Review Detail

The fact that I haven't watched "The Search for Spock" in years helped me approach this edit with fresh eyes. While watching it, I couldn't remember what was cut or tell where it had been cut, and upon checking the original movie, I found that my attempts to guess which parts were rescored were inaccurate. The video and audio edits were seamless, and someone who has never seen the original cut (or hasn't seen it recently and forgotten much of it as a result) would probably not realize that anything has been changed.

As I skipped through the original movie for comparison purposes after watching this edit, I came to feel that it was unnecessarily padded in places, and that the final Kirk/Kruge fight scene didn't feel as climactic without a score. The pacing and additional scoring in this edit are an improvement, in my opinion. The only cut that I'm conflicted about is the Pon Farr subplot. While cutting it did speed up the pacing, it is logical that Spock would go through Pon Farr as he matures, and the Spock/Saavik Pon Farr scene was rather poignant. I also liked the Klingon dog bits from the original cut that were removed in this version, but losing those isn't a big deal.

The only thing that detracted from the experience for me as I watched the edit was the visual quality, which I found rather poor. There were a myriad tiny compression artefact blocks ruining the appearance of the grain in every shot, and there was even occasional banding in some shots. The 9.98 GB file size, while not capable of matching full Blu-ray quality, should be sufficient to avoid this level of poor compression if the encoding is done well. The audio, on the other hand, sounded clear and free of any issues that I could hear.