This I will agree on 100% and is probably one of the biggest factors of the failure of TNG on the big screen.
Star Trek Generations at 20 (November 18, 1994)
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This I will agree on 100% and is probably one of the biggest factors of the failure of TNG on the big screen.
That's a bit of a cop-out, there's plenty of stories to tell with the TNG crew even now. I don't an end to the books or the comic book stories. Vendetta IMO would've made a good TNG movie.
Maybe there was, but the writers at the time were either unable or unwilling to tell them. This combined with the lack of ambition and and money quite simply killed the franchise, at least where TNG is concerned anyway.
As much as I'd love to see it I doubt there's even the will to reimagine TNG post JJ Trek to be honest.
As much as I'd love to see it I doubt there's even the will to reimagine TNG post JJ Trek to be honest.
If you change the whole shield scene to have them taken out with the first volley thus not making Riker look a total twat by failing to re-modulate and give Kirk a little better death reminding everyone he just saved the Enteprise and million of lives (planet in that system) then it goes from a decent to a really good movie.
That saucer crash still looks amazing today
That saucer crash still looks amazing today
Don't remember if anybody had posted this, but here's the VHS documentary bonus feature about the making of Generations:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZxLmPlozE[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgZxLmPlozE[/yt]
Generations was Star Trek cinematography at its apex. Few sci-fi films of the past twenty years have been this pretty to look at.
Too bad it blew most of their budget for a pointless Worf promotion scene that had nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
Worf actually got promoted, though. At least it happened for officers on the 1701-D bridge. We can't say the same for the NX-01 or Voyager.
Poor Travis and Harry.
Poor Travis and Harry.
Yes, but it could have been worse! Moore and Braga could have taken Jeri Taylor's suggestion for opening the TNG portion of the film with the crew having a race where they push eggs around the floor of the holodeck. Thankfully, they didn't.
I thought the sailing ship was fine, because it showed that the name "Enterprise" lives on. It fit with the film's themes -- we start with the launch of one Enterprise, we witness the end of another, and in the middle we see the tradition that the name upholds.
I'm not sure being on "an" Enterprise alone justifies the scene. (What other name of ship would they choose, anyway? OK, Picard may have wanted, Pinafore -- .) The pictures on the rec room wall of TMP E-1701 showed the links to other ships named Enterprise just as well in its own way.
If anything, the scene showed how close and comfortable with each other the bridge crew had become over their time together. I can't imagine Picard behaving that way earlier in his command. But beyond that, it added as little to the plot as Kirk's space-jumping scene showing the state of his life. And that was cut.
All that said, I agree with everyone here who says the film was beautifully shot. Including that opening scene.
I don't agree.
First Contact proved to me that there WERE great stories to tell with these characters.
The problem was that the writers weren't ballsy or risk-takers---they played it safe.
In Treks II-IV, Harve Bennett and his team thoroughly screwed with the Star Trek universe: In three movies, the cast went from heroes to outlaws to heroes, the Enterprise was used, abused, blown up and resurrected. We had action, drama, tragedy, comedy. Treks II-IV were all different from each other in good ways, but they also challenged our characters.
My longstanding memory of the TNG films was that they played it too safe.
I never got the feeling that there was anything terribly exciting or risky taking place.
Generations came close but it stumbled to a close. FC was great, and the series was officially out of gas in Insurrection.
In Nemesis, they tried killing off a character, but by this point, it all had a desperate feel to it and it came off like a cheap TWOK ripoff.
TNG has a record of 1-3, a losing record.
Or the rest of the series for that matter
What.
Don't get me wrong, the idea of the sailing ship Enterprise was cool. The two problems with it however, were that it totally blew the budget, and it revolved around Worf's promotion, which didn't follow up with the events of the movie, and also didn't make a whole lot of sense. Does every Starfleet officer have to perform this type of ceremony when being promoted to Lieutenant Commander?
In retrospect I wish the Duras sisters had been piloting an old D7 or a K't'inga-class battle cruiser against the Enterprise-D. Maybe a small Bird-of-Prey gives some a picture of the underdog exploiting the weaknesses of a far larger and more powerful adversary, but by 1994 the Klingon Bird-of-Prey was no longer the formidable enemy ship it once was and just didn't have all that much of a dangerous look or feel to it.
A lumbering, big battle cruiser closer in size to a Federation starship, though, would have been more menacing, as both TMP and TUC effectively demonstrated.
A lumbering, big battle cruiser closer in size to a Federation starship, though, would have been more menacing, as both TMP and TUC effectively demonstrated.
First Contact was mediocre, but that's just my opinion.
Saying that TNG was running low on gas doesn't mean they couldn't still write some decent stories. It just means it was starting to feel a bit tired; not as edgy or fresh as it used to be. A lot of that was because much of the same people were working behind the scenes IMO.
And I'm not talking about just the movies. Aside from a few great episodes, much of the stories during TNG's 7th season were bland, and less interesting than prior seasons.
TOS in comparison had only been on for 3 seasons. Plus a bunch of time had passed before they starting making the films.
I agree, and I've always looked at it this way: the TOS movies expanded Star Trek's format beyond what it's television instalments could ever have done, they felt appropriately bigger and bolder than anything TOS had done on television. The TNG movies, on the other hand, actually feel smaller than the TV show they're based on. Ironically, The Next Generation as a series had actually taken Star Trek to new places and did really epic things with the universe (a baton which DS9 picked up and then some), but the TNG movies all felt like introspective, internalized adventures. Certainly not in keeping with the medium.
TNG on television had real ambition. TNG on the big screen did not. That seems the wrong way around, somehow.
I agree, and I've always looked at it this way: the TOS movies expanded Star Trek's format beyond what it's television instalments could ever have done, they felt appropriately bigger and bolder than anything TOS had done on television. The TNG movies, on the other hand, actually feel smaller than the TV show they're based on. Ironically, The Next Generation as a series had actually taken Star Trek to new places and did really epic things with the universe (a baton which DS9 picked up and then some), but the TNG movies all felt like introspective, internalized adventures. Certainly not in keeping with the medium.
TNG on television had real ambition. TNG on the big screen did not. That seems the wrong way around, somehow.
Agree 100%. The TNG movies should have at least looked halfway towards the level of polish of JJ Trek, like other movies were starting to in the late 90's. Their lack of ambition and scope meant they just got left behind, in the world of Hollywood that's a mistake, but in the world of sci-fi, it's unforgivable.
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