Yeah, I remember Ridley Scott saying the same thing about Alien. He actually considered the theatrical version the true director's cut. It's what he wanted but he was ok with a 'directors cut' and took part in the process. It was great to see some of the extra scenes but I thought Alien was always a great movie before. Sometimes it goes the other way. I know Robert Wise felt rushed with TMP and was happy to update it for the DE (crossed fingers for a Blu-Ray release--come on Paramount---A 40th Anniversary Directors Edition Blu-Ray would look great ). And I know for some horror movies the director makes a 'directors cut' on purpose because they know they have to tone it down a bit for theatrical release to avoid the NC-17 curse. But I agree. Many times the theatrical version is the one that the director intended all along.
Yeah, it just seemed that way to me too. I guess there's some disagreement there. I just remember when I thought about 82 AU's it just seemed impossibly large. I'm trying to think how big that really is and I can't help feeling like it would take the Enterprise days to travel that distance to get to the center (I'm assuming they couldn't go to warp speed inside the cloud). But to each their own. 2 AU's makes more sense to me.
Come on. After launch, it only took them a few minutes to go from Earth to Jupiter at sublight. That's at least 4 AU right there. Granted, it should have taken maybe a few hours, Earth time, depending on how fast warp point five is. Anyway, that's one-tenth of a radius of 41 AU.
But you see, that's the other thing that makes 82 AU's hard to buy. The cloud didn't dissipate until it was almost on top of Earth. It would have covered half the solar system on the way in and been seen from Earth probably long before it got anywhere near Earth. And the gravitational pull of something so incredibly large probably would have knocked some moons, and maybe even planets out of their orbits.
It seems most unlikely that V'ger would have disturbed the solar system of its Creator, so it would have made sure that didn't happen however big or small the cloud had been. While nothing in the dialog says exactly when the cloud started dissipating, the sequence of the reports from Uhura and Sulu would seem to suggest that rapid dissipation began while the cloud was still at warp.
Well, it's 1.8 hours from launch to when Kirk makes his log entry announcing his decision to risk going to warp. So, yeah, no more than 1.8 hours from Earth to Jupiter at impulse. Thanks!
re 82 AU's In deleted dialog (but in the SLV) Spock says V'ger has a magnetic field greater than Earth's Sun The cloud's "12th power energy field" is a trillion whatever they are using to measure In his novelization GR says the "cloud" glows because the powerfield is annihilating hydrogen atoms as it plows through space at warp 7...likely this idea came from Jesco von Puttkamer Our Sun's heliopause is ~246 AU's in diameter, basically 3x V'ger's "cloud" So, given this thing is supposed to be beyond human reckoning, 82 seems no less ridiculous than 2. The "ridiculous" thing is that no one in the film related just what an AU is, so you can bet that most of the audience went "82 somethings" and weren't impressed.
I agree, probably most of the audience was thinking 'what's an AU'. I was about 12 when I saw TMP for the first time and had to look it up myself. The same even with 12th power. People were probably like '12th power??" I think what punctuated it for most fans was the character reactions. Epsilon's commander was clearly shocked..."it measures....my God 82 (or 2) AU's in diameter, must be something incredible inside there to generate it" (forgive me if that's not exact but it's my recollection). Again with the 12th power...Sulu is clearly shocked. So even if you don't know what an AU is or how much 12th power is, the character reactions make it clear this is far beyond anything they would ever expect.
The Undiscovered Country on Blu-ray is the only home video release with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, I believe. The rest are close to regular 16:9.
What keeps Paramount from releasing a three-disc Blu-ray set with the theatrical version, Director's Edition with new 1080p CG effects, and Special Longer Version? I'd buy one. I'd buy twelve! Do they really think it's not worth it? Considering next year is the 40th anniversary of the film, I'd be very disappointed if they did absolutely nothing.
Yeah, and IIRC the framing tended to be rather odd on the 16:9-ish releases. Re-rendering the TMP-DE effects in 1080p is outside the scope of what Paramount wants to do. For starters, they don't even have direct access to the digital assets anymore, from what's been said. They would have to source it all from people who worked on the DE and managed to salvage it from the now-obsolete computer equipment. Kor
As MGM was in the 80's-90's, so is Paramount now - empty (of cash), incomplete (in competent leadership/archive material) and searching (for enough box office hits to stay afloat).
I'll just have to keep watching the DVD. It's still OK on a modern TV, but obviously the picture quality isn't 1080p and the sound isn't as rich as a Blu-ray.
I routinely copy my old data to new computers as I get them, so I still have 1985 Atari 800 files I can open in an emulator. As memory and drive capacity get cheaper and larger what used to seem like a huge amount of data seems puny now. I bet some of the DE folks have the files easily enough accessible. That said, I think they made a bunch of fannish and poorly researched decisions about edition and I'm not so keen to see those propagated.
Like what? It was all overseen by Robert Wise to fit his vision for the movie in 1979 that couldn't be realized at the time because of budgetary reasons and the fact they were already way behind schedule. The only "fanboy" addition in the DE I can think of is the 2260s Galileo shuttle in the background of the tram station scene.