Star Trek 1 “The V'Ger Incident”

I didn't realize this was fanedit legend BionicBob's first fanedit...it sure doesn't show it!
I have many thoughts on why this is very flawed as a film (here: https://letterboxd.com/nottheacademy/film/star-trek-the-motion-picture/) but the question is if this edit fixes those issues? Well, not really. A great many of them are script-level and can't be changed, or there simply isn't alternative footage. What this edit does well is trim a lot of the scenes not featuring the holy ST trinity of Kirk/Spock/Bones, and pick up the pace a lot.

However, the framework didn't sell me on this being presented as a long TV episode. It was okay, but the thing still has the beats of a movie and doesn't feel like TV. There are also still long, boring stretches focusing on the dated effects and visuals. At this point, even the extraneous characters' scenes would be better to watch than a lot of that dead space, which didn't grab me or create "mood" at all. Also, while many of the cuts were good, some stuff was cut that helps to give the story a cohesive narrative and flesh out motivations. So it's a bit hit and miss.

Overall, this is still better to watch than any previous version of the film, so it's recommended over those. Chock one up in the Win column for BionicBob.

Review by Neglify — March 24, 2012 @ 8:11 am

I only watched Star Trek TMP once and I liked it but thought it was a little too boring for my tastes. I really dug Bob’s edit “The V’Ger Incident”. For me, the pacing was much better and I felt the story flowed really nicely.
There are some technical issues that other reviewers have brought up, such as the audio levels and the letterboxed picture. For me, these didn’t bother me too much, but still factors into it.
Overall Rating – 8/10

Review by TMBTM — June 26, 2010 @ 3:38 pm

This is also a 7/10 to me, and could have been a lot more if not for some technical aspects: 4:3 letterboxed (2.35:1), pixelate red color, dialogue lower than sound effects/music and some added flash light coming over the black bars.
But as some already said, this is a GREAT firstling fanedit, and each fan of Star Trek should watch this one.
The nice new “twist” in the end is very well thought, the pace of the movie is great, the new music and “TV’ series cliffhangers like” are a nice touch.
The DVD menus are beautiful too.
I really wished I could rate this fanedit more but it’s mostly the 4:3 letterboxed (2.35:1) issue that stoped me to do it.
Anyway, Bionicbob is a faneditor to follow, for sure! :)

Review by Dwight Fry — May 30, 2010 @ 9:45 pm, PLUS new comments about version 2 on the bottom.

As it seems, I like Star Trek: The Motion Picture a whole lot more than most people. I think it’s an excellent Sci-Fi film, my fave of the Trek movies actually. I find the way it unfolds to be more mood-creating than “boring”. In other words, adagio can be as valid and beautiful a musical tempo as allegro. So, that means I didn’t prefer this fanedit to the original.

Yet I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. My favorite angle of TMP, the mystery around V’Ger progressively unfolding, develops mostly the same way, and, otherwise, I think Bionic Bob achieved his goal to give a TOS flavor to it pretty well (I’ll leave the minor Trek mythology details to the experts). Focus is back to Kirk and Spock indeed. However, ironically I got the feeling that the reordering of his sequences in the first half pointed out his initial so-called “assholeness” more than the original. On the other hand, from watching this version no one would doubt the movie is and always was all about Kirk. The new pacing works very well mostly, the sole excepcion being Spock’s spacewalk, which I found too fast, seemed like he was continuously reading from a list instead of discovering/realizing things one at a time.

The editing was mostly very well done, except for some of the fades to black, that screamed “artificial” It might be because of the music fading out at the same time, while more of an ending cue would help hiding the stitching. Otherwise I noticed no hard cuts. However, and I understand this is a firstling, several technical aspects left quite a bit to be desired. Red-tinted sequences, as others have mentioned, look badly compressed and pixelated, but to me the biggest letdown was that the DVD was exported in 4:3 non-anamorphic widescreen format, rendering the actual movie as a smallish rectangle in the center of any panoramic screen. Also, the footage inserted into the end of Spock’s spacewalk (which I loved, actually) had fades to white which covered the black bars too, as did the final movie poster still. Some ending inserts were low quality as well (source problems, I guess), and, finally, I personally wouldn’t include the red fanedit warning as part of the main movie, but as a separate video or part of the menu (which, BTW, is very well done, particularly for a first-timer).

Overall, I’m giving this fanedit a 7/10, which would be 8 or 9 if not for technical issues. This shows a very talented faneditor, whose subsequent works I’ll be definitely checking out, and a fanedit which, if a TMP fan liked a lot, people who like Trek but didn’t much care about TMP will no doubt love to pieces.

UPDATE CONTAINING COMMENTS ABOUT V2:

It has been a real blast from the past to get back to a really great firstling from someone who quickly became one of my favorite faneditors on this site. And it's been quite an experience to finally be able to watch it in the technical conditions it deserves. This has gone a long way since the quite subpar 4:3 of version 1, it's now beautifully anamorphic and looks mostly very good. Still, there were a couple of spots which showed similar problems than version 1, particularly the "red" footage in the climax that's not red anymore but, fittingly, in very sixities-like greens and blues, yet still showing the strange pixellation Bob's software maliciously insisted in applying to bright red areas. So it seems that it'll apply it anyway even if you get the red to stop being red... Also, there's a bit of interlacing during the opening credits, which maybe were rescued straight from version 1. Audio was fine, a few music transitions stood out for me but probably because I know the score for TMP so well.

And as for the narrative itself, I liked it even better than in version 1. I still love the mood of the original TMP, but this edit feels a lot like classic Trek. One narrative flaw did stand out for me this time around, though: the cutting back of Decker and Ilia, particularly during the Decker/probe scenes, rendered these characters a bit puzzling. One moment Decker is hating the probe's mechanical guts for killing off Ilia, and suddenly in the climax they're all about making eyes at each other while the love theme plays. Of course, Decker and Ilia's acting is the weakest link of the show and I agree with their cutting back to push our beloved classic characters forward, but still it's kind of a hole. Maybe it might have worked better if I weren't so familiar with the original.

The twist ending is classic Bob, and I absolutely love it. The new David Kerin effects work great.

I'm glad Bob went back to raise the technical quality of this edit up to the level of its artistic merits. This is a classic edit, and one that is as fun to watch as the first day.

And the Bionic adventure is just beginning. :)

Review by L8wrtr — May 29, 2010 @ 4:44 pm

Star Trek “THE V’GER INCIDENT” by bionicbob

Reviewed by L8wrtr

TOS goodness to the rescue

What Bob has done with Star Trek The Motion Picture is for me, the definition of a Fan Edit. He has taken a movie and not only made the story better, but he has given the entire narrative an entirely new perspective, breathing fresh air into an extremely stale movie.

From a story standpoint, BionicBob has refocused the story to what fans of Star Trek care about, Kirk and Spock, and it works very well on this level. Decker is as annoying as ever, perhaps even more so now that we’ve lost the “Kirk has lost his edge” subplot, but fans of the film will understand the first officer’s motivations, which also now highlight the dynamic between Kirk and Spock.

But what really causes this fanedit to stand out, and you see from frame 1 is the TOS treatment. The sights and sounds really help bring this into the classic feel of the original series, at least as much as is possible with with heavily 70s vibe of the set and costuming.

Video editing
The technical execution of the editing is quite good. Choices are logical, transitions are appropriate and the pacing is greatly improved. I find no reason to mark off any points. 10 out of 10

Video Quality
I wish the same could be said for the video quality, but this is not entirely due to the editor. The quality of the original is quite disappointing, however there are heavy compressions going on in the ambient or glowing reds. 8 out of 10

Audio Quality
In evaluating the audio, I will keep in mind that the spirit of this particular fanedit is to emulate TOS. One scene that exemplifies this is the Klingon attack against V’GER. In replacing the music with TOS, we’ve also lost the quiet rumble of the Cruisers, however quite often in the Original Series, ships often glided by on screen with only musical accompaniment, and minimal sound effects like phaser or torpedo shots. While the audio is not perfect, it is in keeping with what we heard on TOS. 8 out of 10

Overall Entertainment
Like CBB’s Kirkless Generations, BionicBob has rescued a film that could, and should have been very good. This movie still has its flaws because the original was itself, terribly flawed, but bionicbob has managed to inject classic Star Trek feel into a movie that I would have been fine never watching again. 9 out of 10.