Campaign to Restore William Shatner's STV TFF for Blu-ray spec. ed.

[wjaspers]

Yes, it is.

[Chrisisall]

wjaspers wrote:

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Yes, it is.

This is contradiction; argument is the next door down the hall.

[Harvey]

Oh, no, this is abuse.

[JarodRussell]

Dennis wrote:

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No, it's not.

You and Devon make a great team.

[Kirk1980]

Dennis wrote:

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No, it's not.

That added a lot to the discussion, Dennis! Wow.

The brilliance, the sophisticated wording....it's all rather much for me.

[Chrisisall]

Kirk1980 wrote:

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That added a lot to the discussion, Dennis! Wow.

The brilliance, the sophisticated wording....it's all rather much for me.

Yes. Not exactly a feat of linguistic legerdemain with a degree of intrepidity.

[NewHorizon]

Dennis wrote:

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No, it's not.

Yes, it is.

Especially after viewing the fan edit "In Thy Image". They cut it down to the length of a standard episode. Sybok is no longer Spock's brother, a lot of the comedy is trimmed out, as well as some other embarrassing stuff. Really made the tone of the story a lot darker.

[JarodRussell]

Why do people have a problem with Sybok being Spock's half brother? I don't get it. Afraid of change are we? Are we also upset about seeing McCoy's never before mentioned father dying? Or about Picard visiting his never before mentioned brother on Earth somewhere in the middle of TNG? Worf's never mentioned before brother? Data's several never before mentioned brothers?

[Harvey]

The problem with Sybok is his blood relation to Spock isn't of fundamental importance to the character. Make him Spock's long-lost childhood friend and the story is mostly unchanged. Moreover, it's awfully late in the game to be introducing long lost relatives of the principal characters. It's true that Spock can close himself off to Kirk at times during the television series (waiting painfully long to acknowledge that Sarek is his father in "Journey to Babel," for example), but by this point it stands to reason that the existence of a sibling would have slipped out between such close friends. Hell, McCoy had Spock's mind in his head for a while--it stands to reason that at least he would know.

Your other examples aren't really the same thing. It stands to reason that McCoy would have a father, and given his age, that his father would probably be dead. That the circumstances were only revealed at this point isn't at all surprising, since McCoy himself has repressed this part of his past.

Picard going home to visit with family isn't the same storytelling trope. He spends much of TNG closed off about his past, and as we find out in the episode, he and his brother are not particularly close. No surprise that he wasn't mentioned until that point.

Worf's adopted brother was mentioned, and he was mentioned early--in the season one episode "Heart of Glory."

Finally, Data...while I'll grant that there's a bit of a credibility issue at a certain point (how many Soong Type Androids are there, really!?) this at least gets a bit of a pass because Data himself didn't know about his "family members," which makes their lack of mention rather logical.

[JarodRussell]

Harvey wrote:

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The problem with Sybok is his blood relation to Spock isn't of fundamental importance to the character. Make him Spock's long-lost childhood friend and the story is mostly unchanged. Moreover, it's awfully late in the game to be introducing long lost relatives of the principal characters. It's true that Spock can close himself off to Kirk at times during the television series (waiting painfully long to acknowledge that Sarek is his father in "Journey to Babel," for example), but by this point it stands to reason that the existence of a sibling would have slipped out between such close friends. Hell, McCoy had Spock's mind in his head for a while--it stands to reason that at least he would know.

Your other examples aren't really the same thing. It stands to reason that McCoy would have a father, and given his age, that his father would probably be dead. That the circumstances were only revealed at this point isn't at all surprising, since McCoy himself has repressed this part of his past.

Picard going home to visit with family isn't the same storytelling trope. He spends much of TNG closed off about his past, and as we find out in the episode, he and his brother are not particularly close. No surprise that he wasn't mentioned until that point.

Worf's adopted brother was mentioned, and he was mentioned early--in the season one episode "Heart of Glory."

Finally, Data...while I'll grant that there's a bit of a credibility issue at a certain point (how many Soong Type Androids are there, really!?) this at least gets a bit of a pass because Data himself didn't know about his "family members," which makes their lack of mention rather logical.

I guess we have to agree to disagree here. Spock not telling anyone about a half-brother who also betrayed the Vulcan way of life is perfectly reasonable to me.

Kirk and Spock are friends, yes, but not the type of talking-about-their-family-relations-friends. Kirk might tell Spock, but Spock would never tell Kirk, that's simply how the characters are.
I have various close friends who don't know anything about my family, nor do I know anything about their family. But we'd die for each other.

[Dukhat]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Why do people have a problem with Sybok being Spock's half brother? I don't get it.

Spock having a half-brother wasn't the problem. The problem was the ham-fisted way it was dealt with.

[Therin of Andor]

Navigator_NCC2120 wrote:

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adding a cgi rockmen sequence

"Galaxy Quest" already did that one, anyway.

My ST pals and I were in hysterics throughout a preview screening of "Galaxy Quest" and at one point, after the baby aliens turned into sinister gargoyles (Shatner had wanted hundreds of gargoyles in ST V), I had actually leaned over and said, "All we need now is a big orange rock man..." - and in he came!

Harvey wrote:

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The problem with Sybok is his blood relation to Spock isn't of fundamental importance to the character. Make him Spock's long-lost childhood friend and the story is mostly unchanged. Moreover, it's awfully late in the game to be introducing long lost relatives of the principal characters.

Diehard TOS fans were upset because DC Fontana had issued memoes during TOS that "Spock has no siblings", because they didn't want his uniqueness to be diluted, and it seemed that numerous writers were pitching scripts featuring Spock relatives. When Shatner announced his intentions for ST V, both Roddenberry and Fontana objected publicly. Fontana also slipped a mention of "Spock is the only son of Sarek" into her novel, "Vulcan's Glory".

[Joker]

Kirk1980 wrote:

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That added a lot to the discussion, Dennis! Wow.

The brilliance, the sophisticated wording....it's all rather much for me.

Oh come on. For all the whining going on, you all know exactly what Dennis is saying.

To the average person who didn't already have a love affair with Star Trek, STV is shite. For all the "nice character moments" and "good story buried in there", the movie was incompetently made, and as a stand alone film can only stand up when you excuse all its failings, which are numerous.

That isn't the mark of a good movie.

[22 Stars]

I would like to see a 'better' version of V but it is just so hard to do. Cutting about half an hour is a good start, rediting what remains and redoing every single fx shot is another. But none of that will solve the problem of the poor acting and general tone of the piece.

[Hober Mallow]

How to make a new STV release an improvement over previous releases--

1) Leave off the movie.

2) Film William Shatner looking into the camera and offering a heartfelt apology.