Star Trek TOS: 4:3 format: Good or Bad?

[GregBlu5]

I've probably told this story here before, but I had taped FORBIDDEN PLANET on a Betamax tape from a TV broadcast decades ago. Since it's one of my fave movies of all time, I'd watched it more than once. And I'd always wondered, though, why Morbius's daughter turned against her father so readily, siding with the crew and making herself as equally vulnerable to the "monster" as they.

Then I bought the Laser Disc letterbox copy of the movie and watched it on my Advent 6-foot projection TV, and for the very first time saw that Anne Francis was standing at the edge of the frame in the doorway while Morbius was ranting that he would only share Krell secrets as he saw fit--clearly showing himself to be both wildly arrogant and perhaps a bit unstable.

The TV broadcast that I'd taped and watched several times had cropped her character *out* of that important scene, and had conveniently removed her presence from a significant segment where her mind was made up by her father's intolerance and arrogance.

(It was nearly as bad as the local TV broadcast of CITIZEN KANE that had ended early and removed the sequence where the audience learns who, or what, Rosebud is. Needless to say, their telephones rang incessantly after that truncated broadcast.)

I echo what was said earlier: No cropping [or cutting]; no way, no how.