Star Trek 10 “Through A Glass Darkly”

Review by Captain Khajiit — April 5, 2012 @ 7:17 pm

Nemesis was a disappointment to me in the cinema. As concepts, I disliked both Shinzon and the Remans. The directing was poor, and I did not appreciate the humor. B4 was the nail in the coffin.

Nemesis will never be a good film, but Bionicbob has removed the worst elements and made watching it bearable, in much the same way as Uncanny Antman did for Terminator 3 in his edit. The result is a well-made edit that should appeal to both Star Trek fans and casual viewers.

Video quality was reasonably high, and the audio did not fluctuate as much in volume as previous Bionicbob edits (thought I did watch it with my media player set on “night mode”). The menu was stylish, and there were some interesting trailers for upcoming Bionicbob edits.

8/10 I highly recommend this edit.

This is my second venture through Bionic Bob's Star Trek edits (V being the previous one). I watched the intro explaining the changes beforehand, and I'm pretty much in agreement with Bob's concluding thoughts on the edit. It's still flawed, but it's a definite improvement, and well worth checking out.

One of my biggest problems with Nemesis revolves around how many subplots there were. So I'm glad that the B4 subplot and the unholy Deanna Troi mind-rape subplot have been excised from this edit. Cutting those two out places nearly all of the focus on the Picard/Shinzon dynamic. And while that dynamic will never be one of my favorites in Star Trek lore, at least it's simpler and easier to follow without being bogged down by other things. I also appreciate that the ending for this version actually produced some irreversible consequences and came with a sense of finality, while also keeping true to the spirit of Trek. And I liked the alternate final scene as well.

I did say that this edit is flawed, though. I agree with a lot of other reviewers that a few of the structural changes were odd, and I also wished the explanation of Data's emergency transport unit at the end wasn't so out-of-the-blue in this version. But those changes feel so small compared to the good changes that have been made here.

All in all, this is a much needed improvement on one of the weaker entries in the Trek theatrical saga. Through a Glass Darkly earns my recommendation.

Review by DriggyDriggs — April 9, 2012 @ 3:17 am

Just watched this last night. Nemesis was also a disappointment to me in theaters. I was hoping for a special edition dvd, but instead what we got was the same theatrical version with poor quality deleted scenes in the special features. There was a time when I attempted a workprint of Nemesis myself, but I abandoned the project when I realized the deleted scenes were in such bad shape it would never be put up on the website. When I saw that BionicBob was attempting a version with B-4 completely gone, I was wondering how he would pull it off. On to the edit:

The good stuff:

- The wedding scene is trimmed. Thank God. Everything after Picard’s speech was dreadful. I’m glad it was all gone.
- The young bald Picard photo is not shown.
- No mind rape. It was done better in the TNG episode “Violations.” They basically ripped it off here and did it worse with a character that had no motivation to do it anyway. Glad it’s gone here.
- No B-4. B-4′s antics are just annoying. I’m glad he’s gone. Although I wish they had found a way to bring Lore back for this story so there was an actual parallel between Data and Picard. That would have required the director to actually be familiar with Star Trek, though. B-4 being gone makes the film much tighter, and actually gets rid of some other annoying things, like the federation “dune buggy.” However, removing B-4 does leave one serious narrative issue, which I’ll get into later.

The Not So Good Stuff:

-Some of the musical cues didn’t really mesh well due to scene deletions in the first 30 minutes.
-A minor plot hole was created because of a scene bring deleted. It is established at the wedding reception that Riker is leaving for his own command, but then he goes on a mission on the Enterprise right after his wedding. Why is he there? In the original film, they are giving him a ride, but they get diverted to Romulus. Maybe reinsert the scene where Picard tells him “the Opal Sea will have to wait” right after they are diverted to Romulus?
-Couple of continuity errors: Enterprise shown at warp a couple of times (one time out the window during the briefing scene) and then shown going to warp right after.
-The Viceroy is never established as having telepathic abilities in this edit, so Troi finding the ship through him and him feeling her presence seemed a bit contrived.
-Without the transport device having been introduced earlier during Picard’s capture, it’s appearance and explanation via flashback also seemed contrived. Unfortunately, without B-4, it would be hard to do Picard’s rescue from the Scimitar.

The faster pace gives this edit a lot of action, and I actually enjoyed quite a few of the edits. However, because of the narrative issues that I mentioned, my rating was lowered a bit.

Final Score: 7 out of 10

Review by DwightFry78 — April 17, 2012 @ 10:01 pm

This might very well be BionicBob’s best achievement so far: taking Nemesis, arguably the very worst of all Star Trek movies, and making it much more enjoyable than I ever expected it to be. Don’t take me wrong, it’s not a great movie now, that wouldn’t be possible given the generic and tired source material, but it’s now worth the Star Trek name and no longer an emmbarrassment to watch. Just removing the worst offenders (mind rape, dune buggy, B4, stupid humor) works wonders for it.

It has been argued among other users whether including a certain flashback near the end was needed or worked well. To me, it’s indispensable, because without it Data’s sacrifice makes no sense: we of course realize what the portable beaming device is when we see it work, but if we don’t know that it can only beam one person up, and that it’s a prototype so Data couldn’t have carried one for himself, the scene would become incomprehensible and Data would seem to be suicidal or have a death wish, and his sacrifice would seen random, meaningless, and easily avoidable. Of course, we have seen the theatrical version so we can mentally fill the gaps, but the narrative of a fanedit should stand on its own. And Bob’s version does. Who cares if the flashback is to something we did not see before. We know those people have had many adventures together.

Technically speaking, this is Bob’s more well-rounded edit to this day. No bad cuts, awkward fades or interlacing, except for the end credits, which do become a bit uncomfortable to read because of ghosting. There’s one flash frame of a starfield right at the beginning before the credits, but it’s nearly unnoticeable. Despite having a pretty good eye for these things myself, I didn’t notice it until another reviewer pointed it out.

I’m giving this a 10/10. Not because it’s now a perfect, flawless movie, which it never will be, but because there’s not much, if anything, I would have done differently. Bravo!