actors they were appearing next to just wasn't the same, so they looked out of place, making it obvious that they just didn't belong there. That stuff bugs me, although I can understand the temptation to do what they did were we in their position. I would have resisted the urge to do that at all costs though. When you're a position like that you have to, otherwise you're abusing the authority that had been given to you and I don't like that.

>>I'm worried what they'll do with "Galaxy's Child". To further confuse my feelings on the matter, I'm also okay with the original creators altering things if they are still around and want to do it as long as the original versions remain available. I'd love for Shatner to have been able to rework TFF. I'm glad the moon-laden matte shot of Vulcan was taken out of TMP ("Vulcan has no moon Miss Uhura!"). But my favorite TMP edit is a dialogue fix where V'Ger was originally said to be "over 82 AUs in diameter" it was reduced to "2 AUs" which is still ridiculously large, but FAR more believable. But altering someone else's work 40 years later because young folks demand it really rubs me the wrong way. I am glad of the Blu-ray having both TOS versions, which is a step above the DVD. But it bothers me when the syndicated version that kids will stumble across on television is the altered one.<<

Don't they still air the original episodes with the original effects as well though? I thought so anyway. But you're kind of all over the map on this, although I realize that my position on landmark silent films strikes you similarly.

As I said though, I view redoing the effects on something like TOS or "The Outer Limits" as complimenting the work of those earlier FX people by doing what they were incapable of doing when the original episodes were produced. I also believe that those original, unedited cuts should be available as part of the same Sets that the studio releases, as is the case with the TOS Remastered Blu-ray Sets. I'm hoping they are released in 16X9 Widescreen next though, if not soon, then by the 50th Anniversary in a few years hopefully, which will give me even more of an incentive to buy them. But that too is altering the original works, at least in terms of format, but I'm not opposed to that because 16X9 TVs are now the norm, so it only makes sense. Rigidity only dooms earlier works to the pile of what gets discarded over time in my view. Modifying those earlier shows or movies so as to improve their quality is a noble effort that should be undertaken with the utmost care and respect by the people who do it though, otherwise they shouldn't be assigned to such a project. And on the upside, once they're fixed now in this later age in which it's finally possible, they shouldn't need touching ever again. After all, what more can really be done with them after a show like "The Outer Limits" has been properly colorized and its effects updated via what's possible with current CGI? Making it 3D? Well, that's something of a different argument I suppose given that those production were designed to be 2D, and holographic immersion is quite a ways down the road, so much so that we probably will not even live to see it, so it's someone else's worry rather than ours.

>>All shows are products of time and money, some of which runs out. There's always something that could have been better. But I accept bad effects same as I accept bad makeup. "Too Short a Season" has TERRIBLE make-up, but that's never going to be changed. So just as I see that for what it was, I see puppet aliens and such for what they are.<<

But we're so far passed that now that we need not be beleaguered by it, unless we choose to by popping those original edits into our Player, or by selecting it to be streamed to our homes instead. I don't want younger generations dismissing TOS as not worth their time because of the production values of the time in which those episodes were produced. I'd rather they be exposed to it, updated and somewhat modified, rather than not at all. After all, it's the stories that count the most, and like it or not, we live in a very superficial society, where aesthetics matter to people, albeit, perhaps more than they should.

[StarFuryG7]

So I popped "Demon With A Glass Hand" in the Player over the weekend, late on Saturday night/Sunday morning at about 1:15am, and made it about halfway through when I suddenly got very tired and didn't think I could make it all the way through to the end, but I persevered, got up and walked into the next room, got the blood flowing a little, and managed to stick it out. I was afraid if I shut it off that I wouldn't get back to it before the weekend was done, which then probably would have left me in a position of not getting to look at the rest of it until this coming weekend. At any rate, I can't say I'm a huge fan of this Harlan Ellison episode, even though he won a number of awards for it. For one thing, Harlan's original script involved a lot of chasing, also involving cars, similar to "The Terminator" I would imagine, as aliens tried to hunt down Robert Culp's character, but the studio went back to Ellison and let him know that it would be far too expensive to shoot and that he would have to rewrite it, which he did. He changed the setting to a chase through a corporate office building instead, which makes the episode feel slow and plodding.

Culp's character, Trent, encounters a woman in the building played by Arlene Martel, looking very different from the T'Pring character she would play a few years later In TOS. Even though she's scared to death of Trent when she first encounters him in the building, thinking he'll either harm or kill her, before long she's telling him that she thinks she's falling in love with him. This just illustrates how silly TV shows and films were back in the 60s, because everything that happens in this building is taking place over the course of one night, so her character goes from being terrified of this man to falling for him over the course of just a few hours. It strained credulity, but despite my scoff, I went with it anyway. The big reveal at the end viewers probably should see coming also, but I would imagine audiences back then would have been more surprised by it than present day viewers.

As for special effects, this episode wouldn't need much changing if it were updated and colorized. The aliens are anchored to the present (the *present* of the 1960s, that is) by a chain worn around their necks, and snapping the chain off of them causes them to lurch back ahead to their own time, a thousand years in the future. One wonders why these creatures would leave their chain exposed rather than keeping it under their shirt at least, but again, this is 1960s television, so why they don't have more basic common sense in that regard despite their being intelligent beings is never mentioned. You're just supposed to accept it on its face and go with it. However, when one of them has the chain ripped from their neck they fade out of existence, using a negative exposure of the film stock apparently in order to achieve the necessary effect of their disappearing. Remastering and updating this episode and colorizing it would therefore make it even more cost effective to achieve as those effects are just fine and suitable here. The only scene that would entail a more radical adjustment using CGI in order to achieve a better and more realistic effect would be the *Time Mirror*, which is the portal the aliens use to travel there from the future.

Fun Fact: Ellison wrote two episodes for this series, with the other titled "Soldier", but people have mistakenly thought it was "Demon With A Glass Hand" that inspired James Cameron's "The Terminator" over the years. Ellison has had to repeatedly correct the record about that apparently, as the episode "Soldier" was the actual basis for a lawsuit that he filed against Cameron and the studio that produced "The Terminator" for [supposed] Copyright Infringement. That suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount wherein Ellison also received an acknowledgment from the producers during the closing credits of "The Terminator", which angered Cameron to no end, as he didn't think Ellison deserved it or that he had a substantive basis for the lawsuit.

[StarFuryG7]

So I finally got around to watching "Soldier", which was the other episode written for "The Outer Limits" by Harlan Ellison. I hadn't seen that episode in at least two and a half decades and it was probably longer than that. I was having a difficult time remembering it as I sat there watching until the ending when it all suddenly finally came back to me, along with my recollection of why I didn't particularly care for this episode. This is the same episode that prompted Ellison to sue the studios behind James Cameron's "The Terminator", claiming plagiarism. The claim was not without basis to an extent I suppose, and Cameron does appear to have a history of co-opting other people's work and adapting it to appear as his own, but a judge hearing the case might have found the claim a bit weak here had it actually gone to trial. The opening scene does--even in black and white--bear a resemblance to the post-apocalyptic future seen in Cameron's film, and there is a time traveling scene that follows in which the soldier, who's played by Michael Ansara (Kang from TOS), ends up travelling unexpectedly back in time to what turns out to be Earth's past. Initially it's open to question whether this guy is an alien, but after the authorities apprehend him it's determined that he's actually a human being from the future, 1800 years ahead in time, and that he speaks a slang form of gutter English spoken very fast. This individual was trained by the state from birth for one purpose and one purpose only--to kill the enemy. It just so happens that was exactly what he was engaged in trying to do when his enemy counterpart got caught in an anomalous temporal flux of some kind along with him, and both get thrown back in time. His enemy shows up at the very end for a final confrontation.

The episode is disjointed, with the person assigned to ascertaining just who he is and where he came from convincing his colleague and the government to let him take the soldier home with him and out of incarceration in order to work with him, gain his trust, and enable him to better adapt to the ways and lifestyles of the era, which is completely alien to him.

The costume Ansara wears as the soldier, along with that of his enemy counterpart, who's dressed the same way, couldn't be sillier by today's standards. They each have a helmet with a rod sticking up, more than likely intended to serve as an antenna so as to receive orders from their respective command centers, with an armor breast plate and chainmail covering their arms which is straight out of the Middle Ages. There was no attempt to construct anything original to pass off as their military attire. Again, that just illustrates the tight budget constraints the producers of this show had to work under routinely in order to produce episodes of this series. And while these men may function as programmed killing machines, they're not cyborgs. Their physiology is entirely human.

In a loose sense, if you're looking for similarities between this episode and James Cameron's "The Terminator", you can find some. Ansara's soldier character isn't relentlessly pursued by his enemy throughout most of the episode because while both men get thrown back in time, the other soldier gets temporarily caught in a time freeze and remains stuck there for much of the episode, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 cyborg Terminator, he stalks Ansara's character when he can, until he finds him and catches up with him at the very end. I can see why Ellison believed his work had been plagiarized by Cameron, but this wasn't a particularly good episode, truth be told. It starts off ominously in the future as a pretext, but then quickly hauls the one futuristic character back to the then 1960s present and focuses mainly on the moral questions as to how this man should be treated, so in that sense it was a morality play, much like "Star Trek" (most of the episodes of "The Outer Limits" were that way in point of fact, hence the opening and closing narration by the Control Voice during each episode). No attempt nor reason are given for this future war, and the only thing we know about these two characters from the future is that they've been bred by the state for the purpose of that ongoing conflict. Cameron's film on the other hand has a somewhat extensive backstory in contrast, wherein some of it is seen, while other aspects of it are alluded to by one of the protagonists (Reese). There can't be any question as to which of the two is more detailed in that regard, and the lack of specificity, the vagueness, is one of the reasons I didn't particularly care for this episode of the series. Also, Ellison, who's supposed to be an intelligent writer, does something seemingly totally lacking in common sense in this story. He has the character who's working with the soldier bring this man home to his family, even though he's erratic and may pose a significant danger to their safety. There's a time to be both humane and understanding, but there are also times where caution, prudence and restraint are not only called for, but are a reasoned necessity, and stupidity wins out in this case.

In the last scene, the soldier's enemy blasts through a wall and charges into the home he now occupies, and it does evoke a similarity to Schwarzenegger's rampaging Terminator on the hunt for Sarah Connor and the protective Kyle Reese, so in that sense, Ellison did have a seemingly legitimate argument as the basis of his lawsuit, at least on the surface, but overall, the two stories share relatively little in common. Structurally speaking, there are certain similarities however, and it's also possible that Cameron's script wasn't a deliberate, conscious attempt to plagiarize. Writers sometimes do this on an unconscious level without realizing it, not meaning to steal another writer's work. J. Michael Straczynski has even alluded to this a few times over the years on various message boards he frequented. Whether Harlan Ellison would care to acknowledge that as a real possibility concerning Cameron I don't know, but Cameron was notably bitter about the allegation of plagiarism and Ellison's lawsuit, having referred to him as a parasite. See the episode and decide for yourself is all I can say.

Fun Facts: Tim O'Connor, who played Dr. Huer in the awful "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" is also featured in this episode and has a number of scenes; he is 86, and Syrian-born American actor Michael Ansara is also still with us, at an astounding 91 years of age.