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Matter of fact is, only a fraction of this film deals with "building Star Trek." Much time is spent on comparing today's technologies to what was shown in the original series (thus allowing various institutions and organizations to, implicitly, make a plea for funds). Actors of current movies (Pegg, Urban) contribute various sound bites, in the style of a making-of and thus also resembling a marketing effort. And then, thankfully, there actually are a few original contributors and one cast member who get a few little things to say. Nothing particularly new or revealing though.
A key problem this documentary has to deal with is the terribly sad state of the original series' props they try to assemble for various exhibitions. There's the USS Enterprise model itself of course. Kirk's commander chair. The navigator console. And various bits and pieces, including some costumes. But whenever a piece arrives and is unpacked, what we're confronted with are various degrees of decay which effectively produce an ongoing sense of frustration.
Accordingly, with the exception of the Enterprise model, they don't really show what's going on during the restoration work, because that would have revealed how many parts exactly they had to recreate or replace. And thus made it clear that the final exhibits, to a notable degree, aren't really "original" props anymore. An illusion, on the other hand, the exhibitions obviously depend on and which they would not want to completely destroy with this documentary.
So, altogether, a sufficiently decent effort but somewhat bound to fail, because the core material they had to work with was in such a desolate state. But then, real fans will probably be able to appreciate these kinds of insights, too.
score 6/10
raimund-berger 12 February 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5479154/ |
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