>When did this director's cut come out? Any idea who was the director
>responsible for it? IIRC, Robert Wise died over a year ago.

Er, several years ago; hang on, lemme go have a look at the box.

Here we go. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition) - street date Nov. 6, 2001. IIRC, it kicked off Paramount's two-disc special edition reissues of all the Star Trek movies, which concluded with the special edition reissue of Nemesis last year.

As such, the director responsible was the man himself, Robert Wise, who finally got a chance to go back and recut the movie he was forced to finish in such an almighty hurry in 1979 that whole effects sequences were dropped untrimmed into the final print, just as they had arrived from the effects studios. It also includes a few new effects shots - mainly visuals from the exterior of V'ger that were storyboarded but couldn't be realized with the technology of 1979, at least not in the time available - and a new sound mix.

Alas, I disagree with many of the choices Mr. Wise made regarding the sound effects used in the new mix, but that may simply be because I saw the original version so many times that the sound effects it shipped with in '79 are permanent parts of my mental landscape now. The rest of the package, though, is fantastic.

Other features of the set:

- Commentary by Wise, photographic effects director Douglas Trumbull, effects supervisor John Dykstra (also of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica fame), composer Jerry Goldsmith, and Stephen "Will Decker" Collins;

- Text commentary (i.e., pithy subtitles) by Michael Okuda, describing various geeky features of the film (like who made the globe of Jupiter used in the shot where the Enterprise is speeding out of the solar system) - this feature went on to be one of the signature features of the two-disc Trek reissues;

- A documentary about Star Trek: Phase II, the television series revival project that eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture;

- Documentaries about the making of the Director's Edition;

- Several deleted scenes from both the 1979 theatrical and 1983 television versions (including the infamous "unfinished effects" shot of Captain Kirk outside the soundstage, er, Enterprise); and

- All the usual stuff - old TV ads, the trailers for the movie, a promo for Enterprise (which hadn't started airing on UPN yet when the DVD came out), etc.

It's a helluva package, and well worth the 11 zorkmids plus handling Amazon wants for it, IMO.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/