Deep Focus Review - Movie Reviews - Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Director: David Carson
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, William Shatner, and Malcolm McDowell
Rated: PG
Runtime: 118 min.

by Brian Eggert

Reviewed:
09/06/2009

Original Release Date:
11/18/1994

Star Trek: Generations serves as an intermediary film between the established material of the original crew and the innovative, much-loved chemistry of The Next Generation cast. Passing the proverbial torch, it meant to retire the old and welcome the new, ideally pleasing both traditionalist and contemporary fans in the process. Doing so with respect to their legacy, and yet consideration for the franchise growing swiftly out of control, proved a task Paramount Pictures was not willing to take the necessary time to examine. Instead, the end film was perhaps not what devoted fans hoped for, but in its own right a solid product and entertaining film.

Paramount couldn’t pass on joining the two crews, in part from a marketing perspective, since the hook transcends age limitations for those who grew up watching the 1960s Star Trek and subsequent films, and those who discovered the series with TNG crew of the 1980s. Getting the word out on their twofer also spawned the first website dedicated to promoting a movie’s release, now a staple for any film’s advertising budget and the foundation of viral marketing. Hiring two groups of writers to conceive two scripts, the studio decided on Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga’s scenario, gave series director David Carson $35 million to play with, but only because filmmaker Nicholas Meyer (The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country) refused to return.

The film begins when, in the twilight of his career, James T. Kirk dies saving the rookie crew of the new Enterprise. He’s sucked into something called an “energy ribbon” and remains there until the next generation of Starfleet, namely the crew of the Enterprise-D, find him. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), who mourns the accidental deaths of his brother and nephew, leads his crew with stern mannerisms and unflinching leadership through a series of investigations that reveal those dastardly Klingons may be responsible for attacking a Federation space station. Meanwhile, long ago a madman named Saron (Malcolm McDowell) was touched by the ribbon, inside finding his deceased wife and child alive and well. The ribbon, you see, makes your most desired dreams come true. The Enterprise’s wise bartender, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), describes it as “being wrapped inside joy, as if joy were something tangible.” Obsessed with getting back to the ribbon, Saron destroys an entire solar system to alter the ribbon’s course over a planet, where he intends to stand and hitch a ride back to joy.

And so, Picard and Kirk join forces to stop Saron’s plan, ending when the elder captain falls to his death after saving the day. Fans met Kirk’s demise with anger, believing the circumstances unsuitable for the hero who had survived so many perilous away missions and fought his way out of numerous spaceship battles. Despite ongoing debates about which one makes the best Enterprise captain, Kirk or Picard, the brash, singular character often wins over the emotionally complex puzzle of Picard. Audiences like their heroes straightforward and their death scenes grandiose, I suppose, so Kirk falling from some scaffolding didn’t feel right. McDowell even received death threats from one Trekkie so distraught over the event. Though, the original ending featured Saron phasering Kirk to death, so imagine what this enthusiast would’ve done to McDowell in that case.

Kirk’s death scene is ultimately more “real” than the storybook finale Trekkies were hoping for. Had he died nobly on the Enterprise bridge, and then had a momentous funeral where everyone could say goodbye, that would be too easy—reality hardly ever lets anyone say goodbye. TNG series was always about bringing a sense of the possible to the Star Trek universe, particularly in terms of its science-fiction, whereas the original series seemed rooted in the impossible and ideal. Astrophysicists such as Stephen Hawking have attested to TNG’s technological and scientific accuracy, how the show builds stories around astrological hypotheses, such as wormholes or time bubbles, ripe for exploration in a weekly television series.

The Kirk crew seems to chase after the adventurous and romantic aspects of space, whereas Picard’s crew delves into the real. Even from a dramatic perspective, TNG layers its characters beyond the predictable roles founded by Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Consider Data, who at first, with his dependence on computerized logic and lack of emotion, was deemed merely a stand-in for Spock. As the series evolved, so did the character, imbuing him with a desire to become human, even subtle underlying feelings. Finally, in this film, Data installs an “emotions chip”, ,used by the writers mostly as a comic relief tool; it serves as an impossible-yet-malfunctioning fantasy for Data, to the point where in the finale he disengages it, because to his android reality its effect is not real.

Buried in the subtext of Star Trek: Generations resides the theme that fantasy does not substitute a harsh-but-true dose of reality, and therefore establishes the entire Picard crew as favorable against the fantastical Kirk crew. The film’s main plot and subplots each contain a Reality vs. Fantasy theme: Saron’s violent drive to return to the Nexus, an acknowledged illusion, twists him into something evil; Data’s emotions chip, ostensibly a step away from his unemotional Self by artificial means (ignoring, of course, that he’s an android), proves problematic; Picard and Kirk both resist the ribbon’s fantasy, however appealing, for the grim realities of their lives—though Kirk undoubtedly still looks at stopping Saron as a wild buckaroo adventure, and perhaps that’s why he dies, because he doesn’t respect the reality of the situation.

Alas, this reading remains the minority opinion toward the film. Too much is destroyed to make the torch passing an effortless process. Not enough of the original cast members returned, and the conspicuous absence of Leonard Nimoy put fans in a tizzy. Nimoy declined an offer to direct and costar, citing problems with the script, and a particular blandness in his lines that Paramount refused to take the time to correct. Nimoy claimed they could be spoken by anyone—turns out, he was right; when he refused to appear the same dialogue was given to James Doohan with no changes. Deforest Kelley, who appeared on the first episode of The Next Generation, couldn’t get approval from the studio’s on-set health insurance goons to appear, so his lines were given to Walter Koenig. And then there’s the big finale’s destruction of the television-grade Enterprise model, whose specs were designed specifically for lower resolution of TV screens and therefore lacking detail, but whose demolition allowed future films with The Next Generation crew to harbor more elaborate ships, some constructed completely with computer-generated effects as technologies improved in that area.

These changes could not be forgiven by some audience, the powerful storytelling and top-notch special effects notwithstanding. So audiences remain split on Star Trek: Generations because they cannot reconcile what they expect from the experience versus what’s actually put forth. Whereas fan service might be in order for this type of event, the filmmakers simply told a story and they received poor notices for their unwillingness, or more accurately their inability to accommodate everyone’s wishes for the final appearance of James T. Kirk. Still, the picture made some $75 million at the U.S. box-office, making it profitable, and earning the possibility to make Star Trek: First Contact, a marked improvement and arguably the best film in the franchise, regardless of who’s sitting in the captain’s chair.

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Star Trek: Generations (1994)

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