Spoilers Was it a mistake to kill Kirk in Star Trek Generations?

Kirk's death was a waste of the character. If he died it should have been in the captain's seat on a starship in combat.

 

Shatner's portrayal of Kirk had become so broad at that point that it didn't matter whether he lived or died he was never going to be serious again in the role. The simple fact that the second portion of the movie where Kirk appeared had to do with horses is proof enough that he wanted to do his own thing with the character and didn't care about what Kirks Legacy should have been. Thank God they were able to get a halfway decent performance out of him for Star Trek 6.

 

I have an easier time believing the horses as in-character for Kirk than I do that his dream woman would be an unknown "Antonia" who we never saw in any episode or movie. It should have been Edith Keeler.

That whole Generations movie was a waste of time. The notion that Picard's fantasy would be a Victorian Christmas is just silly. He doesn't even like kids, except for his nephew (and what's up with killing off Rene? Robert wasn't anyone I missed, but he was important enough to Picard for his death to mess with Picard's mind).

If they wanted to combine the generations, they should have optioned the novel Federation - which would also have given them Zephram Cochrane, so they wouldn't have had to bother with the First Contact movie, either. And the end of that novel offers a terrific jumping off point for a new TV series that isn't so close to the TNG, Enterprise, or DiscoTrek series that it would have cause eye-rollingly bad continuity muckups.

 

Nothing wrong with the principle of killing Kirk but the execution in Generations was just very bad imo. Not just the stupidity of the story and the actual manner of death but it never sat right with me how removed his death was from his actual era (and from Spock!). Like many others I choose to decanonise Generations, lol.

 

I would have preferred that we never knew what happened to Kirk. No Enterprise B or anything like that. Let’s his fate be a great untold story.

Like, maybe he followed Spock into the diplomatic corps. Maybe he died in command of his own personal ship trying to save a group of people with the odds stacked against them. Just leave it up to the viewer to use their imagination.

I do think it was a good idea to not have him interact with the Enterprise D crew beyond Picard. Having him take command against the Duras for example would have just been silly.

 

The writer's would think Kirk would like to see his son again in one of his fantasies in the Nexus than Antonia. Something impactful where the audience can connect with him and dealing with mortality. A missed opportunity.

 

I mean, Kirk grew up on a farm; it's not like it's unbelievable.

 

remember reading somewhere (mightve been from th ewriters of Gen) something about killing kirk in an expected way like on the bridge of an Enterprise George Kirk style wouldnt have made sense as hes Captain Kirk so can get out of anything starship wise , but the way he died in Gen made sense as hes out of his element/century in an alien situation so all bets are off,

 

It's never stated that he grew up on a farm it's only stated that he grew up in Iowa it's not the same thing you know. Just because the doctor lady called him Farm Boy doesn't mean it's true. In fact that was the joke that just because he was from Iowa she calls him Farm Boy which he clearly is not a farm boy at least in his occupation. But it's still missing my point which is were they so desperate to have Shatner that they wrote In a section of the movie with horses or did he demand such a scene? Either case bodes poorly for the writing of the movie. Were they more desperate to have him or was he more desperate for a paycheck? The fact that he ends up at the end of the movie riding his own personal horse from real life points to their desperation to have him at any cost.

 

I always thought it was fitting giving his comments in Star Trek V.

He gave his life to save a world of strangers far from friends and home.

 

James Kirk was a Starfleet-brat with both parents serving in Starfleet. I doubt they were Starfleet "farmers" unless Kirk (and his older brother?) was sent to Iowa to live with his relatives because of his parents' off-world assignments. (Starships didn't have family accommodations back then.) How much time does he really live in Iowa? We know young, teenage Kirk left Earth sometime before/around he was ~13 years old to live/visit on Tarsus Four. ~Fours years later, he was back on Earth in Starfleet Academy. After that, the stars were his home.

 

Indeed. However, Merritt Butrick died several years before Generations came out, so they would have had to recast the role of David.

 

Couldve just used footage from II/III

 

Kirk and David didn't have any scenes together in TSFS, and only one really positive scene in TWoK (the one where he said he was proud to be Kirk's son). That's not much to show in the Nexus. To really sell it, they'd have needed new footage to show Kirk being reluctant to leave.

 

I'm trying to imagine whether they could have found a way to do this (with or without recasting) that wouldn't have offended me even more than the recasting of Rene to make him more chibi.

 

Honestly, that never bothered me, that sort of fantasy seems in line with someone who has Picard's literary leanings combined with never having kids imagining what it's like, versus the reality of mostly yelling at them to do their homework and clean their rooms.

I think you answered your own question there.

 

Who cares if he used his own personal horse? There are some movies and TV shows in which actors and actresses have used clothing from their own personal closets in place of costumes that were designed for them in-studio. There were times during my years working backstage in musical theatre that I'd lend something of my own for the show, rather than make or buy something - either because of lack of time, not enough money in the budget, or just because my own stuff worked better.

While I thought the whole chopping wood and making breakfast for "Antonia" fantasy was dumb, Kirk did strike me as the sort of person who would enjoy a horseback ride. This might actually have factored in to his being chosen as the Enterprise captain, at least if Pike's opinion was asked. We know that Pike liked horses, and most horse-lovers have an adventurous spirit - a quality essential in a starship captain.

 

Now you mention it Kirk nexus does harken back abit to Pike and The Cage.. in fact the nexus plays quite similar to the Talosian illusions .. never thought about that connection before.. no doubt the writers did

 

The basic problem with Generations is that Kirk is irrelevant to the story, and that's something Shatner brought up in his meetings with Berman, Moore, and Braga. It's not difficult to imagine a Generations that's more like Groundhog Day; Picard keeps going back to Veridian III on his own until he finally figures out a way to defeat Soran without help. ("This didn't work and that didn't work, so this time I'll try this...") Everyone knew the script didn't work -- Nimoy recognized that (when hold told Berman the script needed to be fixed for him to direct), Shatner recognized that, even Moore admits they never solved the problem of making Kirk integral to the story. Moore and Braga wrote a script with stuff they thought Shatner would like to entice him to sign, without ever making him essential. It's impossible not to read the end of Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories, which ends as he's about to go back to Nevada for the reshoots on the ending, as Shatner being hopeful that the problems have been fixed (because the text screening didn't work) and Kirk will live to fight another day. Alas, that wasn't to be... unless you read his novels.

Honestly, I'd have liked The Return -- or, its original title, "The Fires of Olympus" -- more than First Contact, but that's just me.

 

There are lots of novels that would have made wonderful movies, or at least a great TV-movie or limited series (Spock's World, for instance), or Diane Duane's Romulan-centric novels that make up a story arc).

Generations was just an awful, badly-written, pointless mess.