If anything, the four year gap and the lack of promotion for Nemesis brought the momentum to a halt.
TNG Movies made Too Soon?
- Thread starter Oceanborn_angel
- Start date
I do think they dumped the gun to soon in the first TNG movie. It was only 8 months when the last TNG episode was aired so i feel they should have waited an extra year. I don't hate Generations but i think the story was weak. Nexus made no sense and it was a mistake having Kirk in it. They should have focus on making a good TNG movie and thet should have hired a experienced motion picture director instead of David Carson (with a bigger budget of course). Personally if i had been in charge i would release first TNG movie in Christmas 95, the sequels Christmas 97 and 99 or 00. After 2000 the actors were getting too old for this so TNG trilogy would be ideal plus the fact LOTR was coming out in 2001 to 2003.
I'd just like to add that also inflation must be adjusted because Box Office prices ion the 80's were alot less than in the 90's.
Adjusted for inflation, Generations, First Contact and Insurrection did better worldwide than Undiscovered Country and Final Frontier. Of course the other 4 did better, The Motion Picture being the most successful one.
Adjusted for inflation, not even the new Star Trek movie beats The Motion Picture worldwide.
In my mind it was just to soon mixed with the fact that there was too much Trek out there.
These characters had just finished a 176 episode run, Deep Space Nine was in full swing and Voyager was less than three months from premiering when the TNG cast hit the big screen.
As big a Trek fan as I am... I had a tough time getting fired up for Generations. Might have been more successful if they had waited until Summer of '95 (TNG would've been off more than a year) and delayed Voyager until Fall of '96.
There was no hunger for Trek in general nor Generations in particular. And that in the long run hurt the TNG franchise.
These characters had just finished a 176 episode run, Deep Space Nine was in full swing and Voyager was less than three months from premiering when the TNG cast hit the big screen.
As big a Trek fan as I am... I had a tough time getting fired up for Generations. Might have been more successful if they had waited until Summer of '95 (TNG would've been off more than a year) and delayed Voyager until Fall of '96.
There was no hunger for Trek in general nor Generations in particular. And that in the long run hurt the TNG franchise.
I remember there not being much promotion at all for Nemesis. And the trailers they made for it looked kind of ...lame.
Generations and First Contact I remember being quite big when they came out. Insurrection was the first NG film I was kind of disappointed by. And I was 15 when INS came out.
The four years between INS and Nemesis couldn't have helped.
Generations and First Contact I remember being quite big when they came out. Insurrection was the first NG film I was kind of disappointed by. And I was 15 when INS came out.
The four years between INS and Nemesis couldn't have helped.
Who's to say that had the Trek market not been oversaturated with trek-related spinoffs they might not have been able to pull of an X-Files -- a movie released during the series' run. The first X-Files movie was a hit, and the series continued to be a hit afterwards.
Well, there you have it. Paramount wanted either an 8th season of TNG or a movie cuz the original cast was getting on a bit in the age department. Problem wasn't that the TNG movies came out "too soon", it was because there was already a STAR TREK glut. By the time ST:G came out, there was already six films & four TV series (counting the Animated version) hence, not enough writers with "original" ideas. Not that they were bad, they just had too many oars in the water & everyone was paddling in a different direction. Plus, they were in the process of shooting "Voyager". Although, from a creative standpoint, it probably would have made more sense to wait before shooting the first TNG film. From the standpoint of the age of the actors & Paramounts' greed, it made no sense to wait a little while.
I've ALWAYS maintained that, during the 1990s, there was TOO MUCH "Star Trek" out there. It was nice when there was just TOS, the first six films & TNG on TV. It gave us something to look forward to every couple of years & during the summer TV production hiatus. At the VERY least, if they were going to delay producing ANY of the spin-offs, it should have been DS9...that show was on the air in TNGs 5th season...the first sign of overkill. They should have let TNG run its' course, transition it to motion picture format, THEN started DS9. Greed is NOT good...at least in this case.
I didn't mind the Trek overload in the mid-90s at all, coz I was a teenager just starting to get into Trek back then. There was so much stuff out there to get into. I wasn't daunted, but excited by it. It's like a novice being handed a Beatles mix tape, and then discovering there's a ton of other material already out there to explore.
If there was TOO MUCH Star Trek, why were the ratings at their peak at that time? Star Trek started to die when there was only one single show left and no movies planned. It was the strongest when 2 TV shows and one movie came out at the same time.
Star Trek didn't start to die because of Enterprise. Star Trek were at there peak in early nineties. I agree, mainly because of TNG popularity, however Star Trek ratings started to decline right after second season of DS9. This trend was also apparent in VOY. Both DS9 and VOY witness gradual decline in ratings until it ended. When Enterprise aired, VOY and DS9 had lost majority of their viewers. Enterprise just picked up the same trend. It just had fewer fanbase when it aired compare to DS9 and VOY.
Conclusion There were defiantly too much Trek plus the fact Star Trek really needed a fresh blood when VOY ended.
Conclusion There were defiantly too much Trek plus the fact Star Trek really needed a fresh blood when VOY ended.
TNG too soon? If anything, the movies were made too late. Trek's popularity peaked around 1996 or so, and if they had pushed forward Star Trek: Generations instead of a seventh season none of the writers really wanted to do, they might have been able to push the next two films to more success.
From a purely business point of view.
Creatively, it would have been nice to see the scripts of all the films (save First Contact, which turned out rather well) polished, or completely re-written, rather than have them pushed into production before they were ready.
From a purely business point of view.
Creatively, it would have been nice to see the scripts of all the films (save First Contact, which turned out rather well) polished, or completely re-written, rather than have them pushed into production before they were ready.
This is incorrect.
The ratings for DS9 remained steady until TNG went off the air, then the ratings dropped steadily. Voyager premiered in January, following the release of "Generations." The pilot rating was high, but the ratings dropped significantly for the following episode, then continued dropping at a steady pace all through the series' run, just as with DS9.
Basically the rating dropped the second TNG went off the air in 1994. Someone recently posted a chart that shows the ratings for all the Trek spinoffs, and you can see all Trek spinoff ratings across the board dropping downward just as TNG's line ends.
That doesn't mean that there was too much Star Trek around, it only means that it wasn't TNG.
The problem is.... They weren't going to say lets end this thing and do movies ten years later. Thats not how holywood works.
You strike while the iron is hot. One of the key reasons for ending TNG was to bring the TNG actors to the big screen. So they could replace the TOS movie franchise, which had been hugely successful. The plan was always to do TNG movies asap.
TOS movies we're planned to long after the orginal series was cancelled. So there situation was different.
You strike while the iron is hot. One of the key reasons for ending TNG was to bring the TNG actors to the big screen. So they could replace the TOS movie franchise, which had been hugely successful. The plan was always to do TNG movies asap.
TOS movies we're planned to long after the orginal series was cancelled. So there situation was different.
Yes. It means that TOS and to a lesser extent, TNG, are the only Trek the mainstream cares about. DS9, VOY, and ENT are for Trekkies only.
Yes, it could be argued that the TNG movies were made too soon.
I was saying when it was announced Generations was going to be made that they should not make movies. Movies were useful -- and wanted -- for the TOS crew simply due to the fact that they only had 3 seasons worth of episodes and there was 10 years between the last TOS episode and ST:TMP. So, there was a pent-up demand to see more TOS -- either on the big screen or on TV.
If there had been 7 seasons of TOS, I doubt I would've been wanting more of that either...so, there's no bias on my behalf.
However, when TNG ended, with few exceptions people were not clammoring for more.
All Good Things wrapped up TNG on a high note and then they just haaaaad to go and ruin it by making Generations and the other TNG films.
First Contact was "OK" but hardly an essential film. It didn't improve on Best of Both Worlds, but it was an "ok" film...not great, but "ok".
The other ones were forgettable and a waste of money -- both for Paramount and me.
I was saying when it was announced Generations was going to be made that they should not make movies. Movies were useful -- and wanted -- for the TOS crew simply due to the fact that they only had 3 seasons worth of episodes and there was 10 years between the last TOS episode and ST:TMP. So, there was a pent-up demand to see more TOS -- either on the big screen or on TV.
If there had been 7 seasons of TOS, I doubt I would've been wanting more of that either...so, there's no bias on my behalf.
However, when TNG ended, with few exceptions people were not clammoring for more.
All Good Things wrapped up TNG on a high note and then they just haaaaad to go and ruin it by making Generations and the other TNG films.
First Contact was "OK" but hardly an essential film. It didn't improve on Best of Both Worlds, but it was an "ok" film...not great, but "ok".
The other ones were forgettable and a waste of money -- both for Paramount and me.
Paramount got greedy, and rushed out Generations and VOY at the same time, as well as TNG season 7. The quality suffered as a result.
Indeed it did! Probably the biggest mistake of the TNG films was letting the TNG writing staff write the films.
They were tired and washed up for the last two seasons of TNG -- why put them on the films? I'll never understand that.
Granted they had the experience, but I wish in hindsight they had brought new writers onboard to write the TNG films. At least then we might have gotten something fresh...and a different perspective on those characters.
Also, coming after DS9, the TNG films looked pale by comparison.
I always wondered how the first TNG movie came out so fast. The only reason I thought because of the gap of TOS and their movies, was because of the origin of Star Wars. Wasn't that movie what sparked Star Trek's return back in the 70's?
