doubleofive said: Adding damage to the E for every shot afterward would require a ton of work that I don't think any of us could do. We could replace every shot of the ship with one from Star Trek 2 or 3, but then people would start to wonder why she always seems to get damaged in the exact same spots. Weak points in the hull or something?

Ya, best not bring in the same damage from 2 and 3. Especially 3 where that extra damage is a mystery in of itself.

I would make a point that tying the engineering electricity and Chekov's station electrocuting him with the Klingon attack will be a bit more difficult since the effects clearly resemble V'Ger's plasma bolt effect. I recommend not having the warp core be electrocuted but leave the panel as is, maybe with a bit more sparl. This is what I have in mind in terms of re-editing the scene.

*Enterprise takes another shot from the Klingons. Station screens on the bridge flicker on and off*
- Decker: Registering power loss on force fields.
- Kirk: Engineering, what's happening with our force fields?
*Over the shoulder shot of Ilia looking at the screen, seeing the Klingons firing another shot* Scotty: Systems overloading captain! *Cut to engineering* Our shields cannot handle another --
*Enterprise's is hit again, leaving the ship without shields. This time the ships lighting fades in and out from the outside for a quick second. Engineering panel (Not the entire core) reacts with violent sparks, and then cut to Chekov's station*

Or something like that. The over the shoulder shot I'm referring to is the one where we see the original Plasma Bolt vanish thanks to Spock sending the signal in time, which was not used in the Director's Edition.