In 2020, Jack Marshall released a director's cut of "To Serve All My Days" upscaled to 4K. Below are his thoughts.
______________________
It was the third New Voyages production, and my third time producing/directing for the series I cocreated. My thinking was this: we had done two productions in an episodic format emulating that of TOS, and I wanted to do something different. I was deep into studying Hitchcock at the time (still am) and wanted to shape the next story as a "thriller/horror" story complete with an alternate score not used on TOS. Besides, what could be more terrifying than waking up and having aged twenty-plus years overnight! So, in my mind, it became an "event film" (well, more like a "movie of the week").
With a script by D.C. Fontana, starring Walter Koenig as "Chekov"—who wanted to use the vehicle to say goodbye to his famous alter ego—the stakes were high. The actual filming was an event unto itself. Half convention, half film production; so many people were there. It was a bizarre nightmare.
And then we wrapped.
I arrived home spent—physically and creatively. I had edited all of our previous outings and intended on editing "Serve" as well, having filmed and mentally assembled it as I shot—like I do, always—but I couldn't get started. So much happened on that shoot, and I just wasn't ready to relive it. I needed more time, more energy to rev up to the process, but it never came, and two months later, I ended up sending the hard drive with all the footage to another editor and closed the door on my active participation with New Voyages. Three more months passed, and I was sitting in the Alfred Hitchcock building at Universal Studios, Hollywood, making Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica.
The product that was released was not my vision for the episode at all. In fact, the new editor was so confused by the footage that he called for reshoots, not realizing that in my head, I had cut, rewritten, and changed scenes completely to fit the vision I had for the story. I couldn't even watch the original cut.
Finally, a hiatus from Battlestar came a year later and I got my hands on that same hard drive and set about assembling the footage as intended. I didn't use any of the reshot footage either. The result is a "director's cut" of "To Serve All My Days." To me, it is a haunting, unbelievably sad, and horrifying tale. There was no epilogue originally shot showing young Chekov waking up and it all being a dream, a scene used in the "official" release. That was just abhorrent and a slap in the face to Walter's intentions. We all know in the Trek timeline Chekov didn't die during TOS. We know that. This is an "Elseworlds story," noncanon and shot—as stated before—as Walter's goodbye to the character. He wanted it this way, and I was onboard to tell that story 100%.
Now, fifteen years later, I revisit "To Serve All My Days," and with the help of machine learning AI, have upscaled it to 4K UHD so that it can be experienced in a whole new way. I hope you enjoy it. I'm proud of the piece and think it was the best thing New Voyages ever did before the crew went from volunteers to out-of-work Hollywood has-been creatives trying to get their name on something made successful by folks whose names you'll never know.
This is for them: the tireless volunteers who launched an internet phenomenon and never got the credit.
Jack Marshall
Cocreator and Series Director
Star Trek: New Voyages, 2003-2005
June 20th, 2020
