Star Trek Two-Point-Ugh

Having seen my first episode of the new Star Trek, where they take a classic series episode and jazz up the exteriors so that the ship looks more realistic and the phasers aren't just obviously little blue lines hand drawn with a straight edge on the film stock, I can finally say my favorite words of Mr. Horse:

"No, sir. I didn't like it."

Part of the appeal of the classic series was the hokey effects and cheesy costumes. If you take that away, you lose something. Sure, maybe the ship looks fantastic now, but you'll still wind up with aliens wearing jumpsuits coated in glitter and ridiculous glowing green fat guys telling the creepy space children what to do. This dichotomy of quality special effects more potently destroys the suspension of disbelief far more than the original shots looking so much like a model space toy always orbiting a planet from the left side of the screen to the right (save for "Mirror, Mirror", of course, in which the switch had, stress the syllables with me now, meaning....)

This is classic Star Trek, folks. The intangible space monsters all look like human historical figures (Apollo, Abe Lincoln) or clouds. Every planet looks like some styrofoam chunks painted brown or red, and the sky is always salmon pink.

This is the way of Star Trek. This is what I want.

To go back and say "we can improve the special effects and therefore make the show better" is to ignore the fact that the show wrapped up production in 1969. It's been as good as it ever can be for the last 30 years, and you're not improving anything. You're overwriting it. Replacing those vintage scenes with shiny new remixes is tantamount to the latest George Lucas trainwreck of refurbishing the Star Wars franchise.