Well I gave in and went to one of the showings of Star Trek the Menagerie! I had a good time, it was kind of weird seeing the show on the big screen, even though it was basically an extended commercial for the release of the new HD series one set. The Menagerie has never really been my all time favorite episode, but having actually sat through it and watched it in this format, I do, now have an appreciation for it.
So here are some the things I liked. The fly by of the Enterprise where the camera comes over the bridge and there is a pass through where you see everyone on the bridge and it zooms in so you can see what's going on, has now been fixed so it matches up better. If you remember before it seemed like the bridge was on a different plane, since they did not match the angle of the model shot with the live action back in the sixties. This shot always bugged me, as a kid all the way till now. So I was relieved when someone finally caught this and fixed it.
The color was brilliant, and they really looked like they took care to remove scratches and dust from the print. The sound totally beat what I have home, but wasn't overwhelming. Then there are the special FX upgrades. I have been watching these re-mastered versions of Star Trek for a little while now, and I can honestly say that the re-mastered FX are not distracting in the least. The first time I watched one of these "newer" versions I really had to question if they changed anything at all. You really only notice when they do close ups of the ship, there is way more detail now.
My wife and I had a discussion after the viewing last night if the enhancements were more distracting in the re-mastered Star Trek episodes or when George Lucas worked his magic on Star Wars. We both came to the same conclusion that the Star Trek enhancements didn't affect the story and were done in a way that they did not take away from your original memory of the show, while Star Wars did have elements that changed the story in re-telling parts or the stories pace. So I'm giving the Star Trek team a thumbs up, way to go!
It was also nice to see some footage on how they accomplished the re-master, even though they were selling the new HD DVD set, I really found the part about the scan and clean up interesting, as well as the re-recording of the original score, pulling the original music and notes from the sixties. It was also a nice touch that when they flashed a name of one of the people that worked on the re-master it was set in the Classic Star Trek font, eye for detail I tell ya!
Things I didn't like, the price seems a little steep, 12.50 USD for a ticket, plus it would have been nice to get a little one sheet or something of the movie poster. I've been to movies before where they handed out little flyer / posters. If this was such the event that it was billed to be, why not give out a little bit more advertising, right? That's really about it for the dislikes. I did here some people complain about the 4:3 Television ratio and not widescreen, but hey you can't really control things like that and not distort the picture.
I will add my apologies to my wife, she didn't find out this was a two hour event until about 30 minutes before we got to the theater. But hey we did go out for Tex Mex before hand and I made sure she got a Margarita, before dealing with all the Trek geeks, myself included.
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