TOS vs. TNG - adaptability to the big screen

[Smellmet]

I think GEN is the best-looking Star Trek film (along with TMP) from the pre 2009 era.

It absolutely is - from the superb moody set lighting, the excellent FX in the Enterprise B scenes, to the fantastic shot of the D approaching the Amargosa station, Ten-forward bathed in sunlight, stellar cartography (compare that to the miserable looking screen in Nemesis) the still-awesome saucer crash, the Veridian 3 shockwave planet destruction (which I still find to be superior to Vulcans demise in 09), Generations for me is a fantastic looking film in every way, and looks lush and expensive in ways it's sequels can only dream about. It's at least equal to TMP (which I'm a huge fan of) and right behind the reboots for overall visual appeal.

I also agree that the interiors of the Enterprise look cheap. The bridge in First Contact is so flatly-lit and looks like a cobbled-together "greatest hits" bridge set from past movies and shows.

It's dreadful - just so plasticky and cheap, and not just the bridge either, the corridors and some of the earth sets looked really poor too. Some of the FX were nice, but I think the visuals in Generations were again, consistently slicker in their execution. I'm struggling to name a bad FX shot in GEN, but there's plenty in FC that look ropey to my eyes.

 

[Kor]

The Ent-E bridge looks like it should be a throwaway guest ship on Star Trek: Voyager.

Kor

 

[Allyn Gibson]

First Contact is clearly the movie with the most cinematic ambition, but it looks like it has those budget constraints... aside from the space walk sequence, the movie is filmed like a TV episode... criticisms which are true of Insurrection as well... whereas Generations (and Nemesis, whatever else anyone thinks of it) are shitty movie-of-the-week scripts, but are filmed with a cinematic flair, particularly Generations where John Alonzo as director of photography manages to get those old TNG sets looking really moody by use of dynamic light sources. And the location sequences also look sublime, again unlike First Contact and Insurrection which were filmed on location, but look like the standard 'planet exterior' and 'exterior village' sets TNG wheeled out over seven years. There's no dynamism there, no energy, no cinematic flair. In some ways, they epitomise that whole period of late 90s Star Trek, where it became a factory, churning out a product.

My feelings exactly. I've never been impressed with Jonathan Frakes' direction on First Contact and Insurrection. Meyer and Carson and their cinematographers made dark and claustrophobic Enterprise interiors work. Frakes doesn't. His direction is static and uninspired, though the exteriors in Insurrection open up that film more.

Stuart Baird may not have gotten along with the cast, and he was an editor, not a director, but he had a really good eye behind the camera and knew how to make a compelling shot. The script in Nemesis has problems, but Baird really tried to make a movie.

Going back to Frakes, the thing that has always bugged me about First Contact is how it takes the Enterprise-E for granted. This is the audience's first time seeing the ship, and it's never introduced to audiences as a place to savor and cherish. We didn't need five minutes of eye-fucking the ship, a la the shuttlecraft sequence in TMP, but a POV character being introduced to the ship and its locations would have gone a long way to make the Enterprise a character in its own right. Instead, it's treated like a place the audience already knows and loves, and that goes back, imho, to Frakes' direction. The bridge, the ready room, engineering, sickbay -- these are all places he shot in his episodes of three different television series -- and I don't feel that he quite aware that he was getting to introduce audiences to all-new versions of these locations, and letting the camera linger for a moment would not have been out of place.

 

[Lance]

My feelings exactly. I've never been impressed with Jonathan Frakes' direction on First Contact and Insurrection. Meyer and Carson and their cinematographers made dark and claustrophobic Enterprise interiors work. Frakes doesn't. His direction is static and uninspired, though the exteriors in Insurrection open up that film more.

Stuart Baird may not have gotten along with the cast, and he was an editor, not a director, but he had a really good eye behind the camera and knew how to make a compelling shot. The script in Nemesis has problems, but Baird really tried to make a movie.

Going back to Frakes, the thing that has always bugged me about First Contact is how it takes the Enterprise-E for granted. This is the audience's first time seeing the ship, and it's never introduced to audiences as a place to savor and cherish. We didn't need five minutes of eye-fucking the ship, a la the shuttlecraft sequence in TMP, but a POV character being introduced to the ship and its locations would have gone a long way to make the Enterprise a character in its own right. Instead, it's treated like a place the audience already knows and loves, and that goes back, imho, to Frakes' direction. The bridge, the ready room, engineering, sickbay -- these are all places he shot in his episodes of three different television series -- and I don't feel that he quite aware that he was getting to introduce audiences to all-new versions of these locations, and letting the camera linger for a moment would not have been out of place.

Very good points. My problems with Insurrection location filming though is, I can see they spent a lot of money going out on location, and Northern California always looks more beautiful than SoCal But so little of that footage of the vast Trek through the wilderness made it to the finished movie, because studio heads thought it dragged down the pace and demanded it be cut down, and the Baku village set looks exactly like the generic 'planet village' set TNG wheeled out all the time on TV from the third season onwards, that combined with Frakes' flat direction, the fact that they actually built that thing out on location almost washes over the audience. INS had a budget bigger than either of it's predecessors, but we don't honestly see that money translate to the screen, and unfortunately I think Frakes is at least partly to blame for that. Maybe he needed to park his reputation for being 'Two Takes Frakes' and actually do a few more takes to get enough coverage to put together a more epic looking movie?

Also totally agree about the introduction of the E. Yes, the characters are all supposed to have been on the ship for over a year and can be excused for not exactly being in awe of it anymore, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have done more to introduce the new ship to movie goers.

 

[BillJ]

Also totally agree about the introduction of the E. Yes, the characters are all supposed to have been on the ship for over a year and can be excused for not exactly being in awe of it anymore, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have done more to introduce the new ship to movie goers.

I don’t think Rick Berman ever realized the Enterprise was a character in its own right.

 

[Galileo7]

Also totally agree about the introduction of the E. Yes, the characters are all supposed to have been on the ship for over a year and can be excused for not exactly being in awe of it anymore, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have done more to introduce the new ship to movie goers.

Agree. The 1701-E should have gotten a proper introduction that the final scene in Nemesis only hints at replicating TMP 1701-Refit introduction. I would have loved to have seen Picard & crew doing a flyover in the drydock too at the beginning of Nemesis.

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[HaventGotALife]

Very good points. My problems with Insurrection location filming though is, I can see they spent a lot of money going out on location, and Northern California always looks more beautiful than SoCal But so little of that footage of the vast Trek through the wilderness made it to the finished movie, because studio heads thought it dragged down the pace and demanded it be cut down, and the Baku village set looks exactly like the generic 'planet village' set TNG wheeled out all the time on TV from the third season onwards, that combined with Frakes' flat direction, the fact that they actually built that thing out on location almost washes over the audience. INS had a budget bigger than either of it's predecessors, but we don't honestly see that money translate to the screen, and unfortunately I think Frakes is at least partly to blame for that. Maybe he needed to park his reputation for being 'Two Takes Frakes' and actually do a few more takes to get enough coverage to put together a more epic looking movie?

Also totally agree about the introduction of the E. Yes, the characters are all supposed to have been on the ship for over a year and can be excused for not exactly being in awe of it anymore, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have done more to introduce the new ship to movie goers.

I felt that Zimmerman was never a great designer. Both the D and Voyager sets had railings that made it almost impossible to defend, walk through.

That said, I always felt the static camera allowed the acting to carry a scene, not movement. The use of clutter in the Enterprise interiors showed that Picard was stressed and overwhelmed. The walk-and-talk in the beginning of the film was one of his better choices.

Frakes didn't have a handle on what they were doing (healing Picard, talking of mindfulness, contrasting DS9, giving weight to what Starfleet abandoned and why Picard would be out of uniform), and it shows. He saw the movie as something "light-hearted" and complains about Michael Piller's "preaching" throughout the commentary. It ruins the action sequences. Screaming by Abraham, ridiculous joysticks and juvenile behavior--after Picard vows to "hold out as long as we can," the scenes on the Enterprise are all but unwatchable, the film jumping the shark while Anij is under a pile of rocks.

He ruined a great movie, and I overlook a lot of flaws and crappy direction during the resolution to call it the best the TNG films had to offer.

 

[TommyR01D]

There do seem to be some actors & shows that come off as better suited to TV than movies, regardless. I know it was never even a remote consideration to put VOY, DS9 or ENT on the big screen, but I can't say that I could even picture it even if they'd wanted to do it. None of those shows or actors would translate well to that format, in my opinion.

It still ultimately comes down to things like writing, but it's interesting that the TOS actors were so well-suited for the switch to the big screen.

I don't think there would have been any room for a DS9 or VOY feature film, unless you did it in place of their grander television episodes. Deep Space Nine relied on a huge degree of serialisation and backstory knowledge that would have made a standalone piece difficult to carry off. On top of that is the problem of so many main characters departing at the series' end.

Voyager was less complicated in this way, and it did have two-parters that were quasi-cinematic, (such as Scorpion and Dark Frontier), but to set a film immediately after the end of the series would be impractical for the simple reason that the series overarching goal - getting the crew back to Earth - was already completed and the cast dynamic wouldn't have held together after that.

As poor as the series had been, Enterprise was the best candidate for a theatrical conversion - preferably taking the place of These Are The Voyages (which wasn't a real finale to the series anyway) and showing the formation of the Federation in more detail. ENT was clearly designed, albeit unsuccessfully, as the direct successor to TNG and TOS (really, they should have called it Star Trek: The Previous Generation) as the all-round space adventure show, whereas DS9 and VOY ran parallel and split the remit between them. The former took on the political, military and diplomatic dimension while the latter did the science fiction and exploration parts. Neither alone could completely represent Star Trek (much like the two B'Elannas in Faces) and both were developments of an existing setting instead of starting from scratch as the other series did, hence it being called the TNG-era rather than the DS9-era or the VOY-era.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

I don't think there would have been any room for a DS9 or VOY feature film, unless you did it in place of their grander television episodes. Deep Space Nine relied on a huge degree of serialisation and backstory knowledge that would have made a standalone piece difficult to carry off. On top of that is the problem of so many main characters departing at the series' end.

Voyager was less complicated in this way, and it did have two-parters that were quasi-cinematic, (such as Scorpion and Dark Frontier), but to set a film immediately after the end of the series would be impractical for the simple reason that the series overarching goal - getting the crew back to Earth - was already completed and the cast dynamic wouldn't have held together after that.

As poor as the series had been, Enterprise was the best candidate for a theatrical conversion - preferably taking the place of These Are The Voyages (which wasn't a real finale to the series anyway) and showing the formation of the Federation in more detail. ENT was clearly designed, albeit unsuccessfully, as the direct successor to TNG and TOS (really, they should have called it Star Trek: The Previous Generation) as the all-round space adventure show, whereas DS9 and VOY ran parallel and split the remit between them. The former took on the political, military and diplomatic dimension while the latter did the science fiction and exploration parts. Neither alone could completely represent Star Trek (much like the two B'Elannas in Faces) and both were developments of an existing setting instead of starting from scratch as the other series did, hence it being called the TNG-era rather than the DS9-era or the VOY-era.

Right, which is why I prefaced it with saying it was never even a remote consideration to put them on the big screen.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

With the PIC series picking up steam, I know this is an ironic question to ask, but were the TNG movies too Picard-centered? One of the strengths of TNG was how it highlighted different characters to share the spotlight. I know there has to be a hero, much like Kirk in TOS, but it seemed like some of the TOS movies were better at letting everyone be the hero, rather than putting so much on the shoulders of one person. There were exceptions, obviously, but in a general way it seems to be a difference between them.

 

[Thomas Elliot]

It's already been said, but
1) no big jump in technology or time between the TV series and the movie series with TNG.
2) the TV two-parters were more epic than the movies, save for Generations.
"Best of Both Worlds" was crazy, and much better than First Contact.
Then there was the Klingon/Worf two-parters that were great, and then "All Good Things..." which again, was more epic than the actual films.
What's the incentive to watch the movies when we got more epic stories on a larger scale for free with the TV show?

If they had to segue the TNG series into film to save money, they should have had it be one continuing storyline, kind of like how TWOK continued in TSFS, and then TVH.
And it did feel more like the Picard-Data show. Instead of feeling like a saga, it felt like isolated, self-contained stories, too little for the big screen.
If you wanted to focus on Data, then have Data's story be a running theme. Maybe Lore somehow survived death by implanting his program or essence into Data, hidden, then it gets awakened, and that could be foreshadowed in the first two films, it's just "the emotion chip" but really it was Lore taking over little by little, and it gets revealed in the second or third film. Concurrently, have the Klingon drama going on with Worf. Maybe something happens the House of Mogh once again, or whatever, and have him dealing with that while trying to maintain aboard the Enterprise and deal with Data going crazy.
And also Worf and Deanna should have continued, as it was more interesting and would give film audiences something somewhat new.
Maybe Ro comes back at some point.
Along the way Riker confesses feelings for her but they they don't hook up, happily ever after.
Like I said, TOS films felt like a saga, and if TNG was going to copy one thing, it should have been that.
Maybe have Picard find romance, and actually have whoever it is stick around. Maybe Picard possibly having a family, or choosing not to.

 

[suarezguy]

I also think both sets of films were uneven rather than the original much better. The original did have some more interesting material, though, just from being able to show the characters at later, different stages of their lives in part from actually being made a while later, while OTOH with the Picard crew, disappointingly, not only were there not a lot of changes the characters didn't really get a lot of focus at all aside from Picard and Data all the time (while with the original cast it felt natural and consistent there would be focus on the big three and the others would just have some moments).

There being more BTS drama with the original cast, ironically, also kind of made the films seem more epic with Spock being killed off because Nimoy wanted to leave helping to make TWoK great (though FC was also great without that kind of cast drama), then him being brought back led to TSfS, I think a big miss but it is love-it-or-hate-it, and to the whole film series feeling more like a series than one-off films.

 

[Lord Garth]

Picard is proving right to me what I always thought: the TNG Movies came out too soon and someone else should've put them together.

 

[Thomas Elliot]

Completel

Picard is proving right to me what I always thought: the TNG Movies came out too soon and someone else should've put them together.

Completely agree.

Another thing I thought was bad for the TNG movies: the move to those black and grey uniforms with only the slightest hint of color at the neck.
The bright colorful uniforms of Star Trek are appealing to younger audiences, and it also gives the future and the Federation/Starfleet this subconscious sense of optimism and enthusiasm.
The black and grey uniforms in the later TNG movies looked drab, and felt more fitting for a generic sci-fi military drama.
In the TOS films we got single colored red uniforms, but the good thing is that they at least stuck with a prominent primary color like red, which usually stands out, evokes passion, etc. And the detailing of the uniforms in the TOS films also evoked a military influenced, but it was in a nostalgic sense so it was more romanticized.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Probably been mentioned in the couple of years this has been going on but the Original Series was an action adventure which didn't need to change its format to work well on the larger screen. In the age of the 1980's summer blockbuster, the original series was a great fit. Action, adventure, some laughs, a message and, if we're lucky, a little romance. Capped with a great score, all you had to do was address the ages of the characters and boom. Done.

TNG was a drama with very little action. Not necessarily because they didn't want to do it, they weirdly couldn't afford it. How many episodes showed a space battle with either very static models or viewscreen computer graphics? TNG was more about interpersonal drama. And THIS does not make for a 1990's summer blockbuster francise (or even an autumn franchise). So they changed the format. While I may have liked them more than the series in general (I really don't think TNG has aged well at all), they barely resembled the series. The original series films were closer to what fans were expecting, while the TNG films tended to be something totally different. Imagine a film about Troi? Or Geordi? Or that kid who idolized Data? Naaaah.

 

[Khan 2.0]

Probably been mentioned in the couple of years this has been going on but the Original Series was an action adventure which didn't need to change its format to work well on the larger screen. In the age of the 1980's summer blockbuster, the original series was a great fit. Action, adventure, some laughs, a message and, if we're lucky, a little romance. Capped with a great score, all you had to do was address the ages of the characters and boom. Done.

yes TOS movies were a great fit for the 80s blockbuster and often aped the popular stuff of the time (intentionally or not - probably the former) so Empire Strikes Back and Temple of Doom elements in III, BTTF/Croc Dundee in IV, maybe even abit of Indiana Jones religious quest stuff in V..

TNG movies tried to turn TNG into the TOS movies with all the Khan like villain stuff/action which the series hadn't really been about at all

 

[DarthTimon]

I didn't mind GEN or FC - in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed FC and I for one felt there was a good deal of tension as the crew faced down their most challenging enemy. INS was a bit average, and NEM was a poor way to end the TNG era. It felt weak, it left me empty.

 

[Lt.Smokey]

I loved the TNG movies, but yeah, they are essentially just long episodes with better production whereas the TOS movies were something totally different than the show, so it felt more like an event worthy of the big screen. But it was totally fine by me, but probably wouldn't work in today's market. You gotta go big to get people in the theatre now/

 

[Thomas Elliot]

They tried to be more action packed and even got inspired to do the time travel thing with comedy bits like TVH.
What I don’t get is why they didn’t copy TOS films further and have each one lead into the next with an overall theme or arc? Maybe because the studio didn’t want to contradict what was going on in DS9?
The TNG films didn’t feel like they had any consequence, even FC, which had a lotta laughs considering the seriousness of the mission. It was essentially Terminator but with Skynet winning. Yet it’s a lot of yucks along the way.
Or forget the emotion chip and have Lore come back as the arch villain. Gives Spiner a chance to really act which he wanted, and have Lore escape into a parallel dimension, the return of the Mirror universe, but much darker. Maybe Picard brings back the daughter of the evil Picard had, or maybe his wife, and have that change the dynamic for the series of TNG films.
And then have the effects of that story kind of ripple into the next ones indirectly or directly.
I don’t know, but what we got felt kind of pedestrian compared to what the tv show did every week.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I think one of the big flaws of the TNG movie run was that we were never given the chance to "miss them" the way we were with TOS.

Yeah. I think a gap of 10 years or even five would've been good both to give us a chance to miss the characters a bit and be surprised by where they were in their lives in the first movie.

"Whoa! Worf is the Klingon Ambassador now! That's cool!"
"Wow, Data has an emotion ship! I never saw that coming!"
"Hey, cool, Riker finally has a ship of his own! And he and Deanna have a kid!"

Going back to Frakes, the thing that has always bugged me about First Contact is how it takes the Enterprise-E for granted. This is the audience's first time seeing the ship, and it's never introduced to audiences as a place to savor and cherish.

The bridge, the ready room, engineering, sickbay -- these are all places he shot in his episodes of three different television series -- and I don't feel that he quite aware that he was getting to introduce audiences to all-new versions of these locations, and letting the camera linger for a moment would not have been out of place.

Excellent point. By the end of TMP, I really felt like I knew the new Enterprise and how it was laid out and put together. By the time it blew up in STIII, it hit hard because we knew that ship. Even by the end of NEM with three movies aboard her, I never felt like I knew the Enterprise-E all that well. I doubt that I could even sketch the bridge all that accurately. Frakes really needed to drill the various Enterprise-E locations into our heads a bit more, both for the thrill of the new and to better establish the geography of the ship before the Borg start taking it over.

Another thing I thought was bad for the TNG movies: the move to those black and grey uniforms with only the slightest hint of color at the neck.
The bright colorful uniforms of Star Trek are appealing to younger audiences, and it also gives the future and the Federation/Starfleet this subconscious sense of optimism and enthusiasm.
The black and grey uniforms in the later TNG movies looked drab, and felt more fitting for a generic sci-fi military drama.
In the TOS films we got single colored red uniforms, but the good thing is that they at least stuck with a prominent primary color like red, which usually stands out, evokes passion, etc. And the detailing of the uniforms in the TOS films also evoked a military influenced, but it was in a nostalgic sense so it was more romanticized.

YES, absolutely. The colorful TV uniforms and the monster maroons, those things POP of the screen and immediately draw your eye to the characters. The TNG and DS9 TV uniforms just looked dull and flat, and the new First Contact uniforms were downright drab. As someone wrote in Sci-Fi Universe back in the day, they looked like 24th Century Garanimals. I liked the white dress uniforms from Insurrection, though. Those were sharp.

But I think the main problem with the TNG movies is that no one had any particular vision for them. They never really tried to surprise us with what the characters were up to. They never seemed like Earth-shattering events, or even particularly important chapters of the characters' lives. They seemed very content to just go on like the TV show did, mired in the exact same status quo that they had back on the TV series. You just know that if Worf hadn't moved on to DS9, they would've had him right back at his security station in FC and INS, the same as he was on TV. The stories are all very mired in the A/B storylines they had on TNG, and in a feature film, that's pretty dull. (GEN - Picard & Kirk vs. Soran/Data's emotion chip, FC - Picard & co. fight off the Borg on ship/Riker & co. help with Cochrane's first warp flight, INS & NEM... I honestly don't remember those movies well enough to summarize. I haven't bothered watching them since their original releases.)

The TNG movies constantly spent their money in the wrong places, too. GEN builds a huge two-story set for Stellar Cartography... and uses it once for rather boring expositional scene between Picard and Data. Meanwhile, the crash of the Enterprise-D is a horribly obvious miniature. We introduce the TNG crew on a sailing ship on the holodeck with a big location shoot in another inconsequential scene, while the big climax of the movie is... three middle aged men fighting on a jungle gym in the desert, not looking terribly different than what we would've gotten on the 5th season of the syndicated TV show.

But at least John Alonzo's cinematography in GEN gave us some great looking shots. He really knew how to light and shoot a scene, unlike his successors in the subsequent movies, who went right back to the flat, boring lighting of the TNG show. Why Alonzo wasn't rehired for the TNG sequels, I'll never know.