Star Trek 2 “Perdition’s Flames”

OK, like so many others, WOK is my favorite Star Trek movie. So I was curious and eager to see how this film could be edited differently but still be the great enjoyment that it is. And boy I was pleasantly surprised by the concept! Spoilers follow...

Let me start by the only thing I had a small issue with, the music. I did not think the blend between the original series music and the movie music works as well as the V'Ger incident. The Jerry Goldsmith score mix much better with TOS than James Horner, who crafted an incredible score. But still, it was not bad, only more apparent.

One thing that could have been nice to do is when the Enterprise meets the Reliant for the first time, a ominous music starts right away. Since it's Kirk POV and he has no idea that this is a threat, the music could have started when Kirk says "This is damn peculiar...". This is just an idea.

That being said, I LOVED this edit! I miss seeing Khan in a couple of scenes but the movie works nevertheless! You sense the presence of the enemy, even if you rarely see him. The Kirk POV really add to the intensity, in part because we cannot see or hear what Khan is saying or planning next. So we are experiencing what Kirk do, and that's the point!

When Kirk finally meet his nemesis, the flashbacks to the Space Seed episode were absolutely genius and the choice of music was perfect!!! I really liked the timing of the flashback scenes during Kirk slowly getting up from his chair, totally surprised by Khan's appearance.

The intent of this edit result in a even better pacing of the movie. I really love the original release but the judicious cuts help to remove some unnecessary fat, like Khan right hand man for example. Even if I didn't knew the story by heart, I felt that all necessary information were there to understand everything. I cannot express how much I was pleasantly surprised by the edit and my enjoyment seeing it!!

There were two particular surprises for me at the end of the Mutara Nebula battle. First, I thought I was going to see Khan on the Reliant when he starts the Genesis device and deliver his final speech. Rather, Bob decided to keep the focus on the Enterprise crew, with a voiceover of Khan's speech, which is brilliant! Second, I was shocked to hear McCoy say "Jim, I think you better get down here...". I was so sure to see Spock sacrifice that it surprised me, as Kirk was surprised by McCoy.

Finally, the Spock funeral was revised for a really emotional scene! The Inner Light track from TNG is one of my all time favorite and it's used here with great effect! The emotion cranks even higher with the inclusion of a couple of flashbacks of the original series.

WOK is a great movie without a shadow of a doubt, but I can assure you that Perdition's Flame has now a place in my movie library, right beside the original release!

GREAT FAN EDIT BIONIC BOB!!

Review by Neglify — August 2, 2012 @ 6:38 am

What a fun fanedit this was. I never got too much into Trek but I love Wrath of Khan. It was great to watch it in a new way. Bob is the king of Trek edits.

The bad:
DVD is not anamorphic, Image looks funny on widescreen TVs. (I ended up ripping the DVD, cropping the image, and re-encoding a disc of my own.)

The good:
Apparently, everyone loves wrath of Khan. It's supposed to be the film that saved star trek. I was born after the classic Trek era. I grew up with TNG. The first Star Trek movie I remember seeing in theatres was First Contact.

Compared to First Contact, WOK is slow and boring (with a glaring continuity error right in the opening). It's not a bad film, it has a lot of redeeming qualities. There is a lot of dramatic irony, the plot is good, the characters are dynamic. It makes for an excellent study in technically proficient storytelling, but it was never a lot of fun for me. (Also, Ricardo Montalbán is the biggest Ham in the universe, right?)

This edit... well it made the film fun. The story moves more quickly, there is mystery and tension. Shatner seems like a great actor. What little we se of Khan makes him tolerable (even enjoyable). Also, the continuity problems have been amended.


On the whole, a fantastic edit. My go to copy of WOK.

A very cool edit, even though less Ricardo Montalbán means less of his impressive performance, but this is not the goal of this edit.
Perdition’s Flames really feels like a great two-episode finale of a star trek tv-season and if they would have presented a story like this in the star trek series it would have definately become a legendary entry.
With cutting the Khan scenes out and just focusing on Kirk the story progresses without many of the redundancies that the original suffers. The scene with Chekov discovering Khan’s vessel is a great opening and bionicbob manages to make it feel like a tv-opening, everything is there, the captain’s log voiceover as the starship flies by ending with the beaming sound of the away mission, there are dramatic fadeouts and fade-ins, one very very cliffhangery freeze frame
with about half an hour cut this is a very quick and exciting ride. it doesn’t replace wrath of khan, this was never the intention it just gives us a new take on an old classic