What happens between TMP and WOK?

[JonnyQuest037]

He can be on record as saying he's a huge fan of TOS but that doesn't mean he wrote its characters well. Its not just that Kirk dies but its the way it happens. Substituting Scotty and Chekov for Spock and McCoy without bothering to change their lines...

I am certainly the last person who will ever argue that Generations was well written, and Moore and Braga would be the first to agree with you that the movie was not what it should have been.

I understand its supposed to be all about Picard but just say "No" to Kirk being in the movie if you are to lazy to do it properly.

And here's where I disagree with your argument. It's not like Moore and Braga did a bad job on purpose. They were doing their best, but they had a lot of masters to serve on Generations. They had to provide a strong Picard story (subject to the approvals of Rick Berman and Patrick Stewart), a B-plot about Data getting his emotion chip (subject to the approvals of Berman and Brent Spiner), crash the Enterprise so that they could replace it in the next film, incorporate Klingons (a studio request), incorporate Guinan and a big Khan-like villain, give the other TNG cast members whatever bits of business they could, AND incorporate Kirk and whatever other TOS cast members they could get (this time subject to the approvals of Rick Berman and William Shatner). Plus you have to try and make Kirk and Picard's meeting as unexpected as possible and give Kirk a satisfying death. That's a lot for one movie, and it's no wonder that the final product came off as more marking off a checklist than an organic story. But I honestly doubt that there are many writers who could make a very good film with all of those requirements.

 

[Commishsleer]

I am certainly the last person who will ever argue that Generations was well written, and Moore and Braga would be the first to agree with you that the movie was not what it should have been.

And here's where I disagree with your argument. It's not like Moore and Braga did a bad job on purpose. They were doing their best, but they had a lot of masters to serve on Generations. They had to provide a strong Picard story (subject to the approvals of Rick Berman and Patrick Stewart), a B-plot about Data getting his emotion chip (subject to the approval of Berman and Brent Spiner), crash the Enterprise so that they could replace it in the next film, incorporate Klingons (a studio request), incorporate Guinan and a big Khan-like villain, give the other TNG cast members whatever bits of business they could, AND incorporate Kirk and whatever other TOS cast members they could get (this time subject to the approvals of Rick Berman and William Shatner). Plus you have to try and make Kirk and Picard's meeting as unexpected as possible and give Kirk a satisfying death. That's a lot for one movie, and it's no wonder that the final product came off as more marking off a checklist than an organic story. But I honestly doubt that there are many writers who could make a very good film with all of those requirements.

Yes there were a whole lot of problems with so many masters but that had nothing to do with the lines Doohan and Koenig written. Surely they had some advance notice that Kelley and Nimoy weren't going to be in the movie so they could have rewritten the lines and it wouldn't have upset Spiner or Stewart or even Shatner. Apparently they wrote the entire script for TWOK in 12 days.
Either its lazy, they're incompetent or its just showing that they couldn't care less about/resented the TOS component.
When I remember the publicity about GENERATIONS it was all about the big meeting between Picard and Kirk. And like so many such meetings it failed miserably. So why include it if you can't do it properly? But of course I'm not the target audience - I'm a TOS fan who thinks TNG is OK - its Star Trek after all. If I was part of their target audience then they failed miserably. I think they deliberately (consciously or subconsciously) encouraged the lack-lustre death scene to somehow make their man Picard look better (which they also failed in). If they hadn't had that great Christmas scene with Stewart, Picard would come out of it as badly as Kirk.

 

[cooleddie74]

You can tell where at least one of McCoy's lines would have gone in the script when Chekov recruits the two Federation News Service reporters to follow him down to Sickbay and serve as nurses. That is such a McCoy line I can see DeForest Kelley rolling his eyes, looking up at the Enterprise-B bridge ceiling and being his typically grouchy self.

It works okay with Chekov, but with McCoy it might have been a truly memorable moment during the final minutes of his friendship with Kirk.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Surely they had some advance notice that Kelley and Nimoy weren't going to be in the movie so they could have rewritten the lines and it wouldn't have upset Spiner or Stewart or even Shatner.

Yeah. The Scotty/Kirk "But I have a theory"/"I thought you might" exchange was obviously intended for Spock & Kirk, and Chekov's "You and you, you're both nurses" is totally a McCoy line. It's obvious even on a first viewing.

It was also painful to hear characters in the TOS/movie era suddenly spouting TNG style technobabble. I guess they were so in that mode of writing by the time they got to GEN that they didn't think twice about it.

Apparently they wrote the entire script for TWOK in 12 days.

Well, they didn't. Nicholas Meyer did. And Moore and Braga are no Nicholas Meyer, IMO. But it was a completely different team of people working on GEN. And writing a movie script in 12 days is pretty exceptional, so I don't know if it's fair to hold M&B to that same standard.

Either its lazy, they're incompetent or its just showing that they couldn't care less about/resented the TOS component.

For Moore & Braga, I vote lazy, or more charitably, busy. They probably had their hands full addressing all of the scripts' other problems. At least they're both cool enough these days to admit to it being a crappy story.

For Berman, it was probably indifference and ignorance to the TOS era and characters. He wasn't ever really a fan of the franchise before he took it over, and that showed sometimes. But I don't think that anyone involved with the film was consciously trying to sabotage the TOS characters. No one sets out to make a bad movie.

When I remember the publicity about GENERATIONS it was all about the big meeting between Picard and Kirk. And like so many such meetings it failed miserably. So why include it if you can't do it properly?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[FormerLurker]

For Moore & Braga, I vote lazy, or more charitably, busy. They probably had their hands full addressing all of the scripts' other problems. At least they're both cool enough to admit to it being a crappy story these days.

Both men are on record as saying that they had to write GEN at the same time they were writing "All Good Things...". It's possible they could only keep them so straight, and the easiest way was to not differentiate between eras for technobabble. It's therefore just as possible that we're lucky they didn't accidentally put scenes from each show in each other's script.

 

[cooleddie74]

We also need to remember that Berman and Braga were both busy with not only the TNG finale and trying to get Generations finished in time for a fall 1994 premiere but Berman was also hard at work on Seasons 2 and 3 of DS9 and the launch of VOY, which premiered just two months after Generations hit theaters. 1994-96 may be the busiest period of the Trek franchise in its entire history. One series ending, two movies being written and produced, another series approaching a major story arc and a third series premiering and getting off the ground. That doesn't include all the work done to celebrate Trek's 30th Anniversary, which was a multimedia event.

If parts of GEN aren't very good you have to realize how busy Rick Berman and the entire Star Trek production team were for a couple of years. I wouldn't wish that kind of an expensive, day-after-day Hollywood workload on anybody.

 

[Commishsleer]

Both men are on record as saying that they had to write GEN at the same time they were writing "All Good Things...". It's possible they could only keep them so straight, and the easiest way was to not differentiate between eras for technobabble. It's therefore just as possible that we're lucky they didn't accidentally put scenes from each show in each other's script.

So they couldn't spare the time to work on the movie that was going to launch TNG. Didn't they have people who could have written it for them? I thought they had a big writing team for TNG. Since they had more important things to do couldn't they have said to them - Spock and McCoy aren't in the movie - change their lines as well as their uniforms.

Anyway I'm glad Spock and McCoy weren't in it. Spock would never never never abandon Kirk without a body especially when he wasn't really dead. He never did in TOS or the TOS movies even when everyone else told him to give up. Spock would have spent every living moment he had tracking Kirk in the Nexus.
Nimoy himself was saying that to Shatner at the Vegas 2010 convention (well saying that Spock would never let Kirk die in GEN).

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Anyway I'm glad Spock and McCoy weren't in it. Spock would never never never abandon Kirk without a body especially when he wasn't really dead. He never did in TOS or the TOS movies even when everyone else told him to give up. Spock would have spent every living moment he had tracking Kirk in the Nexus.

Honestly, in my headcanon, as soon as Spock hears about Kirk's death, he goes straight to the region of space that the Enterprise-B was in and finds a way to pull him out of the Nexus. The guy that Picard met in the Nexus was just the echo that Kirk left behind.

 

[Phoenix219]

Honestly, in my headcanon, as soon as Spock hears about Kirk's death, he goes straight to the region of space that the Enterprise-B was in and finds a way to pull him out of the Nexus. The guy that Picard met in the Nexus was just the echo that Kirk left behind.

Honestly, that solves the continuity issue with Scotty and the transporter as well.

I wonder what secret mission the real Kirk went on after that, that got his fate and future wiped from the records?

 

[Valenti]

It was classified top secret by Rick Berman. My guess is another series of missions.

 

[Phoenix219]

You know... this theory has the added bonus of literally every subsequent TNG movie AND the reboot universe all being a symptom and fantasy of poor Picard, still stuck in the Nexus, where he buried Nexus echo Kirk. Echos can't leave the Nexus. Guinan warned him, but Picard thought he knew better. He's still stuck there to this day.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

You know... this theory has the added bonus of literally every subsequent TNG movie AND the reboot universe all being a symptom and fantasy of poor Picard, still stuck in the Nexus, where he buried Nexus echo Kirk. Echos can't leave the Nexus. Guinan warned him, but Picard thought he knew better. He's still stuck there to this day.

John Byrne subscribes to that theory. If you think about it, the remainder of the Next Gen movies are all about Picard fulfilling various fantasies. He gets to surpass Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise (GEN), defeat the Borg and put his trauma to rest (FC), stop aging & have a romantic fling (INS), and prove his superiority to his younger self (NEM).

 

[Kronos]

Sure, because he's in the Nexus for all of it.

 

[Phoenix219]

It was classified top secret by Rick Berman. My guess is another series of missions.

Figures, for Berman to classify that. Wouldn't want a 4th 5 year mission of a legend like Kirk interfering with his formula...

 

[cooleddie74]

Sure, because he's in the Nexus for all of it.

That'd still be a better storyline than we got for about half of the episodes of Discovery this past season.

 

[johnnybear]

There is roughly a 9 year gap between the events of TMP and WOK. What were the crew up to in the decade between the two films? Why did Kirk leave his command again after having lobbied hard to get it back during TMP?

I've always read that TMP takes place in 2271 (not that I've really accepted that) and WOK is set in 2285 (not that I accept that date either) so that means there is a fifteen year gap between films! The first film should be set at least six or seven years after the television series rather than the eighteen months that we are told it is! Could the Enterprise be totally refitted to the level it was in eighteen months and the complete change in uniforms be that severe in under eighteen months?
JB

 

[Mytran]

They may have spent 18 months refitting the Enterprise (Scotty says) but Kirk also claims to have been Chief Of Starfleet Operations for 2½ years, so TMP must have been set at least that long after TOS.

Although personally, I would favour putting it as far into the 2270s as possible (allowing for the monster maroons on the USS Bozeman in 2278). How about 2277?

 

[cooleddie74]

They may have spent 18 months refitting the Enterprise (Scotty says) but Kirk also claims to have been Chief Of Starfleet Operations for 2½ years, so TMP must have been set at least that long after TOS.

Although personally, I would favour putting it as far into the 2270s as possible (allowing for the monster maroons on the USS Bozeman in 2278). How about 2277?

TOS: 2254, 2265, 2266-69
TAS: 2269-70
TMP: 2273
Monster Maroons introduced: 2277-78
TWOK: 2285

 

[Mytran]

That's certainly one interpretation.
TMP in 2273 does imply a lot of changes (including aging) packed into a short space of time though!

 

[Tomalak]

What are the fixed dates? I think it's just 2270 for the end of the five year mission at one end, and 2293 for Kirk's death in Generations. Nine years earlier he considered leaving Starfleet to be with Antonia, which places it in 2284.

TWOK is set no earlier than 2283, and is about fifteen years after Space Seed. In fact, if you go by Kirk's assumed birth date of 2233, setting TWOK in 2283 is appealing, as it makes Kirk's depression coincide with his half century. There's no reason it can't be 2285 though. It probably works better there, because you can tie it into his internal struggle over whether he made the right decision to leave Antonia.

Everything else is up for debate isn't it? I don't think the V'Ger incident is ever pegged to any specific date.

Kirk hasn't "logged a single star hour in two and a half years", and the Enterprise has been out of action for eighteen months. There's nothing to stop Kirk commanding the Enterprise for a period of years after the end of the 5YM - you could even put Phase II before TMP!

TMP implies that Turnabout Intruder was about three years earlier, but the cast look every year of a decade older. I think TWOK was right to bring them up to date. So yeah, place TMP as far into the 2270s as you like.