TNG should have ended with 'All Good Things...' ?

[Qonundrum]

The TOS movies were made to reignite a series that had been canceled after 3 seasons, expanded on worldbuilding and characterization. They made sense.

The TNG movies were really just quick cash-ins on popularity...and frankly, none of them matched up to All Good Things.

They did feel like cast reunion parties where they sometimes forgot to invite the audience in for the fun, though was "fun" the intent of the TNG movies? Q had promised worldbuilding at the end of TNG's "All Good Things..." episode... The only movie that comes close to Q's promise is "Generations"... yet it feels lacking, to the point I even almost prefer the discarded/original version of Kirk's death because it's using tragedy instead. But that only involves the coda of a character, is "The Nexus" as grand and mindboggling as Q alleged? (Not really, the Nexus has more to do with Guinan's people (and the Borg) being well within 23rd century space, leading to more questions instead of the intent to answer them, among other problems.)

All that doesn't mean the other TNG films don't have moments but they don't have the same feel and scale the TOS films had. Then again, "Turnabout Intruder" didn't promise there would be any future adventures either...

 

[at Quark's]

While Generations may not be that great, to me it's the only movie that can be really still be called 'TNG'. Although it has lots of action and lots of flaws too, it also has a substantial amount of scenes dealing with an overarching theme that's more than just 'catching the bad guy'- let's call it 'time is the fire in which we burn' and what we therefore do with the time we're still allowed.

First Contact - Great movie. Zombies in Space. But the TNG feel is gone from it.

The next 2 movies are mediocre at best and have no TNG feel either.

All in all, perhaps it would indeed have been better if All Good Things had been TNG's final chapter.

 

[Armus]

Tng should have ended when the most important character, the Enterprise D, was destroyed in Generations.

 

[tomswift2002]

I'm glad that TNG didn't end with All Good Things. Although it's to bad that with the TNG movies they didn't include more crossovers with DS9 or even Voyager. It would've been interesting to have seen both Worf and Jadzia Dax on the Enterprise-E in First Contact or Worf and O'Brien.

 

[JesterFace]

First Contact - Great movie. Zombies in Space. But the TNG feel is gone from it.

The next 2 movies are mediocre at best and have no TNG feel either.

All in all, perhaps it would indeed have been better if All Good Things had been TNG's final chapter.

This.

It would be interesting to see what people would think about TNG if it didn't have the movies at all.

 

[TroiFan4ever]

Here are my thoughts on it. IMO TNG should've ended after Star Trek: Generations if anything but i'm glad TNG kept continuing after "All Good Things..." Here's the thing, there is "All Good Things..." and then the movie Star Trek: Generations, which i like as a TNG finale a lot! Think about it: the Enterprise crashing into Veridian 3, Picard meets Kirk and they team up to take down a mad-scientist, what more could you ask for in a TNG finale?

I always look at it like the two-hour "All Good Things..." was just to keep Season 7 at 26 and Season 7 was the last in the series to get the viewers to watch their other Star Trek shows but they still wanted to keep TNG going somehow. But Star Trek: Generations actually felt like a TNG finale... in theatrical movie form. I love that after the series, after the series had supposedly ended at "All Good Things..." there was the movie that came right after it... taking place after that episode! It's like the TNG saga never ended! Well, except for Star Trek: Nemesis anyway.

 

[urbandefault]

One thing is a constant through the history of Star Trek: "Fans" are never happy.

Thank goodness the "Fans" don't run the franchise, else it would have been dead long ago.

Not mostly dead.

All dead.

 

[Verteron]

It's interesting, I find that as I've got older, I've ended up liking Generations more, and seeing First Contact for what it is, a Star Trek action film, and a harbinger of what was to come later in the form of Nemesis and the two last Abrahms films.

 

[Uhura's Song]

All Good Things is the most satisfying series finale I have ever watched. Bar none.

Having said that, I am still glad we got the movies, imperfect as they were. With Picard being out of character the main detriment for me. FC is my favorite. I did not have a problem with Insurrection, kind of liked it. Generations is a harder slog but still OK. I didn't loathe Nemesis, interesting idea at least. But it was so poorly received they didn't get a wrap up movie like Undisovered Country.

And while I think the TOS movies are stronger, there were some clunkers. TMP & FF were awful. Voyage Home & Spock were good. Kahn & Undiscovered were fantastic. 2 excellent, 2 good, 2 clunkers.

TNG was 1 excellent (FC), 1 good (Ins), 1 meh (Gen), & 1 clunker (Nemesis).

For me, distribution is pretty close.

 

[Uhura's Song]

BTW, I would take ALL the TNG & TOS movies over the JJ Abrams Trio. If I had to rank the movies, for me:
1) Wrath of Kahn
2) Undiscovered Country
3) First Contact
4) Voyage Home
5) Search for Spock
6) Insurrection
7) Generations
8) Nemesis
9) Motion Picture
10) Final Frontier
11-13) Kelvinverse

 

[STEPhon IT]

There's the question, would it have been better if TNG had ended with 'All Good Things' and there would be no movies after the final episode?

I think AGT wraps up the series perfectly and the movies... don't. These days I don't pay any attention to the TNG movies. (because they are weak IMO)

On the other hand, if there were no TNG movies, we'd be all wondering ”why didn't they do TNG films!?!? TOS had 6...”

The films were utter trash. "First Contact" has too many plot holes to be anything but a farce. I can't believe it was the same crew from the series. Crew members are revealing things from the future and literally joining Cochrane on his pioneering voyage??? The Moon somehow can block Vulcan spaceship sensors so they couldn't detect the ugly Enterprise. The Borg wants to stop humans from warp travel so the Queen has the brilliant idea to go back in time where humans are close to achieving it. The Queen should've traveled after the civil war or when cave men walked the Earth.

The movie doesn't make any sense, and neither does the other two films and I have to include the steaming pile which started the franchise where Kirk falls to his fantasy death from a bridge.

TNG films are like the DS9 series, simply throwing shit at the wall and hoping it'll stick.

I think TNG would've been better off ending with "All Good Things..." because it was a good telefilm, and it put those characters in a good lite, and left them in pretty good shape. Were the characters left in good shape after "Generations"??? Were they left in good shape after "First Contact", after breaking every rule about time travel??? Were they left in good shape after "Insurrection"??? And what about "Nemesis", with Data's anti-climactic death, another Troi rape, and the mentally challenged B-4???

Everything in those films made me wish they never existed. All of those films were dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.

 

[JesterFace]

Everything in those films made me wish they never existed.

Same here...
I don't know does that label me as a "not a tr00 TNG fan" or not but it has been a long time since I watched TNG films, most likely it'll stay that way for a long time.

 

[STEPhon IT]

No. You're a person who appreciated the great work done on Star Trek : The Next Generation. Those films were not a reflection of a great SF series, but a shattered mirror of it. All of the layers developed for these characters were flushed down the toilet. Picard all of sudden is this deranged maniac who hates the Borg, after there was a wonderful resolution to his conflict in the series.

When the Borg attacks, starfleet made the tough decision by leaving their best player on the bench; putting him and the Ugly Enterprise away from action. Something which would be totally ridiculous on the TV series; Picard has been abducted and knows more about the Borg than any other officer and succeeded in defeating them.

Some thinks the JJTrek films were bad??? Take a whiff of TNG films. There are bad films I can bare which were a good case of Nyquil, but TNG films are a bad case of gastric pains. Watching every character contradiction, wretched ship designs, the regular incoherent plots within a series of terrible stories--and these were not fan films like Star Trek Continues, a person who has a sense of taste for good movies would need doses of Zantac, Imodium, and midol combine.

 

[Emperor Norton]

I still hold that the problem with the TNG films was that everything was so static. The TOS films were all about change. Everyone moved on, and just so happened to find there way back together for the film. The films were somewhat catching up on where they had gone and what they had done since the last film. And it was about life changes; you saw the characters age, and go through life, death, aging and fears of aging, promotions, demotions, and the whole gamut in the background to the main story. The TNG films were everyone, for some godforsaken reason, still in the same rank and position for twenty years.

 

[Chuckles]

If they hadn't destroyed the Enterprise D in Generations, First Contact would have been so much better. To see the Borg taking over the ship we have known and loved for 7 years would have been horrifying. Instead it was some new ship that we had no emotional attachment to at all. I would have rather TNG ended with AGT though and just continued in novel form, like they did with TOS in the Pocket books. Random stories of exploration rather than convoluted plots to try and tie all 3 series together and sell more books.

 

[tomswift2002]

I think one thing they could've done better, especially with DS9, was to have had more crossovers, especially during the Dominion War. Like in Insurrection, it was mentioned that the Enterprise-E was acting more as a diplomatic envoy than participating in the war, which really didn't make sense. Why did Starfleet keep sending their 100 year-old Excelsiors and Miranda-class ships up against the Dominion (unless they wanted to deplete their supply before making new Galaxy's, Nebula's and Intrepid's) that couldn't handle the Dominion weapons, and yet their high class Sovereign ships, which were designed for the Borg, are doing behind the lines duties. And Worf's rejoining of the ship, because he was on "vacation", it was kind of like, I realize that he has friends on the Enterprise, but why wasn't taking his vacation on Earth where his foster parent's live? First Contact had the reason that Worf was in command of the Defiant in the battle with the Borg (and obviously Starfleet had called the Defiant to Earth), but they didn't really have anything on DS9 to connect with. There wasn't even a follow up with Worf and the Defiant missing from DS9, or even Worf calling Sisko to say that he wouldn't be back at DS9 for a while due to the Defiant being in drydock at Earth or Mars.

With the TOS movies, especially V & VI, TNG couldn't really connect with them, due to time, however they were still able to reference them, such as Data mentioning the technological failure in Evolution being 79 years earlier, and Spock mentioning in Unification that he was at the Khitomer talks, and even other TNG, DS9 and Voyager episodes mentioning the Khitomer Accords. However with the TNG movies, not having any lasting effects in especially DS9, was a major disconnect with the movies and the TV series. Boy, the simple mention of Betazed falling to the Dominion could've been a major leaping point for a TNG movie showing the Enterprise crew liberating Betazed (which we eventually saw in the novel The Battle Of Betazed), rather than going off on the search for the fountain of youth.