Was never going to happen. People had already moved on from "Star Trek". Dwindling ratings on TV, and lackluster ticket sales at the box office.
For you long-time fans, did people know Nemesis would be the final TNG film pre-release?
- Thread starter Shalashaska
- Start date
Was never going to happen. People had already moved on from "Star Trek". Dwindling ratings on TV, and lackluster ticket sales at the box office.
DS9 had a pretty definitive ending as well. Be pretty hard to do a movie for it.
I think they saw the writing on the wall.
I'm sure that had something to do with it. I'm thinking the primary reason though is that Behr and Moore constructed a story with a begining, middle, and end, and didn't want to sacrifice that end, both disappointing themselves and the audience, for a potential film that they may not have any control over. So Behr and Moore ended it the way they wanted to end it, on their own terms, without worrying about possibly replacing the TNG crew in future films.
The franchise being rolled under one single roof, definitely had a contributing role in it's overall demise. Between 1986 and 1991 it had been convention that the movies and TV shows were produced by different teams (put aside the TOS/TNG divide here.) There were 'movie people' and 'TV people', and it worked. The trouble with bringing the movies "into the fold", so to speak, beginning in 1994, under the single oversight of a single executive producer, meant that the talent was being spread very thin.
It think it was pretty much always known that DS9 wouldn't go beyond its TV run, there just wasn't an audience for it. DS9 was never the mainstream hit that TNG was and added to that, DS9 was kind of the neglected child of Trek in that it never got much attention from the studio.
Which probably worked out better for the show
I think a lot of us were hoping for that, but I guess TPTB decided it wasn't commercial. A shame, as I have a really cool idea for a DS9 movie (it would actually be a "Wagon Train"-in-space kind of story
). The fact that DS9 wasn't as well known wouldn't have mattered if the movie had been great.Totally! DS9 was the amazing show it was because Paramount executives barely noticed it and Berman wasn't involved with it on a day to day basis like he was with Voyager.
ENT was pretty 'meh' in the writing and execution and the TNG films were really trying hard to appeal to the masses with forced action while simultaneously trying to keep the crowd that watched TNG on the small screen.
In the words of Seven of Nine: "They failed."
Trek, at that time, was a bore and needed some new blood to make it literally sexy and fun again.
In the words of Seven of Nine: "They failed."
Trek, at that time, was a bore and needed some new blood to make it literally sexy and fun again.
I thought I heard that Nemesis was going to be the first of a trilogy. If successful, there would have been two more Next Generation movies. That would have given TNG 6 movies, just the same as TOS got. It is a shame that they did not complete them. "A Generation's final journey begins" can be implied as the beginning of the journey. Meaning that this is the beginning of the final journey. That final journey may take a couple of movies though. The final journey begins, not ends. I am positive that if Nemesis did great at the box office that there would have been at least one more film.
"A Generation's Final Journey Begins" was just the movie studio's way of hedging their bets, in case they decided to move forward with another movie. In fact, it actually highlights one of the problems with the Star Trek movies generally, that being that decisions about continuing with the movies were only made on a movie-by-movie basis, instead of having a forward-thinking plan about where they actually wanted to go with the series as a whole. This was true of the TOS movies too but it didn't become obvious until the TNG ones.
I see it as a strength. In some ways, DS9 has got the most artistic integrity, precisely *because* it wasn't an open ending. It wasn't going to sit there and become a 'franchise zombie' like TNG did.
It was clear to me when Nemesis was first coming out that if the movie had made a profit for Paramount they would have made another TNG adventure. I think the movie might have been *slightly* better if they had said yes this is for sure going to be the last one and lets give the TNG crew a good send off. But instead they made yet another Star Trek movie that no one wanted to see.
I think you comments about the movie-by-movie storytelling is still a problem with Trek to this day. The new movies should have been set up as a trilogy from day one.
I agree with those who think Berman's stewardship of the movies was a problem, but it's not a problem with an easy solution.
Suppose the studio had given some hot new creative team, with or without Hollywood experience, the reins of the Generation movies from the get go. They'd have probably faced pressure to maintain the aesthetic of the then-popular TV show. If they departed from that look and feel, the departure might have seemed too motivated by a desire to do anything novel and stamp their own signature on the franchise. It could come across superficial, desperate or both.
As others have opined, what the Generation movies most needed was more time between them and the close of the series. The original-cast movies feel different from the original TV show in a way that's neither superficial nor desperate, because the movies had to be different. Years had passed in both the actors' and the characters' lives. So the movies become about the crew and especially Kirk growing older, which is a natural and organic departure in theme and plot from the concerns of the series.
But again, it would have been hard to impose an artificial hiatus between the Next Generation series and movies at a time when the series was at the height of its popularity. And how to keep the public's appetite for the movies during the hiatus? How to insure enough of the cast will be willing to return later? The original-cast movies didn't plan any of this. They just serendipitously stumbled into it while trying to get some new version of Star Trek off the ground a lot sooner than they did, and as so often happens in entertainment, an obstacle actually became a spur to creativity.
Suppose the studio had given some hot new creative team, with or without Hollywood experience, the reins of the Generation movies from the get go. They'd have probably faced pressure to maintain the aesthetic of the then-popular TV show. If they departed from that look and feel, the departure might have seemed too motivated by a desire to do anything novel and stamp their own signature on the franchise. It could come across superficial, desperate or both.
As others have opined, what the Generation movies most needed was more time between them and the close of the series. The original-cast movies feel different from the original TV show in a way that's neither superficial nor desperate, because the movies had to be different. Years had passed in both the actors' and the characters' lives. So the movies become about the crew and especially Kirk growing older, which is a natural and organic departure in theme and plot from the concerns of the series.
But again, it would have been hard to impose an artificial hiatus between the Next Generation series and movies at a time when the series was at the height of its popularity. And how to keep the public's appetite for the movies during the hiatus? How to insure enough of the cast will be willing to return later? The original-cast movies didn't plan any of this. They just serendipitously stumbled into it while trying to get some new version of Star Trek off the ground a lot sooner than they did, and as so often happens in entertainment, an obstacle actually became a spur to creativity.
I knew it would be the last 'pure' TNG movie, but I was under the impression then that the next one was going to be some sort of hybrid of TNG, DS9 and Voyager characters. I had read an interview with Brent Spiner suggesting that that was the direction they were taking. But this was when I was a stupid teenager and didn't really understand the importance of box office returns. 
I never felt there would be another sequel after Generations and I felt the same way after each TNG film came out -- including Nemesis. I was always gently surprised that we got one.
If you don't arc things up you run out of steam sooner. That's why I didn't anticipate much longevity. It's a wonder they got as many as they did and four films compared to the TOS slate of six was a good showing.
Also Patrick Stewart's profile was high and getting higher, it just becomes harder and harder to pin down an actor like that to do another one.
If you don't arc things up you run out of steam sooner. That's why I didn't anticipate much longevity. It's a wonder they got as many as they did and four films compared to the TOS slate of six was a good showing.
Also Patrick Stewart's profile was high and getting higher, it just becomes harder and harder to pin down an actor like that to do another one.
