Review Detail

This is a fantastic concept and an edit I have wanted to watch for a while, so I was glad to finally stumble across it. One of those ones I was starting to wonder might have been lost to the depths of time.

The visual quality isn't great but is perfectly watchable. Obviously this is quite an old edit and the source is SD.

Visual editing is mostly what exposes the cracks. There appear to be some framerate issues throughout and the dialogue is often out of sync (which may be related). One or two edits are visually abrupt.

Audio editing is largely very good. Sonically, the two worlds blend together quite well and it wasn't normally the audio that alerted me to a cut. There was one instance where an explosion from Troopers was significantly louder than everything else, but otherwise I thought it worked well.

I'm not an uber fan so I wasn't sure how many different episodes were used for this take, but it came across to me as fairly linear and I assumed sourced chiefly from one episode - turns out a LOT were used, so I'm impressed. There are a couple of scenes that feel a little off, or like they are dropping in a fragment of a Kirk character arc that goes unresolved, but for the most part, the events play out in a way that makes sense. I thought there were some interesting thematic parallels between Troopers and the Star Trek footage as well. The ending comes across a bit dark and out of character, but it probably harkens more to the vibe of Starship Troopers.

While I'm more of a purist and generally prefer original FX to the remastered stuff, I do agree with Bionic Bob that the redone CG effects would probably complement this edit, especially as we already have the CG footage from Starship Troopers. I'm half tempted to restore this edit in HD sometime and with the remastered footage, but the list is already long... who knows.

I enjoyed this a lot although I do think it could have been taken a bit further. This is 80% Star Trek and 20% Troopers, the latter mostly using repeated footage (as others have mentioned). But what's there works nicely and is satisfying to see paired together. The edit itself is presented on a DVD and features a few extras, which is a nice touch. I have to admit I didn't understand what the Space Nazis short was meant to be or what the context was, so that was rather lost on me.