I appreciate the attention to detail in TMP so much and I find it incredibly nuanced. I have always wanted to have a hybrid of DE and SLV and I have just (after 5 years) finished my hybrid 'Rand Cut' for my own personal use, merging the DE with most of the extra scenes from the SLV, plus some of the recently released outtakes.
In the end I used:
- Blu-ray of the new DE for the base
- Blu-ray of TC for the officer's lounge (I flip-flopped but decided on the original version) and I added Kirk's "Oh my God" as a voiceover to the empty transporter pad in the accident scene
- 4k SLV for the additional dialogue in the briefing, Sulu and Ilia on the bridge, McCoy coming aboard, McCoy and Kirk's extra dialogue in Kirk's quarters, V'Ger's attack, Uhura and McCoy's exchange about V'Ger's crew, Kirk's spacewalk, Chapel's reaction shot and Ilia's extra dialogue in her quarters, Kirk and McCoy's extra dialogue in sick bay, and Decker's dialogue about God on the bridge.
- From the anniversary bonus disc, I added the disintegrated security guard, and Kirk's exchange with Chekov in sick bay leading into Ilia in engineering.
I then tweaked a few other things, largely so I could use the rough outtakes of the Memory Wall from the extras, so that instead of Kirk and Spock, it is Kirk and Rand that enter V'Ger. I scraped around for dialogue from old episodes, movies, plus Grace's appearances in other shows, separated from the original music tracks using Spleeter, and a few lines of vocoded dialogue:
- Re-added original footage in the top left office in Starfleet to replace the duplicated footage
- Added bridge background noises to Sulu & Ilia scene.
- Used deepfake to add a line for Rand (taken from World Enough and Time) and a TOS musical overture for McCoy's entrance. Also vocoded extra dialogue for Rand so she says, "Permission granted, sir. Just like old times."
- Reduced the gap between "Why it's Mister..." "Spock!" This is tiny but it has always bugged me.
- Tweaked the V'Ger attack to bleed Uhura's dialogue into the next shots for pacing. Also added some very faint dialogue for Decker whose lips are moving in the background, and Rand's damage report from Flashback over comms just before Sulu's "The new screens held." The hardest part was getting the alarm to sound consistent.
- Added an exchange between McCoy and Chapel to include a version of a smutty joke that was in an early draft. Rotoscoped Chapel's SLV reaction shot from Ilia's quarters against a CGI shot of sick bay.
- Added a new shot in Kirk's quarters, cobbled together from the Kirk/McCoy quarters scene, rotoscoping Rand from the transporter accident and using Facefusion to establish her in Kirk's quarters while they watch Decker and Ilia, using dialogue taken from various TOS episodes.
- Took a shot of Kirk leaving the airlock and, used rotoscoping to change colour of his spacesuit to red/orange and Facefusion to replace Shatner with Grace Lee Whitney so that Rand is the first one to pursue Spock before he enters V'Ger, using dialogue from TOS and Grace's appearance in Death Valley Tales.
- Used a shot of Spock's original suit and Character Creator to create a CGI avatar of Rand and Facefusion to add a deepfake of Grace over the top to include a conversation between Kirk, Scotty, and Rand using dialogue from TOS, STV, and an episode of Gunsmoke. Vocoded a line for Shatner.
- Added dialogue between Kirk and Rand at the Memory Wall, plus three linking shots using Kirk's spacesuit from the spacewalk, rotoscoped and re-coloured, using a CGI/Deepfake Rand. Used the Cloud theme as the music track bleeding into the second half of Ilia in her quarters, so when she refers to 'two carbon units' it's because she has been tipped off by Kirk and Rand using a tricorder to locate Spock and not by Spock who had the sense to use momentum and visual observations only.
- A second shot of Spock passing through a second aperture into V'Ger's holodeck
- Rotoscoped Spock tumbling back into the inner chamber (with Kirk and Rand waiting instead of the Enterprise). Added a dialogue exchange between Kirk and Rand. Rotoscoped Kirk's original spacesuit over his new one for his close ups (except for the rear shot).
- Added Enterprise hum to the extra dialogue in sick bay.
- Added dialogue for 'three casualties' in the final scene. Located and added "Dickerson" as the name of the security guard as it was the closest I could get a voice match.
- Added a mid credit scene where the crew have a bit of banter as the ship flies by, taken from TOS, STV, and the Starfleet Academy game.
Admittedly, it doesn't all look and sound amazing to me, as I know every flaw by heart, but e.g. compared to the new officer's lounge scene or the original airlock scene, I would say my additions look good enough, and I have re-done the shots several times as technology changed and improved in the last 5 years.
I do find it very watchable. If anything, it is just the final scene at V'Ger's brain that I find really drags but I didn't feel confident to trim any of the many reaction shots. Also I would really have loved more of the aborted Memory Wall scene. I think with modern CGI, it might have been possible to do something with it, maybe with Rand using an EMP to save Kirk and that tipping off V'Ger.
I leaned heavily into using Rand partly because I wanted to include her in the second half of the movie but mostly because Grace guested in a lot of other shows, which gave me more dialogue to work with, whereas Doohan's and Koenig's other appearances would not have had the right accents. Plus, I thought it would make narrative sense, if trying to retrieve Spock, to want a transporter expert on hand. Also, TMP is often accused of being too sterile, lacking in camaraderie, and the previous connection between Kirk and Rand might help me to do that.
I've spent so long working on the extra dialogue, especially Rand's dialogue when McCoy comes on board that it feels wrong to me if I watch an official version without it!
