Star Trek: The Next Generation - Riker's Brain

First, this fanedit does exactly what it sets out to do... remove all the flashbacks from the episode.

As others have noted, this episode was a money-saver thrown together with flashbacks and it's pretty dire in its original form. By trimming all the flashbacks, you're left with the substandard original story. For viewers who want to watch every episode, this is by far the best way to watch this episode.

Now, on to the constructive criticism. Can anything be done to improve this fanedit? Quite simply, YES. A few more "Enterprise passing over the planet" shots to show time is passing would help. Basically, in the original narrative structure, a poisoned Riker is fighting for his life, reliving moments from previous episodes. We would go from Troi and the Doctor discussing treatment to the flashbacks, representing Riker's inner struggles. Now, without those inner struggles, we go from Troi and the Doctor discussing treatment to Troi emoting over Riker's deteriorating condition. Without breakaway shots, some of these seem abrupt. So, my ONLY suggestion on this fanedit is to throw a couple of breakaway shots to indicate the passing of time. Maybe even rearrange the narrative a bit to create breakaway shots from the existing bits.

Otherwise, this is a seamless edit and the best way to view this relative stinker of an episode.

This is an edit I myself thought about doing many years back. I was put off in the end, because the payoff really isn't that great. When one cuts out the flashback sequences, we are left with a pretty mundane, stilted story.

That said, the cuts we are presented with seamlessly follows the narrative, without really 'missing' any of Riker's memories. The fact we see none at all, probably works better than selecting only a handful from the original episode. I guess it also means we have to use our imagination and/or empathise with Riker, rather than be fed his mental experiences.

I like the 'bottle show' concept that we now have, and it largely works. (If the producers had decided to go down this route and not re-use footage, they could probably have filmed a few more non-memory scenes to pad the story out, and maybe just a very few 'new' memories, such as childhood memories, or other basic/cheap-to-make snippets on one set. Sadly this was not to be). The transitions all weave together smoothly. There's just a few (unavoidable) abrupt camera angle changes where footage has been excised, but the audio perfectly cleanses these brief moments.

The source material isn't in the best condition, despite being from the blu ray disc, but this isn't the editor's fault.

The title is perfect - a lovely inside joke with fellow Trekkies, and particularly TOS fans.

This isn't necessarily an improvement on a pretty dire episode, but it's certainly a decent alternate take.