DVD
Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Kahn
(Director's Edition 2-discs)

Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy & Ricardo Montalban
Paramount
RRP: £24.99

PHE8201
Certificate: 15
Available now


It is the 23rd century and the USS Enterprise is on a routine mission, one which Kirk seems convinced will be his last. Everything is going smoothly until Kahn, a mutant renegade from 20th century earth returns to avenge his previous treatment by Kirk and his crew...

This is arguably the finest Trek movie to have been made and still stands the test of time it takes the viewer on the whole range of emotions from laughter to the films climatic tear jerking scenes.

Now that the movie has been reviewed it's time to look at the features on this director's edition 2 disc set. When I originally reviewed the recent single disc set I was appalled that Paramount had not released any extras, while insisting on charging £19.99. So, you'd expect some pretty impressive features for your £24 wouldn't you?

Well you are going to be disappointed. The documentaries are very poor and the material would certainly have been available when Paramount originally released this as a single disc - in fact the extras would also have fitted on the same disc as the movie, so a second disc seems a little redundant.

To start with we have a documentary which features interviews with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and Ricardo Montalban. These interviews were all recorded at the time of the movie's original cinematic release - so don't expect to learn anything new and the interviewers are sycophantic. Mind you Nimoy's tasteless suit did make me chuckle - but it's not worth paying £24 to see.

Next up is a featurette that looks at the design of the movie's ships, costumes and locations, but again there is nothing here that is that interesting - although we do find out how the Reliant was designed - it was a simple mistake, apparently.

There is another feature which has Shatner moaning (not sure whether he was joking) that Nimoy and Harve Bennett (co-writer) had kept the fact that Spock would not necessarily be killed off from him.

Next up there is the biggest waste of space - a plug for Pocket Books' Star Trek series of books which has writers Greg Cox and Julia Ecklar talking about (in a nut shell) how the continuity in their books means diddly squat. Now I have read some of Cox's work and find him to be a fantastic writer, but he really comes across as a boring geek. Ecklar comes across slightly better, but only just. Not sure whether the producers of this piece was extracting the urine out of Cox, but they certainly tried to make him look like a geek, especially towards the end, and they succeeded.

The final documentary looks at the visual effects in the movie but starts with Shatner stuttering a line from the movie (not an hilarious outtake, but a piece of bad editing). And we get to hear the Reliant's creation story again.

This is a great movie, but if you bought it the first time round there is no way you should even consider buying this. Poor extras make this a very unnecessary purchase.

Pete Boomer

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£19.99 (Amazon.co.uk)
   

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