Two part versions of movie length eps sometimes better?

[Lance]

We all know there are several episodes of Trek that are movie length, and were written / intended to be viewed that way, but which were cut into 'two part' versions in syndication, often creating an interestingly different version of the narrative.

For example, I find the two part versions of both TNG's pilot episode "Encounter At Farpoint", and finale "All Good Things", to be more enjoyable than their movie length versions. The addition of a 'cliffhanger' at the end of Part One adds a nice breathing space to the narrative (this is particularly true of Farpoint, where I feel both halves flow much better with a break between rather than the long sometimes dragging narrative of the movie length original), and often the cuts made actually trim the fat rather than cutting into muscle (removing the mention of Leah Brahms in AGT or the scene of 'old Q' goading future Picard, are both cuts that make the flow better in my opinion)

I must admit I've never seen the two part versions of the DS9 episodes so can't speak to them, but again I find the syndicated versions of Voyager's movie length episodes better too, for similar reasons.

Maybe less is more, maybe (perversely) in some ways a two part story actually feels more 'epic' than a single movie length one. I don't know what it is, but I definitely prefer them.

What do you guys reckon?

 

[Tosk]

I hate the cut versions. If it was written and designed to be movie-length, that's what I watch. I particularly hate the weird cut in All Good Things where Worf is suddenly sitting differently because they sliced stuff out.

 

[Lance]

I can definitely see that. Some material was definitely excised with little thought for how it'd affect the whole, but others (IMO) improved the flow of the episodes. Farpoint feels quite snappy to me as two separate episodes with a breather in between, but is quite TMP-ish in its pace when watched as a movie. Excising the Picard/Crusher scene is a little weird but some of the smaller cuts actually speed it up a little without sacrificing anything important to the plot.

 

[Tenacity]

Broken Bow yes.
The Best of Both Worlds yes.
In a Mirror Darkly yes,
The Year of Hell, maybe.
The Vulcan Hello, a shaky maybe.
All Good Things no.
Encounter at Farpoint no no no no.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

^ As it stands the first part of 'The Vulcan Hello' didn't make me want to go any further.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

Add Dark Frontier and Endgame for feature length episodes. Neither misses a step in their narrative flow. Dark Frontier is better than Endgame by a huge margin but Endgame still works as one long episode.

 

[The Wormhole]

The two-part cut of WYLB is just downright terrible. They removed Bashir and Garak's good-bye scene! That alone is unforgiveable.

 

[Kor]

Broken Bow yes.
The Best of Both Worlds yes.
In a Mirror Darkly yes,
The Year of Hell, maybe.
The Vulcan Hello, a shaky maybe.
All Good Things no.
Encounter at Farpoint no no no no.

Well, a couple of these were specifically meant to be two-part episodes rather than a movie-length story broken into two parts.

Kor

 

[Firebird]

Broken Bow yes.
The Best of Both Worlds yes.
In a Mirror Darkly yes,
The Year of Hell, maybe.
The Vulcan Hello, a shaky maybe.
All Good Things no.
Encounter at Farpoint no no no no.

As I watch the first couple DSC episodes, I'm more and more convinced that The Vulcan Hello & Battle at the Binary Stars should never have been aired separately. The story flows better as a single prologue.

 

[Terok Nor]

I prefer to have all the episodes in tact. O'Brien/Picard goodbye scene in Emissary, Bashir/Garak farewell in What You Leave Behind, Old Q in All Good Things, all of it. I hardly ever watch part one of anything without immediately following with part two.

 

[StarTrekRecuts]

I noticed in deep space nine and enterprise there are few 3 parter episodes and i remember joining them all into 1 video once just only the credits after the intro show up