IFDB Review: Star Trek Wrath of the Augments:

For a start let's say that I'm one of those Trek fans who grew up loving TOS, movies and TNG. Then liking DS9, tolerating Voyager and then finally hating Enterprise and checking out of the whole show until JJ-Trek at least restored a little heart to the franchise (Even if it was at the expensive of some of it's brains).Back in the day I didn't get past the opening few episodes of 'Enterprise', it was boring, unimaginative, tired and outdated... in short I loathed it. But on BionicBob's advice that the 4th and final series (From whence this edit springs) was when it really got good, I thought I'd give this another chance. Having said that the crew are still fairly bland, the producers managing to assemble a cast that reminds us more of Galaxy Quest rather than Kirk and co. So I went into this edit with a pre-existing hatred of this show... but with a glimmer of hope that BionicBob would have salvaged something that an old Trek fan could embrace.Audio/Video Quality 10/10: It looks like a proper DVD, so what more can you ask for?Visual Editing 10/10: Looked seemless to me, despite having a full third of the footage removed. I couldn't see where it had come from and didn't feel anyhting was missing narratively. However there were a couple of instances when I'd have perhaps chosen to cutaway to somewhere else rather than cutting forward in time, when covering an ad-break removal... but that's probably personnal taste and perhaps nit-picking. The best bit is the replacement credits. Gone is the cheesy, vomit-inducing Pop-Ballad and instead we get a grand montage of shots of the Enterprise set to some some suitably impressive orchestral music... this how a ST show is supposed to start!Audio Editing 8/10: While the techincal audio-editing was great I could still very much tell where alot of the ad-breaks had been. Star Trek has a formula of:1. Slow closeup on worried face combined with swelling loud music.(Ad-break)2. Establishing space shot with loud sting of music that rapidly subsides to interior scene.So a familiarity with this setup made these moments stand out. Having said that, without completely rescoring the show and/or rebuilding the sound FX track from scratch, this is as good as it could have been done. But the transitions are certainly far smoother than a lot of ad-break removals on professional TV show DVDs I own.Narrative 10/10: Smooth as silk, with a third removed this thing now flows with a rapid pace and the story is easy to follow and engaging.Enjoyment 9/10: I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed this edit despite my reservations about the original show. Because of the new pace of the narrative I was never allowed to dwell on the fact that I disliked the people that the story was happening to and just went with the whole warping all over the map Trek adventure-ness of it all. It really helps that this story arc focuses on links to TOS and beyond ('Space Seed' and WOK mainly) so it pleasantly reminded me of other Trek stories I liked. Having two likeable actors like Scott Bakula and Brent Spiner doing a two-hander gives this story real appeal, while most of the other boring characters don't get any more screen time than is neccasary. Although Alec Newman's performance makes for a fairly weak villain he's played just close enough to Khan so I could enjoy his character through the glimpses of what was to come (In the show's timeline anyway). Overall, this edit now ranks with some honour next to TNG movie-length epics like 'The Best of Both Worlds' or 'Redemption'.Bonus Features 10/10: To be honest I was a bit sceptical about how my patience was gonna cope with a 12-minute text based slide show of Trek history... but boy was I wrong. I was glued to the screen reading all the little interesting details filling in the imaginary timeline of Augment history. Wonderful music and well chosen images work wonders. I almost enjoyed this bonus feature as much as the edit itself.I'd highly reccomend this DVD to oldskool Trek fans even if you don't like the crew of the NX-01, because the way BionicBob has edited this thing, you don't need to like them. You just need to enjoy a good fast-paced space adventure.

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