Star Trek Generations (1994)
Plot: The Enterprise NCC 1701-D responds to a distress call at a research station which has been attacked by Romulans wielding disruptor rifles. One of the few survivors is Doctor Tolian Soran, a villainous-looking fellow. Soran is taken aboard the Enterprise but soon betrays Picard’s trust by attacking the crew and hijacking equipment from the research station to shoot a trilithium probe into a nearby star, causing it to implode.
Soran escapes with Klingon aid to commit more villainy. Picard, with help from Guinan, deduces that Soran is trying to reunite with the Nexus, a strange energy ribbon that travels through the galaxy every 39 years. Soran was rescued from the Nexus 78 years earlier by the Enterprise NCC 1701-B, seconds before the craft he was in was destroyed by the ribbon. Soran thinks he will have better luck riding a planet into the ribbon, and is willing to sacrifice a solar system and 230 million souls to do it.
By coincidence, the rescue of Soran was the occasion of the death of Captain James T. Kirk, depicted in flashback at the beginning of the movie. When the chips are down, Jean-Luc Picard finds Kirk trapped in the Nexus and enlists his aid to stop Soran before his villainy can extinguish a second sun.
Thoughts: Really, Generations is not so bad, compared to its reputation and what preceded it in the series. I last saw the film, to the best of my recollection, in 1994, and I’m surprised how much of it I retained. That shows success in devising memorable scenes, strong imagery, and effective character beats.
Here’s what’s great: Brent Spiner giving new life to Data, and stealing the show. Data’s reaction to the emotion chip reveals closer thought to what emotions mean than what we have seen before on the series. He’s hilarious! I could listen to him sing about scanning for lifeforms all day. I would attach an MP3 of this to the boot routine of my computer.
I admire how new lighting and fresh choices of camera angles make the ship look so different, although close scrutiny reveals the standard sets from the show. The lighting isn’t logical, but it looks good.
I love the scenes with Kirk and Picard together. Generations may lean too hard on nostalgia to please the obsessives and hard-core fans, but it sits well with me.
The space battle is terrific. The Duras sisters using Geordi’s VISOR against the crew is a great twist. The pacing and performances are good. And you can’t forget the crash scene.
What isn’t good? Well, the Nexus is pure nonsense. Years of writing on TNG made the writers forget that papering over your plot fallacies with a stream of gobbledygook doesn’t always cut it. There is an effort to layer in moral themes about how to use the time you are given, but they mostly get lost in plot convolutions.
The worst thing about Generations, in my opinion, is its malign influence on the franchise by the introduction of the Big Basic Plot that has since swallowed Star Trek’s brains. The overarching premise of Generations is that the crew encounters a villain possessed with overwhelming advantages who wants, with single-minded focus, to kill everyone, and who can only be defeated by the Captain of the Enterprise in a fistfight. It’s pretty stupid, and stupid isn’t Star Trek’s brand. Evil mastermind capture has unfortunately dominated every Trek film since Star Trek Nemesis (2002). Let’s hope Discovery ushers us back into a Trek universe filled with greater nuance.
I was prepared, however, for Generations to be worse. The charisma of the TNG cast translates to the screen, and what charisma they lack William Shatner makes up for in spades. You can debate all day whether Kirk’s end is fitting, and, like all the great Star Trek questions, there is no right answer. Imagine, Shatner was 63 years old then, and deemed too old to continue. He’s 86 now and still a hero, among other contemporary heroes like Bernie Sanders (75), Harrison Ford (74), and Helen Mirren (71).
3 out of 5 saucer separations. What do you think?
Leave a Reply to Randi Cohen Cancel reply