Kegek Kringle said:
Plum said:
North Pole-aris said:
Brutal Strudel said:
^^^That's for sure. And they pretty much lost interest in TNG, too--they weren't exactly champing at the bit for the last two movies.
Taking TNG off of television was the biggest mistake made with the Franchise since NBC cancelled TOS.
<SNIP!>
*shrug*, Yes, seems pretty much what happened in hindsite. I feel this is pretty on the mark.
Franchise wise, certainly. I'm less certain writing wise. Had it continued for a few more years TNG could have run into the same problems that plagued VOY.
Agreed. Looking at the quality of TNG episodes, it started off very low (first season, almost entirely, and about 50% of the second season) climbed to a zenith of high-quality episodes in the third and fourth seasons, saw a small decline in the fifth season, and the sixth and seventh were filled with sub-par episodes.
TNG had "played out" in the fifth year, IMHO. The idea would be to have wrapped up the series THAT year... taken a couple of years off, done a TNG-based movie (just ONE), then started developing a sequel series, so there'd have been (1) a sense of SIGNIFICANCE to anything new that got released, and (2) so that there'd be a sense of FRESHNESS to any new series.
DS9 started off awfully as well (and had more than it's share of awful episodes later, too... though the numbers declined over time). By the time DS9 started to look "fresh" and interesting, most of the audience had fled already. I know I, personally, was so turned off by the early episodes that it took major convincing to make me watch again. And once I did start watching again, I found a show that was almost unrecognizable versus the one I'd turned off years before.
Which isn't to say VOY was a better idea creatively... hm. I do think overall that the same chefs were left churning out the old recipes for too long... Star Trek could have used some fresh talent in, oh, say, around 1994.
Absolutely.
You know, Voyager COULD have been VERY FRESH. The idea, honestly, wasn't a bad one at all. But it was played out in a horrible fashion. The people running the show (and, harsh as this may sound, I lay this MAINLY at the feet of Jeri Taylor) simply had no idea what makes for compelling entertainment. (Just like the first two seasons of Enterprise...)
And, had the TNG films not been a mishmash of overblown episodes, action movie cliches and less than inspired writing - you know, up to cinematic snuff and with writing at the level of TNG's best episodes - they could have done well at the box office.
The problem with the TNG movies was twofold. You've hit ONE of the two bits on the head, certainly.
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"Generations" was awful, of course... because it was written, first, as a set of "what do we want this film to DO" points, then they attempted to wrap a story around those points.
They wanted to "Kill Kirk," thus (they assumed) ensure that the TOS/TNG rift in fandom would be healed and we'd all come trotting faithfully over to their laps, waiting for the next milkbone they'd toss.
They wanted to destroy the NCC-1701-D because they were tired of the ship design (I never loved it, but the destruction of the 1701-D was utterly gratuitous).
They had a few character bits... Guinan, Picard's family, Data's emotion chip, Troi's bad driving record... that they wanted to play up.
The film they wrapped around those issues was horrible, of course. Because the "points" drove the story, not the other way around.
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"First Contact" was far better, overall (though the Zephram Cochrane character was just annoying at every possible level, in my opinion... and not just from a "canon" standpoint!). The reason was that MOST of the film's plot seemed to follow in a dramatically logical fashion. Okay, so having a "Borg Queen" was obnoxious... a few other things like that... oh well... the movie worked, overall. And MOST of the film didn't feel "epic." Yes, there were "epic" bits in the plot, but most of it felt pretty personal... THAT, IMHO, is why this is the most successful of the TNG-era movies.
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"Insurrection" was just awful, again. Why? It was a series of "ideas" that got stuffed together with a half-baked plot strung up around them.
Someone wanted to make fun of people getting facelifts. Yeah, THAT joke was entertaining for about a half-second...
Someone wanted to have the crew go rogue. Now, that's a worthwhile idea... if it has CONSEQUENCES. Anybody see any consequences from this action?
Someone wanted a "huge battle with kewl 'splosions" and yes, we got that.
Someone wanted a "big name dramatic actor" to play the villain (I'm sure he's regretting that flick to this day!)
And they wanted Picard to "get some."
The plot just felt hacked-together. And so the flick sucked.
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"Nemesis" was the same thing. They came up with a bunch of gimmicks ("Dudes, let's have a DUNE BUGGY CHASE! KEWL!!!!") and so forth, but the plot itself was driven by the gimmicks, not the other way around. And so, it sucked.
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My point? Well, I can imagine what a GOOD WRITER could have done with TNG, a couple of years after it was off the air, knowing that the table was open and he could change things... with the only restriction being to write the most compelling story that he (or she) could come up with... even if it happened to involve death or destruction of familiar things. (ie, these would not be MANDATED, just ALLOWED)
We might have gotten one truly amazing, deeply impactful TNG movie out of that. Instead of one passable flick, one mediocre flick, and two awful ones.
This is what I keep worrying about with this new film. So far, it looks promising, but I'm not 100% convinced. I'm really hoping that we're getting a compelling story, not just "another weekly episode" playing on ticket-punch points ("Sulu - check. Uhura - check. Chekov - Chek"... etc, etc) but where everything in the movie is done because it makes for a better story!
