Wikipedia:Peer review/Star Trek III: The Search for Spock/archive1

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm interested in soliciting feedback about the article and how it meets featured article criteria. Any comments are welcome!

Thanks, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 23:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This certainly appears to be comprehensive, stable, neutral, and reasonably well-illustrated, and well-sourced. It's quite interesting as well. I noticed quite a few minor prose and style issues, fixed a few, and listed others below. I'm sure I didn't catch everything because I began to flag toward the end. The special effects section seemed awfully long, not bad but long. A copyedit of the lower sections from "Special effects" down would be a good idea.

Lead

"Bennett and Nimoy collaborated with effects house Industrial Light & Magic to develop... " - Add (ILM) after spelled-out version on first use?

Plot

I don't know how you feel about sourcing or what the project conventions might be, but generally it's a good idea to provide at least one source for each paragraph. Perhaps all of the plot claims are supported by Rioux?
"On arriving at Earth Spacedock Doctor Leonard McCoy begins to act to strangely." - Add comma after Earth? Otherwise it's possible to think on a quick read that McCoy's title is Earth Spacedock Doctor.
"Believing the Genesis device a potent weapon... " - Insert "to be" so this reads, "Believing the Genesis device to be a potent weapon... "?
"In the standoff that follows Kruge orders one of the hostages on the surface be executed... " - Insert a comma and "that", so this reads, "In the standoff that follows, Kruge orders that one of the hostages on the surface be executed... "?

Cast

"who is resurrected by the effects of the Genesis Device" - I noticed a mixture of "Genesis Device" and "Genesis device" in the upper sections and began changing the big D to little d. Maybe, though, I should just ask before changing any more of these. Do you want D or d? I went for "d" because "device" appeared to be descriptive rather than a formal name.
"Nimoy found the most difficult scene to direct one where McCoy talks to an unconscious Spock in sickbay en route to Vulcan." - Much as I like concision, it might help to insert "was" between "direct" and "one". Also, "in which" might be better than "where". Ditto for other places in the article where the construction "scene where" appears.
"in a minimal amount of scenes" - "Number" rather than "amount"?
"Kelley asserted that the opposite was true; "tribbles," he said," - Period after "true" and cap T on Tribbles? Otherwise, the quotation needs to start with an ellipsis (but maybe it can't).
"Navigation officer / acting science officer" - Maybe "Navigation officer and acting science officer" to avoid the front slash?
"He is forced into the closet at phaser-point by Uhura." - What closet? Am I missing something?

Development

"he had disagreed with changes made to The Wrath of Khan's ending without him." - This could be misinterpreted to mean that the film ended without him in a changed way. Maybe "he had disagreed with changes made without his consent to The Wrath of Khan's ending."
"After persuading him otherwise, Nimoy was given the job." - Suggestion for clarity: "Nimoy, after persuading Eisner otherwise, got the job."
"first reaction to the news of Nimoy as director was that Bennett" - I don't believe Bennett is mentioned before this instance. This one should be spelled out and linked rather than the second use in the next sentence.
"Nimoy wanted to make sure that each character got a small but significant scene to make them more grounded and real." - "Character" is singular, but "them" is plural. "Him or her"? Or, if that's awkward, "Nimoy wanted all of the characters to have significant scenes, however small, that made them more grounded and real."
"The name of the antagonists' ship, the Bird-of-Prey, remain unchanged, as in the Star Trek original series episode "The Enterprise Incident," Spock mentions that the Romulans loan the designs for their ship (and presumably the cloaking device as well)." - Should that be a terminal period after "Incident"? Shouldn't that be "name ... remains"? The sentence appears to be two that have been accidentally run together, but the terminal period might come after "unchanged". Not sure.
"Since items such as the look of the bridge... " - Wikilink bridge?

Design

"the physical model was a foot smaller than the Enterprise built for The Motion Picture" - Maybe consider a metric conversion; i.e., 12 inches (30 cm)?
"Rather than painstakingly wiring thousands of small lights, the model was made of clear plexiglass and then painted;" - Dangling modifier. Maybe "Rather than painstakingly wiring thousands of small lights, they made the model of clear plexiglass and then painted"?
"illuminated from outside by fiber optics and 2000-5000 watt lights" - Suggestion: "illuminated from outside by fiber optics and lights of 2,000 to 5,000 watts."

Costumes and makeup

"Fletcher ended up designing the Klingon and Vulcan makeup in addition to his costuming chores." - He didn't design his costume chores. Maybe "In addition to working on costumes, Fletcher designed the Klingon and Vulcan makeup".

Filming

"To guard against leaks that had affected the news of Spock's death during the production of The Wrath of Khan,[b] precautions made to make people accountable for their scripts and secure the sets." - Something missing here. Suggestion: "To guard against leaks that had affected the news of Spock's death during the production of The Wrath of Khan,[b] the film company took precautions to make people accountable for their scripts and to secure the sets."
"The creatures started as small, slimy crawlers, then grew to lengths of eight feet." - Metric conversion?
"ILM's solution involved rigging the worm with fishing line that were pulled in a choreographed" - "Lines", plural?
"the hope was to get as much usable shots as possible on one take" - "Many" rather than "much"?
"used a large 15 by 15 feet (4.6 by 4.6 m) floodlight" - Hyphens needed. The {{convert}} template is handy for things like this: 15-by-15-foot (4.6 by 4.6 m). Ditto for "the top of a 110 feet (34 m) crane".

Special effects

"Eastman 94 for all effects shots save those that required blue screen... " - Should "blue screen" be linked or explained?
"The cafeteria was a set built at ILM and filled with forty extras" - Digits, 40?
"eaten away by acetone" - Wikilink acetone? Ditto some of the other terms like vermiculite?
My attention began to wander here. While the detail is impressive, it's almost too much.

General

The lead image needs alt text.
Citation 81 has a dead url.
Should et al. in the citations be in italics since it's Latin?

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 22:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mabeenot comments: Wow. I didn't know we had a video of the Enterprise blowing up on Wikipedia. That's awesome. Here are a couple suggestions for the article:

There are a few red links on the page, mostly for people working behind the scenes like makeup artist Thomas R. Burman, cinematographer Charles Correll, and effects cameraman Scott Farrar. If you're looking for FA status, the red links have got to go. Either new articles need to be created for each of the red links or the red links need to be removed from this article, depending upon notability.

Could any of the sources in the "references" section become footnoted references under the "notes" section? It'd be nice to consolidate the two sets of sources and point to where each reference was used.

I hope you pursue Finetooth's detailed response. That was a great critique.

Thanks for working so hard on Search for Spock. When you're done, do you have any plans on getting Voyage Home up to GA or FA status?

-Mabeenot (talk) 17:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, more for your benefit than David's, there is no FAC requirement for notable redlinks to be created, nor has there ever been one, though it's nice if only for aesthetic reasons. (Seriously, whose bright idea was that colour back in the day?) All the best, Steve ^T • C 19:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've read this a couple of times now; I haven't commented so far, because there isn't a lot that I can see wrong with it, so I didn't want you to think I'd done a half-assed review. :-) Anyway, I think it probably needs another pass on the copyediting front. Not so much to remove the usual redundancies and ambiguity-spawning elegant variations and the like, but more for typos and minor mistakes (e.g. "The designer and the production staff was satisfied with the Klingon costumes he made on the first film.") On the content side, all I'd point to is that the "Themes" section feels a little light compared to that of the other Trek articles you've fashioned (though I can easily believe that it hasn't been subject to the same levels of analysis), the infobox should probably include the budget= and gross= fields, and the statement "The film received generally positive reviews from critics" is currently uncited. Though it might not be so much an issue on the other Trek articles, this film is one that's (at least nowadays) not considered as strong as some of the others, so I can definitely see that statement as one that might be challenged, even if it's a correct summation of the 1984 critical response. Finally, do you think the dollar amounts would benefit from being corrected for inflation, at least for the most important sums (budget and gross)? This can be done through the {{formatprice}} and {{inflation}} templates, e.g. "The film made $76,471,046 (${{Formatprice|{{Inflation|US|76471046|1984|r=-4}}|0}} as of {{CURRENTISOYEAR}})" which outputs "($224 million as of 2024)". Feels weird to say that about a film that was made in my lifetime, but there y'go. Otherwise, nice work yet again. Steve ^T • C 14:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. I'm still looking for more stuff about the themes (you'd think that it would be easier to find, given the Wagnerian nature of the film, but hey.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:24, 30 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
- What makes the following reliable sources?
  - http://trekmovie.com/
  - http://www.slashfood.com/2009/10/12/the-8-lamest-fast-food-kids-toys/

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 21:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)