The one time we were lucky enough to get two eras of Star Trek on the big screen together, but I feel it was all a bit of an anti-climax. I know Nimoy turned down the chance to appear, due to the role being a trivial cameo at the start. I think it would have been better if they worked a way for Nimoy and Doohan to be in the film later on in the 23rd century, maybe they could have done a deal where the TNG crew are battling with Soran and goons on the planet, and Spock, Kirk and Scotty use the Ent-D to battle the bird of Prey. Obviously it'd have to be better thought out than that, but I think there are a ton of better options than what they went with.
I would have ditched the whole concept of the Nexus altogether and just have it be a situation where the villain was a long-lived baddie that caused trouble for Kirk and his crew during the first half of the movie and then returned to finish what he started in the second half nearly a century later, running into Picard and his crew at that time. It definitely would have been a half-and-half movie divided between the 23rd-Century and the 24th-Century. Yeah, there probably wouldn't have been a direct meeting between Kirk and Picard that way, but there would have been a scene in which Picard is accessing Kirk's report on the baddie on the holodeck. So we'd still finally see the two captains together in the 24th-Century, but via an interactive holodeck program in which the Kirk hologram talks to Picard the way the real Kirk would. Other stuff I'd done: We still would have seen the launch of the Enterprise-B, but with Spock and more of the TOS cast aboard (don't know if DeForest Kelley would have returned since he was apparently happy with how things ended in Star Trek VI). Rather than destroy the Enterprise-D, she would have been severely damaged in battle, perhaps even losing an entire nacelle and a big chunk of her saucer section. That would ultimately pave the way for an upgraded and redesigned version of the ship for Star Trek VIII (like how the original Enterprise was for Star Trek I). We would still see the Duras sisters as the main baddie's minions.
I think Ron Moore had it right in his recent commentary - 'Yesterday's Enterprise' should have been the film, with Kirk making the ultimate sacrifice and taking the Enterprise-A back to their deaths to save the future.
Yeah I always thought that Generations should have ended with Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise-A going down with the ship in order to save the Enterprise-D.
The problem is that in the first feature film of the TNG crew, it wouldn't have been the TNG crew at all.
So just say Kirk was the only familiar face on the Enterprise-A, commanding one last training exercise or something. Then you get to focus on him in the Castillo role, interacting with our people. Obviously to expand to a feature film, you'd have to add a whole new subplot, probably with the evil enemy commander. It needn't be Klingons or an altered timeline of course.
Minus Spock; McCoy and Scotty of course..something lime that would have worked much better..of course that would have meant meeting an alt-picard instead of the real one
Well, that and he thought the script was crap and turned down being the director as well. What TNG needed for its first big screen outing was the be a TNG movie. Kirk and the ENT B crap should have been dropped from the story altogether and the focus should have been on Picard's story. If TNG wasn't ready to be on the big screen without help from Kirk and the original crew, then TNG wasn't ready for the big screen at all.
Its a tricky concept in general because any true crossover film with both casts of TNG and TOS would feel a bit bloated especially with a villain involved. If it had to be done, I always figured the Guardian of Forever could have been in a decent way to bridge the two eras, both thematically and in the actual story.
That would have been awesome! But that would mean we wouldn't have seen the Enterprise C, which I love. I gotta say, it would have been a great way to have some of the TOS crew meet the TNG crew, and a far better death for Kirk. And I would have very much enjoyed seeing a big screen version of the alt Enterprise D and alt uniforms!
The original plan was for Spock & McCoy. If Nimoy had agreed it is most likely Kelley would have as well. In Nimoy's autobiography he said they discussed it on the phone and they both agreed that they had good ending in movie 6. Nimoy also didn't like the role he was given in the movie. He was always very concerned with what Spock was doing and I say good for him. He obviously cared about his character. But I do think Kelley would have done it if Nimoy had agreed. Although I also read that Kelley was ill at the time. But I haven't seen anything official to confirm that. I have not seen the movie and I don't think I really care to see Kirk's death but if Spock & McCoy had been it I would have been more interested, I love the trio. I do like Scotty & Chekov too of course but it just isn't the same for me.
I thought I had heard that Kelly did want the role, but due to his health it was too big of a liability for the production, so they cut his role.
I heard this too but I have not seen an official source so until I do I consider it just a rumor. The movie came out in 1994 so this had to have been before Kelley had Cancer. The dates don't match up. He might have had another illness at the time but again this is just a guess, nothing official. The stuff about Nimoy discussing it with Kelley over the phone and they both agreeing that it was not good for their characters is in I am Spock which I do consider an official source.
I bet he would have done the cameo if he'd agreed to direct, but since the changes he wanted to make to the script were vetoed by the studio due to time constraints, that was never going to work. It would be interesting to know what kind of changes he would have made. I'm willing to bet it would have been a much better film with his input. He's right about the way "Spock" is written in Generations. Scotty and Chekov get some truly awful dialogue; Scotty especially is teching the tech in true late-TNG fashion. It's painful to watch. Imagine if they'd make Nimoy say that crap?
"Brought a tear to my eye," was obviously a line meant for McCoy. They just swapped him for Scotty. Paint-by-numbers scriptwriting. The TNG 24th Century technobabble dialog the writers gave Scotty to say took away the illusion of this being the same crew we just watched in the last six films. Why everyone thought the first TNG film had to be a mixture of both crews has always escaped me. They ended up doing a terrible disservice to both crews.
As is his jokey "Finding retirement a little lonely are we?" He and Kirk were never quite that familiar. Kirk's reply as originally scripted was probably something like, "You know, I'm glad you're a physician. With tact like that, you'd make a lousy psychiatrist." Then there's Scotty's Spock-like "I do have a theory" and Chekov's inquiries about the medical staff and, "You and you, you've just become nurses...", which is so painfully McCoy. Nimoy opined that there was no specific function for Spock in the original draft, and that the writers could have just swapped his and McCoy's lines for any of the other characters without anyone noticing, but I disagree; they did just that, and it's painful.
If I could travel back in time, I'd give Michael Jan Friedman's novel Crossover to Moore and Braga for them to adapt, transplanting the "Kirk dies on the Ent-B" opening into the new script, and tell them to have Kirk show up throughout the film though flashbacks and as a mental image/internal voice advising Scotty, Bones, and Spock. I'd probably have to show them Generations twice first - once on its own and once with their commentary.
The trouble with having Kirk as a holodeck mentor or guide is that Shatner would never have worn it. Yes, Generations was supposed to be a TNG movie not a TOS one, but we already know Shatner's first reaction even to Moore and Braga's script was to tell them that he wasn't gonna do it because "Kirk is not integral to this script". So I can't see him agreeing to be in a movie where Kirk's role was even less integral. Certainly Nimoy bowed out under similar concerns that his role was basically a glorified cameo at the start of the movie (^as others have already said in this thread, this was a missed opportunity by the writers given that TNG itself had already established that Spock was alive and well in the 24th century, so Spock could have been better integrated into the plot!). I still think the idea that the Star Trek movie franchise had to have the torch passed from one generation to another was a phony premise. They should have just hit the ground running with the TNG crew and used Star Trek VII as an opportunity to revitalize the movie franchise. Draw a line under TOS with STVI and reboot with Picard and crew. The mish-mash of needing to incorporate elements of both is one of the reasons the movie doesn't quite work.
I am sure it would have been fun for the fans to have a better crossover between both generations somehow.