Firstly ive never been a huge fan of this first film in the series. Its always seen as a bit "look at me and what we can do with lots of money" But the commentary is interesting enough. Robert Wise gives us a good talk through this newly edited version of the film although you have to concentrate to hear him. Its as if he is spitting the words from his mind. Then again im guessing he is in his 80s now. The best bunch of this cut n paste commentary are the spfx guys who talk us through some of the tricks they used back in '79. Well worth listening to just for these guysAlso worth listening to mainly because he is no longer with us is music composer Jerry Goldsmith. Who explains his musical choices for the motion picture. All ni all tihs chat track isntgreat but isnt bad. I shall file it under "glad i listened to it"

The most annoying part of this commentary is that Robert Wise was hard to understand at times due to his extremely husky voice but beyond that, this commentary was pretty good. I like how they explained how Paramount was originally planning on making a new Star Trek show but instead opted to make the film.

It's very moving to listen to Wise and Goldsmith, both having died a few years after recording this commentary; but sadly this track has all the well-known annoyances of crammed commentaries: one wonders whether what has been left out of the editing wasn't better than much of what is in it. Goldsmith and Trumbull make by far the most interesting comments, offering really great "Philosophy of Cinema" insight about their respective crafts, and it's hard to suddenly hearing them being replaced by the frail Wise (who doesn't add much to what he says on the featurettes) or by the superfluous reminiscences of Collins. Dykstra is also interesting, but he speaks mostly about practical matters, such as the materials used in the visual effects, and his comments (or the part of it we have here) never make as much an impact as those from Goldsmith and Trumbull.

Pretty decent commentary. It's a shame that Wise is reading from notes. I would have preferred a Wise only track with a moderator, perhaps Nicholas Meyer. And then a separate actor and FX track.
Either way, it's a good solid track with great contributions especially from Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra.
But with all these people involved in one track, Im sure it could have been split into two.