What would you change about 'Star Trek: Generations' if you could?

[Admiral Archer]

My biggest issue with Generations, at the end of the day, is that it is a movie made so soon after ending the series. Not sure if it counts, but I wouldn't re-write Generations per se; I'd simply either have Generations be the finale of TNG Season 7 with more seasons and episodes yet to come (I actually pitched this in another thread) or if you had to do a film series, start with First Contact a few years after All Good Things and just have the TNG movies be set on the Enterprise-D. In both cases, it would prevent Kirk from being killed off (in my pitch for Season 7 finale Generations, Kirk rides off into the sunset at the end of the episode) AND we could get more adventures with the Enterprise-D, a ship which even the movies admit "went before her time".

 

[SithHappens]

I always liked Generations, still do, but the plot is awful really. Its so flawed, so you need to blow up a sun to get the nexus to come to you because you cant fly a ship into it ? Erm, but didnt that happen right at the start of the movie, so what if the ship is destroyed, Soran only wanted to get into the nexus, hes not bothered if his ship is destroyed.

I can leave it anytime too? Erm, oh i know i'll leave exactly when i entered it and hope i can do a better job at stopping him this time, i wont leave a couple of hours earlier and dismantle his missile, or even earlier and just bloody stop him doing whatever hes trying to do.

Anyway, what id change. Dont kill Kirk, or at least leave it ambiguous where because the script is better and Nimoy decided to appear he can say 'there are always possibilities' or something like that. It was clear Shatner didn't want Kirk to die, he even pitched The Return as a possible sequel, and the powers that be have looked at opportunities to bring him back with his 'death' being a stumbling block.

 

[C.E. Evans]

My changes:

I'd ditch the idea of the Nexus and the fanwank(ish) desire for Kirk and Picard to meet and fight side-by-side. It's really enough that they would be in the same movie, IMO. Instead, the plot would revolve around a long-lived adversary that Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise-B defeated in the 2rd-Century, but would later escape incarceration and become a problem for Picard and the Enterprise-D in the 24th-Century. There would be a scene in which Picard would review Kirk's personal logs and see a recording from the man himself. Picard would use Kirk's insight of the adversary to eventually defeat him.

The Enterprise-D would not be destroyed, but she definitely would not escape unscathed. She'd probably lose an entire warp nacelle and a good chunk of her secondary hull, but she'd be salvageable at the end of the movie. The final scene would be of the Enterprise in drydock undergoing a massive refit (not into the horrendous three-nacelled version seen in TNG's finale, but into just a slightly more streamlined Galaxy-class ship for the next movie--25% different from the original Enterprise-D).

We still wouldn't know what ultimately became of Kirk, but it would be revealed in passing dialogue that later he served as the Federation ambassador to Qo'noS after leaving Starfleet, and that he was the first (and currently only) Human to receive an honorary induction into the Klingon Hall of Warriors.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Here's what I'd do to fix the Nexus story...

1) Improve the Enterprise-B prologue. Up the stakes in a more believable way than the dumb "X won't be here Tuesday" thing. Get rid of the stupid TNG-style technobabble that doesn't belong in the TOS movie era. ("Channel the BS thru the main deflector dish to simulate a tractor beam", etc.) Rewrite Scotty & Chekov's dialogue so it's organic to them instead of obviously reassigned Spock & McCoy exchanges. ("I have a theory"/"I thought you might" and "You and you, you just became nurses" being the worst offenders.)

7) Either give Kirk a death worthy of him, or just forget about it altogether. It bugs me that Kirk dies in the 24th Century and none of his friends from the original Enterprise in the 23rd Century have any idea what REALLY happened to him. And Spock and McCoy aren't even there. (And please don't trot out the "I've always known I'll die alone" line from STV. Kirk isn't psychic so we shouldn't treat that as some prophecy to be fulfilled. It's just Kirk having a melancholy moment, he is wont to do.) After nearly 30 years of Star Trek, Kirk dying should've been one of the biggest events EVER. Instead, the film expects us to get more broken up about Data finding his damn cat at the end of the movie.

The way to fix the prologue, imho, is to make it more than just a teaser and have it actually be an integral part of the film. You can cut the prologue and you don't really lose anything. And so if I were doing a page one rewrite, I would connect the prologue and the climax by staging the climax on the Enterprise-B itself.

First, increase the stakes. Picard sees the Enterprise-D saucer cutting through the skies above Soran's missile while they fight on Veridian III. Picard believes his crew has died.

Second, I would make Soran a little more sinister. He's Picard's Christmas dinner guest in the Nexus! Picard's wife knows Soran as an old friend of the family, but he unnerves Picard and speaks of his (Soran's) dead wife and how he wishes he could save her. As they talk, he says something that begins to snap Picard out of his deluded haze. Then Picard sees Guinan, and he realizes what's going on and what he has to do. Which leads to Kirk...

...and as he and Kirk talk about what's at stake and what he (Picard) has lost, Kirk has a better idea than going back to Veridian III. What if they went back to the Enterprise-B instead and dealt with Soran there? Picard's Enterprise won't be lost.

Third, when we get back to the Enterprise-B, Soran "sensed" where Picard had gone and followed him out of the Nexus to stop him. He seizes Engineering and tries to force the ship into the Nexus, and Kirk and Picard try to stop him. They fight around the warp core. There's a warp core breach, but the locks to eject the warp core are jammed. Kirk manually flips the locks, but this means he'll be ejected from the ship along with the warp core. Kirk is able to complete the lock sequence, blast doors drop down sealing him and Soran off from the rest of Engineering, and Picard watches as Kirk and Soran are pulled out into space with the warp core. The resulting explosion kicks the Enterprise away from the Nexus and all is saved. Then Picard fades away because the timeline he's from no longer exists.

Picard wakes from a nap on the Enterprise-D with a dream that felt so real. He has a message from Rene about something (butterfly effect -- he and Robert are fine). He goes to Ten-Forward, Guinan senses his confusion. He tells her he remembers someone -- an enemy? a friend? -- telling him "Time is the fire in which we burn," but that couldn't be real, and she tells him that all that he experienced was real, that time works in mysterious ways.

I'd ditch the idea of the Nexus and the fanwank(ish) desire for Kirk and Picard to meet and fight side-by-side. It's really enough that they would be in the same movie, IMO. Instead, the plot would revolve around a long-lived adversary that Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise-B defeated in the 2rd-Century, but would later escape incarceration and become a problem for Picard and the Enterprise-D in the 24th-Century. There would be a scene in which Picard would review Kirk's personal logs and see a recording from the man himself. Picard would use Kirk's insight of the adversary to eventually defeat him.

That's essentially the premise of the Maurice Hurley script. There's an enemy from another dimension threatening the Federation in Picard's time, and he consults with Kirk on the Holodeck about the events of "The Tholian Web."

 

[Lord Garth]

What would I change? The lighting scheme on the Enterprise-D. They darkened and blackened so much out because they didn't have enough faith in the sets being able to hold up on the Big Screen.

I saw some TNG episodes in the theater in the early-2010s, when they remastered TNG and played two episodes from each season on the Big Screen. The Enterprise-D sets looked fine.

 

[DonIago]

I liked the changes to the bridge though, including the dimmer lighting. I'm also not sure they were wrong to be concerned that it wouldn't hold up well on the big screen.

I saw BoBW on the big screen, but I was also expecting "TV show on the big screen", and they certainly didn't muck with the aspect ratio or otherwise try to make it specifically fit for a theatrical presentation. I got what I expected.

 

[Lord Garth]

I liked the changes to the bridge though, including the dimmer lighting.

Lighting aside, I did like the addition of side-stations to the bridge. That needed to happened.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

I like the look of the side stations, but really question whether it was a good idea in this film.

Not only was it money they didn't need to spend, but it also blunted the emotional aspect when we see it destroyed by making it not "our" bridge.

 

[DonIago]

I like the look of the side stations, but really question whether it was a good idea in this film.

Not only was it money they didn't need to spend, but it also blunted the emotional aspect when we see it destroyed by making it not "our" bridge.

I mostly thought the impact was blunted due to the tacky, "Ooops, look like we took one hit too many and now we're looking at a warp core breach!" resolution to the question of how to take the E-D out of play in future films.

 

[UssGlenn]

Picard wakes from a nap on the Enterprise-D with a dream that felt so real. He has a message from Rene about something (butterfly effect -- he and Robert are fine). He goes to Ten-Forward, Guinan senses his confusion. He tells her he remembers someone -- an enemy? a friend? -- telling him "Time is the fire in which we burn," but that couldn't be real, and she tells him that all that he experienced was real, that time works in mysterious ways.

That's not half bad, but if they had done that, everyone would complain about it ending with a big reset button.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

What would I change? The lighting scheme on the Enterprise-D. They darkened and blackened so much out because they didn't have enough faith in the sets being able to hold up on the Big Screen.

Oh, I LOVE the lighting of the Enterprise-D in GEN! The sets never looked better, IMO, and the lighting was a vast improvement over the flat, boring lighting of the TV show. If you have a master cinematographer like John Alonzo (Chinatown, The Magnificent Seven) working on your film, you just get out of his way and let him do whatever he wants.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

I mostly thought the impact was blunted due to the tacky, "Ooops, look like we took one hit too many and now we're looking at a warp core breach!" resolution to the question of how to take the E-D out of play in future films.

Yeah, that too.

 

[Warped9]

GEN always struck me as overblown and glorified fanfic to get the two crews together. And it speaks to the notion few thought the TNG crew could stand on their own. Mind you, given the TNG films are largely forgettable they possibly had a point.

I’m not sure what I’d do, but it would likely be a Page 1 rewrite. Scrap the whole mess as is.

 

[ScottJ85]

Keep the overall plot, scrap the last 1/3 of the movie and tweak the beginning slightly. Rewrite the ending so that Kirk brings the entire Enterprise-B with him through the Nexus and the final battle takes place in space.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Rewrite the ending so that Kirk brings the entire Enterprise-B with him through the Nexus and the final battle takes place in space.

I don't know how this would work, it may not make a lick of sense, but I like it. I like it a lot.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

Couldn't have been as bad as what we got.

 

[shapeshifter]

I knew some "only TOS, never TNG" type fans. They hated it without ever watching an episode. Started talking smack whenever I bought it up.

I managed to drag them to see GEN though, and it did soften their negative attitudes towards TNG in general. It was like it gave them Captain Kirk's blessing to be ok with TNG. lol They never watched much of it but at least the smack talking ceased.

 

[Danlav05]

This is a hard one - I'd much rather have had 2 Enterprises with at least Shatner and Nimoy playing a full role throughout )(taking into account the events of Unification, of course!)

And they don't die.

So basically a full-whack TOS-TNG crossover. Oh, and keep the -D. Maybe just give it a full refit?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

This is a hard one - I'd much rather have had 2 Enterprises with at least Shatner and Nimoy playing a full role throughout )(taking into account the events of Unification, of course!)

I have sometimes thought about a significant role for Nimoy in Generations. Not more dialogue in the prologue; anyone could have spoken the Spock lines, and Jimmy Doohan did. Instead, I've pondered a story that used Spock in the 24th-century, not the 23rd. Something that built off the Romulans early in the film -- which is a completely throwaway element -- which then causes Spock to become involved, either of his own volition or because Picard needs him. But then the film would start developing in very different directions, and some elements (Picard's grief, Data's emotion chip) would have to be diminished to make room for more Spock.

 

[Summer Solstice]

Listened to the Generations commentary track for the first time, with Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga being very candid about their constraints and mistakes on the movie.

According to Braga, the poster for the film in his head was the Enterprise-A and Enterprise-D locked in battle, but Paramount had 3 notes they had to abide by writing the movie.

1. It had to be mainly centered on the TNG cast instead of a film which balanced time between both the TOS cast and TNG. This became problematic for getting the TOS cast to participate for what, beyond William Shatner, would be a cameo.
2. It had to have a comedy angle with Data, hence the emotions chip.
3. It had to involve Klingons

So if you had to redo Generations, would you do a page 1 rewrite? Or is Generations a movie where the concept of the Nexus was fundamentally interesting and may (or may not) have needed a few more drafts?

My biggest issue with the movie is that Soren isn't an interesting villain. The character has no personal connection to the TNG characters or Kirk, we never see the planet or the people whose lives are at stake, and Soren's goals are not nuanced or have any depth beyond the surface. Dude just wants to go back to Heaven. And maybe they could have added depth to the Soren story, but the other time in the film is eaten up by Data laughing at bad jokes.

I would argue that the movie would have worked better if it had NO VILLAIN. What if it was just a movie where the TNG and TOS casts were thrown together in the Nexus? The Enterprise-A and Enterprise-D get caught in the Nexus at different times. The movie then becomes an exploration of the character's backstories through their memories and the Nexus, they ultimately have to figure out a way to get out, and it becomes a situation where the two crews disagree on the right approach?

Those three restrictions are pretty restrictive actually. I like your idea. I think it's necessary to establish that you leave the Nexus at the time and in the place when you entered it because otherwise there's either a massive plot hole or it's a rehash of "Tapestry" (which is an excellent episode, but the idea has already been done).

I have sometimes thought about a significant role for Nimoy in Generations. Not more dialogue in the prologue; anyone could have spoken the Spock lines, and Jimmy Doohan did. Instead, I've pondered a story that used Spock in the 24th-century, not the 23rd. Something that built off the Romulans early in the film -- which is a completely throwaway element -- which then causes Spock to become involved, either of his own volition or because Picard needs him. But then the film would start developing in very different directions, and some elements (Picard's grief, Data's emotion chip) would have to be diminished to make room for more Spock.

I really love that idea. I think Star Trek XI used Leonard Nimoy's character in an interesting way that really worked.