Star Trek: Means of Redemption

Fantastic 2 part s1 movie. I got hooked from the beginning to the end. 5h10 for both parts.

This is not the show, these are structured as 3 act movie.

Will be watching again.

***This first section is a repetition of my review for P1, Echoes of Lament, as the material here applies to both. Scroll down for specifics about this second piece.***

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.

But, if "Lament" was a flavorless loaf, "Means of Redemption" got burned. This isn't to say that the editing is at fault—the source material is so dreadful that I cannot imagine it ever quite reaching a reasonable state. However, some of the editor's choices were not as conservative as they might have been in cutting out the bad moments. Some moments, like the retention of gore-shots (even in a limited capacity for half-second flashback purposes) were the editor's stylistic choice, not necessity, and I disagree with their necessity. I do appreciate what was cut though, because the original material was lousy with gore. Likewise, various elements of the final third of the film could have been tightened, including ridiculous out-of-universe continuity glitches like Narek's locating them based on their trajectory and heading (this makes no sense!). So, I do think that the narrative arc could have been made much stronger with a bit more cutting. That said, I noticed a few audio hiccups in places as music overlapped, and once with some distorted popping, so I can only imagine how hard it would be syncing things up with even more cuts.

Focusing on what wasn't cut is a better place to go, however. I loved the changes made to Riker and Troi's little life together with their kid - turned from something vomitoriously depressing into something a bit melancholy but, ultimately, extremely sweet. I think the time spent in their scenes was my favorite of the whole experience. So much terrible material is taken out, turning the characters into reasonable human beings instead of the tapestries of suffering and horror they were devised as by the writers. It was really beautiful seeing how the extremely clever cutting made literal changes to emotional beats within the story - which goes to show the power a good editor has when given directorial control - even on a piece that's already formalized.

I am incredibly impressed by these two films, and even if I enjoyed the second one a bit less than the first, I still commend Wraith for doing the unthinkable. They turned something actively harmful into something only a little bit worse than Nemesis, and that's an insane gap to cross. Now, I finally feel a sense of closure on a painful thorn in my emotional side, and I cannot thank the editor enough for creating that opportunity.

As much as fan edits have proven capable of salvaging some projects, sometimes there's only so much you can do with a deeply flawed product. This is unfortunately the case here. Because I did not care about the new cast, which this edit gives us even less time to care about, the 3rd act falls completely flat. To be fair, it also fell flat in the original version, but this makes the problem even more pronounced because the show's undercooked characters feel even more undercooked.

There are also a few minor technical hiccups like a couple burst of static and the audio during a part of the Riker/Troi section was ever-so-slightly out of sync. Nothing too distracting though and this might have been a problem that only I had. Overall, the edit was extremely well put together, It failed for me mostly because the narrative of the show doesn't work. Chipping away, remixing, and rearranging a broken story can only do so much. Sometimes, it just makes it even more broken. Season 2, I imagine, will prove to be completely impossible to re-edit into anything resembling a competent narrative.

However, this was certainly a noble failure and I would recommend it to anyone, like myself, who wanted to give the first season of Picard a rewatch without having to invest quite as much time ;)

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.

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.