Yesterday I caught my first episode of the new “enhanced” version of the classic Star Trek series, which you’ll recall I already pre-denounced a week or so back, sight unseen.

And what is my official verdict now that I’ve examined the evidence with my own eyes. Eh.

Sorry to disappoint those of you who may have been hoping for one of my patented, foaming-at-the-mouth fanboy rants, but this situation just doesn’t warrant getting all worked up. Unlike the original Star Wars films, in which the digital tampering changed the tone, pacing, and, in the case of the “Han shoots first” thing, the very storyline of the films, the changes to Trek appear to be very unintrusive, at least in the one I saw.

The episode I caught was “Miri,” one of the mid-grade shows that is neither Star Trek at its best nor one of the stinkers. (Incidentally, I draw a distinction betwen the entertainingly awful episodes that people think of as the worst of the series — “Spock’s Brain” and “The Way to Eden” — and the ones that both suck and lack entertainment value. “The Lights of Zetar,” for instance, is damn near unwatchable in its sheer boredom-inducing lameness. At least “Spock’s Brain” has the Eymorg miniskirts and some genuine camp to hold my attention.) “Miri” is a largely planet-based episode that was filmed on studio backlots and in terrestrial-style interior sets, so there weren’t very many new scenes on hand in this one. The only changes I caught were to the establishing shots of the Enterprise approaching and then orbitting the planet.

In the original version, the planet looked like a planetarium model of Earth (which I think it probably was; the in-script rationale for the distant world’s resemblance to our Earth is lame enough that I won’t go into it here): basically all the details were flat in appearance and there was no sign of clouds. The planet is now all-digital, with a dynamic-looking atmosphere, clouds, and weather. It looked pretty good, better than the slightly cartoonish Enterprise — I’m sorry, but when it comes to vehicles and the like, I always prefer a good old-fashioned tangible model to CG. The CG stuff almost never looks real to me. But even the ship wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t a disgrace to the good name of Star Trek, and I didn’t find anything offensive about this updating.

But I also didn’t see the purpose of it. The replaced scenes are virtually identical to the original material — the camera angles, the motion of the ship through the frame, the stars in the background, all is the same as it was before. With the possible exception of the more realistic planet (and I say possible because the old one never bothered me), I didn’t see a single thing to recommend this new footage over the old. I found myself thinking of that shot-by-shot remake of Psycho that came out a few years back, in which everything was the same except the cast and the fact that a classic black-and-white film was now done in color. Honestly, what is the point of that sort of slavish replication? I say either come up with a new spin on the material or just leave well enough alone. At least they didn’t put in a Next Gen-style “going to warp” effect, where the ship elongates out like a rubber band and zooms off into a sort of starburst effect. I always hated that…

I will say that the overall image quality was absolutely fabulous. The episodes have been remastered in high definition and color-corrected; everything now looks very bright and clean (but not unnaturally so), and in a show whose look was so much defined by lighting and color (and colored lighting!), the effect is very impressive indeed. And it was also really fun to be channel-surfing and just stumble across this show on TV. I have all the eps on DVD, of course, but the original series hasn’t been shown on television in several years, and not on regular broadcast TV in probably a decade or longer, so finding it by chance was like an unannounced visit from an old friend.

If you live in the Salt Lake area and you’d like to check out the new version of an old show for yourself, it’s running Sundays on Channel 30 at noon.