Star Trek: Echoes of Lament

I very much enjoyed this edit! I watched both parts through entirely today (with a few hours break between the parts).

I will first start with the (few) things to nitpick that came to my mind while watching, and I will end with more positive things :)

In the opening credits "Star Trek the next generation created by Gene Roddenberry" could be changed to "Start Trek created by Gene Roddenberry", since he invented the whole franchise, and not just TNG tv show, but I also get that this is/was a TNG inspired TV show and this would put emphasis on it.

I would have preferred cutting the Romulan woman (of the couple that he lives with) saying to the male Romulan "idiot".
A cut could have been made easily (I hope) after her slapping him and it could have been cut right to "he cannot go at all, he is only safe here" (I don't think this fits here, also it reminds me of women are supposed to make men small nowadays in Hollywood, which I find unnecessary).

I clearly could hear a very small audio glitch at 1:24:09 in part 2 right after they jump into lightspeed on my Bohse noise-canceling headset (which was turned on very loud!). There was another one a bit later, but the second one was not that obvious, so I did not put it in my notes.

I have to say the casting at first seemed a bit off to me, but they all grew on me.

Almost at the end, when Riker was saying that he is the Captain of the USS Shanghai which is the fastest and most powerful ship starship has ever put into service. This line immediately made me think that this was put in to emphasize China as an important market for US entertainment, Maybe this was a coincidence in this specific case, but to me, it was a bit too much on the nose.
I would rather let him say USS enterprise (would be fantastic for nostalgia purposes) or some other ship name (taken from the TV show or one of the old movies) or cut him saying the name of any ship entirely, leaving the audience imagining that this could be hinting towards the Enterprise.

One last thing, I also have to cringe a bit every time in modern movies or TV shows, when the protagonists kiss or are in love in the end or whenever there is a gay/lesbian scene out of nowhere. In this case, I am talking about Rios and Agnes (Dr. Jurati) kissing and Raffi and Seven holding hands. It takes me out of the story because it has literally nothing to do with the story. I was just waiting for Picard to kiss Elnor haha. I do not know how this edit could have been done (probably pretty hard to cut out or trim) but if a romance is not established well in the story, then I do not want a surprise glimpse of a potential romance in the end in a 5-second scene. This goes out to modern movies that shoehorn these things into otherwise good TV shows/movies.


Now to more of the good things, which were more plentiful and weighed way more!

Very good editing (audio and video) and nothing ever showed that changes have been made to the original material, besides the opening and closing, which uses the original Star Trek theme, which would have probably not been used by the original creators.
BUT, I must admit using it made me feel nostalgic, I felt like watching one of the old Star Trek movies with the original cast (Kirk and company), only this time with the TNG cast, which was amazing.

I was lying, it did feel the show was altered in the best possible way. I could almost smell that something bad would come up after the story unfolds better and better and after the story that is being told is making me care for all the characters involved more and more. But it never arrives. So there must have been some heavy (and well) editing done, in order to achieve this!

Also, the music used plays into the entire feeling of the two movies, which was carefully chosen and masterfully inserted.

I definitely enjoyed this edit a lot and recommend it to every Star Trek fan (especially TNG) but also to everyone who enjoys a good science fiction movie (in 2 parts) where the story builds and quite a lot is happening.

Wow! I just finished part 1 and me and my mom LOVED it! Not only was the edit absolutely seamless (like, seriously impressive. I couldn’t even tell when one episode ended and another began!) but also the story was perfectly streamlined! My mom is a life long trekkie and probably the biggest TNG fan ever and she absolutely adored this version! When she watched Picard originally she said that it was a total slog and she really only liked it for Picard, but she said this was 100% THE way to watch it! I can’t wait to watch part 2!

Firstly, this is an absolutely masterful edit. Taking ten episodes and turning them into two two-hour-long films would be impressive in any circumstances, especially done at this level of technical quality. But to do that with source material that is so utterly, completely, depressingly abhorrent is a work of skillful artistry that deserves the highest possible commendation.

I avoided watching Picard when it first came out because I hate streaming services, and because I was nervous. That nervousness increased to outright anxiety when spoilers began slipping into my sphere. When I finally bought it and watched it for myself, the emotional experience was something akin to watching a beloved friend beaten senseless, or having your dog drowned. Star Trek was a formative piece of my whole experience of life, and to see it degraded to such a degree (and lauded for that degradation by mindless hoards of critics) was literally and shatteringly depressing.

Coming from that standpoint, to say that I enjoyed even a moment of the material is pretty amazing. As it happens, this first part, Echoes of Lament, turned out to be... if not a *good story,* then at least not the worst. Utter trash was taken, molded, morphed, risen, baked, and turned into a crusty loaf that -- for all its flavorlessness -- was edible.

The story has been altered fundamentally, the cuts give the characters actually believable emotional states - I couldn't believe how different Picard and Raffi's relationship became. Instead of every interaction being a terrible cringe-fest, they felt merely somewhat dramatic. There were even moments where I found myself enjoying the tale - at least as much as any run-of-the-mill weekly episode.

It's difficult to rate a piece like this for enjoyment because of how deeply bad the original material is. If I were to rate on that alone, the "enjoyment" factor would have to be something sub-zero. It's important to illustrate, therefore, that my ultimate enjoyment rating is focused as neutrally as possible on this work alone, as if it really were a stand-alone film.

One major point that could have been addressed was the "brother/sister" incestuous relationship arc, which never served any purpose anyway, and certainly could have been cut out—making the relationship of the terrible twins seem like just a normal jealous relationship between two psychopaths. The choice to retain lines that could have been cut degraded my enjoyment of this piece directly.

On a technical level, this edit is excellent, but, unfortunately, it still feels like a more truncated version of a series that simply doesn't work. I was hoping that it might work better with the fat removed, but there are too many fundamental flaws to the way the whole season was constructed. The central problem remains that the new cast introduced aren't particularly compelling characters and spending less time with them, as we do in this edit, hasn't really changed that. I'll check out the second fan-edit covering the rest of the season but, honestly, the first part was a real slog to even finish. Despite the clear care and effort that went into crafting this edit, I think this series might be unsalvagable, despite some truly excellent action sequences.

I despised the source material but thought it would be at least interesting to see what a fan edit could achieve. Unfortunately I still hated it but I wouldn’t blame the editor for that. Kudos to them for at least trying though. Incidentally I don’t think the title “Echoes of Lament” works very well, it’s sounds awkward, maybe Echoes of Sorrow or Regret would’ve been better? To me it just sounds like it’s the equivalent of saying Echoes of Bemoan or Bewail.