Review: Best of Both Worlds Showing

On Thursday I got to take a break from doing ALL OF THE POLITICAL SCIENCE and go see the screening of The Best of Both Worlds at the local movie theater.

It was excellent. I dragged my boyfriend along with me and, even though he has the bad habit of judging everything that was, is, or ever will be put into visual media form, I think he had fun, too.

The showing began with a LOT of trailers and advertisements for TNG, TOS, Star Trek, and DVD/Blu-Rays for sale. It was cool (though it got a little old), but these ads were full of spoilers--which made me feel bad for people who were talked into going by fans, since they weren't able to experience BoBW as we once did. They went into the episode knowing that Picard was taken by the Borg, assimilated, taken back by the Enterprise crew, and turned back into a human. I felt like they should have flashed "spoiler alert" across the screen. 

They introduced the episode with a retrospective documentary that mostly centered on the making of BoBW, fueled by cast and crew interviews. Once again, it was full of spoilers, but I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. I love hearing what the cast thought about their roles and the storyline. I love hearing about the challenges the crew had to overcome. And I loved, loved, loved the discussion of the creation of the Borg and their ship. When I was a kid, I thought the Borg were some of the most frightening villains of all time (they're still scary, philosophically, but they don't give me nightmares anymore). Now they're some of my favorite villains, and I enjoyed hearing about the evolution of their concept.

The restoration of the episode gave it excellent video quality--the colors were brighter, the objects (and people) were crisper, and even the sound was better than what I get on Netflix. My only quibble with the episode came from the fact that they fused the two parts together so directly. I think removing the cliffhanger so completely robbed the story of some of its power. But that might just be me.

Everyone in the theater had a good time. People laughed together, people were grim together--the feeling in the room was electrifying. There was also a sense of comradery. Everyone was excited to see BoBW. It was like being at a midnight premier or at a con. Overall, it was definitely a great night.

Speaking of cons, the cast of TNG is going to be in Chicago during the last weekend of May/first weekend of June, and I only just found out about it. And, of course, tickets are all sold out. They're going to have tickets available for the vendors/signing area, but they have some strange language on there that makes me wonder if we'll be able to get autographs or photo ops with these tickets. Is there anyone out there with any knowledge regarding this? Has Creation Entertainment ever done this before? Any help would be swell.

Now, it's back to the mines that is the end of the semester...