check the trivia section http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home In there, a yotube video recounts new dialogue from Shatner, narrating what happened between ST2 and ST4. What do you all think? Should this have been included in all versions of the film?
It was made for the European market because ST III did not get a theatrical release in many European countries, and had not yet come out on videocassette. In Australia, we got the prologue attached to our VHS and DVD copies. It was fun, but not necessary for us.
In the UK, that has always been attached to the movie. For me, that's simply part of the movie. The marketing in Europe was quite different. The movie was marketed as "The Voyage Home" - star trek IV. Emphasis on "TVH", the star trek title was in a small font (as if the marketing people wanted to distance themselves from Star Trek altogether). The credits were in a different font as well. The "O" in voyage looked like the white glowing ball thing that comes out of the probe, but its since been replaced with a more tradtional title card and the movie title has returned to "STAR TREK IV - the voyage home".
^I liked how the European prologue used the Captain's Log as a device to recap what happened previously just as was done in "The Menagerie, Part II." I wished that later Trek productions had done that instead of the voice over of "Previously on (insert ModTrek show here)."
Most of the cliffhangers wouldn't have allowed, in a narrative sense, for a "captain's log." Could you see Riker stopping everything to report on what already happened after saying "Fire" in BoBW? Or how everything could be related when the main characters didn't know certain events (like Sela revealing herself in "Redemption").
^ A concept Futurama made fun of in Where No Fan Has Gone Before when they're having their recap/trial while the battle is still going on outside.
Oh, that's nothing. For the Singapore release Star Trek: Nemesis dropped the whole `Star Trek' thing from the opening credits and the publicity materials. It's like they thought that was the problem.
But more often than not, Captain's Logs do look as if they were dictated several hours or even days after the actual events. That is, they would be narration that the Captain superimposes on the log tapes to clarify what was going on at that timepoint. See for example "The Naked Time", where Kirk describes the events and then says "unknown to us, a deadly virus is spreading"... Or any of the times when logs are made by Picard seemingly in the middle of action in the early TNG seasons. Still, I must agree that use of the log is not dramatically intense enough for something like the "BoBW" cliffhanger-resolution. What was magic about them? Ever since "Court Martial", we have known that events aboard starships are visually recorded in great detail, including the possibility of multiple angles and dramatic zooms when necessary. And that would probably be trivially easy to achieve with treknology, or even with today's technology. (Granted that in "The Menagerie", the very same zoomable visuals are condemned by our heroes as unrealistic, as not-something-Starfleet-really-does...) Timo Saloniemi
Although it was violated regularly, according to several sources, including the book Inside Star Trek, the Captain's logs were supposed to have been after-the fact, indicating the material was historical (insert Galaxy Quest reference here).
True. But in a TV context, having the log at the beginning of the episode, summarizing what they are up to, is more effective.
Hmh? Violated how? By showing Kirk dictating in ST5? Although it's clear that most of the stuff could not be dictated in the heat of the moment, it had to be dictated at some point. And not months or years after the mission (although it might be revised then), but during the mission, so that there'd always be something to be placed in the recorder marker when the ship was about to blow up. Timo Saloniemi
They show computers able to do that, at least with two-dimensional images, all the time on the various C.S.I. shows, so I'd hope they could do that in three dimensions by the time of Star Trek.
That's always been a part of the movie for me. I loved how in the court room scene a few minutes later, they are watching footage from STIII, complete with camera images of the Enterprise's destruction... how...?
The Klingon ship's sensors could easily have recorded that visual. Kirk likely transmitted a report of some description back to Starfleet, and explaining the fact he no longer had the ship he'd taken would presumably factor in quite heavily.
I can't remember which offhand, but I'm sure there was at least one instance in TOS where we came back from a commercial break where Kirk had been knocked out and/or captured, and were brought up to speed with a Captain's Log that referred to their predicament in the present tense, meaning that Kirk had to somehow record it while unconscious/captured.
Don't you think a ship like that would have a security camera trained on the most important part of the ship?