Would the book 'Federation' made a better 'pass the torch' movie than Generations?

[Jedi Marso]

I'm talking about the novel by Judith and Garfield Reeve-Stevens.

That was a fantastic Trek novel- probably my favorite behind 'The Final Reflection.' It involved three time periods, including Kirk and Picard's eras, and a movie adapted from this novel would have had both crews working in their own timelines and then having to save each other near the finale in a very Trek-like conundrum. At the very end, you still get the scene between Kirk and Picard, in this case in the form of correspondence sent down through the centuries. In a movie you could have even done it as a holo-recording in the same vein Jack Crusher left a message for Wesley.

I think that properly adapted for the screen, this could have potentially been the best Trek movie of them all.

Discuss.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Especially if they could get somebody like Jeremy Irons to play Adrik Thorsen.

 

[Dukhat]

Well I certainly thought it had a better premise than ST:FC.

 

[wayoung]

It was a way better look at Cochrane than First Contact.

Edit: And Best Destiny was a much better origin for young Kirk than ST09

 

[Peach Wookiee]

It would've been awesome, but required a recast a la Trek 2009 as James Doohan and DeForest Kelley were already gone.

 

[BillJ]

I think that properly adapted for the screen, this could have potentially been the best Trek movie of them all.

I'd be afraid you'd have to cut too much out of it for a two-hour film.

 

[ClayinCA]

It would've been awesome, but required a recast a la Trek 2009 as James Doohan and DeForest Kelley were already gone.

Not if we're talking about Federation instead of Generations, surely? I mean, De's health wasn't great, but he was certainly still around when Generations was made; and Jimmy Doohan was in the movie!

 

[Peach Wookiee]

This has been a moderator derp moment, brought to you by real life crap...

 

[cardinal biggles]

There didn't need to be a torch-passing movie at all. The torch had been passed, what, four or five times already?

1. Admiral McCoy's appearance in "Encounter at Farpoint"
2. Sarek in "Sarek" and "Unification, Part I"
   
3. TUC with Kirk's final log entry -- "...boldly going where no man -- where no one -- has gone before." -- and the presence of Michael Dorn as Worf's grandfather
4. Spock in "Unification," which includes a direct reference to the events of TUC
5. Scotty in "Relics"

Sarek wasn't a major character, true, but he was one of the few TOS characters they could bring into TNG without benefit of time travel, technobabble, or being a holodeck character. The fact that we got a torch-passing movie boils down to Paramount not having enough confidence in TNG to stand on its own, which is sort of mind-boggling when you consider how enormously popular it was.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Federation was a really great book. It would've made an even better movie if done right.

 

[cardinal biggles]

It was a good novel. I assume if they'd actually tried to adapt it, that the TOS portion of the novel would have been updated to the movie era given the age of the cast.

 

[somebuddyX]

No. Federation is an amazing story and I especially love all the Cochrane stuff but if they were going to have some passing the torch/crossover film they should have gone all out. Have some temporal shenanigans so no one remembers but at the very least get Kirk and Picard solving some moral conundrum together up on the Enterprise (A, B, D? who cares!). I think Doctor Who's "The Day of the Doctor" is kinda the template I would use.

 

[Amaris]

I love the novel, and would love to see it as perhaps a TV mini-series, but as a replacement for Generations? Nah. It would have suffered in the same way GEN suffered: too much crammed into too little space, with so many details flying about the story wouldn't be as cohesive on celluloid as it was on paper.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Still. Adrik Thorsen. ADRIK THORSEN!

If they filmed Federation, and got Jeremy Irons to play Thorsen, the awesomeness would leap off the screen, into your living room, and watch the show with you. It would also make you want to have its babies.

 

[ClayinCA]

Still. Adrik Thorsen. ADRIK THORSEN!

If they filmed Federation, and got Jeremy Irons to play Thorsen, the awesomeness would leap off the screen, into your living room, and watch the show with you. It would also make you want to have its babies.

Oooooh. Great choice!

 

[tim0122]

I haven't read this book, but from the way you describe it, it sounds like too much for one film. Just the fact that you would have to give two crews (made up of 14 regular cast members) something to do (and that's not even talking about supporting actors and villains) would be VERY hard for one film to do. Trek had a hard enough time giving one main crew enough to do for a film let alone two crews.

 

[Leto_II]

^ Yeah, the novel does give pretty strong "page-time" (as it were) to both crews, plus to Zefram Cochrane in the 21st Century (there being three parallel narratives in the book), which is something that a prose novel can do far better than a feature film ever could, due to running-length considerations. Really great novel; easily one of my top two or three favorite Star Trek books of all time.

 

[Tenacity]

I think that properly adapted for the screen, this could have potentially been the best Trek movie of them all.

I'd be afraid you'd have to cut too much out of it for a two-hour film.

Jedi Marso, since this was your OP, what parts of the novel would you feel to be indispensable? And what do you feel could be safely omitted without impacting the proposed movie storyline?

 

[Jedi Marso]

Jedi Marso, since this was your OP, what parts of the novel would you feel to be indispensable? And what do you feel could be safely omitted without impacting the proposed movie storyline?

Hmm. It's been quite a while since I read it; I think much of the material set in the era prior to Kirk's would have to go, but not all of it. Some of that 'history' could have been related verbally in a conference or as part of a holodeck experience in the TNG era, bringing the audience up to speed on the salient points. As the 'first' TNG movie, this would have supplanted Generations and taken place some time after the events of 'All Good Things', when Picard was forced by Q to revisit the horrors of the post-apocalyptic court of an earlier age. Perhaps as a way of exploring that era with his friends, we could get some of the background info necessary to the remainder of the plotline.

Another problem is that much of this story doesn't make sense to audiences not familiar with the TOS episode introducing Zephram Cochrane and Nancy Hereford. At some point that story needs to be rehashed too so people are up to speed on what's going on. (Perhaps when an angry starfleet contacts Kirk about Hereford, who isn't quite dead as the log reflects...)

The indispensable parts of the story involve the tie-ins between the two eras- the pursuit of Cochrane's shuttle into the black hole by the Enterprise, and the way Adrik Thorsen possesses Data in the TNG era and flies into the same black hole as well. It's behind the event horizon (which a warp driven ship can escape, given enough power) that the two crews intersect and interact, and solve the problem of the prisoner's paradox or whatever is was called. Both ships eventually escape back to their respective eras, and then there is a return by both to Christopher's Landing on Earth where, in the TNG era, Picard reads the letter written to him by Kirk in the 23rd (without knowing who he's writing to, other than that it is the captain of a future Enterprise).

It would take a careful treatment to turn this novel into a filmable movie script, but the Reeves-Stevens wrote for S4 of Enterprise and if it was my movie to make I'd hire them to adapt their own work. It would definitely be a movie for Trek fans more than general audiences, and would require probably at least a 2.5 hour run time to do right. That aside, I still maintain that this story would have been a far better 'bridge' movie between the two eras than Generations was. Just MHO.

For anyone who's been interested in this thread but hasn't read the book- I can't recommend it highly enough. It's basically part and parcel of my 'head canon' since I consider the 21st Century Earth in First Contact as a splinter timeline that led to the events seen in Enterprise. First Contact contradicts a great deal of the material in Federation; if they'd adapted the novel as a movie rather than making Generations, First Contact would have been a totally different product.

 

[Relayer1]

Federation was O.K., anything at all would have been preferable to Generations.