Did the film need old characters dug up for all that SUS goodness? "Small universe syndrome" helps a franchise not. Soran should have been formidable alone, and him scheming and finding a way to breach the Big-D may have been more compelling. It's bad enough that Soran is inconsistent with both the "villain" and "sympathetic character" tropes, and hiring the bestest biggesty super-dee-duper actor isn't going to improve on that one bit, as only so much can be done to what's in the script, and MacDowell was rather inspired casting. For a wishy-washy role where the deleted scenes actually had the menace and threat to the crew that was desperately needed!!! We see Geordi being tortured as Soran fiddles with the VISOR, and the original demise of Kirk had more dramatic weight, but test audiences hated that, so we got... another joke scene about "captain on the bridge on the captain" the moment Picard gets down there to gawk at Kirk, before "burying" him on a mountaintop by covering him in a bunch of rocks...
Lursa and B'Tor would be known to diehard fans who saw the arc culminating with "Redemption", but given the number of TNG fans, having to explain them to newbies wouldn't have been an issue. What we did get was a line about them trying to reclaim the empire -- with a decades' old ship that's falling apart and with the threat of a trilithium weapon that destroys stars. He gave them the instructions on how to create another and they didn't plot or outright kill him afterward either (thank 1701-D for arriving on cue)... Plus, it's not like the other time when an old character was dug up: In TWOK, nobody had spent 15 minutes regaling us with the events of "Space Seed" to clue in casual moviegoers, either. They knew how to weave in the backstory and summarize the past while keeping to the present. It's really well done.
Besides, the small universe syndrome fun doesn't stop there. The next movie uses the Borg, with DS9 ship designed to fight the Borg that almost gets destroyed, one Queen, and they forgot how to adapt since they send just one cube... and have time travel technology but won't use it until after suffering massive losses in a battle they didn't need to wage... the first 10 minutes are so loaded with needless problems, but before I digress... At least VOY has "Dark Frontier" where they send a massive fleet of - lo and behold -
two cubes to assimilate a species after trashing their 39-ship fleet, and there's nothing presented apart from a one-liner that humanity is any more special, so maybe the next Borg attack will have two cubes, a diamond, a moon, a horseshow, and three lucky clovers...
Really great scene; the lighting, direction, acting, and music just sweeten the pot. Wish the whole movie's story was as consistent, but it sure did look and sound sumptuous...
