The Wrath of Khan has to be my favorite Trek movie. I know, it’s nearly everyone’s favorite Trek movie, but for me, this realization is pretty recent. The only Trek movie I saw in theaters was The Undiscovered Country, and it swiftly became my favorite. My young mind had a hard time enjoying TWOK quite as much. After all, look at those haircuts! Well, adulthood has led to a maturing of opinion, and I definitely enjoy TWOK far more. There are two commercial releases out there: the theatrical cut and the director’s cut. But relatively few are aware of the ABC cut, shown a few times in the early 80s. The director’s cut is very similar, but there are minute differences.
According to the extremely knowledgeable Grant at trekbbs (and I say that with absolute sincerity, he really knows an awful lot about Star Trek minutia), there are only three differences between the director’s cut and the ABC cut: widescreen vs. P&S, an additional computer line during the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and most significantly, this alternate version of the turbolift scene between Kirk and Saavik.
Silverwook has kindly provided me with a TV recording of the ABC cut, missing only a few seconds at the beginnings of scenes resuming after commercial breaks. None of these slight gaps affects any of the alternate scenes. He has also provided me with the LD version of TWOK, which is the theatrical version in P&S. He suggested that someone make a preservation, something which I could probably not do any time in the near future, as I lack software, hardware, and greenbacks. However, I am planning on putting this up on MySpleen, and I think it would be awesome if someone used both sources to preserve the ABC cut, splicing the VHS recording in with the LD footage. I had a lead on another version of the ABC cut, which to my understanding was actually originally made from a spliced VHS (original theatrical with ABC recording put in where appropriate). I have yet to obtain this, and I can’t help but wonder if there are inaccuracies, but if I get my hands on it, I could put that up as well, so that all the best versions could be put together. Is anyone up to the challenge?