Trek Commentary in High-Def

As some of you may know, I bought Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on BD for boxing day (along with a few other Trek movies) and part of the reason was to hear the new commentary track by director Nicholas Meyer and Enterprise executive producer, Manny Coto. I wasn't sure what to expect, seeing as how I had listened to the previous Meyer track done for the DVD release and the fact that I recently read his amazing autobiography, The View From the Bridge, and was a little worried that it would be a retread of everything I had heard or read previously. Meyer & Coto, however, do not disappoint and conduct a nice, informative discussion about the film, the franchise and the industry. Always nice to listen to anything new by Meyer & haven't heard Coto in a while.

Although it wasn't the new fan track, I also listened to the audio commentary on First Contact by Ron Moore and Brannon Braga and found it to be equally interesting and very interesting. Braga takes a lot of shit for 'ruining' Trek but listening to the guy on this track he comes off as very knowledgeable about the franchise, very willing to acknowledge what works and what doesn't in the film and the series, and I can't help but think that fandom should cut this guy some slack. I would be interested to hear or see more from this guy in some form or another. Maybe he should write a tell-all book about his experiences with the franchise like everyone from the original cast.

Moore, as always, is a commentary dream. He is incredibly frank, well-spoken, funny and a compelling creative force. I used to love listening to his Galactica podcasts and this track was different only in its polish (the podcasts were recorded on Moore's laptop in his home). I also loved the fact that Moore couldn't stop referring to the movie as an episode until Braga finally stepped in and called him on it. Considering he went from writing the series, to writing the finale "All Good Things", to the Generations movie and then First Conact in quick succession, I can't really blame him. In my opinion, all the Next Generation movies feel like episodes to me. Sue me.

I also explored the BD for VI but it was pretty unremarkable so I'm not going to elaborate on that here and I haven't even touched IV yet so I'll leave my commentary here.

Live Long and Prosper!

mike