So I've been rewatching the films recently over the Christmas and new year period, and I've come to the conclusion that the best TNG film is generations, but only for the first hour.
Fascinating!
As has been discussed many times before, I feel the film is a bit of a mess as soon as Picard enters the nexus.
Prior to it, there are some messy moments, but it does have a better flow and doesn't feel contrived to finish up the proceedings...
The fact that the nexus makes no sense, how kirks death is dealt with, and generally just now the rest of the plot is dealt with is quite the let down,
The original death scene, which pre-screening audiences loathed, had more dramatic weight to it. What we eventually got is cornball, complete with unspoken gag about Kirk and "the bridge". Not to mention, Red Letter Media sorta nailed it with pointing out the hungry critters climbing the rock where Picard "buried" him... But RLM also claim GEN ruins all Trek movies. Gonna disagree with them as to
when, but in some ways it's for the best... so anyhoo...
But, that first hour or so is wonderful.
I vaguely remember a few things...
* Kirk and his lesser half of the bridge crew spouting TNG treknobabble on 1701-B
* Data's emotions
* the cool new lighting techniques (yes, I am a fan of it - far better than the bleached-out tv studio lighting)
* the sneak attack on 1701-D
* the awesome Blake's 7-inspired crash, even if they cut'n'pasted the bit from "Yesterday's Enterprise" about warp core breach...
It's definitely nowhere akin to the tone and handling TMP-TSFS had, but there's still much to enjoy.
We have the two crews as we know them, and the characters are well portrayed and familiar.
I love how 1701-B's captain is the same actor (Alan Ruck) who later plays Stuart Bondeck in one of the most underrated sitcoms from the 1990s (Spin City). He and Carter Heywood are one of the all-time great double-acts of sitcoms, but I digress...
There are wonderful moments with Word and Data, and Soran is at first quite an interesting villain.
Worf was okay. If not a bit wet.
Data finally got the emotion chip that he nicked from Lore's head. It's fused, can't be removed, there's no on/off function Data can think into enabling or disabling, but I laughed with those
results scenes a lot. More than
at, fortunately.
(Dang, check out all those new costumes and how they aren't exactly form-fitting or tailored to proper arm size... Riker is too short, the dude in the background's is too long... Troi's just quietly noticing and giggling... )
It's also much more cinematic that any of the other films. First contact, as good as it is, always seems like the best double episode the series ever produced.
It's not my thing. Even INS, for all its issues, had more of a TNG-worthy plot to it. So did NEM, which almost got it right... But YMMV...
On a side note, I love how Data protects Troi when the ship is crashing, somehow I've never noticed that before.
The "oh ****" moment thanks to Data's shiny new emotion chip still fused and not functioning appropriately (Data did retrieve it from Lore, so it's bound to be damaged - that one's easier than my ex!) also has a nuance I never noticed before; the camera framing (Carson ruled) starts with showing the very edges of the viewscreen and slowly zooms in as a subtle homage to the season 1 feel where characters are placed directly in front of the viewscreen to get that "overwhelming" sensation, a nice sort of visual later seasons ditched. (Yes, season 1's camera framing didn't zoom in, which made those shots of Troi or Picard or whomever in front of... outer space... seem even more surreal and refreshingly alienesque.)
Just don't ask how transparent aluminium shatters so easily, but imagine being in the saucer and there's no equivalent to a brake pedal and scaffolding is falling all around you...
