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Alternate History in Star Trek Part 18: The Next Generation on the Silver Screen

Well now I want a technothriller where the USS Chesapeake on shakedown is the only ship that can get to Bermuda and does all the scifi navy cliches with actual navy
 
Generations is a film it's easy to be snarky and negative about, but I did try to emphasise the parts I enjoyed as a kid. Still can't quite get over all those surveyed Canadians thinking it was the best though, even in 1995. (I think their order was Generations - The Voyage Home - The Undiscovered Country - The Search for Spock - The Wrath of Khan - The Motion Picture - The Final Frontier. They could only find one quote from someone who liked The Wrath of Khan. Talk about critical dissonance).

I also forgot to mention that when they stuck extra fins on the Excelsior model for the Enterprise-B so they could show the Nexus damage without cutting into it, they then couldn't unstick them afterwards - which is why the Lakota in DS9, and no other Excelsior, has the same fins. They switched to CGI Excelsiors after that.

Also thanks for adding the links Gary, including the one to "Past Tense" which I hadn't thought of adding!
 
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I enjoy Generations despite its flaws. I do think objectively if you were to split the TOS/TNG films evenly into good and bad columns, as fans seem to have wanted to do since there was an even number of them, it stands out as the best of the bad, as it were.

It has a tremendous Sunday Afternoon Value, as most Star Trek films do, but it stands out for Generations perhaps because of the very obvious flaws lowering the stakes.

The score is massively underrated, and it's maybe the score that really sells moments like Picard's crimbo in the Nexus or he and The Kirk suddenly in a cattle opera. They don't hold up to scrutiny once they're not actually happening anymore.

Still, could have been an all-timer if the filmmakers had a pair of balls between them.
 
RyanF said:
I enjoy Generations despite its flaws. I do think objectively if you were to split the TOS/TNG films evenly into good and bad columns, as fans seem to have wanted to do since there was an even number of them, it stands out as the best of the bad, as it were.

It has a tremendous Sunday Afternoon Value, as most Star Trek films do, but it stands out for Generations perhaps because of the very obvious flaws lowering the stakes.

The score is massively underrated, and it's maybe the score that really sells moments like Picard's crimbo in the Nexus or he and The Kirk suddenly in a cattle opera. They don't hold up to scrutiny once they're not actually happening anymore.

Still, could have been an all-timer if the filmmakers had a pair of balls between them.
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The score is indeed excellent. Mind you, I feel Trek films are like Sonic games in that while the quality of the product as a whole is always variable, the music is usually reliably strong regardless.
 
A very insightful analysis all around. I enjoyed Generations a great deal as a kid/early-teen, but as with you it was soon overshadowed by First Contact. "Self-insert Mary Sue" is probably the best description I've heard of the Shatner novels; while part of me still likes the Mirror Universe element(s) in the later ones, the plots and so much else are so cringey to me nowadays that I'm amazed I could enjoy them even back then.

Minor note: I seem to remember the novelization had a passing reference to Robert and possibly Rene being at the "Nexus Xmas dinner"; another element of the existential crisis/"misjudged plot point," perhaps?
 
A well-rounded take on Generations. Even as a kid, the film never sat well with me. It took me years and getting into writing to realize a lot of it had to do with tone and pacing. Seeing it on my most recent viewing a few years back, it occurred to me it’s essentially a TNG two-parter with a TOS prologue added to bring it to feature length screen time. That it was written by two TNG writers, who brought in plot threads from the show a general audience wasn’t going to catch, directed by one of the show’s frequent directors, and scored by one of its resident composers adds to that feeling. The audio commentary on the two-disc DVD release from the writers reveals that the film was written at the same time All Good Things… was, with the writer’s feeling that the latter was the better script and deserved to be a feature film.

Yet, having read the novelization about ten years ago, I will say that it’s a story that comes across far better on paper then on-screen. Even Kirk’s original death reads solidly and makes sense (though, as noted in the Bond thread awhile back, the change of ending late in production meant that hardcover editions have the original ending while the paperback has the revised/released ending). Plus the novelization didn’t have the problem of dealing with budgets and actor’s availability to get the entire TOS main cast in, either!
 
I agree – Generations was a MASSIVE waste of potential. An adaption of either the Federation novel or the Convergence comic would have worked so much better, without crafting one or both of the crews as a bunch of idiots.

One minor point – the Borg Queen makes sense as an enemy character, rather like Baltar (John Colicos) from the original Battlestar Galactica. He’s the recurring face of the enemy, which was rather lacking in the series after the firm; this actually fits in with other Borg encounters (Locutus, Hugh, Lore, Seven of Nine).

Chris
 
Generations is one of the Star Trek films that I will never go back and watch again. I was 25 when it came out, and had thoroughly enjoyed The Undiscovered Country. I was also a massive TNG and DS9 fan, and even managed to get MrsU watching them.

It might be the worst, because Kirk & Picard in one film should be awesome, and it was not
 
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