Was moving 'The Next Generation' over to movies a bad decision?

[Lance]

I'll throw another theoretical hand-grenade out there: one of the things which arguably sinks the TNG movies like a stone (floatational Data optional!) is that they're all stand-alones. Look at the TOS movies, and every one of them from TWOK through to TVH (and possibly even TFF and TUC, thematically) are telling what we'd now call a 'story arc'. Each movie builds on the ending of the previous one, the story develops and the Trek universe feels much larger as a result. It's theatrical story-telling for theatrical movies.

Contrast this to TNG, where every movie stands alone in and of itself, with (probably) the only link being Riker and Troi shagging in Insurrection leading to them getting married in Nemesis. The reason we so often hear the TNG movies being described as "double-sized TV episodes on the big screen" is because, limited as they are to self-contained plots, they feel like they've been written for television. First Contact being the one exception.

[USS Firefly]

And the movies looked small, for example the old movies had a big Starbase from where the Enterprise left, I would have loved to see the Enterprise E leaving the Starbase.
Or more Space ships

[Dream]

The TNG movies already had a noose around their necks when they started. The studios insisted on blowing up the Enterprise-D and killing Kirk in Generations, both really pissed off fans.

[Peach Wookiee]

I think if the second had been done right, the first wouldn't have mattered so much.

[C.E. Evans]

I was more upset about loss of the Enterprise-D than Kirk. I think it was because for a long time, I thought really only McCoy and Spock were the only members of the TOS gang still alive during TNG (with Scotty added after "Relics").

I guess in hindsight, Generations bought back someone I already thought was dead and killed him twice in the same story.

[Dream]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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I was more upset about loss of the Enterprise-D than Kirk. I think it was because for a long time, I thought really only McCoy and Spock were the only members of the TOS gang still alive during TNG (with Scotty added after "Relics").

A big problem I had was that blowing up the Enterprise-D and killing Kirk in Generations invalidated two of the best entries in Trek, TUC and "All Good Things".

Many people expected TUC to be the last time we saw Kirk and the Enterprise-D would have much more adventures, but we were in for a rude awakening!

[Lance]

I think Kirk's death has got dramatic potential if done properly. Like it was at the start of "Generations". For me the problem with the movie isn't that they killed James T. Kirk... it's that they killed him twice, but the fake first death at the start of the movie was better that the real second one.

[DalekJim]

Generations is the most half-arsed effort of the movie franchise. Kirk's death is rushed, pointless and unmemorable which is everything it shouldn't have been.

First Contact is a fun shoot 'em up, Insurrection is really underrated and Nemesis is really no dumber than Trek 2009. It just doesn't feel as fresh.

[Trek Survivor]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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I was more upset about loss of the Enterprise-D than Kirk.

Most definitely "same". Extremely disappointed they went this route. If they wanted it lighted/framed differently, the ship could've just had a refit. Look how much the "original" Enterprise changed from season 3 of TOS to TMP.

When I think of Star Trek III, and the sacrifice of the Enterprise, it sends shivers down my spine. When I think of "Generations" and the Ent-D crashing into a planet, I just don't get the same reaction.

And as a TNG fan above all other Treks, I really should.

[Allyn Gibson]

Trek Survivor wrote:

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Most definitely "same". Extremely disappointed they went this route. If they wanted it lighted/framed differently, the ship could've just had a refit. Look how much the "original" Enterprise changed from season 3 of TOS to TMP.

There were two reasons the Enterprise-D was destroyed.

The first was that Ron Moore had wanted to do it in season six (specifically, he wanted to crash the saucer into a planet), but they couldn't do it on a television budget. When Berman took ideas from Moore and Braga, that was one of the ideas they pulled out since they could do it properly on a movie's budget.

The second was that the Enterprise-D filming model wasn't up to snuff for film. The ILM model was low on detail (the smaller 4-foot model had a more detailed surface than ILM's 6-foot model) and there weren't many good camera angles for it. The idea from an FX standpoint was that they could replace the model with something better suited to film in terms of resolution and usable angles. (That's roughly the same reason the Excelsior was built. Andy Probert's design for the Enterprise was fantastic, but the model didn't work well with ILM's equipment.)

[Andymator]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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There were two reasons the Enterprise-D was destroyed.

The first was that Ron Moore had wanted to do it in season six (specifically, he wanted to crash the saucer into a planet), but they couldn't do it on a television budget. When Berman took ideas from Moore and Braga, that was one of the ideas they pulled out since they could do it properly on a movie's budget.

The second was that the Enterprise-D filming model wasn't up to snuff for film. The ILM model was low on detail (the smaller 4-foot model had a more detailed surface than ILM's 6-foot model) and there weren't many good camera angles for it. The idea from an FX standpoint was that they could replace the model with something better suited to film in terms of resolution and usable angles. (That's roughly the same reason the Excelsior was built. Andy Probert's design for the Enterprise was fantastic, but the model didn't work well with ILM's equipment.)

Where did you hear any of that? The 6 foot Enterprise D model was wayyyyyyy more detailed than the 4 foot. And there is no way the Excelsior was built because the Enterprise Refit was impractical...

[Allyn Gibson]

All of that was documented in Cinefantastique and other publications at the time.

The only advantage the 6-foot Enterprise-D model had was that it was capable of the saucer separation.

And ILM's Bill George would disagree with you that the Enterprise refit was an impractical filming model.

[Andymator]

The 6 foot Enterprise D has the scale to include incredibly subtle and complex details the 4 footer didn't have, hence why they used it for Generations instead of the 4 foot model. The problem they had was with the sets, not the ship miniature.

I'm sure the Refit Enterprise was an incredibly complex model, that's inevitable when you want to achieve the level of craft they were going for. What I said was that there was no way that the Excelsior was built because of that...

[Allyn Gibson]

They needed to use the 6-foot for Generations because of the saucer separation, even though it looked more unfinished than the 4-foot model. The 6-foot model had a smooth, unfinished surface, while the 4-foot model had a textured surface that depicted the detail the actual ship would have had.

The Excelsior was easier to work with because it was built to ILM's specifications. Even the Reliant model was easier for ILM to work with than the Enterprise model. The Enterprise model had two problems. It was too big for ILM's motion rig and didn't mate well to it. Plus, it had interior lighting that ILM found difficult to work with. ILM never expected to work with the refit Enterprise model again after Star Trek III; to their chagrin, they had to get it out of storage and clean it up for Star Trek IV.

[Newspaper Taxi]

I think that one major difference between TOS and TNG was that TOS was squarely built on the backs of Kirk, McCoy, and Spock. Occasionally when they needed somebody else they'd get one of the other minor characters to talk or do something. Uhuru opened hailing channels and Chekov was the Russian guy.

TNG, on the other hand, was an ensemble show, with Picard at the center of the character relationships. And unlike Voyager, where we were told that the crew was a familly, they really felt like a familly in TNG. The last time we see them in All Good Things is sitting around a table playing a friendly game of poker. I never really believed I saw this chemistry in the movies. They were all stiff and distant from each other.

But when the movies came around, they decided that the 'magic' of TNG was the intereactions between Picard and Data. Yes, yes, the Picard and Data show. I understand that you can only focus on so many characters in the span of a movie, but they could have said, "Okay, let's give Troi and Geordi a bigger part in this one," and then in the next one have Worf or Riker close to the top. That way it wouldn't be the Picard and Data show, it would be the TNG Ensemble, where the various characters have relationships between each other. (Freindly; cordial, lovers, whatever.)

Maybe the polling and testing audiences weren't famillar with who Troi and Riker and LeVar Burton were, but if they wrote a decent enough script they could inspire people to care about them.