Once again, capitalism vs. art

Edit: I can’t believe I missed the obvious subtitle: Kirk Shot First!

Crass corporate greed has now found its way to what was originally thought to be sacred by geeks (and possibly me!): Original Star Trek.

Let me make it clear that I am only a Trekkie in the 1966 sense of the term. As I like to say, “The only good Star Trek was produced before I was born.” The rest of it strikes me as crass commercialism and a superficial attempt to capitalize on a grass-roots appreciation of a storytelling effort. Damn the marketing goon who wandered into a nerdy Trek convention and thought: “Hey… this has serious potential.” Smart, evil man. Thus you have the rebirth of the Trek series in The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, etc. Do any of these series bring something new and original into the world? Perhaps in tiny bursts as writers strive to express themselves within the confines of corporate dictates.

Original Star Trek holds a special place in my heart and the heart of my inner child. The aesthetic was wedded to the times: low-budget, relying on suggestion and implication rather than overt production values. Of course I knew, even as a child, that the Gorn looked shoddy… but it had a joy of its own. And those alien sets would have well suited a psychedelic rave up. Thus do I regard the design aesthetic of OST as a historic artifact of the time that my parents married and decided to conceive me. As a detached viewer, one can appreciate the look of Star Trek purely on that level, because there is no overriding command that the depiction of the future is prophetic and accurate — just enticing.

But now, get a load of this:

Original:

New fancy version:

Where is the charm? Gone with a dash of CGI. I loved the “ball of light-bulbs” spaceship! It was scary! Those light bulbs were big and weird and reminded me of how large the adult world looked as a child. The new version is pretty and snazzy and highly detailed… and loses the retro appeal. Now Star Trek feels like an ironic recreation of the original show.

Here’s another depressing comparison (what’s funny is that they trumpet these as vast improvements on the website). Revamped planets seemed to be high on the list.

Cool, weird green planet:

Boring realistic planet:

Browse through the images here.
You will notice that they undertook to “update” the enterprise as often as possible with CGI lighting and detail, once again taking away the primitive appeal of the models.

Am I having a petulant fanboy reaction? Perhaps. I do feel a bit self-righteous right now, but also I’m just annoyed. Why spend money to revise the graphics of a forty year old science fiction show? Oh, right, because there’s a huge fanbase who is acclimated to CGI graphics, and now they can repackage the seasons and sell them to a new audience. How utterly lame. And what’s worse is that Star Trek hasn’t been worth watching since these early episodes were made. Why is Hollywood so adverse to creating original material? This, I think, is a major factor in the ghettoization of science fiction, fantasy, and genre fiction in general. Artistic conservatism predicated by financial concerns.

Once again, America makes things bad.