It’s no secret that I’m a something of a Star Trek fan. Dig through disassociated and you’ll find various references I’ve made to the franchise in the past. Anyway I was over at the local DVD library (we can hardly still call them video libraries?) the other day, cruising the aisles when I spotted a special edition version of Star Trek 4: The voyage home. Needless to say I decided to have a look at it.

While no previously “deleted scenes” are added back into the movie (as sometimes happens with DVD special editions), or anything like that, there are still a few interesting extras. One being an optional running commentary, which you can choose to activate, and hear the production crew offering behind the scenes insights and thoughts as the movie plays.

More interesting though was some of the content on the additional bonus disc. Amongst mini documentaries discussing the reality of time travel (in ST4, the 23rd century based crew travel back in time to 1986), various aspects of filming the movie, there was a feature on how the movie’s storyline was conceived.

There were interviews with Leonard Nimoy (Spock), William Shatner (Captain Kirk), and executive producer Harve Bennett. While it’s no secret a degree of animosity exists between Shatner, and well, everyone else on the ST cast, it certainly manifested itself here. Not so much (at least directly) on the part of Nimoy or Bennett, but certainly with Shatner’s somewhat brazen comments.

Brazen may just be an understatement though. Perhaps Shatner’s ego was in overdrive as he sat, flanked by a poster of Star Trek 5: The final frontier (the, sorry, less than memorable ST movie he directed), and explained that he was responsible for Nimoy’s acting and directorial success!

To be honest I couldn’t be sure if he believed his own words, or was just winding up the ST audience. While the doco consisted of quite substantial input from Nimoy, Bennett, plus a few other ST producers, Shatner’s contribution was (mercifully) limited to three or so very short comments. I expect he was saving it up for the special edition version of ST5 (which, may I remind you, he directed).

That movie is one DVD I’ll hardly be going out of my way to find… much less the special edition version.