Does GENS succeed or fail as an introduction to TNG for new viewers?

[Lance]

Some great observations there @Desert Kris

Touching on a point a few people have made, about perhaps opening with the TNG characters and introducing the Kirk story in flashback maybe halfway through the movie, there's another benefit of holding back on Kirk: if your main tag line for the movie is 'The Generations Meet', then keeping the trump card (ie Shatner) as something the audience has to wait in anticipation of seems sensible from a story building sense.

 

[Khan 2.0]

There's an interesting point that has been raised about the structure and pacing of the movie, and adhering to the needs of the story as it unfolds. There's been talk about the opening scene as an action piece, which makes it problematic to introduce the TNG crew with an action piece that sets them up in the best light. They traded TOS crew's need for TNG's crew's need. Someone suggested that the Enterprise-B sequence should have been dropped, and although I kind of like that sequence, I think that would have done the movie a huge favor. There's something really weird about the Enteprise-B sequence in the first place, it has the storytelling style of TNG story writing, at least that's the vibe I always got from it. TOS characters had a good action sequence to close on with TUC. This lets the writers have a stronger case for an opening action sequence for TNG, to give them a good introduction.

The EntB opening does feel very 'TNG' e.g. the look/feel, Scotty technobabble ... its almost like feel of transitioning of TOS movies (Kirk/Scot/Chekov, Ent B/Excelsior design) to TNG (the TNG look/feel, score, Guinan) almost like bit of a 'TNG Begins'

It would make it more interesting to have the investigation of the Soran and the Nexus connection tie in to a final adventure where Kirk is killed. And then reveal gradually through dialogue and some tantalizing flashbacks that fire our imagination about what exactly happened, I think that would be a strong audience lure that would make the investigation more interesting. The less we know, the more interesting it is. And we feel like we learn along with TNG's crew, rather than kind of knowing or suspecting the answer, and waiting impatiently for them to catch up. I think the movie could have worked well that way, better.

Yes that sounds like it would've been better, also similar to the way ST09 did it (imagine had ST09 had a 20 minute opening of a condensed version of Countdown with Nimoy, Stewart, Spiner, Dorn, Burton... would've been fun no doubt but works better the way they did it)

 

[Desert Kris]

The EntB opening does feel very 'TNG' e.g. the look/feel, Scotty technobabble ... its almost like feel of transitioning of TOS movies (Kirk/Scot/Chekov, Ent B/Excelsior design) to TNG (the TNG look/feel, score, Guinan) almost like bit of a 'TNG Begins'

From this standpoint, I'm still kind of glad we have the scene. Being deflector-dish happy all of a sudden is a real eyebrow raiser for me. It kind of works in the spiritual sense that TNG's tone now starts to seep into the Star Trek setting, paving the way for the next decade or two in-universe.

Yes that sounds like it would've been better, also similar to the way ST09 did it (imagine had ST09 had a 20 minute opening of a condensed version of Countdown with Nimoy, Stewart, Spiner, Dorn, Burton... would've been fun no doubt but works better the way they did it)

This could have been great, to get a tie-in comic, a "Countdown" counterpart for TNG's first movie. We could see a completely different version of the story that includes Spock and McCoy, and all the rest of TOS crew.

 

[suarezguy]

Generations still has pacing problems, anyway. I always felt that the transition from the Enterprise-D crashing/Soran vs. Picard fight into the Nexus is a jarring tonal shift. From the shock of the Enterprise dying, to the possibility they were all killed on the Veridian planet, to a weirdly creepy yet smothering saccharine Christmas thing that I found excruciatingly boring as well.

I thought the first half/second quarter or so of the film feeling maybe a little rushed and concluding in outright defeat, failure for the crew and then letting the pace slow down (before then having a second conclusion) was an interestingly different style of storytelling, maybe television-ish but in a good way, but then the pace & content of just Picard and Kirk interacting got a little too slow & self-indulgent for too long.

 

[Lance]

The problem with the pacing goes back to the 'laundry list' design of the script

There's just too much that they're trying to cram into it, and at the point where Picard's nexus fantasy begins is about the point where they start having more material than they have enough time to fit in

So the whole final third of the movie feels suddenly rushed, because there's a momentum pushing against the structure of the story

They need to establish the inside of the Nexus *and* have Picard reject it *and* reintroduce Kirk *and* give the two captains something substantive to do together to establish their rapport *and* reprise Verdian III *and* kill Kirk *and* finish the movie, but they've got like 30-40 minutes of screen time left to do all those things

The ultimate problem is one that Shatner himself indentified in earlier drafts: Kirk simply isn't integrated into the story very well. It's like the writers actually got to that stage in writing the script and were like, "Oh crap, we've painted ourselves into a corner, what'll we do now???"

The pacing of the movie is pretty much fine right up until the final third when the whole thing goes out the window

 

[The Wormhole]

This could have been great, to get a tie-in comic, a "Countdown" counterpart for TNG's first movie. We could see a completely different version of the story that includes Spock and McCoy, and all the rest of TOS crew.

Spock, McCoy and Hikaru Sulu are included in the novelization.

 

[Vger23]

I just want to say...I think this is one of the most thoughtful and interesting discussions about Star Trek Generations I've ever read through. It's an amazing testament to how an element of the franchise can be debated, dissected, praised, and criticized in a constructive and informative way. Best thread I've read on here is a long time.

My feelings on this film are so conflicted. I know it's a flawed, muddled, and troubled film and intellectually, when asked, I claim that it's one of my least-favorite Trek movies...but the bottom line is that I just inexplicably enjoy it from the heart and I go back to it quite a bit.

 

[Vger23]

Speaking of Star Trek Generations, today is the anniversary of the movie's US release 24 years ago. That really makes me feel old. I can remember going to that premier like it was yesterday. The saucer crash sequence pinned me to the back of my seat. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[The Wormhole]

The saucer crash sequence pinned me to the back of my seat.

IMO, it still holds up today. Like I said earlier, it really shows off the impressive things you can do with models.

 

[Smellmet]

The saucer crash is awesome, I think it holds up very well today, as do most of the FX in the film.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Speaking of Star Trek Generations, today is the anniversary of the movie's US release 24 years ago. That really makes me feel old. I can remember going to that premier like it was yesterday. The saucer crash sequence pinned me to the back of my seat. Pretty cool stuff.

Generations was my first Star Trek experience at the theater (I was 15) and I remember how cool it looked when Veridian III was coming up fast on the viewscreen and the audience collectively laughing their ass off at Data's "OOOOH SHIT!" line

 

[Jeyl]

Soran's lines are something I really like about the movie, and I've been known to paraphrase them in real-life conversation "Time is a fire in which we burn... it's a predator, stalking us."

They're good comparisons, but not when combined together. If someone is on fire, you can't really say that the fire is stalking them because... IT'S ALL OVER THEM!

 

[Dukhat]

They're good comparisons, but not when combined together. If someone is on fire, you can't really say that the fire is stalking them because... IT'S ALL OVER THEM!

You'd think that with all the references to fire, that when Picard is given a chance to go back in time, he'd go back to before Robert and Rene were killed in said fire.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Generations was my first Star Trek experience at the theater (I was 15) and I remember how cool it looked when Veridian III was coming up fast on the viewscreen and the audience collectively laughing their ass off at Data's "OOOOH SHIT!" line

Data said what the rest of the bridge crew was thinking. That's what made it funny...that, and "YES!"

 

[Crimson Forcefield]

Generations has its own look and feel distinct from anything else I've seen in Trek. Not always bad (I loved the "golden hour" starlight effect) but there was just way too much corny humor and sentimentality.