2005-09-30

The best Finnish B5/Trek crossover movie you've never seen

Friday, September 30, 2005

I don't remember when I first heard about STAR WRECK:IN THE PIRKINNING but after watching the trailer, I was intrigued - somebody was making a movie where the Star Trek universe intersected with Babylon 5, and the production values looked far better than the usual fan film. Since I like obscure movies, I figured that it was worth the 24 Euros to order a copy.

I received the DVD a few weeks ago, and I can say that it didn't disappoint.

This is the 6th Star Wreck movie (though judging from the clips included in the "making of" feature, they weren't nearly as good as this one) and picks up where STAR WRECK:LOST CONTACT left off: Pirk, Info and Dwarf (I'm sure you can figure out who they're based on) are stranded on Earth after foiling the Korg's plan to keep the Vulgars from hearing Jeff Cochbrane's guitar riffs, which results in our first interstellar rock concert.

(Yes, the premise is that silly)

Pirk uses the Vulgar technology to build his own starship, the USS Kickstart, and then proceeds to take over the world and declare himself Emperor.

Of course, what's Star Trek (in any format) without some eye candy?

A "maggot hole" is discovered and when Pirk takes the "P-Fleet" through it, they discover an alternate universe where they find the space station Babel 13.

Pirk, being the egotistical dictator that he is, decides that he wants to rule this universe as well...

Of course Captain John Sherrypie, commander of Babel 13, is having none of it.

There's lots of fighting, both in space and on Babel 13 itself. I won't spoil the ending for you, but suffice it to say that there are lots of casualties on both sides.

The movie isn't all dark, though, there are lots of funny bits including an incompetent bridge officer:

There are also some very subtle touches, including this shot of the Kickstart's bridge:

Is STAR WRECK:IN THE PIRKINNING perfect? No, but while it has its faults they are minor. The biggest issue I have with the movie is that the subtitles aren't properly placed; they tend to be applied halfway over the bottom edge of the action (the screencaps used here are from the trailer, which had better subtitles) and in some instances, the translations are a little bit lacking:

(Condensate?)

Some of the subtitles might appear to be errors but aren't - for example, "warp" is replaced by "twist," "phaser" becomes "twinkler," and here's what we get in place of photon torpedoes:

There's also the fact that most of the talent are not professional actors, and it shows. That being said, the plot is good (even if you don't know the backstory), the virtual sets and space battles (created in Lightwave 3D) are fantastic, and there's DVD extras such as a "making of" featurette and deleted scenes (although those scenes aren't subtitled) that make this DVD something any hardcore SF geek should consider ading to their collection...as long as they have a way to play PAL DVDs from Finland.