Review Detail

I've watched all of BionicBob's Star Trek TOS film edits in order, and I have to say that sadly, this was the one that worked least for me. I see that most of the other reviews here are quite positive, so I'll explain what my issues were and let potential viewers make up their own minds.

Firstly, I should say that I don't like the original film much to start with. It's my 2nd least favorite Star Trek film, and a lot of the issues are just script-deep, nothing that can be changed without radical restructuring of the film. (Full review here: https://letterboxd.com/nottheacademy/film/star-trek-vi-the-undiscovered-country/) This is not that edit, though it does improve on the story in some areas.

I liked all the cuts and trims, they were very welcome. Many more would have been, especially where the film contradicts other films or series (which it does a lot). The non-stop Shakespeare references could've been trimmed way back, as well as Spock's line about being related to a fictional character (is this meta now? We the audience know that Spock knows he's fictional???) Perhaps the traitor falling for such a stupid ruse could've been trimmed back, and perhaps Spock's mind-rape could've as well. But anyway, I'll stop with my wishlist and focus on what's here...

The additions and alterations are my main issue with this edit. While I thought BB hit a sweet spot on how to finetune the commercial cutaways and the TV tone with his previous edit (STV), this one is a big step down. Fades are overlong, music often doesn't fit the scene, and the music and sound effects frequently stomp on the dialogue, particularly when cutting to commercial. The effects added in here at a key point look pretty bad and scream fanedit, I'm sorry to say. And the bookends are overlong and send the same message. They really have very little to do with what's onscreen and attempt to reframe the whole film with explanatory title cards. It's the classic case of Telling rather than Showing, a mis-step that faneditors often try to fix when a director does it. For me, writing a bunch of text that explains what was really happening in a movie just doesn't work as a fanedit, and it's also at odds with the supposedly "TV series" presentation of the whole rest of BB's Star Trek series.

There may be some big Star Trek Enterprise fans that love this film connecting to that series. I've never seen it and don't think I should have to in order to enjoy this edit. It's supposed to be for fans of TOS, so all the connections to a massive Enterprise storyline just felt really forced to me. I'd appreciate another version of this that simply tries to fix the original film, but I suppose this is an alternative for superfans who feel differently.

All respect to BionicBob, I appreciate the hard work on this series. The other ones all worked better for me, so you can chock this up to my personal taste.