Spoiler Ahead!!!!

OK, I watched Star Trek: Generations last night for the first time in a few years. I remember liking the movie quite a bit but one things struck me as odd this time around. Maybe I missed something but I was hoping someone here could help me.

In the beginning of the movie, two character (along with others) are saved from the ship in the Nexus. These characters are Zorin the villian and Whoopi Goldberg's character. They seem to be around the ages of the actors playing them.

Well, the movie jumps some 70 years in the future and Zorin and the Whoopi Goldberg character are still around. Zorin has been trying to get back into the Nexus and Whoopi has ended up as the Enterprise bartender or something.

The problem is that they have not aged at all!!! I would understand if it was just a few years but 70 years!!! Did I miss something or is this just a major plot inconsistency/hole?

That was the only main plot hole I saw. Of course timing the Nexus ribbon trajectory by launching a missile at the sun was a little far fetched but I could suspend disbelief on that one.

I assume you bought the new special edition DVD? Listen to the writer commentary. They don't address your question, but the two writers admit they made a lot of mistakes in the film.


But space ships and lasers are easily swallowable?

This was the "plot hole" you found? Soran and Guinan are El-Aurians. Their lifespan is many centuries (I believe Guinan is over 700 years old during TNG) and they have a unique relationship with the space-time continuum. If you're bothered by Generations, have a look at 'Time's Arrow'.

das

New Techonologies are fine because it is Science Fiction.

But, his idea was to destroy the Star so the removal of its graviational force would change the direction of the Nexus.

Well, turns out he only the destroyed the star minutes before the ribbon arrived so how could the ribbon's trajectory have been changed enough. We don't even know if the removal of the graviational force would have been felt yet. Heck, the shock force had not even arrived yet.

Also, the precision and timing would have needed to be very high because the ribbon was narrow enough to grab Zorin but not the Star Trek: TNG crew which had crash landed not too far away.

I guess its the impossibility of the timing and the disregard of the age difference that I thought was bad

I think the bigger plot hole would be why didn't he just pilot a small ship into the Nexus to begin with? Why destroy a sun and all these other planets? He obviously knew where the ribbon was heading, why not hire a shuttlecraft and fly head on into it?

Because there is nothing "evil" or bad guy-ish about hiring a shuttle.

Because the ship could be destroyed by the spatial disruptions before ever reaching the actual Nexus, and it wouldn't be very effective if he were dead.

Come on. You can do better than this ...

das

OK, then...Spacesuit! Pilot the shuttle close enough, then jump out in a spacesuit. There didn't seem to be any spatial disruptions when he was on the planet.

Thanks for the info about El-Aurians. That is exactly what I was looking for. I figured there was something about the Star Trek Universe that I did not know that answered that issue.

Another plot problem,

If Picard could leave the Nexus at any time, why didn't he leave it when the Enterprise first transported Zorin from the destroyed ship. He could have immediately imprisoned Zorin when he boarded the ship. Picard could have saved 2 start systems this way instead of just the one.

Or, he could have come out a month or two before that and warned he nephew about the possibility of dying in a fire.

Just goes to show you that when you bring time-travel into the plot you better show some restraint or provide a lot of constraints or you can get a mess.

I still think 12 Monkeys is the best Time Travel movie there is. Of course I believe you can only go forward in time. This going back in time is nonsense. If it was possible, people from the future would be back here now improving our life.

Bah. Everyone is still in the nexus to begin with. Every movie after Generations doesn't really happen.

Same problem. Getting a shuttle "close enough" is dangerous, because any number of things could destroy it before "close enough" status was reached, but let's say it happened anyway, and he jumped out in a spacesuit. He's not massive enough to avoid disruptions caused by the outer regions of the Nexus. He could easily be catapulted off into space. That's no fun.

The planet wasn't affected because it was a massive body, unlike a shuttle or spacesuit.

das

Futz around in the timeline for personal gain? That's Janeway's job. Picard picked the least intrusive moment to cause the least damage to the timeline.

das

I don't think that saving an entire star system (the first one) would be personal gain.

Let's examine this even more. I have a question about this Nexus. When the individual leaves the Nexus like in the case of Picard, is he as old as when he went in? I guess that is true based on what happened to Kirk. So could Picard have left the Nexus to a time when he was a child and watched himself grow up? or would he have reverted to that age and been able to relive his life with all the knowledge of his many years as a captain aboard the enterprise?

Listen, I love Star Trek, and I really enjoyed this movie. I think the plot devices they used (time travel, star systems blowing up) really gave the movie an epic feel that I much liked. I am just stating that you need to be careful with time-travel because it opens up a can or worms and forces the audience to suspend disbelief.

But then again, I love time-travel movies so go figure.

Time travel is a terrible plot device used as a crutch by weak writers. I won't disagree with you there. I'm just pointing out the "logic" behind the choices made in this particular film.

das

The following was an actual conversation between myself and Brannon Braga.

Brannon: So what did you think about Generations?
Me: Truthfully? It sucked. They're still in the nexus.
Brannon: Fuck you. But you're right.

I said that when the movie was first released theatrically and my friends said I was crazy. How can that be when from what we learn throughout the movie the only way out of the Nexus is to be pulled out of it (like what happened with the crew at the beginning of the movie)? The Nexus takes you to what you want to see and experience. Not reality.

Frankly, the crew is dead and Picard in the Nexus. You see them get blowed up good when he's taken by the ribbon.

You can leave the Nexus willingly; people just don't choose to, because it kicks ass and stuff. Picard chose to. Of course, a part of him is still there -- an echo -- or some bullshit, I guess.

das

I think he never left and is actually still there, living out his days as captain of the Enterprise, because that is, in reality, his ideal nexus existence.

I would like to see an "elseworlds" or "what if" type story told where Picard actually never came out of the Nexus and is in fact still there (and will stay there because nobody else can figure it out, or is trying to) and the Enterprise remains destroyed. What effect would it have had on the Dominion War? Perhaps Picard's evil clone would have claimed to be Picard from the Nexus and taken over Starfleet Command?

Now wait a minute.. Picard is in a nexus of the nexus. End of story. Everyone else is dead.

I'm doing my best to ignore that Generations actually happened. It's my own personal Nexus existence.

I believe you mean "gravimetric distortions".

All of these other nitpicks I can deal with. The biggest plot hole in Generations, IMO, is the opening scene. A bottle of Dom Perignon floating in space would not only be frozen solid, but it would have popped its cork due to the extreme pressure difference.

1. Alex the Droog could've put on a space suit, and then beamed himself directly into the Nexus. Unless there was Positronized Gravometric interference that would've unstabilized the transporter's compression matrix.

2. I also don't see why couldn't have just flown a small shuttle into it, instead of trying to destroy a sun or ram Captain Cameron's Enterprise into it.

3. How do you destroy a sun with a single missile? Even if that tinyu missile wasn't destroyed before it reached the sun, I'm sure that whatever it did to the sun that destroyed it would take more than the couple of seconds we saw in the movie. Never mind that it would take about nine minutes to even know something happened to the sun from the planet's surface.

4. If the Nexus exists outside of our time as was shown in the movie, then Kirk, Picard, and Guinan are still in it, aren't they?

5. And Picard picked a shit time for he and Kirk to come out of it, didn't he? And shouldn't there have been two Picards there, anyway? If he went back in time before he went into the Nexus, he should've been there already. And then we'd have two Picards running around because they prevented the Nexus from destroying the planet, so the original Picard wouldn't have had anywhere to go.

Or maybe Berman and Braga are just dipshits.

Ding ding ding!

Well, you'd have to include Ronald D. Moore, too.