Was moving 'The Next Generation' over to movies a bad decision?

[CobraCommander]

I dont care what anybody says, nemesis was good. With that said, TNG is more of soap opera than an action series. And even tho i would be the first one in line at the opening day of tng movie..it shouldnt be there. Its like putting the day time soaps on the big screen, it just doesnt belong.

I agree with you on "Nemesis".

I disagree with you that TNG is "more soap opera than an action series". It's most definitely not soap opera. It may be "more suited" to the TV screen, but that's not the same thing.

I agree the TNG movies came too soon. Generations should never have been made. The production team should have focused on making FC an epic classic/ writing a solid plot....

...Another issue with FC was how it's battle with the Borg and near destruction of the Defiant were not mentioned on DS9. It was also a lousy way to get Worf back on the Enterprise.

On the latter point: That's a "fault" with DS9 (Behr was unhappy at how the Defiant was treated in FC, hence the refusal to acknowledge the damage); as for a 'lousy way' to bring Worf back... really? I thought it was rather good, and certainly better than "Insurrection" which just couldn't be bothered to explain it at all!

As for your first point: Not sure of your age, or how long you've been into Trek, but back in 1994 there was a massive demand for more TNG, and the hype for "Generations" was...well, I personally think the period '94-'96 is when Trek was at its pop culture/mainstream zenith. There's no way a film wasn't going to be made, or do well.

It's easy with hindsight now to plot a different course (and I agree ideally there should've been a longer wait to build up even more anticipation), but at the time, "Generations" was absolutely the right move.

What I meant by lousy was that the Defiant would not have been dispatched by just Worf and a crew of only nameless expendables. Sisko would have been on the bridge of his ship or dead. It also was too far away. Now if Worf had been hitching a ride on a cruiser to Earth (family visit?) then his being in the battle would have made sense. Now Worf was one of very few TNG characters to remain true to their character in FC. Picard wasn't himself until the talk with Lily.

In regards to the return of Worf in Ins, I agree it didn't make sense how he came back. Also using him for comic relief was demeaning to his character. What happened to the Defiant would have to be acknowledged on DS9.

I also was around back in 1994. I had seen ST VI when it came out on the big screen. As being a Trekkie and wolfing down whatever came along, I initially did not hate Generations. The Ent-B scenes felt great while the rest of the film felt like a souped up episode (with a mix of DS9 and TNG uniforms). As I have become older, I have come to the conclusion after repeated viewings that Gen did damage the TNG legacy. The issues have been mentioned many times before so I won't delve into them.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

^ You should listen to the Ron Moore and Brannon Braga commentary of Generations. It's like a 1 hour and 40 minute long apology for how bad the movie is. Basic summation is the film was advertised as a go get'em action flick with the Next Gen crew and Kirk riding shotgun. Even the poster seen below. Tagline was "Two Captains, one destiny".

But in writing the film Moore, Braga and Berman all thought it would be better to do what everyone didn't expect rather than make what certainly would've been a crowd pleaser. Turns out taking the piss with the story, characters, and icons was extremely detrimental to the franchise.

Killing Kirk by having him fall to his death. Which was a reshoot of simply having Kirk be shot in the back. It was changed because test audiences didn't approve. Not because the creative team thought it was bad.

The piss poor way the ENT-D was destroyed. It's like they forgot the ENT-D was it's own character and just chucked her to the way side.

The nexus is a problem. Even Leonard Nimoy said so. If you can just walk away from the fantasy or simply walk out of the nexus, then what are the stakes?

Picard beaming down to talk to Soran and having to embarrassingly crawl through a hole in the shield. Seriously was this the best these guys could come up with?


First Contact was a several very large steps in the right direction. But all that progress was essentially set back to square one by the piss poor INS. NEM was the last hoorah for the TNG crew. Bringing in the big space battles that were so well received on DS9 but by that time no one cared.

 

[johnjm22]

The TNG films never felt right. It always seemed like they were forcing a square peg into a round hole.

For whatever reason, making a good Trek movie has always been difficult. There's been 12 of them now, and only a few of them were worth while IMO.

 

[Hober Mallow]

The piss poor way the ENT-D was destroyed. It's like they forgot the ENT-D was it's own character and just chucked her to the way side.

And Picard and Riker don't even give a shit. We went from "My God bones... what have I done?" to Picard and Riker cracking jokes.

The ship is dead. Kirk is dead. Picard and Riker stand smiling and sharing a couple jokes amidst the smoldering ruins of their ship, then Picard winks to the audience and says, "I'll bet if you're all good you'll have a badass new ship called Enterprise in your Christmas stocking..." Cue faux happy ending.

 

[Lance]

TNG was a great show, but I felt it never worked in movies - I also felt Generations was the best one, despite its flaws, like 'Mr. Tricorder' bit, because it is the only one where the TNG characters still seemed in role from the TV Series - example: in FC and Ins, Picard suddenly became an "action" captain, who bucked orders to do what HE wanted, which is very different from the Picard we knew in the series, and never rung as "authentic" to me ...

But there are serveral episodes in which Picards does the Action Jackson. The one with the terrorists on board, during the cleansing of the Enterprise, for example.

It isn't just about Picard "doing" action, though... he's a Starfleet officer, it stands to reason he'd be just as competent with combat as Kirk (indeed TNG stated outright from the very beginning that Picard was a tactical genius earlier in his career and that his assignment to the Enterprise was simply a different type of mission -- diplomacy and long term exploration -- to his earlier times as skipper of the Stargazer).

No, the problem isn't Picard suddenly being an "action" hero... it's like Cadet49 suggests, it's more ingrained than that. Picard of the movies is a rebellious spirit. He ignores his orders in both First Contact and Insurrection. In the latter movie he actually rebels completely against the chain of command. And he's got a reckless streak in Nemesis (cf. the Dune buggy sequence) which is just hideously out-of-character. The Jean-Luc Picard of the TV series would never have done any of these things. And that's exactly what set him apart from Captain Kirk.

 

[Belz...]

Which lends credence to the theory that TNG wasn't well-suited for the movies, in a way.

 

[Lance]

Look at it this way: I honestly think that Nemesis and the NuTrek reboots have got a lot more in common than most people would be willing to admit. But the difference IMO is one of outlook and how the cast dynamic works. The TNG cast were repeatedly slotted into plots which quite frankly didn't play to their strengths. Picard and his crew are not "action heroes", but Paramount wanted action movies. The thing about the reboot cast is that the character dynamic has been tailored towards what Paramount expects a Star Trek movie to be. The TNG movies however were not what fans expected the TNG characters to be. There was a fundamental disconnect between the cast and their history from the TNG series, and what they were actually being asked to do in those movies.

I think you could slot the Dune Buggy sequence into any one of the NuTrek movies, with Chris Pine's version of Captain Kirk going crazy behind the wheel while Spock fires at the natives with the onboard gun, and nobody would bat an eyelid. It would rile a certain subsection of fandom no doubt about it, but within the context of those characters it'd be perfectly fine. Put Captain Picard in that situation and it's a whole different ball game. We know Picard. We know he wouldn't act like that.

 

[Third Nacelle]

I was watching You Are Cordially Invited the other day, and I was thinking how weird NONE of the Enterprise crew came to Worf's wedding. I'd trade all the TNG movies for some occasional appearances of the Enterprise crew on DS9. Or even made-for-TV specials rather than full-blown movies.

 

[Belz...]

I think that's a fine summary of the situation, Lance.