Ran accross this if anyone is interested. I'm pretty sure we might have gotten that missing diologue in the director's cut, but I'm not sure. Anyone know for sure?
I saw that over the weekend and meant to post it here but forgot. IIRC it's in the novelization, but it's been forever since I read the book.
We got the bit about Kirk saying that he was glad to have Sulu at the helm, but absolutely nothing about him getting promoted to captain or what the inspection might turn up. In the director's commentary, Meyer says that Shatner kept deliberately blowing the part where he talked about Sulu getting promoted. Meyer claims that they did a bunch of retakes, and Shatner kept screwing them all up, so eventually, Meyer said the hell with it and they moved on.
So I was looking as to why Takei and Shatner have such a long running feud. It’s because every time Shatner has a new project, he stirs up shit. Sounds pretty petty. If that truly is the reason, I hope Takei has the last laugh by outliving him.
I seem to recall that the only substantial change in the Director’s Cut was the restoration of the scene that explains that the cadet that dies is Scotty’s nephew, which makes the scene where he carries his dead body onto the bridge make a little bit more sense.
It depends upon which version of the Director's Cut that you're watching. On the DVD version, you get not only Scotty telling Kirk that Preston's his nephew (while they're in the engine room), you get an expanded sequence in Sick Bay when he dies, and when Kirk returns to the Enterprise, as he and Spock are climbing through the access tubes, Kirk tells Spock that David is his son, to which Spock has the very dry reply of, "Fascinating." On the Blu-Ray version, that last part is cut. I think that there might be a bit or two else that was cut. None of those appeared in the theatrical release, but some of them did appear when the movie was shown on broadcast TV for the first time.
Since those were apparently the only lines that talked about Sulu getting his own ship, losing them doesn't hurt film's story. It's a plot cul de sac. It's interesting how dropping those lines affected the other movies that followed. If they'd left them in, there'd be no reason for Sulu to still be part of Kirk's crew by the time of TFF.
Ok that's good to know. Whenever I see Scotty show up with the dead kid on the bridge I say "Jesus Scotty, that's just poor form" and shake my head in disapproval
Still, taking him to the bridge instead of sickbay might be a great "dramatic" moment, but it's a very stupid lapse of "in-universe logic".
