In hindsight do you wish TNG had ended with "All Good Things"?

[Marsden]

Pre-Star Trek: First Contact, the prevailing fan belief was that Zephram Cochrane was actually a native of Alpha Centauri, and that once sublight Earth ships reached AC, they opened diplomatic relations with the aliens, which led to the formation of the Federation. Then he created warp drive.

This was my understanding for many years before FC came out and my main reason for hating that movie, at the time.

Now, I no longer give a shit about a cohesive back story, so I kind of like FC, but it's like the smartest kid in a family of morons.

So on one side I can say yes, All Good Things would have been the best note to go out on, but to lose the movies, as meh as they are, would be wrong.

And while we don't always appreciate business decisions for what they are, there would be no way the money people would not make a movie out of TNG, it was just worth too much. It's just too bad that it meant they would approve that half baked disappointment that became Generations.

 

[RunawayStarShip]

If I could choose, I'd end it at First Contact, but as someone pointed out earlier, the success of FC would lead to more movies... so I'd have to vote for not ending at "All Good Things" (though there are days that I wonder).
A lot of the quibbles that I had with Generations have disappeared over the years. It was a bold (though ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to tell a grand story about life and mortality, but it fell apart the moment Picard tries to enlist Kirk's help. However, I really can't fault it for trying and failing. (Bonus points: the Enterprise-D bathed in yellow sunlight. Too bad she wasn't from planet Krypton.)

First Contact is, distilled to its most simplistic form, a zombie movie in space with plot holes and continuity issues, but it's also more than that. It serves as an origin story for Star Trek itself, somehow capturing the essence and idealism of Star Trek (TOS-style idealism, to boot). Sure, some of it is weird (yes, there's no money... only "Federation credits" in the future). Sure, the movie's setting is pretty dark. The world is horrible (WWIII aftermath). It turns out that space can also be horrible (the Borg). People are imperfect (Lily's takedown of Picard is awesome, BTW). Ultimately, though, the optimism shines through strongly. There's a better future waiting for everyone: we all can be taking the first steps into a new frontier if we really want it. Even if the future can be horrible at times, it's still one with worth working toward. Somehow, First Contact simply works. (Bonus points: Lily Sloane.)

As inexplicably stuff comes together for First Contact, allowing it to transcend its popcorn-flick-ness (?), Insurrection doesn't work. It had a worthy premise, but it's execution is just plain bad, with the plot holes being bad to the point of defeating the premise. At least with First Contact, we can hypothesize in-universe reasons/Treknobabble for Borg time-travel issues. Even visually, Insurrection somehow manages to look bland. I appreciate what Piller was trying to convey, but executive meddling seems to have killed the film before shooting even started. (Bonus points: ... it still made money?)

Nemesis is savaged more for it "killing" the movie franchise than for the actual movie itself, which was mediocre but still more entertaining than Insurrection. Visually, it holds up the best along with Generations. The cast seems weary throughout the film (likely due to real-life weariness with regard to the director). Shinzon's desire to destroy Earth seems out of the blue, but I suppose we can chalk it up to insanity. Unfortunately, Nero makes for a much better madman in a much better Trek movie just a few years down the line. As they say, a film's only as good as its villain. (Bonus points: ... thanks for ST09 and STID, sorta?)

As an aside, I think it was Insurrection that killed the TNG movie franchise, not Nemesis. With slowly increasing box office returns (adjusted for inflation) for three straight movies (TUC, GEN, FC) after the disaster of The Final Frontier, Insurrection somehow managed to destroy any interest remaining in TNG. The four year gap between INS and NEM only served to reinforce that disinterest rather than build anticipation (which might have happened if they had a four-year gap after First Contact instead, which in turn would have given them time to make a better follow-up film).

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Whether or not you liked all 7 of the main characters I think most people would admit that TNG did a great job at giving each character a unique personality and making them all important to the series in different ways.

Then the films come and all that is throw out. Picard and Data dominate the plot for pretty much all the films. Picard is transformed into a quasi action hero and Data his comedic sidekick. Meanwhile, for the most part, the roles given to the other 5 are so small and meaningless that they almost could have been played by cardboard cutouts of the actors.

Stewart and Spiner were the breakout actors from TNG, it made sense the movies would focus on them. The death of TNG may have been accelerated if they had given us movies based on one of the minor characters. Most didn't have the acting chops to carry a movie (much like the minor TOS actors) nor the popularity among general audiences that are needed to make a film financially successful.

These are valid arguments. My problem though are:

1. If Picard and Data were the breakout characters, why change them in such a drastic and unbelievable fashion for the films. I'll spare the details because any TNG fan knows how different they were. Kirk and Spock carried TOS films, and the characters changed, but they did so in a believable way. Kirk became more mellow and introspective and Spock became less rigid. It seemed like a natural progression. Picard and Data were the total opposite from TV to films.

2. Even if the other 5 didn't have the chops and/or popularity to carry the films the extent to which their characters were reduced was staggering considering the importance they'd had in TNG.
Again TOS did the opposite for the most part. Chekhov and Sulu got more time in at least one film than in the show. Scotty was about the same and Uhura was still pretty much ignored. But overall the minor characters did become more important. In TNG they went from some importance to almost inconsequential.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

There's a nice open-endedness about AGT. In the mists of our minds, the ship and crew could have gone anywhere from there. And had it been the literal end, then we'd have been left with those hypothetical possibilities to ponder.

The movies act as an anticlimax to that. First they shoot down 1701-D herself, then they basically do character assassinations on the rest of the crew as well. Our lasting impressions of The Next Generation are therefore suffering a kind of taint; a post-script where we start our discussions with "That show was awesome!", but finish them with "Oh yeah, but it all got a bit depressing in the movies at the end".

AGT left us with hope. But the TNG movies stomped on that hope, kicked sand into it's face, squeezed lemon juice into it's eyes, and left it rolling around on the grass screaming "Make It Stop!".

Of course, all of this is only evident to us in retrospect. At the time, with TNG ending on a high, sending the crew to the big screen seemed like the obvious thing to do. And I can't really imagine any way in which history could have unfolded differently than the way it did.

Excellent post!

 

[Catarina]

Yes and no. I liked the final shot but not the rest. I'd have to watch it one more time. it's been 10 years for me. but the first impression I got was it was just another episode but featured them all playing poker to make it climactic yet-now I wanted to see more of this dynamic. I wanted more TNG.

 

[JesterFace]

TNG should have ended with 'All Good Things...'.

No matter how people try to justify the films, they're just bad! FC is the only one with anything good in it but overall it's just too different compared to the TV series. In my opinion, TNG should have never gone to the big screen, the format just doesn't work with films.

I'm quite certain i'll never watch any of the TNG movies again. I don't want to.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

No one has to "justify" the films or their liking of them to you or anyone else. It is a personal opinion, nothing more.

 

[JesterFace]

No one has to "justify" the films or their liking of them to you or anyone else. It is a personal opinion, nothing more.

It just feels like that after many posts are about "why this and that is good". If something is good... it just is, and no explanations are required.

 

[Mudd]

At the expense of making the guy from TOS's "Metamorphosis" into an alcoholic womanizing self-centered asshole, and also at the expense of making the Borg into some drone bee hive with a sultry hormone-addled queen bee at the center.

And both choices worked really well - great returns on the "expense."

DS9 was never going to carry the Franchise, so moving TNG out of the way for it would have been self-defeating for the studio. Better they'd kept TNG going another four or five years, bringing in new actors and characters to replace departing ones.

Who knows, Avery Brooks might have spent some years commanding the Enterprise.

 

[Dukhat]

Never heard that one before, maybe not all that prevailing.

I favor the fan belief where Cochrane lead the first Human mission to Alpha Centauri.

Then apparently you weren't an aficionado of early Star Trek novels, which were basically Trek's "canon" up until TNG premiered. Many of those early novels dealt with the idea that Cochrane was an alien from Alpha Centauri, taking what was said in "Metamorphosis" literally. It also carried over into "non-fiction" Trek books like Worlds of the Federation, and several RPGs.

Only problem with that theory is Cochrane is human.

MCCOY: He's human, Jim. Everything checks out perfectly.

That doesn't really mean much when almost every alien in TOS looked exactly like humans.

And both choices worked really well - great returns on the "expense."

I never said that the choices didn't work well returns-wise; just that I didn't personally like the choices.

DS9 was never going to carry the Franchise, so moving TNG out of the way for it would have been self-defeating for the studio. Better they'd kept TNG going another four or five years, bringing in new actors and characters to replace departing ones.

While I agree with your logic in theory, if they changed the TNG cast but kept to the same formula of "Enterprise visits planet-of-the-week that nobody really cares about" or "yet another Klingon revolution attempt gone awry," then the show would have gotten dull fast no matter who was in command of the ship. Changing the format of a Trek series to something other than this was, IMHO, the way to go, and the only realistic way to do that was to have a spinoff. And while it's true that DS9 wasn't going to carry the franchise, it was something different than the status quo of being on the Ent-D.

 

[Phantom]

Insurrection was the last really good TNG movie. Nemesis was at best, a very weak "fair".

 

[BillJ]

Insurrection was the last really good TNG movie. Nemesis was at best, a very weak "fair".

Nemesis is the only TNG film I can really stomach anymore. My rants about Insurrection are legendary!

 

[Phantom]

Nemesis was too slap-dash for my taste and the Argo scene was nothing but filler and stroking Stewart's ego. It rates a "fair" based mostly on the actress playing Donatra making her interesting to me and Data's sacrifice and the aftermath of that.

The only way I can tolerate B-4 is by going with the fan theory that it was really Lore, helping Shinzon for his own reasons.

 

[RunawayStarShip]

While I agree with your logic in theory, if they changed the TNG cast but kept to the same formula of "Enterprise visits planet-of-the-week that nobody really cares about" or "yet another Klingon revolution attempt gone awry," then the show would have gotten dull fast no matter who was in command of the ship. Changing the format of a Trek series to something other than this was, IMHO, the way to go, and the only realistic way to do that was to have a spinoff. And while it's true that DS9 wasn't going to carry the franchise, it was something different than the status quo of being on the Ent-D.

I think DS9 was a bold attempt to shake things up, and I personally enjoyed it. It had very strong characterization and was well-written for the most part. I suspect that its main weakness (along with VOY and ENT) was that it became too insular. If released today, I'd suggest that an abridged DS9 without the filler (to be more in line with modern "binge viewing"-tastes) might do pretty well.

Perhaps TNG did well because the the adventurer archetype that kind of exists beyond the need for characterization. Obviously, good characterization helps (Picard and Data are probably who come to mind), but the Enterprise crew can basically be summed up as adventurers, and TNG is the chronicle of their adventures.

"Enterprise visits planet-of-the-week that nobody really cares about" might have become stale, but ultimately it depends on how its written and executed. The all-too-short visit to a planet that nobody really cares about in the opening minutes of STID certainly didn't feel stale. Of course, I doubt TNG could have sustained its high ratings without bringing in fresh faces behind the scenes. Like Dennis says, even stale TNG probably would have lasted four more seasons just from its head start before the decline in viewership became nasty. (Heck, Star Trek in general lasted 11 years after TNG went to the big screen.)

In hindsight, though, it was obviously always going to go back to TOS when there was nothing left in the tank. The sci-fi exemplar of an adventurer has been Kirk since TOS ended and gained popularity in syndication.

 

[TheSubCommander]

I'm glad TNG continued after All Good Things, but I admit I wish the films had been better.

Generations is flawed, but serviceable. I used to hate it, but its stock has risen for me over the years.

FC was the best of the lot, and I can't think of anything that could have been done better.

Insurrection is okay, but really seems more of a mediocre TNG episode, than a feature film.

Nemesis, wow, wasn't a fan when it came out (plot wise I wish things were taken in a different direction), but like Generations, my opinion of it has risen, and I agree with BillJ that of the TNG films, it has aged the best.

But its not that I wish TNG ended with AGT. I just wish things had gone in a different direction. I definitely wanted more TNG films, and personally, I wish we received one more after Nemesis as a "proper" send off, before the reboot. Or, if they were going to bring in TNG actors in Enterprise, anyway, I wish we at least had a GOOD 2 or 3 -episode TNG crossover in Enterprise (and not as the series finale, rather a mid-season episode), rather than the ham-fisted Augments/TATV we received. It was totally doable, especially if it were set post-Nemesis, and if they couldn't get Patrick Stewart to join in, it could have been a USS Titan story crossing over to the Enterprise NX-01 era, with TNG (and possibly Voyager) cast members who wanted to guest star.

There is no word that I've come to hate more than 'canon'.

I hear that! You know, I understand the importance of continuity, and having the over all story jibe, but when it comes to very minor plot points or trivial details that really don't affect the mythology one way or the other, that is something I wish people wouldn't spend so much time on. When you have a half century of Star Trek, minor things are bound not to line up exactly. As long as the overall story has continuity, I am cool with it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Nemesis had one of the more cheesy villains of Trek history and the whole thing came off like a cheesy Hollywood B action flick except with 50 year olds. But if you're going to kill a major character it should be in a fitting way and not in a way that seems tacked on for shock value. The whole sequence of events that led to it seemed blatantly contrived.

Main character deaths only work when they're earned. That's why 24 lost me late in its run, starting around season 5 (Hey, when the Trek folks came in) they stopped worrying about earning their main character deaths and just started doing it whenever. Data's death was not earned.

 

[DonIago]

The funny thing about NEM was that it convinced me Tom Hardy was a bad actor. I remember being pretty worried when Inception was making the news and I found out Tom Hardy was one of the leads. Then I saw the film and realized he'd simply been very poorly served by NEM.

 

[Orphalesion]

I just wish they came up with better movies; I just don't think Berman/Moore/Braga have a "feature mindset". They just came up with bigger TV episodes for the big screen, and not great ones at that...

I agree with this. Now I', mot a fan of TOS, but I have to agree that, at the very least, WOK, SFS and TUC are about something more than just the "planet/calamity of the week" you could argue for TVH due to its association with WOK and SFS. And there's very great continuity between some of these films.
WOK-TVH was more or less the Spock trilogy about his death and rebirth. TUC built up on David's death. There was character development between the movies and acknowledgement that the characters were getting older along with the actors.

The two bad TOS (TMP and TFF)movies are the only ones that are completely insular and static. With no character development, problem-of-the-week adventures (rather bad ones at that) and nothing (except special effects) that could not have been done in TOS while it was still on the air. Basically they were "big TOS episodes"

The TNG movies were all "big TNG episodes" there was no advancement or development aside from them finally, finally, going ahead with the Will/Deanna relationship (about a decade after anybody stopped caring and it could have made an impact on the story) which really felt more like something thrown in as an afterthought.
As to the change of Enterprises, I do not consider a change in sets a significant development, or one at all really.
All the stories were insular and "problem/planet of the week" no continuity between the movies, no overarching character arcs (or character arcs at all)

Even the stories were (imho) shit at the very core(also just like TFF):

Gen: A villain that comes out of nowhere, a rather silly concept of a magical fairytale place (that also was not executed very well), the completely superfluous Shatner appearance. All this in addition to holes in the plot Troi could fly the Enterprise through without crashing.
Nothing has changed by the end of the movie, except a purely cosmetic change in the next film (new ship)

TFC: I understand how the Borg Queen might have been needed for a movie, but she robbed the Borg of all their mystique and "otherness". Plus she seemes like a desperate attempt to copy Kahn. Time-Travel was an overused cliche by the time of TFC. Data repeats his arc from a regular TNG episode, Picard turns into a howler monkey (also lifted from a TNG episode) and the rest of the characters prance around a shanty town.
Nothing has changed by the end of the movie.

INS: Not only was this insular, but it also didn't make any sense and very little was ever explained. It's basically TFF if they had went the way of "yeah that thing is the actual, Abrahaic devil" (like they originally planned)
We have a planet full of magical, immortal hippie people, some Viidian rippoffs and once again holes Deanna can safely steer the Enterprise through.
Nothing has changed by the end of the movie (Deanna and Will spent the entirety of TNG in a quasi relationship)

NEM: Actually the TNG movie I like the most. Still plenty of nonsensical things and plot holes but at least more characters than just Datar and Picard get something to do. Shinzon is another desperate attempt to create TNG's Kahn, though I found him more entertaining than the Borg Queen. Still the Romulan stuff was fairly interesting and this story had a potential to grow, which sadly was never realized because the execution was just awful.
By the end of the movie nothing has changed (Will and Deanna got married long after it had the potential to impact anything and Data's death already had the retcon built into it with the new, blank Data-clone.)

 

[BillJ]

The funny thing about NEM was that it convinced me Tom Hardy was a bad actor. I remember being pretty worried when Inception was making the news and I found out Tom Hardy was one of the leads. Then I saw the film and realized he'd simply been very poorly served by NEM.

I thought Hardy was very good in Nemesis considering the script was pretty rough.

 

[mswood]

By the same logic of this thread I should have wanted TNG to end most likely by season 5 certainly by season six. I mean did turnabout Intruder (or heck TOS third season) ruin my love of TOS?. Nope.