Generations felt ambitious despite its obvious flaws. The other TNG movies felt claustrophobic. In particular Insurrection would've benefitted from some scale. I'm not sure they did the movies any favors by killing off the Enterprise-D either. The Enterprise-E always seemed like it didn't quite fit to me.
TOS vs. TNG - adaptability to the big screen
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
- Start date
I’m surprised FC gets a lot of criticism here.
I haven’t seen it in years but I remember as the best TNG film by far.
My only complaint was that they swept the previous movie under the rug at the beginning.
What the hell happened to the TNG crew between GEN and FC?
They just gave Picard a bigger more improved ship?
It bugs me, especially after the Genesis arc, that the events of GEN had no long-standing effect. However, the movie is so good that it’s easy to forgive that.
I haven’t seen it in years but I remember as the best TNG film by far.
My only complaint was that they swept the previous movie under the rug at the beginning.
What the hell happened to the TNG crew between GEN and FC?
They just gave Picard a bigger more improved ship?
It bugs me, especially after the Genesis arc, that the events of GEN had no long-standing effect. However, the movie is so good that it’s easy to forgive that.
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Not bigger, actually. The Sovereign class was more streamlined than the Galaxy class. Families were gone. It was a battle ship now, stronger and with better offensive capabilities.
He apparently didn't have much choice then. I imagine he said "hey look, if I'm getting a new ship, can we do without the kids and stuff?"
"It'll be smaller...."
"Worth it."
Sovereign Class is CONSIDERABLY smaller in volume than the Galaxy Class. Like, by almost 50%. Look at any side-by-side comparison. It’s a patrol ship, not a long-range explorer. It actually makes no sense that many of Picard’s crew from the D would transition to the new ship. Completely different mission:
Strangely enough, TNG SHOULD have made a better transition. When they did TOS, there was virtually no chance they would ever be doing films. When TNG became a hit, everyone I knew assumed we’d be watching movies within 10 years based on the success of the TOS films. TNG films following the TOS films just seemed a foregone conclusion.
Some Trekfans had claimed TNG movies were bad TNG episodes but come on, were those movies as good as those bad TNG episodes? At least on the series the character were still the characters but in the movies those actors especially Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner were anything like their counterparts on TV. I can bare a poor tale if the character were still intact and were true to who they are but those movies... the actors were the characters in name only.
I don't know, "Force of Nature" was pretty bad. At least Insurrection had romance for Picard, some locale to visit, and Nemesis had a young, evil Picard played by Tom Hardy.
But yeah, for the most part, even the bad episodes are still more enjoyable and in-line with the story. FC, INS, and NEM didn't feel like they were "real."
Two years had passed and Picard and Riker don't seem worried about punishment or career-derailment at the end of Generations.
That was one of the problems.
TNG already did an evil twin story well once or twice ("Datalore" and/or, though I don't think so much of it others do, "Brothers"), they should have realized more (especially after "Descent" disappointed most people and "Second Chances" avoided using that approach) would be way pushing it.
They weren't.... Picard is still in the Nexus, and Kirk is out captaining the Enterprise in the 24th century.
The way it was ultimately executed, yes. They half-assed it in my opinion. If they were going to go that route, go all the way and do a mirror-universe movie. But instead of having the same actors playing their evil selves but with goatees and different hair styles, have different actors and just explain it.
This Picard (Tom Hardy) keeps back up clones of himself because of assassination attempts. Or maybe it's some type of drug treatment that keeps him youthful to prevent some sort of advanced celluar decay, a disease he picked up fighting some alien race.
Evil Picard also has an empath on board, Kestra Troi, a full-blooded Betazoid who drowned her younger half-sister at an early age. She's dangerous because of what she knows about those around her and what she can do to their minds.
Maybe there's a Romulan security officer in Worf's place, and in the mirror-universe the Terran Empire and the Romulans conquered their mutual enemies the Klingons before the TE turned on Romulus. Maybe Worf is a cowardly scoundrel in this, or maybe he's been killed.
Lore is the missing piece, as he escaped into the mirror-universe and he alerts MU Captain Picard that there's another universe out there.
Now that would have been a fun movie.....
There are a lot of reasons TNG didn't work. One of them was that they didn't have the right writers. Another reason is that TOS characters were more suited for the big screen. It wasn't an ensemble cast. You had your leads and your supporting cast. TNG was much more ensemble. Kirk was the action hero. Picard was not, and when they tried to make him that, it didn't work because that's not Picard.
But one of the most important reasons TNG movies didn't work as well was because TOS was canceled in 3 seasons, while TNG had a full run on TV. TOS got movies because there was demand for more.
TNG only got movies because TOS did. If there was never a TOS movie, TNG would have ended with AGT and everyone is fine with it.
But one of the most important reasons TNG movies didn't work as well was because TOS was canceled in 3 seasons, while TNG had a full run on TV. TOS got movies because there was demand for more.
TNG only got movies because TOS did. If there was never a TOS movie, TNG would have ended with AGT and everyone is fine with it.
Absolutely, and I recall that Michael Dorn made several declarations to that effect to reporters on the set of The Undiscovered Country, and that several TOS cast were reputedly a little annoyed by the assumption. But yes, most of us assumed it was a fait accompli.
But here's the thing: it wasn't so much about "Of course they will transition to the big screen", as much as it was that the transition was handled poorly. The TOS movies recognised that if you're going to put a TV show in movie theaters, you have to fundamentally reassess the format. Hence, the TOS movies have logical, sequel escalation. Each movie carries on from the one before it, and the whole is bigger than its individual parts, as opposed to the more episodic nature of television, and used the ensemble cast better too. The TNG movies, iromically, went the opposite direction, taking an ensemble that worked on TV and making the stories basically about two or three characters, and TNG on television had been praised for it's multiple episode world-building but in cinemas they went totally episodic and hit the reset button at the end of each movie, even eventually, by Insurrection and Nemesis, introducing continuity errors with the TV version. TNG had all the elements needed for a successful movie franchise. But the powers that be actively chose to squander it. And to be honest, the Kelvin movies made the same mistakes, too, choosing not to have faith in Trek's ability to span multiple movies, but instead green-lighting each movie as a standalone, reliant on the success of the previous one. That stagnates storytelling possibilities. Something the TOS-Trek movies seemed to understand.
TOS works in movies because they decided to take the strengths of the TV show, but go one better, go larger, go deeper into the characters, tell stories across multiple movies. TNG fails, precisely because it ignores everything that had made the TV show so good, and instead seemed to look at each movie as a product to meet a release date, while checking tick-boxes and not really playing to the strengths of the show.
I did like how GEN felt like a continuation of the show, but in an epic way. The threat of the Duras' sisters carried over, Data's pursuit of human emotion was carried over. Then they killed of the sisters and Data's pursuit of human emotion was ind of played for laughs and as simple as turning off an on a switch.
And killing off Picard's family...ugh.
And killing off Picard's family...ugh.
The TOS films told stories over multiple films kind of by accident, not always by design. TMP was stand alone. One and done. They never expected to make a second. When TWOK was mounted, they stayed as far away from that film as possible. TWOK was also supposed to be a stand alone and final film, but when the box office came in and Nimoy wanted back in the franchise, that's when they had to continue directly from Star Trek II. If Nimoy didn't want to come back but they went ahead with Trek II with Saavik as Spock's replacement, it would probably have been another stand alone. But nope, they had to bring Spock back. TSFS was saddled with an Empire Strikes Back kind of unresolved ending (other than actually restoring Spock), so they wrapped up those loose ends in TVH, but the main story wasn't dependent on the previous films, just the set up on Vulcan and the last 10 minutes. The bulk of the film was unrelated to Treks 2 and 3 and worked as a time travel comedy. They could have written this film anywhere in the run really. Cut a few lines here and there about Spock's memory and full death experience and you're golden.
TFF was completely stand alone. It was a fresh start with hardly any connections to past films (and even made up new stuff about the characters) and Trek 6 went out of its way to ignore it. However, TUC does build a little on prior films (David's death by Klingon, Admiral Cartwright). But it was really the only one. The rest were serialized because of the Nimoy situation and arguably, only TSFS fed directly off it's immediate predecessor. You needed to see TWOK before that. TUC picked up the main thrust of Kirk's racism from the climax of TSFS, but that could have been just another episode also with some rewriting and none of the prior films were required viewing. Out of all the sequels, I daresay TSFS was the also only one aimed squarely at the fans. The general audience was lost.
Not unfair. I see your points.
To be generous, TFF does at least make some token efforts to carry back to where TVH left off, with 1701-A being refit and relaunched, etc, and it arguably acts as a much-needed 'breather' in the arc plot that encompasses TWOK through TUC.
But yes, I conceed it may have partly been by accident... but nevertheless, the assumption was there that you use the plot of the previous movie as a springboard in each sequel. So, TSFS continues the Genesis plotline, TVH shows our heroes returning from exile on Vulcan in their borrowed Bird-of-Prey to face the music for stealing the Enterprise, TFF launches the new Enterprise and begins steps towards some kind of peace with the Klingons, and TUC kinda cherry-picks elements from all four previous movies to tie up (the Klingon captain Klaa from TFF even reappears briefly, providing continuity threads even through the fifth movie).
Generations continues this general trend to begin with, starting aboard 1701-B feels like a nice gentle way of transitioning from Star Trek VI to Star Trek VII, but after that there's not really even any precursory attempts to carry elements or narrative forward directly from instalment to instalment. First Contact takes place more than a year after Generations, starts from a kind of 'Year zero' approach (which is not necessarily a bad thing, don't get me wrong, I've found it's a very easy gateway into Trek for uncommited new viewers), but the emotions chip is essentially discarded (Data can now switch it on or off) and events basically ignore anything Borg related that happened on TNG after "The Best of Both Worlds". The emotions chip is officially abandoned in Insurrection, with barely one line to explain it's complete absence, and the plot makes no other attempts to tie back into the previous two movies. Nemesis at least continues, broadly, the Troi/Riker arc from the previous movie, but is extremely cavalier about what other bits of continuity it accepts or rejects.
The approaches are entirely different. It is, perhaps, prudent also to remember that during the TOS period, where production overlapped, the TV production and movie production were handled by entirely different teams, whereas from the seventh movie onwards, everything Star Trek started and stopped with Rick Berman. I truly believe he had no instinct for movie production, and approached commisioning the movies as being just like selecting episodic TV scripts, not feeling a great sense of needing to 'over-arch' the TNG movies in any meaningful way.
On some level the movies all have to stand apart from the TV shows, and I find that fine and acceptable (after all, how do you appeal to the broad audience of movie-goers if you're tied into a television continuity they may never even have seen?), and Generations does seem to understand that it needed to be understandable to audiences moving directly to it from The Undiscovered Country, hence bridging the gap with the prologue on the Enterprise-B was a sound move. But, well, Treks II - VII have that narrative link, kind of, that one might expect from movie sequels, a cinematic, theatrical progression; but VIII, IX and X are basically all stand-alone stories. This coming from The Next Generation crew, which (on TV) had largely been praised for the way they hadn't been afraid to tackle character arcs and grow continuity across multiple episodes and seasons. The TNG movies feel risk-adverse. A little bit like how Voyager and Enterprise each felt increasingly risk adverse.
