Does anyone care that they killed Picard's family in Generations?

I'm far more annoyed by the death of James T. Kirk, particularly how poorly it was handled.

BUT

I just watched the TNG episode "Family" today for the first time in a long while, and my wife had never seen it. So at the end of the episode, I dropped the "too bad that little kid is dead" bomb on her, and explained that both Rene and his father were killed as a plot device in Generations.

Now that I think about it, it kind of sucks. I guess it doesn't matter, we were never going to see those characters again anyway, but I don't know, kind of weak. Thoughts?

 

Depressing.

Then again, when stuff wasn't exploding in the TNG films, they were busy making us depressed.

Proof:

Generations: Depressing
First Contact: 'splosions
Insurrection: 'splosions
Nemesis: Depressing


At least Generations's ending felt somewhat uplifting, despite the losses in the film (Picard's family, Kirk, the Ent-D) outweighing those in Nemesis (Data.)

 

Picard cared, so I did.

By the way, everything in a movie is a "plot device"

 

I felt for Picard and I liked the characters of Robert and Rene so yeah I cared. It was just a plot device to advance the character's arc though, also to explore the themes of family and time.

 

It mattered for about 2 minutes, and was not required beyond that. Could have been dropped with no issue. AND it raised the question, why not use the Nexus to go back and save his family?

 

I had a hard time caring about anything in Generations, up to and including the death of Kirk. So, uh, no.

 

Meh - like you said, if they didn't die here as plot devices we never would have even heard their names again.

 

It might have made more of an impact on me if they had used the same actors from "Family," but they didn't. The "Robert" in the photograph is clearly not Jeremy Kemp, and that little boy didn't even bare any resemblance to the Rene in the episode, even if he was intentionally meant to be younger.

Same thing happened with Torah Ziyal. They used some other actress for the episode where she gets killed, and even through all that Cardassian makeup and prosthetics, you could tell it wasn't the same actress.

 

Picard would never have used the Nexus to save his family, tempted yes but would never give into that temptation.

 

Oh please. I have just as much self-respect as Picard, and given the chance, I'd save my family from a horrible death in a heartbeat.

 

Same here.

 

As to the question at hand: No.

Guess you and me just aren't evolved enough. Check out 'The Gift' from DC Comics Star Trek: The Next Generation #1.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Gift

 

Well at least in Ziyal's case the actress playing her during the episode she meets her end had been playing her for several episodes up to that point.

In this case it's totally different after just one prior meeting with the characters.

 

Bill, I clicked on that link, but it doesn't say anything about the comic's plot. I'm guessing you know what it was about. Could you enlighten me?

 

It was one of the most ridiculous set-ups in the whole movie.

Family members die a horrible death and Picard is shown emotionally broken up like we've never seen.
Days, if not hours later, he encounters this Nexus that enables him to be anywhere at anytime.

Tell me the first order of business on his mind wouldn't be to go back a few days and save his brother and nephew. How could it NOT be?

And if not that, then his consuming grief should have at least lead to a Nexus fantasy where Oh Thank God, they're still alive and okay!!

You'd think, right?

 

No, not really. Seeing them alive would bring back the loss. His Nexus fantasy made perfect sense given the events.

 

Never let it be said that I'm one of those people who criticizes only the new movie.

 

Yeah, but it's the same as the deal with Tasha Yar in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the Sela episodes. If Sela never came about, we would have never seen/heard about what happened to Yar (I'm not counting "All Good Things...", because her scenes happen in the past), but it would have been nice to be able to think maybe Yar survived the Federation vs. Klingon battle and settled down with Castillo.

Instead, we can't even have that fantasy, because we get a shitty canon ending to the character that basically says, "fuck you for caring about this character (again), we're going to kill it off in a shitty way (again)". Picard's family were endearing characters. It was nice to be able to imagine that his nephew realized a dream of going into space while his parents watched on proudly, but instead, the writers of "Generations" destroyed that possibility in a weak, lazy attempt to wring out some cheap sentiment.

 

Spoiler: a twenty year old comic

Picard is given the chance, through Q, to bring back to life a never before mentioned brother who died as a child.

 

@Dukhat...you and I might choose to save our families from a horrible death given the circumstances but the poster was talking about Picard. Picard as he was in Generations and prior to that would not take matters into his own hands like that. He might be seriously tempted to do but probably would take into consideration everything that could result from that decision. Plus there's the matter of the Temporal Prime Directive (lol which of course was created later but we can assume existed and was imposed then).