Original Generations Uniforms

The proposals look too formal and too change-for-the-sake-of-change; its OK for the uniforms to look a little television-ish as this was also the last movie of the E-D.

 

Aye, the movie was originally supposed to open the TNG segment with a big ass battle scene of the Enterprise swooping in the save the Armagosa conservatory from a Romulan attack, until Jeri Taylor took a look at the script and commented "You know, you guys need to open this movie with something fun". So we got 15 minutes of the crew farting about in 18th century clothes instead.

 

Personally I didn't care what uniform they wore.
But maybe a new uniform would show that the movies were a change from the series, something new.
Even though I didn't like the TMP uniforms, at least I knew we were moving on in TOS.

It may have been OK to have the 'fun' start if it was fun.

I didn't get why they were angry at Data.
I'm also not familiar with naval traditions which indicate who it is OK to dump into the holographic ocean.
I thought they were all being jerks to Data like they were in Season 1 of TNG. Maybe I was the only one not rolling around the floor in laughter after this opener.

 

Yeah, never mind that that "fun" cost half the movie's budget on a pointless Worf-gets-promoted scene which was completely irrelevant to the story, as his promotion had nothing to do with anything. And any "fun" that the scene might have conveyed was completely disrupted by Picard's news about his brother and nephew. And it made Riker look like more of a dick than he usually does. Thanks, Jeri!

 

I did not know it was so expensive. I've always suspected the entire reason for that sequence was to get to the visual of Picard, Riker et al on the starship bridge wearing the age-of-fighting-sail uniforms. It was around the time that the Patrick O'Brian books were becoming "a thing."

 

I don't know the exact amount, but a lot of the budget was blown on this scene. That money could have been better used toward a better Klingon ship model for the Duras sisters, new Romulan warbirds for the observatory attack scene, or better uniforms for the crew, etc. Hell, they could even have built a new model for the Enterprise-B.

 

Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that. I'm still wondering why on earth they would think that Kirk getting randomly shot in the back would have been any kind of satisfying death for the audience. I mean, I know that the production was rushed, but still...that was the best they could come up with?

 

Given the way themes of death were handled in the movie - Picard's family being wiped out in a fire, for example - I imagine the writers were trying for something proud. Maybe thinking they could elevate the way Star Trek deals with mortality, treating it somewhat realistically.

That of course was a mistake. It's an adventure fantasy and it has a certain ceiling. Fan expectations must be fed.

 

I think he meant the new ones that they tossed would have cost $3000 a piece as well, so they already spent $30,000 on he new ones. To make new "old" ones would have pushed the budget up to $60k!

Apologies for being a noob- but what was the original scene? I always assumed it was just a different take in the Death Valley setting?

 

I saw the scene on Youtube a few years ago. From what I recall, it was basically just a loooooong scene of Picard, Kirk and Soran climbing rocks and shooting at each other. Then Soran shoots Kirk in the back. And that's about it.

 

^ I'm sure it would have been much better with dramatic music playing.

 

The other "fun" idea to open the 24th-century part of the film involved the bridge crew pushing eggs around with their noses on the floor of the holodeck. They realized how stupid that sounded (and would look), whereupon they went with Worf's sailing ship promotion.

I've sometimes thought a halfway competent script doctor would have dispensed with the first twenty pages of the script, ditching the Enterprise-B opening and the "fun" intro because neither is, strictly speaking, necessary. Both are, basically, "Meet the characters" scenes, but that's all they do -- introduce the characters. Much as I enjoy those scenes, they don't introduce plot or conflict. If you start the film with the Enterprise-D at Amargosa, it's the same movie.

 

Er, what?

Then how would Kirk have ended up in the Nexus?

 

But then you turn Kirk getting lost in the Nexus during an action-packed scene into one of lame exposition between Crusher and Riker later in the film.

 

That was my point in the post above. Just saying that Kirk was on a mission and was lost wouldn't really cut it with the audience. We had to see that happening to get the full effect. So I think the Ent-B scene was necessary, even if it could have been written a lot better (Enterprise the only ship in range, Harriman looking like an idiot, Spock and Bones's lines given to Scotty and Chekov, etc.)

I again once had an idea to fix the scene. Instead of having it be the commissioning ceremony for the Enterprise-B, have it be the decommissioning ceremony for the Enterprise-A, and have it take place somewhere far away from Earth so having the ship be the only one in range would be more plausible. That way you fix lots of problems (the aforementioned only-ship-in-range issue, no new captain to be made to look foolish, no dumb jokes about equipment not arriving until Tuesday since the A would have been gutted of its equipment already, have the entire ship get caught in the Nexus so that it could escape in the 24th century and rescue the Ent-D from destruction, etc.)

 

Sounds good. But I definitely remember there being much fan speculation about the starship class the B would have belonged to back in the day. Common sense said it was an Excelsior class, and the scene in Generations paid that off.

 

^Well, both the "Enterprise history wall" in the observation lounge and the info in the TNG Tech Manual explicitly show an Excelsior class ship in its original configuration, which was not what we saw in Generations. However, the history wall also shows very inaccurate depictions of all the ships, especially the Enterprise-C which changed design in "Yesterday's Enterprise." My point being, it really wouldn't have been that much of a problem to show the Ent-B as a new class of ship.

However, in my take, we wouldn't have seen the B at all. Instead we would have been treated to one last adventure with the TMP refit rescuing the Enterprise-D from crash-landing on Veridian III.

 

Seriously. Moore and Braga talked about that at the time the film came out. All I can figure is that they had good drugs in Hawaii when they were working on the script in the summer of 1993.

The same events happen. I'm just not sure that you have to show them, at least at the beginning. And then it becomes a bigger surprise to the audience when Picard finds Kirk in the Nexus.

It's possible that they could have done the reveal of the "how" after the Kirk reveal. The Nexus is non-linear time, after all.