TGM

not sure I want that. then it becomes all about Q, or at least that's what the audience, including myself, would want.

although eventually, perhaps a S2 having him back... would love a scene where he shows up looking just as young as the last time we saw him thanks to CG, but upon seeing Picard now he morphs his image to Delancey's current age, perhaps to mock Picard, or perhaps just to remain somewhat of a "contemporary". That'd be great.

milo bloom

Simply put, Star Trek is not a movie franchise. The fact that any of the TOS (and some of the TNG movies) did any good at all is a fluke to be perfectly honest.

But if we want to talk about what went wrong with the TNG movies, the Stewart and Spiner influence is definitely an issue. There's a book called Fade In... by Michael Piller, it's not officially published but his family encourages people to "look for it elsewhere" because Paramount doesn't like what it says. It talks about everything that went wrong with Insurrection and it's Stewart and Spiner being prima donnas for the whole time.

As for Nemesis, it should have been Lore instead of B4 and the Romulans should have been the ones from the series including Sela.

And count me as another fan of Generations. It's an interesting concept and Shatner is clearly having fun, but they absolutely rushed it and should have waited a couple of years.

But to be really honest, TNG should have just done a few more seasons and not done any movies.

The only TNG era movie that should have been done was VOY's Endgame, including all the crew reuniting with their families.

Mike86

I can see that with Spiner. Stewart seems like a pretty easy going and humble guy who doesn’t make things all about himself so I’m inclined to be skeptical how true that is.

TheMovieman

As flawed as the storytelling was, I also really liked Generations... I'd rank it in the upper half amongst all of the Star Trek movies. Of course, I'm also not all that offended by Star Trek '09 or even Star Trek Beyond.

Mike86

Star Trek: Beyond is the best of the new Trek films in my opinion. I don’t dislike the new films but they’re their own thing and not really traditional Star Trek.

Traxan

First Contact worked because they dispensed with The Roddenberry Box and really allowed Picard to shine in a new way. In the first 10 minutes of the movie he blows off orders from Star Fleet. TV Picard would never do that. That confrontation with Worf would be unimaginable while Gene was around.

And James Cromwell owned that movie. The sainted Zefraim Cochrane, a drunken lout. Just beautiful.The scene where he got Deanna drunk and Riker came in to attempt to talk to her was utterly hilarious.

The real question is what went wrong with Frakes. He directed Insurrection and that horrible Thunderbirds movie. Talk about starting at the top and working your way down.

My greatest hope remains a fruitless one: A DS9 movie. Cast Shemar Moore as Sisko, Tom Ellis as Bashir, who knows as Kira, and make it happen. But after that awful DS9 documentary I don't want Ira anywhere near it.

bunkaroo

I absolutely love Generations - it’s what got me into TNG. I never had any affinity for TOS so I didn’t give a rat’s ass how they handled Kirk. It’s Picard’s story and I love the melancholy of it. I think it would have been much more well received if it didn’t have the burden of being the one Kirk died in.

brayzie

The TOS films felt like a bigger deal because there was a big jump from the 60s to the later 70s/early 80s with regards to technology, special effects, makeup, and uniforms.
I wasn’t even s fan of TOS but the films always had this grandeur to them. It was a great novelty to see actors in brown face to now seeing Klingon warriors. Seeing Kirk on Earth and the federation headquarters was epic.

Now for the TNG films they didn’t look any different from the TV counterparts. Plus, the season finales and two-parters in the show had a much more epic feel than the actual films. Compare the Locutus storyline with First Contact. The former felt like end-of-the-galaxy shit. The latter felt like a forced, cliched action film. They even changed the creepy non-individuality of the Borg to merely workers for a Queen. And nothing could beat the series finale in terms of scale.

Mike86

Yeah, TNG had a great finale that was hard to top. On the other hand TOS didn’t have a great finale (I think most would agree that the third season is overall pretty weak compared to the first two). I think the TOS movies benefited from having a ten year break between the end of the series and the first film.

Josh-da-man

First Contact is really the only TNG film that feels like an actual film and not an overwrought tv episode.

Even then, I have reservations about it: Another time travel story (Jeezus, this isn't Doctor Who, people!), Zefram Cochrane was horribly miscast (Tom Hanks, who was rumored for the part, would have killed it). Nothing against James Cromwell, but he was the wrong person for the part -- too old, too humorless and curmudgeonly.

milo bloom

I think that's been a pretty well accepted theory for a while now. The TOS movies had a lot of passion behind them because the cast only had three seasons (plus the animated series) and also the jump in tech.

The TNG movies were simply punching a clock. They thought they could replicate the magic of the TOS movies but as good as Stewart and Spiner (and Dorn, to a degree ) were on the show, they didn't have the charisma of Shatner and Nimoy. I mean, Kirk and Spock slash fiction basically launched fan fiction (and shipping) into the mainstream.

And I really recommend that book Fade In.., it's eye opening.

brayzie

I disliked how they tried to make Picard and Data the new Kirk and Spock. I never got the sense that Picard and Data were bffs on the show. Picard seemed to be close to everyone on the bridge.
As far as most cinematic and epic, I actually thought Generations felt that way.

First Contact felt like they were trying too hard to make it action-y and it showed. Also, I didn't really believe that this was Earth in our future/TNG's past. From what I remember it looked like they were on a sound stage with some random people camping out. The most memorable thing for me was when Picard was going Captain Ahab and called Worf a coward, and Worf's response. That was some good acting and a great scene. It makes sense that Picard would want to make a stand and not sacrifice the Enterprise. But wasn't this a new Enterprise? It would have made more sense and been more meaningful if he was trying to save the same ship from the TV series. But they already trashed it in FC. These things are apparently always getting destroyed and new ones made.

Mike86

Funny, because one of the knocks against Generations often is that it looks like a tv show trying to be a movie in terms of the sets and lighting and whatnot.

The Earth scenes in First Contact are basically all in like a forest/wooded area. I could semi-buy it because they weren’t way far into the future. The year is 2063. Kind of like that they went with that rather than a completely unrealistic future setting. The most futuristic parts we see are Cochrane’s warp drive test ship that’s basically in a silo.

milo bloom

That's kinda the thing, he had just lost one ship and didn't want to lose another one so soon. He was just getting attached to it, and may have received a royal dressing down from Starfleet about losing the -D and told to take better care of his new one.

Mike86

In terms of TNG which ship do people like more? I assume most would say the D since it had a longer history. The E is cool looking but I definitely think I like the Galaxy Class design over the Sovereign Class. The Galaxy design is knocked for being more of a luxury cruiser not well equipped for battle, whereas the E is basically the opposite and looks more militaristic and is far more combat ready.

Josh-da-man

Cochrane was out in the middle of nowhere because that's where the missile silos are/were.

Growing up in the midwest in the 1980s, there were missile silos out in the middle of wheat fields. I'm not sure if there were any in mountainous/wooded areas like were depicted in First Contact, but the filmmakers might have gone with the forest because it's more visually interesting than a flat grassland.

brayzie

But wasn't it Stewart that asked to be written as more of a bad ass with action scenes and playing up the ladies man angle, like we saw in Insurrection?


That whole thing felt rushed in that opening. I would think that by now Star Fleet would have faith in Picard rather than the cliche of forcing the cop who knows everything about the killer to stay off the case. It felt contrived to make Picard more like a rule breaking Kirk.

The confrontation with Worf was great though, and I could see it happening under certain circumstances on the show as well.

I think they should have expanded on what was going on with DS9 and incorporate it into the TNG movies. DS9 started to feel more epic than the TNG movies. In TNG they fight the Borg again but it's boring, and then...they go against some Cocoon senior citizen aliens...and some random Romulans/Remans. While in DS9 Earth and the whole quadrant is going to be invaded by shapeshifters, the Federation is hanging by a thread, the Romulans are teaming up with the Federations enemies...It turned out to be a great show.

I like the TV show one best. The military one felt too much like a battleship. I like the idea that they are explorers who sometimes happen to find themselves in war-like situations. When they have uniforms and ships that look more like military, it feels more like some run-of-the-mill action Sci-Fi instead of speculative fiction.

tanman

If you think it was all about saving the ship you missed/don't remember the whole point of that scene.

tanman

I know it's a cop out but I like both for those reasons you stated. The Enterprise D worked well for a TV show since it felt more like a city and the Enterprise E worked for the movies since they were more action oriented.

brayzie

I know what it was about. But at first it’s played like he wants to save the ship, and the audience is supposed to go along with that until we get his big speech and we go “ohh, I see...”
but first thing I thought was “why does he care so much about Enterprise 2.0? Aren’t these things getting destroyed and new ones built all the time in the movie-verse?”
And we get a 3rd Enterprise in the third film. Makes the destruction of the Enterprise seem like nothing.

Mike86

The Enterprise E doesn’t get destroyed in First Contact. It gets pretty messed up, but I’m pretty sure it’s just repaired. I think it might be beyond saving by the end of Nemesis though.

Jay G.

The writers were following a mandate from the studio that the original crew only appear in the opening, although Kirk could come back at the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_T...ns#Development
The writers clearly wrote the script to match the story elements the studio wanted. The issue is that a lot of them feel forced, because they didn't come to them organically. They needed a way to separate Kirk from the original crew, and bring him and only him into the future. The Nexus allowed them to do that. However, once they had him there, they didn't really have anything for him to do except be extra muscle in the fight with Soran. From a plot standpoint, he played a role any random ensign could've filled. Kirk needed to be brought back to do something only Kirk could do, like having some special knowledge about the sitation and/or enemy, or thinking his way out of an impossible situation.

Around the time of Generations, a Star Trek novel called Federation came out that tells a far better crossover story.


Now, it couldn't have been adapted as-is, largely because the TOS part of the story is set in between episodes of the original TV series. Also, as it was written before First Contact, it tells a very different history of Zefram Cochrane. But it has at its core a better story, with both crews in their own time trying to solve the same problem up until the moment when, due to extraordinary circumstances, the two ships meet..

tanman

I thought the way they brought back Scotty was much better. And that way he could interact with the new ship and crew and have a lot of little moments. Kirk was just in his fantasy realm and then on the planet and only interacted with Picard. It wasn't a great send off. Spock in the Kelvin timeline was much better done too. Actually now that I think about it everytime they did brought someone back or visited a previous timeline was better done then in generations; the trouble with tribbles episode etc.

Shannon Nutt

The biggest problem with most (not all, obviously) Star Trek movies post 1982's The Wrath of Khan is that they kept trying to capture the feel of The Wrath of Khan. The Voyage Home worked so well because there IS no "bad guy" in that movie. Most of the others try to feature some "big bad" that never lived up to Ricardo Montalban's performance (how could it?!).

As for the TNG movies specifically, they seemed to always be trying to copy stuff from TOS movies:

Blowing up the Enterprise (Generations); killing off a beloved character (Nemesis); etc.

Jay G.

Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI came close. That was a good movie too that came close to the tone of Wrath of Khan, likely because it was the same director.

First Contact also did the "Khan" thing somewhat by bringing in a notable villain from the TV series: The Borg. It made the conflict personal, since Picard had a notable history with them, which is something the writers could build on and the audience could sense, even if they didn't see the TV show. It's more difficult to introduce a new villain in the movies, and you can't fake a history since the TV shows preceded the movies. It's what made Star Trek VI work, since while Kirk didn't have a history with Christopher Plummer's character specifically, he did have a history with Klingons going back to the show.