Star Trek: Generations

An *Opinionated Trek Film Guide* review.

Review of the first feature film with the cast of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*.

## Film information

* **Film series:** TNG era films
* **Installment no.:** 1
* **Premiere:** 18 November 1994
* *Star Trek: Generations* at StarTrek.com, the official website
* *Star Trek: Generations* at Memory Alpha, a canon *Star Trek* wiki
* *Star Trek: Generations* at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
* *Star Trek: Generations* at the Internet Movie Database

## Review information

* Review link
* Published:

## SF Debris synopsis

*Opinionated Trek Film Guide looks at Star Trek Generations. Being incapable of dealing with a problem that cannot be solved with 'Make it so,' Picard goes to Kirk and begs him to save the day for him.*

## Follow-Up

### Final Score: 2

***A Mess, But Tries to Cover This Up by Being Stupid***

"Final score for *Generations* is 2 out of 10.

Awful film. Made all the worse by the way it killed off an icon. In their defence, much of what was in the story was dictated to Moore and Braga, but that doesn't excuse the many problems they brought to the script. It's fairly hard to do an exploration of mortality in a script where you need to do childish humour with Data, and the efforts to avoid predictability wound up undermining the story overall.

Since this has come up again recently, let me adress an idea that's been thrown around the Trek community for well over a decade now. The idea that Picard never left the Nexus and that everything we see in the rest of the films happened in his own head. You're free to believe whatever you like, but objectively speaking, if you introduce the idea that you can dismiss what you see as not being real - in terms of the show, obviously, none of it is real life - then it would actually make a lot more sense to say he isn't in the Nexus anymore, because he was never in it in the first place. After all, which makes more sense ? That Picard, an old guy dressed in a nearly all-black uniform, with no protection from the sun of any kind, not even so much so as a thimbleful of water, now has sunstroke, and now believes he is teaming up with a great Federation hero ? Or that he's entered into a land of fairydust magic, where his fantasies come true ? Plus, the sunstroke idea is the simplest way of explaining how they saw the sun explosion in seconds, rather than minutes. Meaning, it's actually more plausible than taking the film at face value. Then again, *Jason takes Manhattan* is more plausible...

Despite this, while reviews have not been good to the movie, it did well financially, and it ensured there would be another *Star Trek* film, again done by Moore and Braga. But we'll discuss that a bit more when we eventually get to *Star Trek: First Contact*. Shatner would eventually resurrect Kirk in some of his novels, something no doubt encouraged by how empty his death was. He was a character that endured for decades, left in a shallow grave, and looked over by one man, who never commented on him again. It was not a sendoff that any of the TOS characters deserved. Nevermind one of the two most popular. Kirk, who had done so much, given of himself so much, and never said "die", deserved better."

### Annoying Character

***Data***

"Annoying Character goes to Data. No contest."

### Burn, Baby, Burn

***Enterprise-D***

"We have Burn, Baby, Burn for the *Enterprise-D*."

### Lazarus of the Week

***Enterprise-D crew***

"We have a Lazarus of the Week for most of the members of said *Enterprise-D*, killed by stellar shockwave, but returned by Hot-Tub Time Machine."

## See also

* Opinionated Trek Film Guide
* Star Trek TNG movie reviews