I have just listened to this and its interesting how they compact the story down into not quite 12 minutes. The complete abandonment of the Kirk/Decker plotline is interesting, they simply make Admiral Kirk the leader and Decker the XO. However, I think the most interesting change is the use of a still from the abandoned 'memory wall' sequence to illustrate Spock's mind meld with V'ger. They have Kirk and Spock leave the Enterprise together on their spacewalk. Oh, and McCoy gets only one line in the entire thing. It's worth a listen/look on youtube if you're also obsessed with TMP.
Used to own the II and III ones (remember they didn't have the proper scores unlike other read along like Indy, SW etc). Had no idea there was also one for IV but there is..
And in case anyone is interested, this great site... http://readalongadventures.com/flash/downloads.htm
Thanks for the link. I've had physical copies of these for years, but never heard them, because it's such a hassle to set up the turntable, etc. etc. Now I can listen to them!
I didn't realize it until I started playing it that the summary of Star Trek III is stored in the depths of my memory. As soon as I heard it, I can remember the words without reading it. It's just taking up brain space. I think my parents had a VCR, but I didn't have the Star Trek movies. I'm not sure if they were available. Releasing things for home video was kind of new. So I listened to that record over and over.
My favourite line from the ST III set: "You Klingon monster, you killed my son!" ST II and ST III came out about the same time (I think they even have consecutive product numbers), and all three record/book sets were also available in a handsome collector's set. ST IV didn't get added to the Buena Vista series till that film came out, so it was easy to miss.
My favourite bit from the Readalong story was that they went straight from Ilia's death to her robo-resurrection without missing a beat. Cut out a big long passage in the film that really added very little