Sulu's Captaincy - what tweaks to the script?

[Pauln6]

I'm doing a fan edit of TMP and someone asked whether it would be possible to use similar techniques to reinstate the scene that mentions Sulu's captaincy into TWoK. It's certainly possible. I'm still balls deep in the TMP edit, waiting for the re-mastered DE but I started to wonder what other changes would need to be made to make it work. I was thinking:

1. STIII - Stiles would not direct his comments directly at Kirk. Kirk is retired from Starship duty anyway and it would make more sense if he were talking to the man due to take over the Excelsior shortly.
2. Subject to fitting in with the music score, it might be possible to crib a reaction shot from Sulu from elsewhere in the movie.
3. There is some additional Sulu dialogue out there in Flashback and World Enough and Time. In Flashback, for example, we have "Objection noted," and, "We're not ready to give up just yet," that could work.
4. In STV in the shuttle with Uhura and Chekov, we would need some dialogue alluding to Sulu's presence on the Enterprise being temporary.

Any thoughts?

 

[Jedi Marso]

Those all sound interesting.

It adds some much-needed (at the time) character depth to Sulu, especially since we see Chekov as the XO of Reliant a short time later. It lets the audience know that Sulu also has some irons in the fire career-wise. It also makes for a smoother transition continuity wise at the beginning of TUC when we finally see Sulu on Excelsior's bridge, doing the captain thang.

Hopefully you can make it all work the way you envision. Where do you post your finished projects? I'm a fan of well made fan-edits.

 

[Pauln6]

Those all sound interesting.

It adds some much-needed (at the time) character depth to Sulu, especially since we see Chekov as the XO of Reliant a short time later. It lets the audience know that Sulu also has some irons in the fire career-wise. It also makes for a smoother transition continuity wise at the beginning of TUC when we finally see Sulu on Excelsior's bridge, doing the captain thang.

Hopefully you can make it all work the way you envision. Where do you post your finished projects? I'm a fan of well made fan-edits.

You can find my works in progress on the You Tube link in my sig. Mind you 'well made' they are not. This was the first project I ever tried, so i am learning as I go. I still have issues with the levels of some of the imported dialogue and Grace Lee Whitney's vocoded dialogue is not quite there because I couldn't work out how to get Deepvoicelab to train on her voice samples and I had to use pre-trained models as my base. I would describe them as passable as SLV quality :-P.

Oh ok so found the stealing the Enterprise scene with soundtrack only on Youtube, that makes it a whole lot easier to re-script the scene.

Actually, I might also be tempted to cut in a quick scene of Rand flipping a switch just as the spacedock doors open. Her red hair might make a close up a bit difficult. Replacing her hair with a blonde bob in the earlier scene might be a bit beyond me. There's a line in Flashback, "You're relieved, Ensign," that could be used if there is a sequence of an extra vacating their chair somewhere. It's possible there might might also be a useful shot using Kim Catrall's arm or hand in STVI or something from Starfleet Command in STIV that could pull that off.

 

[Firebird]

especially since we see Chekov as the XO of Reliant a short time later.

The interesting thing about that is Chekov was promoted to Reliant's First Officer during the editing of TWoK. In the shooting script, and the workprint, he's merely a "duty officer."

 

[valkyrie013]

Keeping the whole crew together was unrealistic. By 2285, ST2 time, checkov was what? 40 years old? He should be at least a first officer, almost a captain himself. Sulu a captain for awhile.
The rest could stay as they were heads of there department, spock, uhura, scotty, bones.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I'm doing a fan edit of TMP and someone asked whether it would be possible to use similar techniques to reinstate the scene that mentions Sulu's captaincy into TWoK. It's certainly possible. I'm still balls deep in the TMP edit, waiting for the re-mastered DE but I started to wonder what other changes would need to be made to make it work. I was thinking:

1. STIII - Stiles would not direct his comments directly at Kirk. Kirk is retired from Starship duty anyway and it would make more sense if he were talking to the man due to take over the Excelsior shortly.
2. Subject to fitting in with the music score, it might be possible to crib a reaction shot from Sulu from elsewhere in the movie.
3. There is some additional Sulu dialogue out there in Flashback and World Enough and Time. In Flashback, for example, we have "Objection noted," and, "We're not ready to give up just yet," that could work.
4. In STV in the shuttle with Uhura and Chekov, we would need some dialogue alluding to Sulu's presence on the Enterprise being temporary.

Any thoughts?

Very difficult task. TSFS, Sulu was piloting the Enterprise entering Space dock and Kirk spouted off about the Excelsior is there a window of opportunity to make the impression Sulu would be commanding that ship? When the ship was docked the Fleet Captain didn't give any kind of recognition to him but did so for Scotty giving him a promotion. Will you edit those scenes out?

 

[Pauln6]

Very difficult task. TSFS, Sulu was piloting the Enterprise entering Space dock and Kirk spouted off about the Excelsior is there a window of opportunity to make the impression Sulu would be commanding that ship? When the ship was docked the Fleet Captain didn't give any kind of recognition to him but did so for Scotty giving him a promotion. Will you edit those scenes out?

Yes that's a good point. Plus doesn't Sulu say, "They say she has transwarp drive..." and if he is overdue to take over as captain, he would certainly know.

So maybe the compromise would be to tweak the dialogue in TWoK to refer to him as first officer rather than captain, and remove the "They say...". That also then gels with TUC, where he says that he has just completed his first mission as captain, implying that he took command in 2291, which is 5 years after TSFS.

 

[Vger23]

It's an interesting idea...but I think it would stick out like a sore and unnecessary thumb in TMP. It's really completely unnecessary to the plot and it would feel too much like a distraction.

YMMV of course.

 

[Pauln6]

Well, I did a really quick hatchet job as proof of concept and it didn't require too many alterations to make the story element slightly more relevant and noticeable. Some of the more subtle changes to dialogue would take a lot more time and effort but I might circle back to it to have a proper go at a later date.

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[Pauln6]

Here is a slightly tweaked version with a rotobrushed close up of Rand. It occurs to me that I just invented an on-screen reason for busting her down from Commander to Master Chief in STIV...

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[Pauln6]

And the second part in STV to explain why he delayed his captaincy:

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[JonnyQuest037]

I'm doing a fan edit of TMP and someone asked whether it would be possible to use similar techniques to reinstate the scene that mentions Sulu's captaincy into TWoK.

Any thoughts?

I'm sure it would immediately become George Takei's preferred cut of the film.

My friend Glenn Greenberg's hilarious recounting of The George Takei Incident.

 

[Pauln6]

Lol that does sound like he was teasing. Sounds like his scene in Big Bang Theory.

Maybe the whole of Star Trek VI is just Sulu's hallucination in Star Trek V?

 

[ChallengerHK]

Maybe the whole of Star Trek VI is just Sulu's hallucination in Star Trek V?

I just got crap for positing that everything after TOS is Christine Chapel's fever dream of trying to get Spock into Pon Farr :-)

 

[Pauln6]

I just got crap for positing that everything after TOS is Christine Chapel's fever dream of trying to get Spock into Pon Farr :-)

She did lack imagination...