TNG Movies made Too Soon?

[Hober Mallow]

Paramount got greedy, and rushed out Generations and VOY at the same time, as well as TNG season 7. The quality suffered as a result.

You could blame DS9 for this. Prior to DS9, Paramount was wary of having two Trek shows on at the same time. Initially, they flat-out told Berman and Piller they would never do a Star Trek spinoff. A year or so later, Paramount asked Berman and Piller to develop ideas for new shows, Star Trek-related or not. One idea they had was Deep Space Nine. Another idea was an SF series set during medievel times. Paramount went ahead with DS9, but still had reservations about having two Treks running simultaniously. They already had a huge success with TNG; you can't really blame them for not wanting to rock the boat.

DS9's success convinced Paramount they could slap the Star Trek name on anything and it would be a huge hit. They decided then that, once TNG went to movies, they should still keep running two Trek shows.

So you see, it's all DS9's fault for not tanking.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I still say the films ruined the legacy of the TNG TV series...

I don't know if that's the general public's perspective, but it's certainly true for me.

The return of Trek owes a lot to George Lucas. And actually, SW itself may not have happened without ST (I recall Lucas saying he was influenced by TOS). So the wheel turned full circle. ST begat SW begat ST.

I don't know about that. SW was influenced by Joseph Campbell and Akira Kurosawa far more than it was infuenced by ST.

There's one other reason why Generations had to happen in November 1994.

Paramount had the cast of TNG under contract for an eighth season; the cast signed two year extensions after the sixth season. But that would have taken TNG into May of '95, and Paramount wanted to launch UPN in January of '95 with a new Star Trek series anchoring the network. Could the audience have supported three Star Trek series in the winter and spring of '95? Unlikely. TNG had to leave the air for Voyager to take its place.

With TNG going off the air, with November '94 being three years (roughly) since the last movie, it made sense for Paramount to transition the crew to the big screen when they did. Without a UPN to muddy things up, there might've been a classic Trek film in '94.

Actually, we knew during the fifth season of TNG that the seventh season was going to be TNG's last and that they were going straight to movies. Long before UPN was announced. It was the plan all along. In fact, before that it was believed the sixth season was probably going to be the last. It wasn't until Paramount announced they were going to do one more season that we knew we were even going to be getting a seventh season.

People get confused when talk of Hollywood contracts comes up. For instance, when an actor signs a contract for, say, three Star Trek movies, fans will start talking on message boards about how, "Paramount is making three Trek films!" That's not at all the case. The purpose of contracts is studio leverage. Just because an actor signs a three-picture deal for an adaption of Asimov's Foundation trilogy doesn't mean the studio has actually put any thought into actually making that many films. One does not follow the other.

I was aware before DS9 even premiered that TNG's seventh season was definitely going to be its last. It was common knowledge among TNG fans. This was long before UPN was even a glint in Paramount's eye.

 

[I am not Spock]

So the reason we got Generations instead of TNG season 8 was not because of UPN/Voyager? Well, TNG was probably better off ending when it did. An 8th season could have been a disaster. The writers were already burnt out by that point.

 

[Hober Mallow]

So the reason we got Generations instead of TNG season 8 was not because of UPN/Voyager?

Nope, it was the one-two punch of the aging original series actors and the escalating TNG cast salaries.

 

[DWF]

So the reason we got Generations instead of TNG season 8 was not because of UPN/Voyager? Well, TNG was probably better off ending when it did. An 8th season could have been a disaster. The writers were already burnt out by that point.

Well al they had to do was to cast new people on TNG and get new writers. If the writers were really burnt out they should've continued on to DS9 and Voyager for that matter.