enterprisecvn65, you are right on target with that, its one of the most ridiculous scenes in Trekdom. Earlier in the film, Picard actually states "they are trying to figure out how an old Bird of Prey can tackle the Federation flagship"! Even after taking the initial torpedo hits, the Ents weapons were obviously still online, as they were able to fire phasers. If they cut lose with all available phasers and photon torpedoes, the BOP was toast. Its an assinine scene, simply thrown in to crash the Enterprise.
It just stuns me though that, in addition to destroying the Enterprise, the scene manages to destroy everything we had been taught to believe about Will Riker over 7 seasons of TNG. In one scene he goes from the best of what starfleet has to offer, to a guy who immediately panics and basically does nothing except run away in an attempt to survive.....especially when there were so many other options available that the TNG Riker would have used in a second that probably would have won the battle.
Compare this to Kirk in TWOK, setting aside his negligence in raising the shields when Reliant was approaching, once the Reliant attacked he didn't just start freaking out and yelling "Get us out of here".....He's giving orders to Sulu to try and get the shields up, he's calling down to Scott to get a status on how badly they are damaged and if they have enough to fire back, he's assessing the situation with Spock....and so on. He's clearly in shock given a fellow Federation ship just attacked them,but he's not freaking out and, even though he realizes there's not much he can do given how badly the Enterprise was hit, he's still in command and doing all he can to try and save the ship and crew.
I don't know how power Frakes had over his character, but if he did have and say I can't believe he let this scene stand.
Nimoy freaked out when Roddenberry made him wear that silly IDIC necklace in a crass marketing ploy, even though it didn't hurt Spock as a character in the least other than he had this weird necklace on for a few scenes.
In Generations the Enterprise is lost under Riker's command to an inferior opponent and, despite 7 seasons of actions that would suggest the contrary, he's totally incapable of reacting properly and he didn't have a clue on the best course of action to take.......Talk about a character trashing.