I just don't think TNG had the right makeup for the big screen. Too big a cast, that was an ensemble plus the fact is simply never was an action-adventure show. Putting it on the big screen was like trying to cram a square peg in a round hole.
Morning, KB! I concur - even the cast felt rushed to the big screen. I remember the articles when TNG wrapped up the series, and no sooner did they yell "CUT!" then Berman started rebuilding the bridge set for "Generations". I recall Patrick Stewart saying they never got a chance to revel; to celebrate the conclusion of the series. The TNG movie franchise was uneven; the closest they came to something cohesive was, I felt, on "First Contact", but "Insurrection" was as close to a core Trek principle. As for the rest... eh? Good fodder for watching on a rainy evening.
Trek was always notable for its world-building. Violations of continuity were kept to a minimum, though all shows require a little bit of tweaking of their internal histories, when they becomes too creatively limiting. What we really didn't have back then was the concept of blatant rebooting, where the audience is expected to notice but be fine with it. We were straightforward enough as viewers to expect that past events in a thing called "Star Trek", or "Bonanza", whatever, would go on being the fictional past, and not be swept away by some new producer's "re-imagining". ------------------ Next Gen had an appearance by McCoy in its first episode. In its second, the events of a TOS story are talked about as history. It was all set about 75 years in TOS's future, from the start. It was in the initial publicity, I think.
But that's what I'm saying -- back then, it wasn't seen as a binary choice between perfect consistency and complete reimagining. Sequels would be loosely consistent with what came before, pretending to be continuations but changing the specifics as needed for the stories they wanted to tell. For instance, Turner Classic Movies has been showing the old Universal and Hammer Films Frankenstein movie series, and you can really see that loose, in-between approach to continuity in them. The sequels refer back to events from earlier films, but change the details of those events quite liberally. For instance, in the first two Universal Frankenstein films, Henry Frankenstein's lab was in an abandoned watchtower far from his family home, and it was burned to the ground in the second. But in the third film, supposedly a direct sequel, the lab was suddenly on the grounds of the Frankenstein estate and merely had a collapsed, dome-shaped roof; plus Bela Lugosi's Ygor was introduced as Frankenstein's assistant from back in the day, even though he hadn't been in either of the first two films. The fourth film picked up directly on the ending of the third, but it changed the geography again so that now the lab was inside the Frankenstein castle. And the castle had a completely different set design and exterior in each film. The Hammer Frankenstein films are even looser with continuity. The third film is a near-reboot that tries to emulate the Universal films more than the first two did, but it still presents itself as a sequel, the return of the monster Victor Frankenstein had created years before, even though the circumstances of that creation are portrayed in a very different way. The fourth film is in some odd side continuity where Frankenstein is able to work openly using his own name and his hands are crippled somehow, but in the fifth, he's using aliases again and his hands are fine. After all, moviegoers and TV viewers in those days didn't have access to the reference books and home video and online sources that we've had in the past few decades. So earlier installments in a series were remembered in broad strokes rather than precise details, and thus film and TV creators could get away with fudging the continuity more than they generally can now. Actually it was said to be 78 years in the future of the TOS movies. Which is pretty much what later chronological references used as their guide; TNG's first season was set in 2364, and the Okuda Chronology put The Voyage Home (the most recent film at the time TNG began) in 2286, 78 years earlier. And Generations explicitly said in an onscreen caption that its TNG portion was 78 years after the launch of the Enterprise-B.
But comics were already into multiple versions of characters existing in different universes, so they could do what they wanted. What is going on now in TV and movies is just an extension of that. I never really had an issue with rebooting properties.
It always confused me that people simultaneously claim that TMP was trying to be 2001 and then turn around and call it a Changeling retread. How can it be both? (And nobody remembers One of Our Planets is Missing). Christopher, I like your analogy to the Frankenstein pics.
Because those comparisons are about two entirely different aspects of the film. The "Changeling" comment is related to the plot -- an old Earth space probe being transformed by aliens into a world-killing super-AI and setting course for Earth with plans to rid it of all life. The 2001 comparison is about its style and tone -- the fact that it was a throwback to the more thoughtful, intellectual, subdued, adult-oriented science fiction films of the '60s and '70s, of which 2001 is an archetypal example, as opposed to being in the more lowbrow, visceral, garish, action-oriented style of genre filmmaking that Star Wars ushered in.
Much like the Abrams reboot in 2008, TMP was foundational in that the movie rebooted the franchise in 1979. The large screen gave atmosphere and depth to an otherwise stalled series.
Yup. Dialogue did say 80 years, but of course people tend to round things off. The caption gave the more exact interval.
I need to watch it again. I remember the card saying 80. I don't know why they'd insist on it staying at 78, anyway. Time passage shown wasn't consistent.
I think it was a kind of payoff. All the commercials for TNG said "SEVENTY EIGHT YEARS AFTER..." Then it was never really mentioned again (since TNG kept a comfortable distance from TOS for the early seasons). So when they really finally bridged the two Generations, they came back with 78. Yes, fans, we remember you. It was kind of sweet, really.
World-building is one of the joys of programs like Trek, the built-up accumulated history that you can live in and imagine in. When something called Trek throws that away, I immediately and completely lose interest.
But a reboot or multi-verse doesn't throw it away. Many Trek fans seem to have very limited thinking in this regard. "Prime" serves as a baseline for comparing and contrasting multiple interpretations by new creators. I love to see the same events or time periods play out in different ways.
I think that different versions/continuities/whatever of a property actually open up a lot of interesting possibilities for new and different world-building. Here's a screencap of that card, 78 years: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=511&pid=55441#top_display_media Kor
Ah! Yes, that was from "Generations". So that would place the start of TNG at -7 years from that stardate.