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Generations Redux

I watched the begining of Trek Generations last night, after not having seen it in a while. I was struck by how good the beginning was - the incident on the Enterprise B. The characterizations are good - Kirk may be the most Kirk-like of any of the films - a decisive man of action, and hankering for that center seat. The interplay between Kirk, Scotty and Chekov is good. (and yea, I know it was originally supposed to be Spock and McCoy, but they still play it well.) John Ruck's Harriman is properly intimidated by having Kirk on board, and plays the "company man" well. The special effects were pretty neat too. It made me think that maybe the better movie would have involved continuing this story in some way, maybe running parallel with a TNG story, involving something to do with Kirk's apparent demise and how it effected both crews and storylines. Would this have been possible? Would it have been better then the plot hole filled story we were left with? Opinions?
That might have worked or even after the events of star trek VI the Enterprise-A encountered a temporal wave which send it to the 24th century and the duras sister want to stop the Enterprise-D for repairing the timeline. I know the time travel thing is over used but it might have left less plot holes. Still I love Generations it was the last time I saw the Enterprise -D in action and the entire TNG cast has a nice amount of time on screen.
 
The Emotion Chip sub plot is a turn off for me as well. To a casual fan or a non-trek fan seeing this movie, Data would have looked like and absolute idiot. I thought it was pretty pointless, besides the fact that it allowed Spiner a little more room to 'act'......oh and sing that big hit "Life Forms".
My sister wasn't a fan of Next Gen before the movie, but she started watching it afterwards. The only character that would have appealed to her was Data.
Having to listen to Scotty spit out technobabble about "phasing in and out of our space-time continuum" and remodulating the deflector shield was painful to hear. Not that they didn't ever use technobabble on TOS, but this was decidedly TNG-flavored Technobabble (tastes great! less filling!).
It was Spock's line until Nimoy declined
 
It would have been equally out of place coming from Nimoy's mouth. TOS technobabble was far simpler and straightforward than TNG-era technobabble.
 
I've only seen most of TOS just once, but none of the technobabble ever struck me as being as convoluted as it was on TNG. Even when it was, it certainly never came across as the plot crutch it became in the TNG era.

Whereas "It may be possible to simulate a torpedo blast using a resonance burst from the main deflector dish" comes across as pure TNG/VOY.
 
I've only seen most of TOS just once, but none of the technobabble ever struck me as being as convoluted as it was on TNG. Even when it was, it certainly never came across as the plot crutch it became in the TNG era.

Whereas "It may be possible to simulate a torpedo blast using a resonance burst from the main deflector dish" comes across as pure TNG/VOY.

Not to mention that TNG/VOY technobabble always invovles doing something to the main deflector.
 
1. I think having Kirk etc in the film was totally unnecessary. When I first saw it as a kid I thought, oh no not these guys again!

2. Killing Picards family off was senseless, horrible and stupid. Moreover you think Picard would be devastated for more than just 5 minutes screen time, enough to even leave star fleet.

3. The nexus makes no sense, I mean sci fi rarely makes sense as it but at least a facade of reason is maintained. They could even have hinted that aliens may have created it, but without this we have to assume its naturally ocurring and it makes no sense thereof because picard et al would be vaporized.

This film had some amazing potential and some great ideas, I'm not against the nexus per se, just the lack of scientific justification for it. If they had unified them and just focued on TNG, because this was a TNG film after all it would have been one of the best trek movies ever. But instead they ruined it with a plot that makes no sense whatsoever.
 
But realistically, why couldn't the Ent-D be able to track human life signs on Veridian III and have done something instead of getting blasted by a bird of prey?

Hey, even if they couldn't, they likely could have incinerated every continental mass from orbit with phasers and photon torpedoes. The planet was lifeless and as far as they knew, there was no other way to stop the launch of the trilithium device. A biosphere isn't much of a high price to pay to save a planet with sapient life.

In a similar vein, if the Nexus destroys starships, why wouldn't it plasmify atmosphere or vaporize the rock Soran and Picard were standing on? Or them? GEN might have worked better if Soran had hijacked the Enterprise, which alone had powerful enough shields to pilot it semi-safely into the Nexus. It could've been more like TMP in that regard, equally a voyage of exploration as well as an action romp with a barely-explained sci-fi plot device.

I didn't mind Kirk's death for what it was. Seemed heroic enough. He saved lives, had fun, got stabbed with a bridge.

I'll echo the criticisms that the E-D went out like a punk, though. Lursa and B'Etor, and Geordi the Visor-Wearing Liability (Again). Sigh.

Re: TOS technobabble. I just watched TVH the other night, and am still dumbfounded at the process Spock recommends for "dilithium recrystallization." "High-energy photons," huh? You mean like the ones in your matter-antimatter reactor? Yes, it was worth it for Chekov the Russian asking for the location of the "wessels" but still.
 
Picard goes back to save Tasha Yar, but gets killed by Armus. Before he dies he tells Tasha to save his family on stardate such-n-such. That timeline's Picard never loses his family but meets Kirk, who went to the future to stop Soran.

Then uh...I dunno what...Guinan dies saving Kirk...yeah. That's it.
 
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