They were commenting about how the movie is about broken human relationships and because of that they were having a hard time dealing with the machine that was out there. With the computer voice and some of the other sounds it made the Enterprise full of machines. So they removed them and adding things to make it more human. Why does the new klaxon and every button have to sound like a synthesized bird chirp? The low drone of the orginal klaxon sounded like a real warning of danger. I also miss the computer voice too. If this was the version I had originally seen in 1980 in the theater's I would never have had such a strong interest in Star Trek. I would have stayed with Star Wars. They said they cut Kirk's second "Viewer off!" because they felt it would have been bad for all those crew members seeing a senior officer freeze. I never thought that. They cut Kirk's "Oh my God!" after the transporter accident because they said it was to campy, and did not fit with the tone of the scene.
Tell me about. I for one think the new sound mix is a huge improvement. It took only 1 viewing of Fan Filtration's edit of the Special Longer Edition to make me realize how much I hated that computerized voice that stating the obvious and what's going to happen before it even happens! Example. Computer: Malfunction. (Says this a total of 13 times even though we obviously see and hear that something is wrong with the Transporter) Computer: Emergency Alert! Negative control at helm! (Says this four times before Spock points out they're caught in a tractor beam) Computer: Intruder Alert! (Says this nine times BEFORE the intruder even appears on the bridge) Computer: Intruder location, a sonic shower. Temperature at intruder location. Temperature drop rapid now. Six, Zero degrees. Five, Zero degrees. Temperature care flattening. Four, five degrees. Four, zero degrees. Temperature leveling. Three, nine degrees. Holding at three, seven point six five degrees. (Why do we need to know all this?!) Thank god the latter scene was replaced with Jerry Goldsmiths wonderful V'Ger/Ilia music instead. I also approve of some of the trims, especially that scene where Captain Kirk shakes off McCoy while he was questioning Spock. Kirk is not that blatant and Bones knows the urgency of the situation to not stop Kirk from finding out as much as possible of V'Ger. And the sound mix on the bridge? We got the original series chimes going on for crying out loud. Even the transporter activation is the same! It's a nice little touch of continuity that shows that not EVERYTHING changed in the refit. And while the visual effects are questionable, they're no where near as bad as the Lucasfied Star Wars movies. When the plasma weapon fades away just before hitting the Enterprise, I thought the CGI Enterprise was a perfect counterpart to the model we just saw.
You realize that that was inspired by the actual computers used on NASA space craft at the time... Go watch Apollo 13 again, listen for the computer reporting "main bus B under vault", ect... it's mixed down but is there. That was purposeful. It was meant to show that these people had changed some, grew apart... It also calls back to the interaction between kirk and McCoy after the wormhole sequence. What about the hundreds of sound effects created for the movie but not mixed in, and later used in TWOK and TSFS... just tossed... Nice. That is one of the few areas where they did a good job in my opinion. But the two or three of these do not make up for the hundreds of mistakes where they screwed up.
That was not the computer. It was Houston over the coms confirming if it was Main bus B under vault. The only thing the computers on Apollo 13 did was 'show' the crew what was wrong by displaying it and the crew reported on it. That's what the Director's Edition does. Wait a second. Where have you heard that?
You don't like TOS? I also prefer the original klaxon. But with the computer voice was just annoying. Doubtful. I can understand their reason... but I'm not sure I buy it either... Because with the line in there it takes Kirk even longer to ask if they got them back.
That's not what was said in a thing I read on the actual capsule around the time the film came out. It talked about how the computer would read off the warnings, and that Ron howard had reproduced that aspect, but test audiences commented that they didn't like the "sci fi computer voice" that they added in... not realizing that it was what the tech of the time did, so most of the audio readouts were dumped... The Main Bus B was one of the few which still made it into the film. Years ago someone ( i think it might have been TGT but I'm not to sure) posted a link to an artical which spoke about it.
So, you're telling me we had talking computers in the Apollo capsule in 1970 when the guys in the NASA control room monitoring that very same capsule were using slide rules to verify their angle and trajectory numbers? Talking computers, yes...handheld calculators, no....that's what you're saying?? It's been 40 years...why don't our home computers talk back to us? If that technology existed back in 1970, what happened to it since then?
Here's a link. It comes in at 2:02 in the time line. Forgive the subtitles. It was the best I could find. Sounds too good to be a computer recording. After Fred says "Sh**, it's main bus A", you hear a voice literally say "Main Bus A under vault?" as if it was a question of confirmation, which Fred says again "Houston, we have a main bus A undervault"
And for more fun, Wise used the same concept with his movie Andromeda strain... Computers using prerecorded responses to audibly interact with humans, again based of of the same technology used in the Apollo capsule.
Which they didn't use in Apollo 13 and for all intents and purposes, Andromeda Strain "isn't" Star Trek. The computer voice is still out of place, intrusive and overall silly even for Star Trek. If the characters say what the computer does anyways, what's the point? And another thing, the Enterprise's voice is almost always depicted as being female, which the Director's Edition also correct.
I've personally didn't like the female computer voice. I know the pschological reason it is used in the real world but I find it distracting. I like the orginal computer voice in TMP. It is one of the things that help set the feel of the movie for me that I really liked.
Thank you Paramount for keeping the original version of the movie intact, and not subjecting us to Robert Wise's mood swings (the so-called "director's cut")
You actually find her voice annoying? She only had four whole lines in the whole movie compared to the 50 lines of the male computer voice and he wouldn't shut up. This isn't the Apollo program they're flying in.