Eugh.
It's Friday night, y'all. Time for #wenchwatches
Let's watch a bunch of upright people decide to break multiple laws and commit grand theft larceny to save their friend.
Tonight, "something comforting": #StarTrek3
First of all, if you haven't watched Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan yet, you might want to skip this one, and go watch that first. For extra points, go watch the TOS episode "Space Seed" before that.
AND, if you're a brown-nosing teacher's pet, go read the comic book series that fills in the time period between Space Seed and Wrath. Really. It's good.
This is your spoilers warning.
Star Trek 3 was revelatory to me as a little kid. I was well acquainted with Star Trek The Original Series (TOS), as I sometimes skipped out on Sunday School to watch that on a little TV in our family van.
It was a much, much better teacher of ethics and how to be a good human anyways.
TOS was always episodic. Rarely did an episode follow up on a previous one in a meaningful way. Most TV leaned on episodicness so as to make onramping viewers easier in the age before internet chat rooms and social media.
Star Trek 3, on the other hand, was a follow up. It picked up where Wrath of Khan left off. The idea of a continuous story in Star Trek was intoxicating to me. Fortunately, my dad was already a fan, and had the entire three movie cycle recorded from TV broadcast on VHS tape.
Let's watch!
It took *forever* for the Klingon empire to get off of that Atari cartage standard for ferrying intelligence information.
A think that always struck me about Star Trek 3 compared to 2 was just how *bright* the film looked. Wrath was always shot in darker, ruddier hues, perhaps to match the darker tones of the story.
I'm not sure exactly what's different, since many of the same effects companies were involved with 3 (unlike Star Trek 5, which couldn't get ILM scheduled). The filming also felt sharper and more modern that 3, and is reflected in even my cheap, multi-DVD pack I got for $20.
It's been remarked by the cast that the films until 4 where a "Live - Death - Then, Life again" cycle. Perhaps then, Search for Spock, being the last part of that cycle, was shot with brighter lights intentionally. I'm sure someone reading this may have the inside scoop here.
@socketwench - I do know the effects work was done differently because ILM had full control.
TMP was done by Doug Trumbull and John Dykstra's Future General and Apogee. They controlled that look and went with the pearlescent paint job on the E. To film it, it had to be dark to avoid blue screen splash over.
TWOK used TMP footage, so ILM wasn't able to completely remove the pearlescent paint job for new shots, so, again, filmed pretty dark.
TSFS is all new footage, so ILM, which hated the pearlescent look, were able to refinish the model, removing the pearlescent paint job and film brightly. Too brightly if you ask me. The ships look flat because of that.
The rest of the bright look is all up to Nimoy's directing I'm guessing.
