Star Trek: Generations at 30
- Thread starter Tallguy
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Yeah, WYLB still annoys me to this day. It was the series finale, and they used 100% stock footage of a space battle from a previous episode (which was why the new Defiant was the same class as the old one.) The final episode of DS9 deserved better than that.
I think I'm more forgiving of WYLB because it was TV instead of a feature film and because I can appreciate that they just had no money left in the budget and because by and large I felt the DS9 final arc was great stuff. Also the battle stuff there was more 'this stuff happens along the way' and less 'this is a major climax point for the episode'.
OTOH, I feel pretty meh overall about GEN, and the BoP explosion reuse is just one of my top five examples of why the film miffs me. Number One(!), of course, being, "WTF does Picard choose that moment, out of all possible moments, to return to?!?!"
OTOH, I feel pretty meh overall about GEN, and the BoP explosion reuse is just one of my top five examples of why the film miffs me. Number One(!), of course, being, "WTF does Picard choose that moment, out of all possible moments, to return to?!?!"
Even as a kid I recognized that. A future Blu-ray/UHD release really needs to edit in the ABC footage, etc. as well as the spacedock and Klingon scenes to something like this.
I could forgive them utilizing the stock explosion footage to save money if the battle itself were something special. But it wasn't. The Enterprise fired phasers a grand total of once. Until the final torpedo shot, that was the entirety of the Enterprise's resistance. Heck, we got to see more of an effort from the Enterprise on a TV budget in "The Survivors."
Not to mention that even with shields compromised, the Enterprise should have been able to kick the Bird of Prey's butt with no difficulty. Yes, they'd take some serious damage themselves due to the shields not working. But they still had way more powerful weapons. That BoP should have been toast in about 10 seconds.
Not to mention that even with shields compromised, the Enterprise should have been able to kick the Bird of Prey's butt with no difficulty. Yes, they'd take some serious damage themselves due to the shields not working. But they still had way more powerful weapons. That BoP should have been toast in about 10 seconds.
It would have retroactively weakened the impact of the sequence in NEM, and probably not a great idea with civilians on board, but I might have been very forgiving of that in favor of the sheer spectacle of it if the E-D had rammed the BoP to destroy it. That would have also been much more acceptable justification for the following events than, "Ooops; looks like we took one hit too many."
I'm not going to go to great lengths defending this as the greatest space battle of all time. It certainly was not. But it was better than Star Trek VI. (Ironic.)
(Have we ever seen the Enterprise in a fair fight? It's either against some pip-squeak with a trick, someone has managed to hamstring the ship, or it's like Metron or Q level of laughably overmatched. Or just way outnumbered. The classic Enterprise vs. D7 duel has never happened.)
But it was exciting, it was cinematic, and they never made BoPs out to NOT be dangerous. Especially when you don't have shields. It's not like this was one shot, one kill for the Durases. They engineered the odds in their favor and then they still got lucky. Mostly.
Now why the Enterprise didn't run like hell when her shields stopped working? No idea. I mean, I suppose they might have feared that the Klingons would kidnap Picard. Was that worth sacrificing a Galaxy class starship and all families on board? They certainly weren't going to be able to take a pot shot at Soran's sun killer missile under those conditions.
(Have we ever seen the Enterprise in a fair fight? It's either against some pip-squeak with a trick, someone has managed to hamstring the ship, or it's like Metron or Q level of laughably overmatched. Or just way outnumbered. The classic Enterprise vs. D7 duel has never happened.)
But it was exciting, it was cinematic, and they never made BoPs out to NOT be dangerous. Especially when you don't have shields. It's not like this was one shot, one kill for the Durases. They engineered the odds in their favor and then they still got lucky. Mostly.
Now why the Enterprise didn't run like hell when her shields stopped working? No idea. I mean, I suppose they might have feared that the Klingons would kidnap Picard. Was that worth sacrificing a Galaxy class starship and all families on board? They certainly weren't going to be able to take a pot shot at Soran's sun killer missile under those conditions.
But the Enterprise didn't need to run like hell! That's my point. All they needed to do was actually fire their weapons. Riker was absolutely incompetent in this battle.
Just watched it again and Enterprise A took 6 hits (the 6th is the one that penetrated the primary hull and destroyed the galley/officer's mess). Excelsior took at least one on screen and Chang's Bird took 7 total (4 from Enterprise and 3 from Excelsior).
Novelization had Kirk firing phasers blindly at least once (ould have been kinda like Ent-E against the Scimitar) and Chang applauding his desperate moves at worthy of a warrior.
The Duras BoP in Generations should have at least been that strength, but yeah a couple more BoP and a Vor'Cha would be more worthy of the D seeing what it could unleash futilely against a Borg cube (and Husnok illusion/construct).
Novelization had Kirk firing phasers blindly at least once (ould have been kinda like Ent-E against the Scimitar) and Chang applauding his desperate moves at worthy of a warrior.
The Duras BoP in Generations should have at least been that strength, but yeah a couple more BoP and a Vor'Cha would be more worthy of the D seeing what it could unleash futilely against a Borg cube (and Husnok illusion/construct).
Reading this post makes me feel as though we saw different films.
The pasting (I won't even call it a battle) in GEN may have been cinematic, but it was basically a repeat of the 'battle' we'd just seen in the previous film, except more poorly executed because there were so many things Our Heroes could have (been shown to have) done differently.
The one thing I'll say in Our Heroes' defense is that they couldn't just run away because they were still trying to prevent Soran from destroying the Veridian sun.
It might even have been more acceptable if the BoP was initially shown to be attacking the E-D's weapons systems or specifically attacking Main Engineering in order to prevent them from counterattacking. Somewhat implausible given how many weapons systems the E-D possessed, but at least it would explain why the ship made such a dismal showing for itself.
But really... reset the shield harmonics and/or fire all weapons at the BoP and call it a day.
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I agree with most of your post, except this part. The BoP was always shown to be significantly inferior to the Enterprise, even the refit original Enterprise and the Enterprise-A. In TSFS, for example, Captain Doc Brown is surprised that Kirk hasn't destroyed them and says they outgun him ten to one. That doesn't imply evenly matched ships.
The main advantage, of course, is that the BoP could cloak. Which was the reason why both of them (Kruge's ship and Chang's) were able to do the damage they did.
That's fair. I'll strike that.
What the Duras sisters should have done was destroy or at least cripple Main Engineering and/or the bridge with their first few shots. Unfortunately they're instead shown to be toying with the E-D in a scenario where time is their enemy, which proves out even with the miserable defense the E-D puts up.
Chang's definitely. It was a more sophisticated cloaking device that not only was harder to track, but allowed firing when cloaked.
For Kruge's ship, I think it was more the fact that the Enterprise was already severely damaged from the battle with Khan. After all, Kirk and Sulu are able to visually spot the BoP even when cloaked and they get off the first shots. It's only the fact that the systems on the Enterprise break down that ultimately allows Kruge to get the upper hand.
Yeah, if the E had been fully crewed in TSFS (or Our Heroes had been more aggressive in their initial attack), things might have proceeded very differently.
Of course, if the E had survived while the BoP had been destroyed, the events of TVH might have proceeded in a much more tragic direction.
I'm sure it's a feelings thing. I didn't think the "nooks and crannies" of the battle in Star Trek VI were well addressed. "How does Uhura (brilliant officer though she is) solve the problem of how to torpedo a cloaked ship when the best minds of the Federation could not?" "Why did this technology of firing when cloaked ever appear again?" Also, I think making a heat signature is a very 20th-century problem, isn't it? (This is the problem with not-military geniuses trying to write military geniuses. See also The Picard Maneuver.)
OTOH, I was fine with the battle in GEN. The rules were "The Klingons have sabotaged the Enterprise making her essentially defenseless until Data figures out how to turn the tables." Could they / should they have plugged some of the holes like "Hey at least shoot back" or "Show us why changing the shield modulation didn't work"? Sure. But after they teched the tech that would still have been the answer. (This is probably the same response I should have to TUC.)
It's Jack Dawson and the door. He could not get on the door with Rose. Because that's the story. If the prop maker made the door too big that doesn't mean Jack could have lived it means that the door needed to be smaller.
As for how a Bird of Prey could take out the Enterprise? That's explicit: They cheated. The Enterprise crew is even smug about how impregnable they are until it happens.
Why not just shoot a ship that's de-cloaking when it's shooting at you? That's been "hard to do" since Balance of Terror. Should it be? I don't know. It's a Star Trek rule. (In TUC they react like "can't fire when cloaked" is some physical law of cloaking tech. In Balance of Terror it was just an energy problem.) They take out the Klingons because Data figures outwhere the stock footage is I mean figures out how to get them to de-cloak when they aren't in a position to fire.
I was too busy wondering why the 50- and 60-year-olds were getting in a fistfight over a missile when they had time/space travel that would have made Time Lords jealous. Oh, and why didn't Kirk and Picard feel like they were wrapped in joy?
Also why nobody asked a shipload of refugees close to Earth WHY they were refugees? "Well, there was this thing called THE BORG..."
THESE are the things that bother me about GEN.
OTOH, I was fine with the battle in GEN. The rules were "The Klingons have sabotaged the Enterprise making her essentially defenseless until Data figures out how to turn the tables." Could they / should they have plugged some of the holes like "Hey at least shoot back" or "Show us why changing the shield modulation didn't work"? Sure. But after they teched the tech that would still have been the answer. (This is probably the same response I should have to TUC.)
It's Jack Dawson and the door. He could not get on the door with Rose. Because that's the story. If the prop maker made the door too big that doesn't mean Jack could have lived it means that the door needed to be smaller.
As for how a Bird of Prey could take out the Enterprise? That's explicit: They cheated. The Enterprise crew is even smug about how impregnable they are until it happens.
Why not just shoot a ship that's de-cloaking when it's shooting at you? That's been "hard to do" since Balance of Terror. Should it be? I don't know. It's a Star Trek rule. (In TUC they react like "can't fire when cloaked" is some physical law of cloaking tech. In Balance of Terror it was just an energy problem.) They take out the Klingons because Data figures out
I was too busy wondering why the 50- and 60-year-olds were getting in a fistfight over a missile when they had time/space travel that would have made Time Lords jealous. Oh, and why didn't Kirk and Picard feel like they were wrapped in joy?
Also why nobody asked a shipload of refugees close to Earth WHY they were refugees? "Well, there was this thing called THE BORG..."
THESE are the things that bother me about GEN.
Here's the thing; I don't think the emotion chip was necessary as a plot point. I mean, yeah, who doesn't want to see Data with emotions? But at the same time, from my perspective and I've observed a bunch of other people with this same opinion; that Data, this whole time, had emotions. He just experienced them differently because he's an android. I can probably find clips of this, which I may reply to this post with said clips later. I understand the purpose of the emotion chip but I think it was unneccesary.
Well, it was sort of necessary to the plot in that it disabled him from helping to stop Soran from kidnapping Geordi. But the reason for him installing it (during the aforementioned pointless holodeck scene where he still doesn't understand humor for some reason even after all this time around humans, pushes Crusher into the water, and then decides to install the chip right in the middle of a dangerous mission), makes no sense whatsoever. But he was one of the 'big two' of the film (Stewart being the other), so Data got all the spotlight.
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