Digital Layers on Media

Frank Wu has a great post about the new remastering and special effects that are going on with Star Trek: The Original Series.

I think we're only just beginning to see what the ramifications to these reimaginings are with Star Trek and Star Wars. The story in these things remain (at least somewhat) appealing, but the looks don't age well. From the sound of things, the new effects are fairly conservative. But they won't stay that way.

I can imagine in the future that our old films and books and other media will continue to survive, but with a kind of digital coral grafted on top of it, layers that can be peeled back, if one wanted. I can see children five hundred years from now, watching Star Trek and burrowing through to the original stories. TV will become the strata through which archaeologists dig.