I have, throughout my life, been known as something of a Generations apologist. My reasoning behind this is not at all balanced—I am more of an Original Series fan than a Next Gen one, and Generations, to me, had some interesting things to say about being Captain Kirk.
But in terms of a film meant to launch the Next Generation crew into their own slew of Hollywood blockbusters, it is perfectly fair to say that Generations is a meltdown of nuclear proportions. Let’s be real here.
There are a number of things to be sad about in this film. In fact, it has been expertly picked apart at great length by many, writers of the script included. You can go all over the internet and have the ravages of plot holes, inconsistencies with previously established television continuity, and outright goofiness aired systematically before your very eyes. Yet there’s even more to cringe at, and so much of it has to do with ignoring everything that made people love the TNG crew.
A perfect microcosm on the film’s problems can be found in Data’s emotion chip snafu, a B-plot that runs the course of the whole film. Data’s desire to become more human comprises his entire character arc in the show, a quest that powers many forms of self-discovery during his time on board the Enterprise. But out of the desire to give this quest a shorthand for potential movie audiences who knew nothing about Data, the emotion chip was brought into play. Make no mistake, the android’s choice to finally integrate this aspect into his person is monumental, but in Generations, it is treated with all the relevance of a new haircut. An important alteration to a key character is instead contained in a few quips and an essential meltdown when the plot requires it. If you need any further proof that this storyline was made light of, all you have to do is jump ahead to Star Trek: First Contact, where Data has apparently integrated the emotion chip so well (off camera, so we observe none of the struggle) into his being that he can turn it off at will.
Captain Picard is given trauma to deal with from the get-go because without the death of his family, it seems he would have no reason at all to be tempted by the Nexus. Does anyone really buy this? Or buy into the idea that Picard’s ideal fantasy is to live somewhere in Victorian England with half-a-dozen perfect Victorian kids, and a wife who spends her days slaving over their roast goose dinners? Jean-Luc has an appreciation for history and anthropology, and we could even argue that he’s something of a throwback in his refined tastes, but his idea of “a blanket of joy” being the ultimate example of ye olde western European privilege is sort of off-putting. Combine that with his parental scolding of Captain Kirk, and the current Captain of the Enterprise comes off nothing like his usual enlightened self.
Geordi is there to get his VISOR messed with so spying turns easy for our villains, Dr. Crusher is there to fall prey to a “repulsive human females” Klingon punchline, Riker is there because someone has to be in charge while the captain’s away, and Troi is allowed to be counselor right at the beginning and then never again. The script is so confused about what to do with her that she’s somehow promoted to helmsman in a dire emergency of the ship-crashing variety. Worf doesn’t do much of anything at all. It’s understandable that giving everyone their moment in a two hour film when you’ve got a core crew of seven and a legacy captain is practically impossible. But all that meant was that the script needed to be distilled down. If passing the torch was really the whole point, then 70% of the film should have been Kirk and Picard showing the kids how it’s done. And honestly, that film might have been something wondrous. We’ll never know.
But with what we’ve got, I would argue that the only member of the TNG crew who acquits herself with dignity in this tale is Guinan. She is eerily situated to know exactly what is going on, as she often was on the television show. Her patent brand of wisdom provides Picard with the advice he needs and gets the real show rolling. If the Nexus had been used as something more than an enabler, an object for the antagonist to covet, we could have instead had a film with Picard trying to navigate the thing and Guinan popping up whenever he needed a clue to exit the level. Which also could have been an incredible movie, one that would have worked on the level of your typical Trek episode.
And what about the antagonist? The choice for the villain roster was confusing at best. It’s not that I object to the Duras sisters (I really don’t at all), or to bringing in a screen veteran with an impressive track record for psychopathy (Malcolm McDowell is a pretty fantastic guy). But combining Tolian Soran’s forces with Lursa and B’Etor, only to have him treat them them both like dumb, muscled limo drivers is entirely disappointing. As was their needless deaths over something as insert-the-blank thoughtless as a trilithium bomb.
Notably, Generations has all the problems of a poor two-part episode from the television show. There are too many plotlines, most of them not important enough to demand the attention they receive. It is full of big ideas, but none of them are examined beyond the barest skeletal consideration. It has many moments that are meant to be emotionally impacting, but fail because they are not treated with the care they deserve.
Or, to put it another way—if Data’s reunion with a cat is aimed to prompt the same level of emotional response as the legendary Captain Kirk’s lonely death… you might need to rethink your movie a little.
Emmet Asher-Perrin still cries every time she watches Kirk die, though. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
To be fair, I always liked Data’s cat more than I liked Captain Kirk.
This movie has always been the poster child for not rushing into production. They started filming this movie while “All Good Things…” was still being done, and it was slammed into production at a breakneck pace. This meant, among other things, that the sets were the same ones used on the TV show, which looked flimsy and awful on a big screen (hence the darkening of the bridge to try to cover it up). The worst offender was being able to see LeVar Burton’s eyes blinking through the slits of the VISOR, a prop never intended to be seen on anything bigger than 30″.
And the script reads like a poor first draft. A good movie could’ve been made from this plot, and if they’d taken more time, they might’ve managed it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I haven’t seen this in years, but I remember being disappointed with how Picard was not on the D when it went down. It felt wrong. The crash landing was very cool…though the “battle” was hardly worthy of the consequence.
I once heard Mirina Sirtis tell a hilarious story about when the crash scenes were being filmed. The FX guys were destroying the bridge left and right with explosions and the moment came for Troi to take the helm…but when she sat down, a few burning cinders started burning through the seat of her pants causing her to jump back up and yelp with pain…which ruined the scene. The FX crew had to rebuild the entire bridge just for a second take. When the moment came for Troi to sit down again, she brushed the debris out of the chair before she sat down…but that ended up happening off camera.
I’ve always been torn on Kirk’s end. There are rumors that there was a cut line of dialogue where Kirk says, “Bridge on the Captain!”
It’s a fun film though. I only wish I’d been able to see it in the cinema, the crash of the Enterprise is one of my favourite scene of the whole of Star Trek and it must be awesome on a giant screen!
The Duras sisters are still alive to me, damnit.
I found it very effective in the theater, though I grant that its weaknesses become more evident on later viewings. But there are things about it that I still like better than most people do — particularly Kirk’s death. I hate the sentiment that his death wasn’t impressive or spectacular enough. The idea that death is some glamorous, romanticized thing is an ugly lie that Kirk would’ve held in as much contempt as I do. All that would matter to him is whether he made a difference, whether he did his duty. And that’s exactly what he did, regardless of whether it was spectacular or not. What I particularly love about it is the way that, after being pulled off the teetery bridge that had almost killed him, Kirk unhesitatingly leapt right back into the jaws of death because he still had a job to do. That took great courage, dedication to duty, and a certain recklessness, and that’s pure Kirk.
As for the emotion chip, I don’t mind Data installing it here and struggling to adjust; I think they did the best they could with that in the context of a movie where it was just a subplot. The problem is the way the later films chickened out and systematically reversed his growth here. GEN said the chip was permanently fused to his neural net and he’d be stuck with emotions forever. FC backed down and said he could turn them off at will. INS had a throwaway line that he hadn’t taken the chip with him on his mission, and it was never clear whether he’d had it put back in at all. And NEM ignored its existence altogether and even had Data say “I feel nothing.”
To me, this is a systemic problem with both the original and TNG film series. Whenever any attempt was made to introduce a lasting change, it ended up being reversed or undone within a couple of films. Originally Saavik and David were introduced as part of a plan to phase out the older cast members and have new, younger leads gradually take over; but within two films, they were both out of the picture and the big seven were all back on the bridge of the Enterprise. They even destroyed the ship and then brought back an exact duplicate one movie later. In both series, it wasn’t until the last film that any major changes were allowed to stick. (I’m not counting Kirk’s death in GEN because his movie series was already over.) Which is sad, because movies should be about major, transformative events.
@@.-@: Yes, the saucer crash was breathtaking on the big screen, at least for me.
@5: It’s true, there is enough time between the last shot of the sisters and the final destruction of the Bird of Prey that they could have potentially gotten to an escape pod in time. Although canon is inconsistent on the question of whether Klingons use escape pods.
@6,
Even if Klingons in general never use escape pods, Lursa and B’Tor surely would.
It bugged me to no end that the explosion of the Duras’ sisters Bird of Prey is so clearly a reuse of the footage from Christopher Plummer’s Bird of Prey in Star Trek VI. They couldn’t reshoot that?
1. I’M torn between saying “Kirk needed a better death” or Kirk needed a death that did’nt feel like it could undone so many ways. They did’nt kill Jim Kirk they killed Jim kirk from some strange timline where you fry eggs in a blender and go horseback riding with carzy guys from the future.
2. the nexus was a neat idea but I was always distracted by the thought “Wait that’s not Natural! somebody BUILT the nexus find out who maybe we have a movie.
3. Generation was the first time I stopped fighting it and admited that there’s just no fannish warm spot in my heart for TNG it had it’s moments on tv but my love the actors won’t forgive a weak script.
It wasn’t perfect, but I dug it. In the theater some of those shots were just amazing. I own half the Next Gen movies on DVD, and this is one of them.
The whole nexus idea was poorly thought out. Why would both Picard’s and Kirk’s visions of eternal bliss be 19th-20th century domestic tranquility? Kirk at least should have imagined himself as captain of the Enterprise, maybe with David Marcus as a junior officer in Spock’s science department and an Orion yeoman in his quarters, fighting fu manchu Klingons and reinterpreting the Prime Directive.
For me this movie is too depressing to watch. Too much death. Too much destruction. And as nice as Picard’s little lesson in time as a companion is, it doesn’t make up for all the dreariness that came before it.
Search for Spock took a similar trajectory—and did it better. They destroyed the Enterprise. They killed off family. But we got Spock back, dammit! And that made it all worthwhile.
TNG had a successful 7 year run on TV and had built an entire generation of fans who little connection with the original series other than the movies. What it did not need was a “passing of the torch.” It did not need to be some hybrid Kirk-Picard buddy movie and excuse to build a new model of the Enterprise. The Torch had been passed by the tv run. We didn’t need Kirk’s moment in the sun.
There were some good special effects (the nerd-boy in me always wanted to see the saucer section land ever since reading about it in the tech manual) but I have the same issue with this that I had in several episodes of the series- the Enterprise-D gets its butt kicked by a ship that should never be able to kick it’s butt. Geordi gets turned into a spycam (you think after he’d been captured someone would make sure he hadn’t been bugged) so the really old Klingon vessel can send it’s torpedos through the shield. Please re-read that… it’s torpedo’s…. torpedo’s don’t have a phase- they are just there. It doesn’t matter what the frequency is of the shields, it’s solid matter. You could adjust your disrupters to interact or pass through the shields, but you can’t put a solid object through them. But once again, the most powerful ship in the Federation gets its butt kicked- this time by a 50 year old cast off frigate. WTF?
This had the makings of a good multi-show arc that would have improved season 7 (Data and his emotion chip deserve much more time than the comedic purpose it had here). But as far as a kick off for the Next Generation movies, like the original series kickoff, it just fell flat.
@8: It’s no worse than TWOK recycling a lot of the Enterprise footage from TMP. Most Trek movies have been on modest to moderate budgets and have needed to cut corners.
What bugs me more is that we never got a good establishing shot of the Enterprise-D. That was a clear symptom that the filmmakers were approaching it like a double-sized episode rather than a movie — they never gave the hero ship a worthy introduction for filmgoers new to TNG. After the holodeck sequence, our first look at the ship from the outside is just a partial shot of the saucer coming into view in the corner of the screen, a stock angle used frequently in the show (though not actual stock footage, I think). We don’t even see the entire ship until the shot where it’s warping away from the Amargosa supernova, maybe a third of the way through the film, and it’s just small and in the background.
@11: What you’re describing is a TOS fanboy’s dream, not a realistic dream for James Kirk. In TOS, he often expressed his yearning for a simpler life — “a beach to walk on” and a lady love to share it with. And he wasn’t a young man anymore at that point — he was aging, retired, satisfied that he’d served well and ready to embrace that domestic life he’d always fantasized about before. I think he was written perfectly in character.
What this movie did do, of course, was reinforce what become painfully obvious during the series. That leaving Will Riker in charge of the Enterprise is always a bad idea.
I find it entirely in character for both Kirk and Picard to want to settle down with a family. Calling that “unenlightened” is ridiculous. Picard might have proclaimed his fear of children, but family was important to him, even if they did overbludgeon that idea to set up his angst.
Is the rumor about 3 scripts true? one with a full tng/tos crossover one with kirk and Spock and what we got?
@13 Beginning with Next Gen, the Enterprise almost always got its butt handed to it, especially the D. The E gets knocked around in every movie except for the Battle of Sector 001 in First Contact.
And not just the Enterprise. I’m pretty sure the Defiant got its ass kicked in its very first episode…AFTER everyone established just how “bad ass” it was.
And don’t get me started on Voyager. I know it wasn’t a warship…but granted how easily the Kazon could disable it in the first few seasons, you had to wonder why they wanted it so badly.
The movie stumbles right out of the starting blocks and never really recovers. To begin with, everybody I know had a really hard time accepting Cameron from Ferris Bueller as a captain. That he was then utterly ineffectual was a little more believable, but nobody that feckless has any business being on the bridge of any starship, let alone the Enterprise.
Then there was the problem that both Nimoy and Kelley turned the film down. It is painfully obvious that all of the dialog with Chekov and Scotty was written for Spock and McCoy. The seams and the duct tape are glaring.
Data’s plot is poorly done, most especially his scanning for lifeforms song, though his “Ohhh, shit!” as the ship crashes is a close second.
The decision to wreck the ship may have come along after they saw the first test footage of the Enterprise-D bridge. It looked fine on TV, but didn’t translate to the big screen very well. The crash gave them an opportunity to come up with a more cinematic design.
In defense of Troi manning the helm, she just jumped in the seat when the previous occupant was hurt or killed. And I’m sure she got her certification to steer the ship when she took her Bridge Officer’s Exam.
Speaking of the helm, I didn’t get to immediately watch this one, since Netflix doesn’t have it available to stream, and I loaned out the DVD years ago and never got it back, but did we see any of our series regulars, like Ensign Gates, on the big screen? I can’t remember.
Pretty much what everyone else said: it wasn’t a movie, it was a 2-part episode that ended up on the big screen. Except for the destruction of the Enterprise, everything else was the sort of thing that our heroes do every week, then never mention again. There’s not much at stake here. Yes, there were a lot of lives on the other planet, but we’ve never met any of them before, we know zip about their culture, and we really don’t care if they get wiped out.
The other big issue was the “temptation” of the Nexus. It’s like the writers hadn’t watched their own show. Picard isn’t a family man. His most consistant character trait was a dislike of children. Even in the later seasons, when he stopped being a complete jerk to kids, it was obvious he was uncomfortable around them. Kirk…well, I’m not as familiar with TOS as I am with NextGen, but in the movies, Kirk had several opportunities to retire and enjoy civilian life, and each time he was more than eager to return to the ship. In the first movie, he practically shoved Decker out of the captain’s chair. I don’t think “retirement with a good woman” was really what he was looking for. I think that’s why I’ve found a certain appeal in the “Picard never left the Nexus” theory. Because, really, which seems more like Picard’s idea of pure joy:
A) It’s always a traditional English Christmas and he’s surrounded by dozens of grubby-handed children.
B) He proves himself strong enough to “resist” the Nexus, meets the legendary Captain Kirk and fights with him to save the day, then goes on to become the action hero who always gets the girl.
@19: Captain Harriman gets a bad rap. He had a lot of good suggestions for how to solve the problem, but was stymied by his ill-equipped ship. And when he ended up having to accept that he was out of his depth, he did the wisest, most responsible thing anyone could possibly do in that situation: he deferred to a more experienced officer. He recognized that the collective experience of Kirk’s crew was a valuable resource, and he set petty ego aside and made use of that resource. That is a deeply admirable decision. An effective commander needs humility more than overconfidence or the need to do everything himself.
As for the saucer crash, that was actually something they’d initially planned to do in the sixth-season finale, but they couldn’t afford it then. So once they had a feature-film budget, they were finally able to go ahead with it.
@21: Yes, Picard was initially uncomfortable with children, but he softened in that stance over the course of the series — particularly after living nearly 50 subjective years as a father and grandfather in “The Inner Light.” There’s no way that wouldn’t have changed him profoundly. And it was established in some episodes, notably “Journey’s End,” that he cared a lot about the Picard family heritage and legacy. He just assumed that his brother and nephew would be the ones carrying the Picard name forward — and once they died, it changed things for him, because he realized that the family line would end with him unless he could somehow achieve in real life what he’d achieved as Kamin in that other existence. Hence the fantasy of being a father. (I was always disappointed that they didn’t get the actress who played his wife in “The Inner Light” to appear as his Nexus wife.)
The thing that always most jarring to me was the first few minutes when you can tell that the lines were written for all of the TOS gang, but only Kirk, Scottie and Chekov signed on. Instead of scrapping or rewriting the lines, they just had those guys say the lines…
I found it very, very disappointing when I saw it in the theater, so it actually seemed a bit better than I remembered on rewatch. Emily nailed it in her review though. I find it sad to think about what might have been. I don’t think they ever really hit the right balance in the TNG movie series, even in First Contact, which I did enjoy overall.
@6. What bothered me about Kirk’s death was not that it was mundane but that it was utterly unnecessary. They could jump back to any point in time…why then??? I couldn’t quite let that go.
I thought they missed a chance to have Edith Keeler be with Kirk in the Nexus. That would have given Kirk’s leaving the Nexus to help Picard an extra emotional punch–at least to knowledgeable Trek fans. Joan Collins would probably have been up for it!
@23: Actually the lines were written just for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, but when Nimoy and Kelley declined to participate, Scotty was given Spock’s role and Chekov was given McCoy’s role (which was why he was helping in sickbay).
@24: I never really bought the notion that the Nexus could send you literally anywhere in real space or time. I always figured that you could imagine any place or time in the internal fantasy realm of the Nexus, but upon physically leaving it there was a range limit on how far in space you could be from its actual location. So they could only go to the planet at a point when the Nexus was already physically close to it.
Alternatively, it could be a Temporal Prime Directive issue — the further back they went, the more disruption they could potentially cause to the timeline, so they opted for the minimum possible adjustment.
I do have one positive thing to say about Generations: the cinematography. It’s arguably the best looking Trek movie of them all. Just check out the lighting in Picard’s ready room. Very film noir. Like Dixon Hill’s futuristic office!
Am I the only one bothered by the lack of a warp factor rating?
So many great moments in the movie, so little good plot. I think it could be summed up in one scene: the battle between the E-D and the bird of prey.
We’ve been shown throughout TNG that Riker is pretty good with combat tactics. Worf is better. Data is good at analyzing and adapting. Put them together an you should be nigh unstoppable, yes?
Apparently not. We’re given a scenario where the enemy has rendered our heroes’ shields ineffective. So, what do we do? Fire back with everything we’ve got and overwhelm them with the might of Starfleet’s most powerful ship? Of course not, that would be silly. How about using the Enterprise’s awesome maneuverability for a ship her size to avoid their fire? That, it seems, is far too 23rd century a solution.
No, we sit like ducks and take hit after hit while coming up with a plan of attack that hinges on the Duras Sisters not being smart enough to replace a KNOWN DEFECTIVE PART. It works, since apparently Lursa and B’Etor are the only people in this movie dumber than Riker, but the ship gets blown up anyway. Umm… by the way, what was Worf doing the whole time they were getting pummeled? The Enterprise fired what, 2 shots back at the bird of prey?
Much like the rest of the movie, the outcome was thought of first, then the scene was written (badly) to force it to happen.
@15: I have to say, though, that Riker does a damn fine job of reviewing duty rosters, evaluating departmental transfers, and implementing policy changes. Turns out he’s well-suited for middle management.
This might be the only NexGen movie I haven’t seen more than once.
And as much as I love First Contact, I had always secretly hoped that they would open the second movie with Riker’s COURT MARTIAL! Hey, ignore all the little plot contrivances like him allowing Geordi back on duty after having been captured, but never checking for tampering (or never detecting the outgoing signal during a time of enemy engagement)…
One action alone should have ended Riker’s career. The scenario: you are on a damaged ship. You are seconds away from losing all power. You have time for one, maybe two commands before your bridge blows up… Do you
a) point the ship TOWARDS the planet?
b) point the ship AWAY from the planet?
Clock’s ticking….
The movie is mediocre at best. My only comment is that I enjoyed what they did with the Enterprise D’s sets. Adding stations to the side of the bridge, darkening the sets, etc. What I didn’t like was the not-so-subtle transition between the TV show’s uniforms to the DS9-style uniforms throughout the film.
@33: The problem with your question is that it ignores the existence of gravity. You’re treating “toward the planet” and “away from the planet” as if they were equal choices, but they aren’t. The planet is exerting a gravitational pull on the ship, even in orbit. So “toward the planet” is actually down and “away from the planet” is up. Clearly those are not equally easy to achieve. An orbiting ship is literally falling toward the planet, being pulled downward by its gravity; it’s just moving sideways fast enough that the pull causes it to curve around the planet at a rate matching the curvature of the planet’s own surface, so that it stays more or less the same distance above the surface.
And taking a ship out of orbit isn’t as simple as you’d think. There’s really only one direction of thrust that will achieve that: thrusting forward in the direction of your orbit, so that you accelerate to a high enough speed to overcome its gravitational pull. If you thrust backward, you decelerate and fall out of orbit. If you thrust upward or downward, you just make your orbit more eccentric. If you thrust to either side, you just alter its inclination.
Of course, that means that it should be as hard to cause a ship to fall to the surface as it would be to take it out into space. But for decades, Star Trek has been showing us stories where a ship fell out of orbit when it lost power, suggesting that the ship wasn’t in a true orbit, but a forced orbit, using thrust to maintain a position over a planet’s surface. There are reasons why this might be done; the best one is to stay in communications and transporter range of a given point on a planet’s surface. Geosynchronous orbit only works over a point near the equator, and the ship would have to be a fair distance above the planet — 35,000 km for Earth, more or less for other planets depending on their gravity and rotation. Transporter range is typically 20-40,000 km depending on the century, so on some planets it may be necessary to maintain a powered orbit to stay in range of a given surface location, and if the power failed, the ship could indeed fall out of orbit.
I always found this movie disappointing. It is basiclly a two hour episode on the big screen. It had funny moments like Scotty’s crack about the chair being broken, but I have question about the prune juice scene. Why would taste be considered an emotion ?Data can’t taste things or are we supposed to ignore that because it’s funny. The problem I have with Kirk’s death is it seemed pointless. Spock’s death was epic and the Captain’s was that’s it?
@36: It’s not a sense of taste that’s an emotion, it’s the reaction to how something tastes. Now he’s able to like or dislike the taste of something rather than simply analyzing and cataloguing it.
And how was Spock’s death “epic?” He only saved one ship and its crew, a few hundred people. Kirk went out saving a whole species as well as the entire crew of the Enterprise-D. Spock’s death may have been more emotionally engaging and satisfying to the viewer, but I wouldn’t call it “epic” — if anything, it was rather intimate and personal compared to Kirk’s.
I actually think this one aged pretty well compared to the other 3 TNG movies. It is by far the least “depressing”, even counting first contact. Everyone feels like they were having fun. Honestly, this movie feels to me like a second season episode. the next 3 movies all seem like extensions of season boring 7. The acting is just DEAD.
I will go out on a long limb and say that I disagree with the author of this article completely by saying I LOVED the look of this film. In fact I think this is the best looking trek film there is. The enterprise D is stunning on film (ent-E is an abortion of a concept),and I thought the natural light coming through the windows was actually a really cool effect. Further, it is actually a pretty fun flick. I would say the first 2/3 of Generations is actually pretty good movie making.
It is ironically Kirk himself that destroys the film. I disagree that Picard wanting a victorian family is silly, on the contrary, I think it is well within what we know of the Picard characer. I think the whole idea of Kirk living on a horsefarm is silly, Shatner wants a horse farm. If Picard had instead found Kirk on the enterprise, I think this movie would have been stellar. Seriously, how many times does Kirk say the only place for him is the enterprise? Hell, he says it in THIS MOVIE.
@Cloric
Dont know about Ensign Gates, but background extras who played Ensigns Kellogg and Jae were both in this film.
Jae (short black hair) was the helm officer who gets hurt in battle whom Troi has to replace, although Jae makes it back to the bridge as the Enterprise crashes. This character is seen in the next two films as well.
Ensign Kellogg is a tall, redhead who has been in Security for years on the show. She’s also on the bridge, occupying Tactical when Worf is elsewhere. For First Contact, she works with Riker’s Away Team on Earth.
I didn’t know there was so much hate towards this movie! I kinda love that there’s been a flood of nitpicks, and CLB’s been shooting them all down. :)
I find myself wishing Chris Bennet had done the rewatch of this movie, because he clearly enjoyed it. Personally, I love it. In particular, I think the depiction of the Duras sisters and Soran’s behavior toward them was very well done. I never found the Duras sisters to be particularly threatening villains, and even moreso after they lost the civil war and had nothing left of the power of their house. Soran is using them, the same way Sela was using them in Redemption. To him, they really are little more than “dumb, muscled limo drivers”. They have resources he needs, so he needs them. For now. Given his established arrogance and self-centeredness, I think it would be odd if he treated them with any kind of respect.
I enjoyed this one. True, as I get older, it loses some of its luster with time, but the same is true of the series and of pretty much all the movies. Wrath of Khan I think still holds up for me pretty well, but that film even has its critics too. I get where people might be annoyed at all of Data’s jokes in this, but Star Trek IV had a lot of the same thing, and that movie is highly praised. So I guess when you throw this one in with the Star Trek movies as a whole, it’s not really any worse than the rest of them. Oh, criticize away if you want to…but I guess I wouldn’t put it at the bottom of my list, and I still think it’s better than a lot of non-Star Trek movies.
Riker losing the ship does bug me though…whoever said that Lursa and B’Etor are the only ones dumber than Riker was right…when your weapons can penetrate your enemy Galaxy-class starship’s shields, “Target their bridge” should be your first order. The Enterprise actually is able to take quite a beating considering the shields don’t even work. Just imagine if Riker knew how to give the order to fire weapons. Instead, he sits on his hands just like he did in “Rascals” and tries to come up with some really elaborate crazy idea. Just say, “Fire all weapons” like Picard did against the Borg or the (fake) Husnock ship, and watch the bird-of-prey explode.
I think Data’s emotion chip was a natural progression of his character (well, after they retconned that he had NO emotions) and it had been set up over the course of two episodes. So to approach it for a movie I think was a move in the right direction. Again, maybe the jokes were overboard for some, but I think that’s part of his journey and we see at the end that he is trying to integrate it. And I think it worked in First Contact too: He switched it off so he didn’t have time to grow accustomed to his fear. The Borg Queen activated it and surprised him with a sudden burst of fear at a critical moment, along with other, more pleasureable emotions. This was part of his trial in that film, so I think it works. By the time we got to Insurrection though, they basically wanted to sweep it under the rug because they didn’t like it, and wanted to have Data “explore humanity without his emotion chip” even though we’d been seeing him do that for seven years. [i]
[/i]
Oh, and @22: That’s a very interesting perspective on Harriman. I think part of the problem upon viewing it though is that he’s played as a little too nervous and fumbling. Overconfidence is one thing, but a captain should at least project confidence.
@42: The problem, though, with Data switching the emotion chip off in FC was that it was a retcon. There was that whole big scene in GEN in Stellar Cartography that was all about how the emotion chip was irrevocably fused to Data’s neural net, that he had no easy escape hatch from his emotions any more than a human does, and had no choice but to learn to cope with them. So FC ignoring that and giving it a handy off switch is a really sleazy copout. “Character growth? Personal struggle? Who needs it? Let’s just let him turn it off the moment things get difficult.” Good writing is not about making things easier for your characters.
So many good comments already. A few points I think no one else has made:
No one has mentioned that among other offenses this movie retcon’d/sullied one of the most acclaimed moments in the TV series, the 2×16 “Q Who” first appearance of the Borg. By putting in the throwaway line that the ships in the prologue were “refugees from the Borg” it inserted the knowledge of them here.
Matthew McDonald was better on screen than the character as written.
13. MikeKelm
Yes, yes, yes. I avoided seeing it when it first ran for this reason, and when it first ran, and when I did see it I was annoyed all over again that it was actually just the prologue and finale that roped TOS cast in there. You think Nimoy and Kelley’s refusal to go along with this could have clued them in it was a terrible idea, but Paramount was determined to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
The prologue was so appalling. Every time someone said “Tuesday” it was a poke. Not to mention the space reporters on the bridge. I have worked as a reporter, used a audio recorder, and hate doing it. The prospect that hundreds of years in the future there won’t be a better way is a horrifying disutopian future.
@44: I guess I didn’t really see it as a retcon so much as they figured out a way to unfuse it or turn it off by then. Especially with Geordi back.
@40 Agreed. While I think it’s a weak film overall, many of the nitpicks here are just that, and CLB has handled them beautifully.
My nitpick: I personally didn’t like the sudden dark lighting of the ship. I remember the film makers trying to play up the “this is how it really looks” angle of the cinematic bridge, but the fact that the set may have looked like crap in the initial dailies makes more sense. One reason I always liked the Enterprise-D was that it was brightly lit after all those TOS movies where Nick Meyer, et al, tried to portray starships as submarines “IN-SPACE!” To have the Enterprise-D bridge be dark all of the sudden after seven seasons of television was jarring.
Some in-universe blame might be laid at Riker’s feet for the destruction of the ship; however, as has been pointed out, he is often portrayed as a briliant tactician (and pilot). The failures leading to the Enterprise falling out of the sky in this movie are out of character for everyone involved, not to mention silly on a few tactics and physics points.
For me, the main problem with this film was that it seemed too obviously contrived. For example: What might motivate Picard to want a family? Oh, I know, let’s ruthlessly kill off his relatives, including his surrogate son (his nephew). Cool, because that also gives Troi something to do for a few moments. What can we get Data to do since he isn’t required to do much otherwise? Oh, let’s have a bit of fun with his emotion chip and reveal that he really should remain as he was since he is very irritating with human emotional capability. How do we create some kind of link with the Kirk movies? Oh, let’s stick Kirk in the Nexus. Contrived, yes, and also “we’re making it up as we go along”.
My best moment was one of the Duras girls saying, about Geordi, something like: “He must be the only engineer in Star Fleet who never goes to Engineering” which was a laugh out loud moment for me and something that could have been applied to many episodes in the TV series too!
I didn’t dislike the movie when I first saw it (on DVD on a friend’s wide-screen TV) but I was disappointed in it and subsequent viewings, sadly, haven’t changed this. There are many good things in it (Malcolm McDowell’s facial expression of slightly hurt bewilderment when he realizes he’s about to get blown to pieces, for example), but perhaps too many great possibilities and ideas that never got fully developed.
One thing that has always bothered me: If the Nexus is so overwhelmingly enticing that it seduced a person of Guinan’s intelligence, experience and wisdom, why was Picard (and Kirk, subsequently) able to be so immune to its charms?
(Bet that goose was dry anyway).
@45: Remember, it was “Q Who” itself that established that Guinan’s homeworld was destroyed by the Borg. And she’d been living in the Federation for some time before TNG, apparently. So the movie didn’t contradict anything that hadn’t been established from the start.
Who’s Matthew McDonald? Do you mean Malcolm McDowell?
The reason Nimoy turned down the cameo is not because he thought it was “a terrible idea,” but simply because he has always, throughout his career, been picky about the parts he took, generally preferring roles that he felt were meaningful or challenging. He simply didn’t feel that Spock contributed anything to the movie that any other character couldn’t have contributed. As for Kelley, he pretty much retired from acting in anything but Trek after about 1981, and he felt he’d already made his goodbyes in the previous film and a small cameo like this wasn’t enough to justify returning.
@46: Whether there was an in-universe explanation for the change is beside the point. This is not a matter of continuity, it’s a matter of good character writing. GEN tried to do something that fundamentally evolved and grew Data as a character, and then the next three movies systematically dismantled that character growth until he was right back where he’d started over a decade before. And that is a crappy way to write a character.
@47: I gathered that the reason the sets were darker was because darker lighting and colors work better on the big screen in a darkened theater, while brighter colors work better on a TV screen in a relatively well-lit living room. This is also apparently why the TOS movies eschewed the vivid colors of the TV uniforms.
@48: I suppose Picard was able to resist it because he knew he had a life-and-death responsibility out in the real world. Guinan, when she had her Nexus encounter, was a refugee who’d spent decades wandering across the galaxy after the destruction of her homeworld. Her real life at the time was pretty sucky, and she didn’t exactly have a lot of incentive to want to go back to it.
“@48: I suppose Picard was able to resist it because he knew he had a
life-and-death responsibility out in the real world. Guinan, when she
had her Nexus encounter, was a refugee who’d spent decades wandering
across the galaxy after the destruction of her homeworld. Her real life
at the time was pretty sucky, and she didn’t exactly have a lot of
incentive to want to go back to it.”
Hehehehe! All right, I’ll accept your suggestion simply because it is a way around the problem! Thanks. However, Guinan had lost her entire world. Picard had lost his annoying brother. If anyone were to be seduced by being surrounded by bliss, I would have thought Picard would be the one. Plus, it doesn’t work for Kirk anyway and his reason for realizing it’s all a load of rubbish is his bad cooking.
This is where the film fell apart for me on the first viewing. Yes, I can accept your point about Guinan wanting to remain in the state of being surrounded by bliss. Same with McDowell’s character. They had both lost so much. Yet Picard had suffered a personal loss that cut him to the core. Kirk had lost nothing. My point is that their different reactions to the Nexus seemed contradictory. Either it is a “bliss” environment and you never want to leave and spend a lot of your life trying to regain (or get over it as did Guinan), or it isn’t. In my opinion, we can’t have it both ways unless it is properly set up.
On the other hand, that horrible child thanking Father Picard for the doll is enough to jolt anyone back to reality!
Let’s all admit one thing: It wasn’t a good film; it wasn’t a bad film…but, hey, it’s fun discussing it!
Thanks to everyone for their comments (and Emma for a super review). I do read everything everyone posts on a thread such as this and I am always grateful for opinions, different or the same, insights and the fun.
Sorry, I meant Emily, not Emma! Oops.
@48,
One explanation of why the Nexus’s powers of seduction are so lame is because, well, they are. Guinan and Soran were in the Nexus for all of what, about 30 seconds? Could be that in that initial 30 seconds, Guinan and Soran got zapped with the initial joy beam, and spent the next 70 years remembering how good it felt, but if they’d stayed as long as an hour, they’d have gotten bored sick and wanted to be out of there too.
Or alternatively, you could go for the “Picard didn’t resist and everything that happens after this is a Nexus hallucination” theory I mentioned earlier.
@50: You’re overlooking one factor I already mentioned, the one that Picard and Kirk both share: their sense of duty. They’ve both spent a lifetime serving and protecting others, setting aside their personal yearnings in the name of that service. It’s no harder to understand why they’d turn their backs on the Nexus than it is to understand why a firefighter would go inside a burning building.
@52: To paraphrase The Middleman, in the Nexus, time has no meaning or relevance. Remember, from Picard’s POV, Kirk had been lost 78 years before, but from Kirk’s POV, he’d just arrived. Because the Nexus is timeless, it could work just as well the other way — 30 seconds in the outside universe could feel like subjective years on the inside. Wherever you encounter someone along their personal timestream is arbitrary and has no relation to how time passes outside.
Thanks Lsana! I’ve just re-read your comment above. Interesting ideas.
I suppose what does make the movie fail in this regard is that some of us are finding ways of explaining away what should have been explained in the film.
A true work of fiction (film or other) should work within its own universe (call it logical integrity or other such guff). This didn’t.
Sorry, but I am not convinced by the “sense of duty” idea. It might work with Kirk, but not Picard. He is suspicious from the very moment he enters the Nexus. Now, the Nexus surrounds you with bliss. If you are in that, you are not going to start thinking about some bloody star ship.
Nor do I think that comparing Pic and Jim’s turn away from the Nexus to firefighters going into a burning building at all acceptable. Sorry, but I found this comparison , er, not very good. Sorry.
Also, if Soren is so desperate to get back, then it suggests that this darn thingie is a mind-altering anomely (as Lsana suggests if I have read the comment correctly) and Picard wouldn’t have stood a chance (especially after his intense personal loss).
So, this is where the film falls down. It doesn’t make sense. Yes, we have emoptional Data later, Riker crashes the ship (again). It is a mess with a pseudop-religious load of clap-trap at the end about Time walking with us and a bloody cat.
Sorry to be sharp. I have the film on right now!
@55: You’re assuming the Nexus actually alters your mind in such a way that it renders rational thinking impossible. There’s no evidence of that in the movie. It gives you what you desire: for Kirk, it was a peaceful life and a second chance a meaningful relationship. For Picard it was a family. However, Kirk and Picard are Starfleet officers, and they know when they have to set aside their own desires to do what’s right, which is what sets them apart from Soran, who is totally concerned with himself. That’s why they can resist the Nexus: their own desires are not the most important thing to them.
@55:
Excuse me? Picard has been a starship captain for most of the past 38 years at the time of this movie. He certainly wouldn’t be so dismissive toward the ship that was his responsibility and his home.
Not to mention that we’re talking about saving an entire sentient species from destruction. Picard is absolutely not a person who could just indulge his own self-interest when he knew that he was responsible for preventing the death of billions. I mean, that’s how Soran thought, that his own personal happiness was more important than the lives of billions of others. And that made him a monster. You’re saying that Picard would be just as great a monster as Soran, and that’s a hideous misreading of his entire character.
Why not? In both cases, it’s about setting aside self-interest and personal comfort in order to protect the lives of other people.
Soran was desperate to get back because he was mourning the death of his wife and children and would do anything to be reunited with them, even if it was just in a Nexus fantasy. His fixation wasn’t about the Nexus itself; the Nexus was just a means of attaining what he really wanted, which was to experience the love of his family once more.
Then it’s startling that you’ve missed so much of its content. Maybe you should try watching it without the distraction of posting on the Internet at the same time.
Star Trek has always been less about faithful story continuity and more about the gist of emotional feeling towards its characters. Generations hits all the marks in this respect making it the best TNG movie despite the plot holes you could thread a wormhole through.
Christopher L. Bennett, you have been spot on in all your posts. Despite its many many many many flaws, I enjoyed this movie. I especially agree about Kirk’s death not needing to be glamorous, as death is not glamorous. Kirk died doing what Kirk always did: saving countless lives, in his heroic, reckless way. Kirk and Picard’s respective Nexus experiences matched them perfectly: two adventurous men longing for a simple, contented life they could have had but abandoned for Starfleet careers. I suspect that most of our Nexus experiences would be similar ( I know mine would).
And finally I completely agree about Captain John Harriman. He had good ideas but was limited by the equipment (or lack thereof) on the Enterprise-B. The maiden flight of the Enterprise-B was just supposed to be a trip through the Sol System. Harriman realized he needed help, and very humbly asked Kirk for advice, rather than going on ego and blundering forward. A respectable choice.
To me a fun film. Could have been better. While I never got to see this movie in cinema, I loved seeing the Enterprise-D bridge in a movie for one more go-round.
@57:
Thanks for taking the time to supply feedback. Actually, I only put the film on to check quotations, not to watch.
No, I wasn’t saying Picard could become as big a monster as Soren. My point is this: Guinan suggests that the Nexus is like being surrounded by bliss. If Picard entered into this state, then all other considerations like duty etc would be washed away and forgotten. So, what I mean is that he would cease to be aware of other commitments such as duty, no matter how many years he had spent as a Star Fleet officer.
Yes, I accept your points and, although I still don’t entirely agree with all your interpretations, thanks for taking the time.
@60: “Guinan suggests that the Nexus is like being surrounded by bliss. If Picard entered into this state, then all other considerations like duty etc would be washed away and forgotten. So, what I mean is that he would cease to be aware of other commitments such as duty, no matter how many years he had spent as a Star Fleet officer.”
And I don’t accept that interpretation, especially since we later saw what it was like inside the Nexus, and it wasn’t anywhere near that addictive. Naturally firsthand observation should take precedence over anecdotal accounts, because the latter are subjective and unreliable. Guinan said it was like being surrounded by bliss, because that’s how she remembered it 78 years after a brief encounter with it. That’s clearly not reliable evidence. Any oral testimony offered so long after the event in question must be intepreted skeptically, especially when dealing with something so emotionally charged. People have a way of exaggerating things in their memory, particularly positive experiences.
There is so much wrong with this one. I don’t even know why we needed a pass the torch movie to begin with. The show had already been on the air for seven years, had an incredible run…consider the torch passed, my friends. And the Nexus made no sense at all. It was what you desired yet had the power to send you back in time. You’d think that the El-Aurians would have used it to go back in time to stop the Borg from destroying their homeworld, or telling everyone about it first so they didn’t all die. And why did Picard and Kirk only go back to the point that they did and not sooner. Hell, Kirk could have went back to before he “Died” and stopped Soran then and not “Died” to begin with. Plot holes are hard to deal with at times, but ones as gaping as these are bad
@62: Lots of people who go to Trek movies don’t regularly watch the shows. The whole reason to adapt a series to a different medium is to expose it to a different audience, not just the same people who already watch it. So a lot of the potential audience for the TNG movies would only know Star Trek from the original-cast movies. It was for them that a transitional movie was needed.
@61:
Well, I doubt we will ever agree, but we are getting closer. We obviously have very different views, and that’s great! Sometimes, discussion helps develop a more balanced and informed response to what we see.
Yes, I do appreciate what even I have said elsewhere about over-analyzing things. It is just a film, after all!
As always, thank you for the replies which make me think again, which is never a bad thing.
Perhaps the best tribute is to the film. We’re all talking about it, even now. So, it did have an impact!
Well said Christopher. I remember getting together with my geeky friends during the summer of ’94 and watching The Wrath of Khan on laserdisc. (It was letterboxed on a 27″ CRT and we thought that was as good as that movie could ever look at home.) Watching the beautiful miniature work in that film used to depict the Enterprise and the Reliant in the Battle of the Mutara Nebula I was giddy at the prospect of seeing the Enterprise D similarly portrayed in a few months on a theater screen.
What a complete and utter disappointment.
I’ve often heard the theory posited that the design of the Enterprise D “just didn’t work” for film and that’s why it was destroyed in Generations but 19 years later I still don’t buy it. I do recall reading an article at the time where someone – can’t recall if it was Herman Zimmerman or somebody from the visual effects team – basically said that after seven years they were really sick of shooting that model and were delighted to be done with it.
To me this is yet another of the many reasons that they should have waited a couple of years before doing the first movie with the TNG cast. It would have given both the audience and the production team a chance to miss Picard and company. Perhaps the effects team would have been excited to bring back the D and give it a visual treatment never possible on the small screen.
“Sorry, but I am not convinced by the “sense of duty” idea. It might work with Kirk, but not Picard. He is suspicious from the very moment he enters the Nexus. Now, the Nexus surrounds you with bliss. If you are in that, you are not going to start thinking about some bloody star ship.”
I figure it’s simply because Picard was prepared. If you take it as assumed that very few people ever actually leave the Nexus, then it’d be pretty rare for anyone on the ‘outside’ to know anything about what it is. You’d just assume that people hit by this ribbon were dead.
But Guinan got out, got over it, and told Picard about it. Guinan and Soran and Kirk had no way of really knowing that what they were experiencing wasn’t “real”. Soran and Guinan figured it out after they were pulled out. Kirk figured it out after Picard explained it to him. But Picard figured it out because he knew before hand. THAT is the advantage he had, and why he was able to break through the illusions when other (arguably stronger) people had not.
I just got in tonight from a screening of Best of Both Worlds (I & II) at the movie theater. So I wanted to just address the issue of the darkness of the movie vs the tv show, and the theory that it has to do with the brightness of the uniforms – that the bright uniforms and bright lighting work on the tv screen in lit homes, but darker is better for the darker movie theater.
Well, the TV show on the movie screen was definitely bright! I found that the blue and the gold uniforms were not distracting. The red uniforms, though, were. They were just very, very, very red. I’m guessing that’s also why Picard (and other red-uniformed folks) spends half the movie in the DS9-style uniforms (mostly black with red shoulders instead of vice versa).
I then rewatched Generations tonight on Netflix. It’s not as bad as I remember it. I don’t see that Picard and Kirk’s visions were necessarily intended to be “eternal bliss”. It was just something that makes them happy, right now… and that something can CHANGE. Like echo-Guinan said, they could do anything they want in the Nexus. Picard was feeling all family-bereft, so that was the FIRST place he went. It doesn’t mean that’s his one greatest love, his truest ambition, the most important thing to him EVER… only just now. After spending some time with this fantasy, he could very well move to another.
Same for Kirk. He was revisiting a specific moment in his past that he had regrets over. Of course he’d always choose Starfleet over a family, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t wish he could have had both. So of course initially he’s tempted by it.
And I don’t think it’s implied anywhere that anyone is TRAPPED in the Nexus. It seems clear that folks can leave whenever they want. Most just don’t want to. So there’s no reason to wonder why Picard and Kirk are ‘able’ to realize it’s not real when nobody else could… Echo-Guinan knew it wasn’t real. She just couldn’t leave – if she wanted to – because she herself is not really real either.
I wonder… Is there an Echo-Soren in the Nexus as well? Perhaps being PULLED out of the Nexus instead of willingly leaving leaves the echo behind. And perhaps that makes the urge to go back to it that much stronger?
@67: On the “echo” idea, I’m not sure I really believe that any part is “left behind” per se. I mean, think about it. The Nexus is timeless. It’s like the Bajoran Wormhole, in that all times exist simultaneously. So if you’re in the Nexus for any length of time at all, you’re in it always. So it’s not really that a piece of you was left behind there — it’s just that whatever period of time you spent in there is “mapped” onto every point of time in the external universe at once, so from an external perspective, it’s like you’re there forever.
You all should see Mr. Plinkett’s review of Generations. Some things he complains about: Picard’s careless treatment of the Kurlan naiskos; the windows of the Enterprise shattering as though they were made of glass; the Enterprise being the “only ship in range” in the solar system of the capital of the Federation; the reuse of shots from Star Trek VI; and the holographic borders on Picard’s photos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h06WKYFYdlo
Even though I hated to see 1701D destroyed, I must admit that I enjoyed watching Starfleet Lawn Service in action. :-)
Look, I know I’m taking this way too seriously but Nexus doesn’t make any sense. Sure I can buy into a space phenomenon where fantasies appear real. A sort of giant LSD trip. But everyone would be locked in their own fantasy world. They wouldn’t be able to intrude into anyone elses. Yes, Picard could decide to visit Captain Kirk. But it would be imaginary Captain Kirk in Picard’s fantasy world where Kirk would do whatever Picard wanted him to do. It wouldn’t be the real Captain Kirk even if the real Captain Kirk was also in Nexus. So Picard wouldn’t find Captain Kirk living out Kirk fantasies and go chasing Kirk on one of Kirk’s fantasy horses. How does that work? I suppose you could argue that when someone gets in close proximity to another real person then the other person’s fantasy world takes over. But then what would determine whether Kirk’s or Picard’s fantasy took precedence? And likewise, yes, in Nexus, Picard would be able to travel anywhere in time and space. But it would all be fantasy – not reality. The idea that Nexus could enable him to genuinely go back in time before Soran fires his rocket is nonsense. The reality is that the physical world that existed before Nexus arrived has just been destroyed. We’ve just seen it. So how could Picard, using just force of will, go back in time to a few minutes before Nexus arrived and rewrite history?
@71/Nick: The Nexus isn’t just a place where fantasies become real. Then there’s be no reason to call it the Nexus. A nexus is a link — it’s from the same etymological root as “connection.” It’s called that because it’s a point of connection between all points in time. Its interior is a timeless realm not unlike the interior of the Bajoran wormhole; anyone inside it experiences all times at once, simultaneously. That’s why Kirk had only been there subjectively for a few minutes when Picard found him — because both the 23rd and 24th centuries were simultaneous from inside the Nexus. And that’s why Guinan could be inside and outside the Nexus at the same time — because as soon as she entered it, she existed throughout all times, so the Guinan who was briefly inside the Nexus was forevermore existing simultaneously with the later Guinan who had been rescued from it. Picard didn’t have to go back in time to leave the Nexus, any more than Kirk went forward in time when he entered it. Within the Nexus, every time is “now.”
As for the fantasies, I suppose they were a side effect of the timelessness. If time doesn’t pass, you can relive a moment endlessly, and maybe choose to perceive it any way you want. Or maybe it’s a nexus of all possible timelines as well as times, so you can select whatever version of your past or future you want to experience.
@71: The Nexus can do all those things because that’s how it is defined in the movie. Is there a real Nexus somewhere that is defined in a different way? I feel like you’re trying to impose a set of restrictions on the Nexus that are not called for in the script. The Nexus is introduced here, and is defined exactly as it is portrayed.
Datas emotion chip is a well founded part of tng infact lore and data first come across this in the series not in the films. The chip giving data realiatic human behaviours making brent spinner in his wierd acting way works a treat ashe cannot control his emotions and subsequently it malfunctions causing data to fire on a cloaked ship being prepared to transport and relocate the inhabitants of the planet so starfleet and the outcasts can harvest the metaphasic radiation from there planets orbit. Once it malfunctions and wharf and piccard have used a servo to shut data down it is then deactivated . Later being re activated by the borg queen who knows data strives to be more human so gives him skin and hair and nervs thinking it will persuade him into giving the borg the codes to the computers encryption. Data leading her on into a false sence of security then fights back with piccard evwntually dissolving all of the borg queens organic matter in warp plasma killing it . The plot is a little patchy at times yes indeed i agree butvthe main plotline isnt the relocation of the villages nor the outcasts getting revenge on those who bannished there children. It is about datas sttuggle with emotions. The plot brings to lightvthe emotion chips existance being data has had it for a few years in real terms and we were told very very little about it . Only that lore his brother was made intact and data was left incomplete. The reason being lore was bad from word go . the chip is a major part in tng a plotline left unended and open….leaving fans in the dark about it opemed the doors to makeva film where it plays centre stage. Ppl diss generations alot but its actually pretty good and if u know your trekhistory ud see it completes an open door. The rest of thevplot just helps the story move along some. The director johnathan frakes did an ok job . Having spoken to him on the phone a couple of months ago whilst he was at saltlake comicon i was left feeling it wasnt his first and last trek direction. Cant wait for mr frakes to direct another!
Wow. I just watched this again after seeing it in the theaters so many years ago.
Wow.
I have been doing a rewatch of all of Star Trek. I have been following along with KRAD’s reruns and am most of the way through DS9 when I decided I needed a break and popped in Generations. I wish I hadn’t.
All I can say is that this was the greatest disservice that could ever been done to TNG. All of the wonder, all of the fun of the series was completely replaced with base stereotypes of characters who were given things to do simply because they were in the cast. I was o.k. with Kirk’s death. Except for the horrible blood makeup, it was fitting. Data’s b-plot was just a disservice to the character. The comedy was puerile. Everyone was acting way out of character and I am pretty mad that I chose to rewatch it. I didn’t remember it from when I saw it in the theater which tells me I somehow built up some mental barriers that were never meant to be broken down. Step one: I will not watch anymore TNG movies. Step two: I will go back to my happy little DS9 rewatch and rebuild my shattered dreams.
Wow.
my problem is that after going on wikipedia and looking at the entire star trek timeline from TOS to Voyager, it seems this movie is supposed to be set before the events of TNG. if that’s the case, Geordi isn’t supposed to be chief engineer yet, Data didn’t get the emotion chip yet, Riker and Troy hadn’t been picked up yet. and the borg hadn’t even been talked about yet lol.
those are the things that kinda stood out for me.
@76/Jeff: Uhh, what? Generations is set about 7-8 months after the end of TNG. The last episode of TNG had a stardate of 47988, and GEN’s stardate is 48632, or nearly 2/3 of a year later. That stardate puts it in the latter half of DS9’s third season (sometime after “Heart of Stone”) and midway through VGR’s first season (between the stardates of “Emanations” and “Prime Factors”).
And if you’re referring to this Wikipedia timeline, you need to take another look — it puts TNG in 2364-70 and GEN in 2371.
@77, It always made sense that it took place months after the end of “All Good Things”. It would’ve taken time for the refits to the bridge to be installed, for example.
Yes, gaping plot holes, out-of-character characters, and an underwhelming effort at bringing the two iconic Enterprise captains together for the first and only time. But, to paraphrase Guy Fleegman: I’m just jazzed to be watching the show, man….
36: was Data drinking prune juice? 45: did the prologue ever say the El-Aurian refugees were running from the Borg? 47: we got submarines in space in the Voyager episode Thirty Days, according to Tom Paris anyway. 48: I don’t agree that LaForge never went to Engineering. One of Picard’s kids is Lord Henry Burleigh from Janeway’s holonovel. Both Picard and Soran had lost family and the Nexus could give it back to them, albeit an illusory one.
In regard to Nimoy and Kelley: Nimoy wanted to make a meaningful contribution to the projects he did (he also wanted to direct the movie, which was denied). Kelley was ailing and unable to obtain insurance to work.
SethC: your comment regarding Nimoy is not what my research turned up. They wanted him to direct, but he didn’t want to direct without having a say in the story. Not saying you’re wrong, though what I found strikes me as more in character, given that he had story input in his other two….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s unusual in the feature industry for a director not to have control of the story. If anything, it’s usually the other way around — directors have total control over the script and the writers are treated as little more than contractors hired to write what the director tells them to write.
Christopher: Yeah, but this wasn’t a normal feature, it was something that grew out of a TV show, with the production staff being the folks from the television side, and the people running the TV show were much more in control of it than is normal.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
^Yes, understandable, but still highly atypical.
It wasn’t just that Nimoy wanted to have a say in the story, he thought it was a bad story (He was right) and he wanted to fix it. But the movie was rushed to production and they didn’t have time to go through a series of rewrites with him so he declined.
I first saw this when I was a kid. It’s a good movie, if you don’t stop to think about all the plot holes. The space battle at the end is a cool scene, if you don’t stop to think about how ridiculous it is that the flagship of the Federation is getting outmatched by an obsolete Bird of Prey. The time travel and nexus is cool, if you don’t stop to think about how silly it is that Picard goes back in time 5 minutes before the rocket launch and then gets in a fist fight with Malcolm McDowell.
It’s shot well, acted well, has good music and on the surface has a good story. I don’t think the Data emotion chip plot is bad. But just don’t think about the details too much. I guess it’s easier to do if you first saw it as an impressionable youth.
@86/Tommy: “if you don’t stop to think about how ridiculous it is that the flagship of the Federation is getting outmatched by an obsolete Bird of Prey.”
I don’t think it’s ridiculous. First off, they’d hacked Geordi’s VISOR to get compromising info on the ship’s defenses, so they had an edge. Second, the Galaxy class was built in an era of peacetime (aside from the Cardassian war, which must’ve been a relatively small border dispute or perhaps merely a technical state of war like that between North and South Korea, given that it was essentially invisible during the first two seasons of TNG when it was supposedly still going on), while Klingon BoPs in any era are built for combat.
It’s certainly no more ridiculous than the Enterprise bringing down the Reliant‘s shields with a 5-digit, purely numerical prefix code.
Picard’s ultimate fantasy galled me even as a child, but in retrospect, I resent this movie even more for establishing the precedent of depicting Jean-Luc’s family life as a weird pseudo-Victorian domestic fantasia. Also for establishing the precedents of giving Picard horrific family trauma just to show off Patrick Stewart’s acting talent and adopting a shallow action movie format complete with a cheesy Hollywood villain.
I don’t love the idea of Data’s emotion chip to begin with, nor how thick its results get laid on here — and yes, the whole deal gets majorly walked back in future movies — but, regarding the conversation above, it’s worth noting that just before Spot is found in the wreckage at the end we join a conversation in progress between Troi and Data wherein she asks why he chose not to remove the chip, suggesting that it’s already no longer fused. (He replies that he believes he’s learned to control his feelings rather than being controlled by them, which as expected results in a bemused look from the counselor.)