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Trekkies
R4 - Australia - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (4th May 2004). |
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The Film
 I don't get what the big deal is with Star Trek, I've never gotten into the series both the original and it's re-hashed spin-offs like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the many, many movies. I suppose this universe is an acquired taste. However my feelings I certainly cannot deny that Star Trek has beamed it's way into popular culture, in fact the term for a Star Trek fan "Trekkie" is the only fan term listed in the Oxford Dictionary. Ever since the late 1960's when the original TV series aired Star Trek has had a massive fan following encompassing all walks of life, young, old, man, woman, rich, poor, white, black, etc. It has no boundaries and I suppose that's what makes it appealing to so many people. Back in 1997 filmmaker Roger Nygard set out to create a documentary about Star Trek's appeal on pop culture and follow some die-hard fans through their numerous adventures at conventions around the United States. Nygard also managed to get many of the stars of both the original and of The Next Generation to talk candidly about their views on fandom and what Star Trek has meant to them over their careers and lives. This film takes an often-humorous look into the lengths that fans would go to continually live in their own little Trek world. This is certainly an entertaining film to watch and lets us into their strange world. Certainly a must watch for long time Trek fans, and defiantly a curiosity piece for those not familiar with the Trek universe or its fandom.
Video
This film was originally shot on 16mm and subsequently blow-up to 35mm for its limited theatrical run back in 1997. This DVD presents the film in its original theatrical ratio of 1.33:1 or in layman's terms, full frame. The transfer has its flaws, it is by no means reference quality, after all this was a low budget 16mm documentary which, at the time was probably intended for television, and most of the time the image looks like it was shot with a video recorder. This minor problem aside the film is entirely watch able and the image is not all that distracting.
Audio
This DVD offers the film in both an English and German Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track, for the purpose of this review I chose to view the film with it's English track. This is mainly a dialogue driven film the sound track is not the best but for this film it does it's job, the dialogue is clear most of the times, although I did encounter a few scenes where I found it hard to hear what was being said so I had to increase the volume. Other than that it's not a bad effort. This DVD also includes subtitles in English, English HoH, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
Extras
Nothing at all, Paramount spared no expense here folks! It would have been nice to hear a director's commentary or even to have included some deleted interview footage, now that's not asking a lot is it?
Overall
An entertaining, funny and often crazy look at Star Trek fandom, with some very nice reflective moments with the original cast and an inside look at some of the off-beat fans that take their obsession to a whole new level. Certainly a must buy for Star Trek fans, as for non-trekkies such as myself it's certainly worth a rental purely as a curiosity. As for the DVD, Paramount could have tried harder, having seen some of the elaborate special edition created for the TV series it would not have been hard to put together at least some extras for this release.
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