What allowed the Enterprise D to survive in All Good Things but be destroyed in Gen?

On the All Good Things issue, I always wondered what exactly diverged to allow the Enterprise-D to survive in AGT but be destroyed in canon.

I feel that the timing of Data's emotion chip installation is key here. Picard likely told Data how future Professor Data had emotions (Future Data mentioned his housekeeper made him laugh).

For whatever reason, this affected the timing of when Data installed his emotion chip. Likely a sense of security that he is destined to have emotions affected when Data decided to install it. As it was in canon, he just happened to install it during the Soran incident, incapacitating him in Soran's abduction of Geordi and leading to the destruction of the Enterprise.

In Q's timeline, Data never had foreknowledge of getting emotions in his future. He installed the chip earlier or later--whatever the case, he likely was not incapacitated by emotions at the time of Soran's abduction attempt of Geordi, and the Enterprise was never destroyed.

 

Brannon Braga.

 

Since Ronald D. Moore also wrote both with Braga, it could just as easily have been him.

Rick Berman was credited for the story in GENERATIONS, too, so that might have been his decision. In fact, I'd bet on it, given the look of the Enterprise-E.

 

Budget.

 

IIRC, Berman wanted his own "movie Enterprise," distinct from the TV series Enterprise, just like the first Trek film had its own "movie Enterprise." So he decreed the D be destroyed and the E created.

 

Most of the time an engine is a bomb.

The bigger the engine, the bigger the boom.

Warp 13 is big.

 

Maybe in the AGTverse Picard left the Nexus, popped up in Ten Forward and detained Soran.

 

Wasn't there a line of dialogue in AGT that pretty much said the future wouldn't necessarily pan out the way future-Picard would see it?

(The real life reason of wanting a ship design separate to differentiate - what Forbin said - makes sense. Ditto for how the TV show sets were getting worn and dented over 7 years so they wanted to make shiny new sets that would withstand being shown on an 80 foot screen - which is also why "Generations" is darkly lit (but in a cool way).)

 

They survived a whole lot, including the Borg, but they couldn’t handle the Duras sisters.

I know they wanted to make room for a new Enterprise, but I wish they would’ve come up with a different way to put the D to rest. Those sisters didn’t really deserve to have that honor.

 

Starfleet officers/ships don't necessarily go down in honorable combat and it's senseless, just like in real life. TNG particularly reminded us of this with Tasha's death.

 

Lursa and B'Etor found something else to do... or did it at another time.

A class D12 bird of prey, retired from service because of a defective plasma coil in their cloaking device + Geordi's visor transmitting the shield frequency of the Enterprise D = the destruction of the Enterprise D. The events of Generations and the future would not have come to pass if All Good Things turned out as Q projected, and they would have not been called to the Armagosia observatory and have their fun adventure with Soran. That's my interpretation anyway.

 

There’s certainly a pattern of that in ST. I would’ve rather seen something like the Pegasus run at the Cylons in BSG. There was some of that in VOY, but not so much in the other series. To be taken down by an outdated Bird of Prey just doesn’t seem to do justice to a ship like D.

 

Thinking in-universe, something Picard did in changing the timeline by telling his crew everything must have caused the divergence (thus my theory Data installed his emotions at a different time).

The other possibility is that the irumodic syndrome, which Q likely implanted so Picard wouldn't remember the future timeline (like how the Klingons took over the Romulans--we now know it was due to Hobus supernova), caused Picard to retire early in Q's timeline.

 

Well, there's all kinds of possibilities, many of which could be entirely unrelated to Our Heroes. Could be as simple as a different ship answering the Amargosa distress call because they were closer.

 

I think it's a good thing that Enterprise-D wasn't destroyed during the series.
The ship was almost a character, a familiar place where things happen.

Why should have the ship been destroyed during the series?
It would have been too sad if the Enterprise was destroyed in the final episode.
The final scene in 'All Good Things...' was great, Enterprise-D continuing its voyages.

 

Who says it wasn't? The saucer was salvaged. The Enterprise E was destroyed when the Klingons invaded the Romulan empire post Horbus. After Riker's Titan captaining he got promoted to admiral, and pulled out the Enterprise Saucer from the scrapyard, added it to a different (upgraded) stardrive section, and kept it as his personal runaround.

 

Well, Troi was driving the ship, so there's your answer. "I'm a Counselor, not a pilot!"

 

She drove the ship twice - once in Generations, once in Nemesis. Crashed in both cases.

 

Plot armor was off-line,

 

I've always thought that, that way we still get the E but a refitted D based on the saucer later on. Being an Admiral, Riker would have the privilege of naming it.