The new CW

It's cool to have a new network named after your initials.

The new CW is of course the merging of the old UPN and the old WB.

It's not called the UW because ... UPN never meant anything and CBS owned UPN and so it was better to use the first C from CBS.

The only thing I have watched on the new CW is the remastered Star Trek. This is not to be confused with extremely strange Star Trek 2.0 airing on G4, which is the old, unremastered Star Trek with all kinds of crap placed around the screen in a feeble attempt to be hip and interactive.

The new, remastered Star Trek, which is just called Star Trek, is pretty good looking. Besides remastering the audio and video, select special effects have been redone.

Some people objected that this would take away from the charm of the old series, but in fact, those old special effects were so bad by modern standards that they really took you out of the show. The new special effects - primarily planets and space ships - are not crazy ass modern - they are simply well executed digital versions of the old effects. The lighting is bit better but most importantly the motion of the ships is smooth, and so the new effects just blend better with action.

Sadly, things like the Horta still look like an elephant puked up a giant pizza, but it would be a major effort to rotoscope out the old crappy Horta and put in a new one. I suspect that will be done someday. You know how they could get it done cheap? Make it a school project. Effects are cheap enough to do that they could get film school kids to do it at video res and it would probably look great! The big problem with rotoscoping is that it is labor-intensive ... so get cheap labor!

I myself am a new CW - after suffering horrifically at the hands of my old sleep doctor, who subjected me to over a year of brutal sleep deprivation while he tried to 'cure' my sleep apnea with a deadly C-Crap machine, I am mostly recovered. I took the opportunity to rethink what I really like doing in life and to focus on those things and little else. It's been quite the voyage of self-discovery.

Woot.

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.