TWOK "I'm delighted, any chance to go aboard the Enterprise..."

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I put this together for you, using the relevant snippet of the audio from the workprint.

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Shatner's delivery is fine. Hardly the sabatage that Takei makes it out to be.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Hearing it leaves the same impression as reading it...it's really a clunky little bit of business that has no relevance in the story and was begging to make the cutting room floor. Now if they'd worked it into Kirk's midlife crisis somehow--played it as a beat of his "children growing up and leaving the nest"--that could have worked for the story.

I suspect that the reason Takei was so adamant about this in the first place was that he didn't want it to look like Chekov had been promoted past Sulu.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Yeah, the delivery is fine, outside of the odd way that Takei pronounces "nostalgia," but that could've easily been fixed in a looping session. The stilted dialogue definitely needed a polish before shooting, though. I'd say that's the more likely culprit for the scene being trimmed. "Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise, however briefly, is always an excuse for nostalgia." Who talks like that?

Heck, most of the odd omissions in TWOK can probably be attributed to something awkward about the scene. I'd say we lost the dialogue revealing that Peter Preston was Scotty's nephew due to the weird "Midshipman, you're a tiger!" line that Shatner had. I think there was something similarly odd in the Kirk/Spock exchange that revealed that Saavik to be half-Romulan.

I just watched the bit at the end of TWOK that hinted at a Saavik/David flirtation, and it's also a clunky scene. Kirk says to Saavik, "I believe you know David Marcus." Um... yeah, Kirk. She only spent a couple of hours stranded in the Genesis cave with him. They've met.

With deleted scenes, you usually watch them, see something interesting about them, but you can also usually get a sense of why they were deleted. Check out the "That young man -- he's my son!" exchange between Kirk & Spock while they're climbing ladders towards the end of the TWOK Director's Cut some time. The way Nimoy says "Fascinating" in response to Shtener sounds utterly indifferent and downright sarcastic. I think I recall reading that it was the very last scene shot for TWOK, and it shows.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I've always like this line, originally cut and then reinserted into the DVD director's edition: "We're only alive because I knew something about these ships that he didn't."

I like the way Shatner delivers the line.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I've always like this line, originally cut and then reinserted into the DVD director's edition: "We're only alive because I knew something about these ships that he didn't."

I like the way Shatner delivers the line.

Yeah, that's a really nice moment. That was the extra bit right after Peter Preston's death, right?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Yeah, that's a really nice moment. That was the extra bit right after Peter Preston's death, right?

Yep, right before Kirk steps out of the exam room.

 

[Maurice]

Also, note that in the finished film the dialogue gets cut right after "Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise" right up to "I for one am glad to have you at he helm." It's not about Shatner trying to rob Takei of a moment, it's a bunch of superfluous dialog trimmed because it didn't add anything.

 

[FormerLurker]

I knew I didn't recall Sulu getting to the word "nostalgia".

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Could it just be as simple as that if Sulu gets promoted to Captain, then no George Takei in subsequent movies (it costs money for special effects to create a whole other ship, and to cast a whole other bridge of characters, and a pain to work it into a story), and it's more economic, and appealing to filmgoers to keep Sulu in his customary role?

 

[Maurice]

I doubt it. If that were the only reason to cut the promotion stuff they could have still left the nostalgia line unmangled. Besides, if they were willing to off Spock they sure as heck weren't gonna care about Sulu going buh-bye.

 

[urbandefault]

Sulu didn't have a whole lot to do in any of the subsequent films anyway.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Excelsior has nothing to do with TWOK. No reason for the line to be there.

 

[David cgc]

I do kind of like Kirk's slightly whiney continuation of his thought about inspections, that there isn't even a point since Spock is charge, and it's not like he'd let something slip. I never heard about that part of it, before.