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The Appropriate Tune - "Alphabet Song" by Captain Picard
In 1979, after a cavalcade of enthusiastic support, merchandise sales and homoerotic fanfiction from a legion of fans, Gene Roddenberry was finally able to finagle a deal with Paramount Pictures to bring his science fiction program known as Star Trek to the silver screen. Entitled Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the film would see the return of James Tiberius Kirk, Mister Spock and the rest of the cast to the bridge of the USS Enterprise for the first time in a decade, going where no man had ever gone before in a way that would have been impossible on a TV show’s budget. While several points of criticism were launched against the film when it released, such as a lack of action set pieces in favor of special effects showcases (Star Wars had come out two years prior and had quickly become the benchmark by which all films were judged), that grassroots support ultimately helped to make Star Trek: The Motion Picture quite lucrative at the box office, earning 139 million dollars over a 44 million dollar budget. In case you’re still confused about why WB signed off on the Snyder Cut horseshit, it’s not without precedent or intent.
The success of Star Trek: The Motion Picture naturally led to a string of sequels, all of which proved to be relatively successful and none of which involved Gene Roddenberry in any meaningful way. Still, being the creator of a multi-million dollar franchise does earn you a bit of clout in the industry, and after years of workshopping ideas and casting out nets ol’ Gene was finally able to finagle a deal for a new TV show. Dubbed Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show started up around a century after the events of the original series, featuring a new cast and crew traveling on a new Enterprise, exploring a galaxy that would have been strange yet familiar to any old Trekker that stumbled across it. While initially a bit shaky, part of which can be blamed on Gene himself, once it hit syndication TNG proved to be an overwhelming triumph for the little cult sci-fi show that could; Running for seven seasons (four more than the original series had managed to do) and spawning two long-running spin-off shows in Deep Space 9 and Voyager, as well as comics, video games, novels and so on. For a good many people, myself included, The Next Generation was their introduction to Star Trek as a concept, their Star Trek, which is why CBS and Paramount’s general abandon of that part of the franchise in favor of rebooting, revisiting and rewriting the original series over the last couple years has been particularly tedious. Except for Picard that is, although judging from the reviews it seems that we were better off forgotten.
Given the fortune that the original Star Trek had at the cinema, it’s only logical to assume that The Next Generation, once it gained steam, would also make the trip to the cinema. Which it did, several times in fact. It would also be logical to assume that, having spent the better part of a decade covering the six TOS Star Trek movies, that I would then move on to the TNG era films. Which I am, and here we are. Unfortunately this does mean we’ll be out of sync with the Apes films in the end, but I wasn’t about to watch Tim Burton’s attempt at Planet of the Apes just for the sake of synchronicity. Life goes on.
Released in 1994, Star Trek: Generations was written by Rick Berman, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga (all major creative figures in the TNG era) and directed by David Carson, produced by Rick Berman through Paramount. After a five year mission and saving the Federation a half dozen times Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is now officially retired, which would be fine if he had a family or any life outside of his service to Starfleet, but that was taken care of back in Star Trek III. While on a publicity tour with the newly christened USS Enterprise-B, the ship receives a distress call from two civilian transport ships who have been caught in the wake of some sort of bizarre energy ribbons, the gravimetric pressure being too great for their systems to handle. Despite a severe lack of equipment and manpower, the Enterprise-B not yet fitted for active duty, Kirk’s leadership allows them to rescue at least a portion of the survivors, including a rather desperate man played by Malcolm McDowell, which tells you right away that he’s probably the villain. While attempting to escape the pull of the ribbon however, the ship is struck by a wave of energy, breaching the hull and heavily damaging several decks, including the one that Kirk was on at the time. His body is never found.
Seventy eight years later the Enterprise-D, lead by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) receives a distress call from a remote starbase that has been attacked for some reason. On that base is one Doctor Tolian Soran, the same guy that was rescued all those years ago, as well as some dead Romulans. Seems that the Romulans caught wind of a trilithium in the area, a substance capable of killing stars, although such a material has heretofore been impossible to manufacture in any significant capacity. Except Soran totally is the bad guy and did make trilithium, and he’s teamed up with some renegade Klingons to boot. We can easily guess what use the Klingons would have for such a horrific weapon, but what of Soran? What does he stand to gain in such a deal, and how does it connect to that bizarre ribbon of energy all those years ago, now known as the Nexus? And what about all these subplots? You’re gonna have to watch and find out.
The first thing that came to mind when I was watching Generations was how much I enjoy the look of cinematic Star Trek. Part of that is the special effects of course, scenes like the dying stars or the Enterprise-D crash-landing on Viridian-3 looking far beyond what was possible for any science fiction television show at the time, but honestly a lot of it has to do with the cinematography. Even from the time of The Motion Picture the films have had this more natural setting that made the universe of Star Trek feel more real, as opposed to the technicolor TOS and fluorescent TNG. Generally speaking Generations is no exception to that rule, flashy where it counts but otherwise impeccable, aside from David Carson’s apparent predilection for piss yellow lighting cropping up several times over the course of the film, which when combined with shadowy setting really does not look good. It comes across like you’re watching the film while wearing those big rim sunglasses that people wore in the 70’s, or playing one of those FMV computer games from back in the day.
As someone who cut their teeth on The Next Generation I will say it’s nice to see the crew of my Enterprise together again, even if most of the attention is split between Picard, bartender/mysterious alien Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and my favorite character Data (Brent Spiner), whose consistent struggle with his newly installed emotion chip serves as the main source of humour in the film. Malcolm McDowell puts in his usual good work, even if Soran as an antagonist is unremarkable. I even find William Shatner tolerable here, even though I found his smarmy interpretation of the character in the later TOS films to be almost an insult. Before I started these films I had heard that some of the actors phoned it in for the movies, particularly Marina Sirtis, but for their first shot at bat I think everyone put in a good day’s work.
Speaking of films though, one of Generation’s big problems is that it doesn’t feel like a movie. This is probably a given, but when you get a bunch of people who write for TV to write a movie, the movie is inevitably going to feel like a TV show. It starts off normally, but once we get into the TNG era the tropes start to interject themselves. Picard’s stardate monologues, the A and B plots that are wrapped up by the end, even the Trek staple outdoor scene that takes place on a rocky outcropping. This might not seem like a bad thing, TNG made for some great TV after all, yet in spite of having almost two hours to flesh this formula the film feels very ephemeral. As I said earlier Soran is incredibly underwhelming as an antagonist, the aliens who loved whales back in Star Trek IV were more compelling, and despite developing the most powerful weapon of mass destruction in the series history is basically an afterthought used to move the plot. Data’s plot, which is meant to be a capstone moment for his entire character arc, is mainly used for joke fodder and the one moment it does have an impact in the story it’s resolved within minutes. Picard’s plot, revolving around the death of his nephew and his family legacy, is treated somewhat better but it’s also rather subdued and only really comes into play like twice in the film, which admittedly is more attention than Kirk’s son has gotten in the last two movies. I mean it’s not out of character for Picard to bottle emotions like that but it really feels like that should have been more of the focus than it was, especially when the true nature of the Nexus is revealed, which is yet another thing that feels like it we barely got time with. It’s like I’m not allowed to relax and think in this movie, I’m constantly being pushed along to the next scene and the next bit of dialogue. Something that I don’t think came up across TNG’s several two-parters, despite those being about the same length of time as a feature film.
I also question the decision to place Generations deep into TNG continuity. Usually when you’re adapting a TV show, or anything really, to the screen you go into it under the assumption that the person watching it has never heard of this thing before. It’s why half of all superhero movies ever made have been origin stories or featured something related to the origin. Which isn’t to say Generations should have been a TNG prequel or anything, but scenes like Worf being promoted or Data installing the emotion chip are things which only have emotional impact if you’ve been watching the show and knew these characters. Although to be honest it feels like they fucked over Data’s character to shove in that emotion chip plotline anyway, dude’s run the gamut of human experiences but he suddenly doesn’t understand humor, so they were better off nixing it entirely. The TOS films took place after the show but it still gave you time to understand the characters before they started to change things up too much. TNG doesn't get that same courtesy, and I think the film suffers for it.
Then there’s Kirk. Now listen, I understand how important Kirk was to the popularity and sustainability of the Star Trek franchise, but after 6 movies I’m tired of Captain Kirk. Maybe someone thought that bringing Shatner in would help ease moviegoers in, but fuck that; TNG was coming off a seven year run as one of the most successful science fiction shows in the world at the time, they earned their place in the spotlight and they didn’t need to share it with the guy from The Devil’s Rain. Some people might point out that Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan and DeForest Kelly had made guest appearances on TNG, but I would argue that those episodes always celebrated the past while promoting the future. Kirk’s screen time in Generations mainly centers around people falling over themselves to extoll the greatness of James Kirk. The idea of the two captains of the Enterprise meeting sounds good on paper, but in practice this meeting of equals consists of Kirk throwing around smarmy one-liners and Picard being treated like a chump who can’t do anything on his own. While he redeems himself somewhat at the finale, the character was better served taking the bow with the rest of the crew in Star Trek VI. Or, if they were dead set on ruining the ‘one last ride’ theme of ST6 they should’ve just bit the bullet and brought back the entire crew. Enterprise meets Enterprise sounds way cooler than just captain meets captain, would have felt like a proper passing of the torch from one era of Trek films to another, rather than an excuse to blow smoke up William Shatner’s ass.
Watching Star Trek: Generations is like reading the abridged version of a novel. What you see might be interesting, but you can’t escape the feeling that you’re missing some important chunks of the story. Given the reputation of the TNG films though I was expecting a lot worse, and while I would have preferred a more solid first outing for my favorite Trek, I would still take this over Star Trek V. Star Trek: Generations gets the recommendation, although those who aren’t already fans of Star Trek or The Next Generation will likely find little reason to bother with the film this Halloween.
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