Star Trek: First Frontier

A great action adventure, classic Trek movie with great characterization. Very enjoyable from the starting credits (featuring a Nichelle voiceover) to the end. Great music (also featuring a Nichelle voiceover) to the end. The special effects, while not always excellent in some setups (you could tell the actors were playing before a green screen in some shots) werre still very good, and largely on a par with the original series or beyond. Liked the andorian communications officer. The uniforms and make up were good, so glad to see no overproduction in these things, which so often happened in other productions merely because they had the funds. Anyone who appreciated the original series should love this movie, as I did. Far superior to anything put by network showrunners.

A noble effort and yet another reason to be disgusted by what CBS has done to the the Star Trek ideal. Good story, well-casted, and wise to use James Horner's sweeping score. Yes the sound is bad and the effects are not up to current standards, but you've got to appreciate the effort and drive to create a feature length film with "stone knives and bear skins." Not up there with Star Trek Continues, but I hope they will keep exploring this end of the Star Trek universe. They got the tone right.

Others have commented on the poor sound and I have to agree. The movie doesn't seem to have been mastered to a consistent level which makes it difficult to follow and spoils the whole thing.

The dialog is mixed so low as to be drowned out by the music and the audio effects are deafening. T.J. Garland is credited (blamed?) as production sound mixer. Many of his other credits are as a boom operator. The visual effects are a mixed bag. Some are on a par with ST:TMP, others are reminiscent of very early Doctor Who. Early Doctor Who was constrained by the technology of the day, a handicap which doesn't apply to STFF.

Based on what I was able to piece together from the visuals and snippets of dialogue, some force from the future is threatening to destroy Earth and the Enterprise saves the day. Or something.

It's OK if you can forgive it some technological failings.

The official film makers of the franchise could take a few pointers from this film. Made my people who love the genre and starring people who can act (I can't say that for every fan film I've seen), First Frontier tells the story of the first flight of the USS Enterprise under the command of the rarely seen Robert April. Not all is roses for the crew, either. The ship's commander is suffering from burn out and probable PTSD, he's not connected to his wife and even the new comms officer has an "interesting" past. I would like to see more of these characters. Most of the special effects were decently created CGI (I had to forgive the creator of the title sequence), although the effect for the evil aliens' eyes were terrible. If I had one main complaint, it was the sound engineering. The music borrowed heavily from James Horner's STII:TWOK soundtrack and the sound effects were OK, however the mix often drowned out the dialog and I often could not make out what was being said. That, and the editing left me wondering what was going on at times. A bit more TLC in post production and this movie could easily have earned at least one more star. All that being said, it's a great flic and, story-wise, it's an improvement on the flashy, often brainless, films fans have had to endure in recent years. A return to real Star Trek. Keep up the good work!