McDowell: Kirk Deserved Better

[AllStarEntprise]

Take Kirk's first death on board the Ent-B and use it for the ENT-D with Kirk saving the ship during a warp core breach. That would've been acceptable. Braga and Moore said they contemplated an epic space battle death for Kirk in the DVD commentary but didn't go with that because it was too "predictable/anticpated". So they over thought the problem and came up with something people wouldn't expect.

[CorporalClegg]

Dream wrote:

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TNG crew also deserved better then being in those big dumb movies (Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis).

You mean to suggest First Contact isn't a "big dumb movie"?

[Dream]

CorporalClegg wrote:

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You mean to suggest First Contact isn't a "big dumb movie"?

I like FC. The other TNG movies can take a hike.

[doubleohfive]

Call me Water.

That thing over me is just a bridge.

[teacake]

The bridge that collapsed on him?

At least we know his return in Prime Treklit has been foreshadowed. I know that's not canon but it is still something to look forward to.

[Trek Survivor]

Dream wrote:

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I like FC. The other TNG movies can take a hike.

Doesn't mean it's not another "big dumb movie".

I like all of the TNG movies, but they're all pretty dumb.

[deep_edward]

It was one of the big problems I had with Generations, along with the destruction of the Enterprise-D, which seemed forced and contrived.

I'm not sure Kirk should've had a heroic death at all. I would've liked it better if he'd lived to be 140 and died a distinguished, retired Starfleet admiral. Picard could've met him on his death bed or something, if they wanted a tie-in between the two captains. Dr. McCoy was still alive at the time of the 1st episode of TNG, after all.

[BillJ]

deep_edward wrote:

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It was one of the big problems I had with Generations, along with the destruction of the Enterprise-D, which seemed forced and contrived.

I'm not sure Kirk should've had a heroic death at all. I would've liked it better if he'd lived to be 140 and died a distinguished, retired Starfleet admiral. Picard could've met him on his death bed or something, if they wanted a tie-in between the two captains. Dr. McCoy was still alive at the time of the 1st episode of TNG, after all.

But then you're just copying Sarek's death from Unification.

[AggieJohn]

That was pretty stupid. Generations became the Crystal Skull of Kirk movies and it did not need to be. Kirk "died" at the end of STVI, going off into the sunset. Leave it be. Did they even need to connect Kirk to Picard? Its not like the TNG sucked and no one liked it. It ran for like 8 years. It was on almost 3 times as long as the TOS. They should have stuck with focusing on their own stories instead of leaching off the TOS characters. That was dumb and it set the tone for the TNG movies which were all bad, with FC being OK.

[StalwartUK]

Pulling off Kirk's death was probably an impossible challenge. There was no way they could've pleased everyone. As I'm sure has been said before Kirk's involvement in the first Generations felt almost unnecessary and seemed more like a crutch. He had already gone out in style in the previous movie. Putting him in in Generations reeked of the studio having a lack of faith in the TNG cast (even though it was one of the most successful TV shows around) and made it seem like they needed members of the original cast for the movie to make its money back.

Generations started off the TNG movie series on a bad footing. Other than First Contact they were wanting at best. Too bad the TNG movies never really played to the strengths of the TV show and instead they attempted to make dumb action pieces.

[deep_edward]

BillJ wrote:

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But then you're just copying Sarek's death from Unification.

Minus the Vulcan Alzheimer's, yes. But I'd take that over what we got.

[BillJ]

deep_edward wrote:

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Minus the Vulcan Alzheimer's, yes. But I'd take that over what we got.

I've been watching Star Trek since I was five in 1975 and he was a childhood hero. He went out saving millions of people.

Good enough for me.

[Sindatur]

Babylon 5 had a very powerful episode testing the Heroes (John and Delenn) and teaching them the possibility and the value of dying alone, with no one knowing you had saved someone versus going out in a blaze of Glory on the Front Page so everyone honored it (Comes The Inquisitor)

[Methos]

yup... and it had...

Jack the Ripper in it as well

M

[Locutus of Bored]

Kirk essentially got to die heroically twice in the same movie (though the first got a do-over), once saving the Enterprise-B and the remaining El-Aurians, and once saving the crashed Enterprise-D crew and hundreds of millions of aliens. I don't see how you can give him a better send-off and have him do something that "makes a difference" more than that without having him be the central character of the film and his journey the central plot.

I liked that they bucked expectations by not having him die on the bridge of his ship (just under a bridge this time - "Trolling message, Spock? None that I am conscious of" ).

Plus, it ties back to what Kirk said in ST:V about how "I always knew I'd die alone." While obviously Picard was there as well, at the time he was off trying to disable the launcher and Kirk was on his own on the bridge. Plus, on the Enterprise-B he left the relative safety of the bridge to go off on his own into deflector control too, thus leading to him getting blown into space.

So you really get the best of both worlds: Kirk dying in space on an Enterprise and Kirk dying on the ground fighting a villain in a rocky desert environment. It's like half the fighting scenarios of TOS.