Star trek final frontier directors cut finished

[The Old Mixer]

I never had a problem with the concept of Sybok as Spock's emotional half-brother, but the execution left something to be desired. There was nothing remotely Vulcan about Luckinbill's performance...he just came off as a gregarious human who happened to have pointed ears.

 

[Elder Knight]

I've grumbled about this before, but why stop now?

I'd suggest some backstory for General Korrd. After all, his assertion of dormant authority supplies the resolution to the crisis.

All we see of him in the film shows him as drunk and useless, and his sudden influence comes out of left field.

Have a scene wherein Spock consults the ship's computer (stock footage would work) for background on Korrd. This permits us to see (newly filmed) flashbacks depicting someone who was once hailed as a great statesman and reluctant warrior, but whose capabilities have since deteriorated.

Of course, Spock will remember this at the ciitical moment.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

I'd suggest some backstory for General Korrd. After all, his assertion of dormant authority supplies the resolution to the crisis.

Well, there was dialogue between Kirk and Spock detailing that Korrd had fallen out of favor with the Klingon High Council but was once a highly respected military commander. IIRC, Kirk mentioned that Korrd's battle strategies were required study material for every Starfleet Academy cadet, and that he also hoped he would fare better than his counterpart once he was put out to pasture.

--Sran

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Indeed, that aspect of the film was as developed as it needed to be. A "Young Korrd Adventures" flashback sequence would have been a needless diversion. Some things are best left to the imagination.

 

[trevanian]

This just happened to come up in a way that fans don't like. Well, too late. You weren't on the team supervising the script, and you can't go back in time* to change it.

Well it seems that Nimoy and DC Fontana (who came up with most of Spock's family history) also were not big fans of it, so I guess I am not alone.

Back in the 70s after TAS, Fontana pretty much issued a decry that Spock had no siblings, just to head off all the fanfiction that was headed in that direction. Even so, Vonda McIntyre included a weird emotional cousin of his in a novel about a decade later, a few years prior to TFF.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^Indeed, that aspect of the film was as developed as it needed to be. A "Young Korrd Adventures" flashback sequence would have been a needless diversion. Some things are best left to the imagination.

I tend to agree. It would be an interesting novel, but it's not worth putting in the film. That Korrd was able to talk down Klaa in just a few minutes indicates that he'd been something of a hero to his people before being sent to Nimbus III.

--Sran

 

[Nightowl1701]

What about TWOK? It gave Kirk a never-before-mentioned adult son, along with the lost love who was his mother (although lost loves/old flames out of nowhere were a standard TV trope that TOS used multiple times). It also gave Spock a longtime protegee, Saavik, whom we'd never heard of before. And in the Director's Cut, it gave Scotty a nephew. TWOK probably sets some kind of record for the number of relationships-out-of-nowhere it introduced.

And McCoy's daughter wasn't mentioned onscreen until the animated series. "The Way to Eden" would've been the story that introduced her, but it was rewritten heavily and she became Chekov's old girlfriend instead.

Once again my main issue with Sybok is he is a long lost family member that becomes so integral to the 5th movie but in the end really doesn't add much of importance to Spock's character. In fact he feels forgotten by the end of the movie. Sybok doesn't add depth to Spock's character, it just feels like a twist.

I am not saying suddenly introducing family members is always a bad thing but Spock already had an established family in the show: characters like McCoy and Scotty did not.

I am also not a terrible big fan of the way Kirk's son is suddenly introduced in WOK and then killed off in the next movie. Surely Kirk would care about his son dying but the movie didn't make me care. But at least this can explain why Kirk has a hard time trusting Klingons in the 6th movie.

Sybok becoming Spock's brother happened mainly because Shatner/Loughery had written themselves into a corner with the scene in the shuttlebay where Spock has Sybok at gunpoint. Up to that point they'd had Sybok merely as a childhood friend/contemporary of Spock. But there was no good reason why Spock couldn't/shouldn't shoot Sybok at that moment and protect his crewmates, unless... as McCoy later put it, "He could no more kill his brother than he could kill (Kirk)."

 

[Metryq]

What about TWOK? It gave Kirk a never-before-mentioned adult son, along with the lost love who was his mother

Even from the first time I saw TWOK I figured Carol Marcus was the "little blonde lab technician" Gary Mitchell "aimed" at Kirk. While lying in sickbay in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Mitchell boasts that he outlined her whole campaign for her. Kirk sputters, "I almost married her!"

Why would Kirk almost have married her—because he got her pregnant, perhaps? There's a lot of exposé in WNMHGB. Kirk was very serious at the academy, "a stack of books with legs." We also know that Kirk and Mitchell were indestructible, young action heroes sniffing out trouble wherever they could find it. Mitchell reminds Kirk of a poisoned dart he took for Kirk on Dimorus.

This dovetails with the quarrel between Kirk and Carol Marcus on Regula. Kirk knew about David ("Is that David?"). And we know why Kirk almost-but-didn't marry the blonde lab technician—she knew Kirk is a danger junkie and didn't want to lose her son, temporarily or permanently, to the same dangerous, never-at-home lifestyle.

I'd say there's abundant foundation in TOS for an adult son to appear in TWOK. Add however many years Kirk had been out of the academy in TOS to the fifteen years since he'd last seen Khan, and David is no surprise. That Carol is a scientist is also grounded in WNMHGB.

 

[trevanian]

Brother or no brother, he could still have kneecapped Sybok with the rock gun. I thought the brother angle was really lame, and prefer to think of Sybok just as Spock's onetime guru. The bro bit works for me mainly for Kirk's "I had a brother once" line, as it reinforces the notion of the family you create out of friendship can be a truer one than blood lines (then again, I'm an only child of an only child, and don't like much of the family I DO have, so of course I'm going to take that TOS/CHEERS view of friends&family.)

Also, I'm one of the rare folk who really like TFF, and I don't think cosmetic alterations will change my opinion of the film drastically (except in the way remastered added a cartoony element to FX, which I found objectionable.) The character stuff largely works for me, and it feels like TOS. I like some of the art direction, but find a lot of the VFX unsuccessful -- which is also like TOS to a degree.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Even from the first time I saw TWOK I figured Carol Marcus was the "little blonde lab technician" Gary Mitchell "aimed" at Kirk. While lying in sickbay in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Mitchell boasts that he outlined her whole campaign for her. Kirk sputters, "I almost married her!"

I thought the same thing. And as we know that Nicholas Meyer scoured the entirety of TOS to find an appropriate premise for his movie, it's likely he latched onto that nugget of information about Kirk's past and used it to create Carol and David's characters.

One thing that surprises me is that Mitchel's name is never mentioned again in any TOS installment, be it TV or film. He's just gone.

--Sran

 

[trevanian]

It was Bennett who looked through all of TOS, not Meyer. He and Jack Sowards devised Carol & the son, but originally she was going to be the woman from THE DEADLY YEARS, Janet Wallace.

I don't think the 'little blonde lab tech' is anything more than a coincidence.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^Thank you. I didn't know that.

--Sran

 

[Metryq]

It was Bennett who looked through all of TOS, not Meyer. He and Jack Sowards devised Carol & the son, but originally she was going to be the woman from THE DEADLY YEARS, Janet Wallace.

I don't think the 'little blonde lab tech' is anything more than a coincidence.

Thanks for the behind-the-scenes trivia. Just the same, the "little blonde lab tech" coincidence is a much better fit than Janet Wallace. She admitted to still wanting Kirk very much, which doesn't fit with Carol Marcus' attitudes in TWOK.

(Kirk really sticks it to Janet with the "love, or a going away present?" remark. Ouch. That one went in all the way up to the handle.)

 

[Elder Knight]

^Indeed, that aspect of the film was as developed as it needed to be. A "Young Korrd Adventures" flashback sequence would have been a needless diversion. Some things are best left to the imagination.

Okay, but if you cut the risible stuff out of TFF, you'll have trouble filling out a movie-length slot! So, I'd opt to flesh out the characters.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, but if you cut the risible stuff out of TFF, you'll have trouble filling out a movie-length slot! So, I'd opt to flesh out the characters.

But there's no way to film new material with the actors being a quarter-century older or dead. And inserting some kind of viewscreen infodump would be terribly awkward. There's no realistic way of adding any story content. Visuals can be altered, special effects added, but otherwise it's just a matter of rearranging the material that already exists.

Anyway, the existing cut is an hour and 47 minutes long. A lot of movies are as short as 90 minutes. Better a tight, compact movie than one padded out to a greater running length than it needs (although that seems to be a dying philosophy in the feature film industry today).

 

[The Old Mixer]

Not to mention that they'd be adding to the time with the rock monster....

 

[trevanian]

Actually you could choose to make it longer ... IF you could access the dailies and or cutscenes, you could expand it back to before Bennett started tightening, which would actually make it more into a true director's cut.

I'd love to see a longer version of Sybok's entrance (as is, it builds to ... nothing, he's just there) and more of the Paradise City takeover. Even the little tidbit where McCoy takes a bullet out of the guy who used to be Kelley's standin and tells him to stay off his feet for 2 minutes till the wound heals would probably be fun to see.

 

[neoworx]

This has "bad idea" written all over it. The movie died shortly after opening. Let it rest in pieces.

 

[Metryq]

I don't see how adding a rock monster would fix any of this film's problems. (Besides, people would probably accuse it of ripping off the Galaxy Quest rock monster. And yes, I know that rock monster was a reference to the one that was supposed to be in ST V, but others wouldn't know that.)

TOS already did the rock monster thing, anyway, in "The Savage Curtain"... and "The Devil in the Dark."

 

[Kinokima]

I'm an only child of an only child, and don't like much of the family I DO have, so of course I'm going to take that TOS/CHEERS view of friends&family.)

Definitely the family bond and love between the TOS characters is why I love the series so much.

Also, I'm one of the rare folk who really like TFF

Even though I am one of the people complaining about Sybok I don't hate the film. Like I said it has some of the best trio moments in all the movies. The plot isn't necessarily the best but of all the movies it feels the most like TOS and it still has a lot of fun & heart warming moments.