Brought to us by Jack Marshall (of New Voyages fame (http://www.newvoyage.com)), Star Trek Phase II "In Thy Image" reimagines Final Frontier as a pilot episode for a new Star Trek series.
The version I got my hands on was a PAL DVD .iso with spanish soft-subtitles and a Spanish text prologue. (An on-disc .nfo file had an English translation and indicated that the original English titles are lost).
Editing ST5 into a watchable film is a feat that most of us would figure to be impossible, but like most good edits, was made by someone who legitimately liked the original film on which it was based.
Trimmed to a svelte 63 minutes there was little time wasted on subplots or extended beauty shots of ships, just the main story. It's cut and timed like an extended TV episode with episode-style music and breaks for "commercials".
And it works. It works well.
All the camp and crap that made this a bad movie feels perfect as a lost TV episode. If the actors were younger, wore their old uniforms, and the sets wobbled you might not have noticed the difference.
Except for a few minor instances where trims made rapid jumps in locale or time apparent, you start to ask yourself with an hour missing, was anything actually cut?
Unfortunately (at least my copy) suffered from quality issues. Letterboxed and a bit washed out, the picture lacked any real sense of sharpness you'd expect from a DVD. Weighing in at 1.7gb it's a shame since there was plenty of room to spare. Audio-wise the 2.0 DD track was fairly weak and had me cranking the volume up. But cuts and newly integrated music was flawlessly added.
Of course as always I consider PAL format to be a technical flaw since it runs faster and is pitched higher than the source material.
There were also numerous instances of double image frames that looked like bad blending deinterlace. I can't say if this is the editor's fault or his source.
I would definitely add this to my shelf as a very watchable replacement to ST5, and strongly recommend you track it down.
Frankly I'd like to see this reconstructed in higher quality, (or at least an NTSC fully english disc (yes I'm thinking about it)).
Edit: 4.5/5
Video: 2.5/5
Audio: 3/5
Total (not an average): 4/5
-Doctor M
Update 1/22/06:
As noted below the NTSC version is available on MySpleen.com.
Comparing that to the PAL edition reviewed above it should be noted that there is little difference in quality.
The Edit: Jaiman Tuckuh points out that the theme music is different. Additionally, the opening text is English and scrolls rather than the still pages on the previous version.
Video: The opening text contains some bad compression artifacts.
The ghosting/double image artifacts remain and the runtime is unchanged at 1:06 with the framerate reported as 29.97 (video/no pulldown flags).
It seems the source material was probably an NTSC laserdisc or letterboxed VHS tape that was deinterlaced poorly.
The NTSC edition contains more unique frames than the 25 frame PAL suggesting that was indeed the original source. So any additional lines of resolution gained by the PAL version are extrapolated and not a true increase in quality.
Audio: The audio still has a processed/compressed tinny quality.
Extras: Some nice stills and text files are included on this version regarding the original abandoned Phase II project.
Overall, I'd say get the NTSC release unless you speak Spanish. The PAL version gains you nothing in quality, and in fact is a bit jerky because of the 24 -> 29.97 -> 25 frame conversions.
The version I got my hands on was a PAL DVD .iso with spanish soft-subtitles and a Spanish text prologue. (An on-disc .nfo file had an English translation and indicated that the original English titles are lost).
Editing ST5 into a watchable film is a feat that most of us would figure to be impossible, but like most good edits, was made by someone who legitimately liked the original film on which it was based.
Trimmed to a svelte 63 minutes there was little time wasted on subplots or extended beauty shots of ships, just the main story. It's cut and timed like an extended TV episode with episode-style music and breaks for "commercials".
And it works. It works well.
All the camp and crap that made this a bad movie feels perfect as a lost TV episode. If the actors were younger, wore their old uniforms, and the sets wobbled you might not have noticed the difference.
Except for a few minor instances where trims made rapid jumps in locale or time apparent, you start to ask yourself with an hour missing, was anything actually cut?
Unfortunately (at least my copy) suffered from quality issues. Letterboxed and a bit washed out, the picture lacked any real sense of sharpness you'd expect from a DVD. Weighing in at 1.7gb it's a shame since there was plenty of room to spare. Audio-wise the 2.0 DD track was fairly weak and had me cranking the volume up. But cuts and newly integrated music was flawlessly added.
Of course as always I consider PAL format to be a technical flaw since it runs faster and is pitched higher than the source material.
There were also numerous instances of double image frames that looked like bad blending deinterlace. I can't say if this is the editor's fault or his source.
I would definitely add this to my shelf as a very watchable replacement to ST5, and strongly recommend you track it down.
Frankly I'd like to see this reconstructed in higher quality, (or at least an NTSC fully english disc (yes I'm thinking about it)).
Edit: 4.5/5
Video: 2.5/5
Audio: 3/5
Total (not an average): 4/5
-Doctor M
Update 1/22/06:
As noted below the NTSC version is available on MySpleen.com.
Comparing that to the PAL edition reviewed above it should be noted that there is little difference in quality.
The Edit: Jaiman Tuckuh points out that the theme music is different. Additionally, the opening text is English and scrolls rather than the still pages on the previous version.
Video: The opening text contains some bad compression artifacts.
The ghosting/double image artifacts remain and the runtime is unchanged at 1:06 with the framerate reported as 29.97 (video/no pulldown flags).
It seems the source material was probably an NTSC laserdisc or letterboxed VHS tape that was deinterlaced poorly.
The NTSC edition contains more unique frames than the 25 frame PAL suggesting that was indeed the original source. So any additional lines of resolution gained by the PAL version are extrapolated and not a true increase in quality.
Audio: The audio still has a processed/compressed tinny quality.
Extras: Some nice stills and text files are included on this version regarding the original abandoned Phase II project.
Overall, I'd say get the NTSC release unless you speak Spanish. The PAL version gains you nothing in quality, and in fact is a bit jerky because of the 24 -> 29.97 -> 25 frame conversions.
Speaking of which, I'd better increase my upload speed, huh?