TF01 3,Overload? 4, by Sven Harvey Stardate: Sunday 5th February 1995 Location: MGM Cinema in the Arcadian complex, Birmingham City Centre A party of four of us arrived in a taxi at 8:40 am to the first all day showing of the Trek movies I have ever attended, and the immediate thing that attracted our attention was the fact that apart from myself, my fiancee Claire and David Zabiela only 5 people had turned up in uniform! That is terrible. The weekend before there had been a preview of Generations at the Trocadero in London and 75% of the attendees were in uniform. Are so many people in Birmingham and the surrounding area wimps, or was it just that all the brave people were at the Generation convention in London? To be honest I ended up being glad I was in uniform, mainly because mine is very, very comfortable and I probably fared better in it then I would have done in jeans and a tee-shirt! On entering the complex we firstly got very annoyed at the fact the cinema had 3 (we counted them!) of the Generations promotional poster-box thingie (you know the multi-layer 3D light up jobby) and then one of the staff thrust a programme in our face. The programme was really just a greeting with the Generations poster an some stills, all badly photocopied onto a single double-sided sheet and stapled to a quiz for which there were prizes for the most correct answers, unfortunately only the winners knew what the prizes were! Unfortunately the quiz was based on the Star Trek Encyclopedia among other things so I knew that if I handed my CORRECT answers in I would get less marks than those who guessed... or those who had the Encyclopedia with them (I saw you, whoever you are!). My main problem was that I couldn't remember what mistakes the Encyclopedia had made so I couldn't get the right (but incorrect) answers!?! Anyway the films were supposed to start at 9:00 am, so in time honoured tradition Star Trek: The Motion Picture didn't start until 9:10 am. The quality of the copy was terrible to be honest but mercifully in its shortest form, and was followed by the extremley garden sheared (PG) version of Star Trek II: The Wrath (erm... Annoyance in this version) Of Khan. Unfortunately someone had brought their brand new Playmates phaser with them and had installed a class 3B laser into the damn thing so a red spot kept appearing on the screen! Annoying or what?! Anyway backside ache had already started to set in, so at the end of Star Trek II I decided to stretch my legs and go to the loo, which is when I remembered the only problem with a properly made Next Gen uniform... the trouser half actually goes up to your solar plexus (thats plexus NOT NEXUS!)... I quite enjoyed Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, mainly because it was the first time I had ever watched it in a cinema, mind you it still didn't convince me that Robin Curtis was a better Saavik the Kirstie Alley, the reverse in fact. At least the quality of the film print was better than the first two. At the end of STIII people were starting to get restless but due to the quality of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (again better than its predecessor people soon settled down. The quiz had to be handed in before the start of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier so between IV and V there was a frenzy of activity. Then the unthinkable happened... most people actually stayed to watch the fifth movie - remarkable! Now I am not going to lie and tell you I like the movie, because I don't but it is repleat with some nice Star Trek moments even if the story is terrible and the directing lets the whole thing down further. Even then, only after a few minutes I almost took Kirk at his tee-shirt, at least climbing a rock wasn't as tedious as this movie. At least I had something to eat at that point. Those who had left returned for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, though I don't know why. Don't get me wrong non-Trekkers may see this as the best movie dramatically etc., but the fact is that it is a terrible STAR TREK movie with little or no regard for the characters or Gene's Star Trek Rules. So I slept through it, but seeing V so close to the beginning of VI really drove home the problems with VI continuity wise. Kirk was drinking with the Klingons at the end of V and then reacting as he did in VI doesn't make sense. Claire said that it was the original cinema release, fortunately, so the character weren't completely ruined in the eyes of any Star Trek Virgins in the audience (there were a couple, but what a way to start watching Star Trek?!). Before the commencement of Star Trek: Generations the quiz winners were read out and we then settled down to watch the latest of the movies in glorious digital surround sound... However you will have to read my review of the movie elsewhere in the next issue! Suffice to say that at 12:55 am I finally arrived home and crashed out. It really is a good test of how big a Trekker you are. If you can sit in a cinema with over 100 other people watching and talking Star Trek for over 15 hours you will never EVER overload on Star Trek and at a cost of only £14 the whole thing was quite good value for money. I am looking forward to the all day special showings at the release of Star Trek VIII, I just hope that with the possible content of the second Next Gen movie doesn't make the whole thing too borging...