Review Detail

8.8 9 10
FanFix August 14, 2012 4802
(Updated: September 15, 2012)
Enjoyment
 
9.0
Review by DwightFry78 — May 20, 2012 @ 9:49 pm

This edit is the end of an era, in which a man who calls himself Bionic Bob dared to boldly go where no man, where no one, had gone before: take all the theatrical Original Cast Trek movies, and make leaner, meaner TV episode style edits out of them. All of the entries have been successes IMO, and with this final one Bob gave his all and wrapped the whole thing up in a way that ties The Undiscovered Country with a lot of other elements of the Trekverse. Now, while I have always tended to enjoy all things Star Trek, I wouldn’t consider myself a Trekker and I still have a lot to watch, so being a bit less than a fanboy yet a bit more than a casual viewer, I must say that the newly added elements worked great for me, even if I didn’t “get” all of the references. But I didn’t need to, even for newcomers I think there’s enough of a pattern to sense there and a mystery element that works. Particularly, I loved the book-end structure. It gave the whole thing a flavor of mythic, larger than life “old legend” narration. Genius.

The rest of it is a much improved pacing-wise version of the sixth movie in the franchise, which once again shows that it contained a lot of unneeded filler. However, I got slightly disappointed in seeing that some cheesy stuff had remained, which might even be my fault in part for not suggesting its removal while this edit was in the works. Much of that cheese has to do with Bill S. No, not him. The other Bill S. Starting from establishing that Shakespeare’s works were originally written in Klingon (wut?), and culminating in the non-stop quoting by Chang of lines from the plays that, for my tastes, turn him into a buffonesque operetta villain and deprive the last third of any tension. It’s unintentionally funny and works against the narration. My other complaint is Spock’s bloodline link to Sherlock Holmes. Not only is it way too forced and unlikely, but it reminds me of how everyone in the world who claims to have been reincarnated, claims to have been the likes of Alexander the Great or Cleopatra, never a random XII Century leper beggar… I will concede, though, that the Holmes line is hard to remove given the flow of the conversation.

Some other reviewers have complained about the commercial fades. I think they were fine. Bob has come a long way since his early Trek edits that faded out and in the audio and the video at the same thing, which WAS jarring. Here he used different timings, and it felt natural. In fact, other than the moments I mentioned above and some spelling errors that others have pointed out already, both the narrative and the technical stuff were flawlessly handled.

A great final chapter of a great fanedit saga, and yet another one of Bob’s edits that replaces the original for me. On top of everything, I couldn’t agree more: KIRK LIVES! 9/10.
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