STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

star trek: generations (1994) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   PG 

Running time   |   118 minutes

Released         |   18 November 1994 

cast

Patrick Stewart ... Picard
William Shatner ... Kirk
Malcolm McDowell ... Soran
Jonathan Frakes ... Riker
Brent Spiner ... Data
LeVar Burton ... Geordi
Michael Dorn ... Worf
Gates McFadden ... Beverly
Marina Sirtis ... Troi
James Doohan ... Scotty
Walter Koenig ... Chekov
Alan Ruck ... Capt. Harriman
​

director

David Carson

writer

​Gene Roddenberry ... (television series Star Trek)
 
Rick Berman ... (story) &
Ronald D. Moore ... (story) &
Brannon Braga ... (story)
 
Ronald D. Moore ... (screenplay) &
Brannon Braga ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

​John Alonzo ... director of photography

music

Dennis McCarthy ​

film editor

​Peter E. Berger

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​​​​​​118,071,125

Australia                 $​​​​​ not available

North America       $​​​​​​​​​​75,671,125

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movie minutiae

​This was the first movie to have a website created to promote it. The site was launched at generations.viacom.com on October 28, 1994, three weeks before the release of the movie. The site featured a graphical interface resembling the LCARS display of the Enterprise. Site content included: video of both versions of the movie trailer. audio clips and photos. cast and crew biographies. shopping from a catalogue of Star Trek videos on VHS (and a 1-800-number to call to order) a downloadable "interactive kit" with images and videos and a simple game. a fan survey on Star Trek favorites and on-line access. The website was mentioned on the NCSA "What's New" site, and quickly became one of the most popular destinations on the fledgling World Wide Web. This website no longer works.

​In the movie, Soran comments on La Forge's response to his interrogation by saying, "His heart just wasn't in it." This is a reference to the form of torture used in a deleted scene in which Soran used a nanoprobe to stop and start La Forge's heart. This was also referenced in a later scene in which Dr. Crusher mentioned that she had removed the nanoprobe.

​A new set of Starfleet uniforms was intended to be introduced in this movie to be worn by the Enterprise-D crew. These new uniforms would have been similar to the television ones, except the collars would have been the same department color as the rest of the tunic and the rank pips would have been worn on the shoulder with a corresponding rank braid on the wrists. The uniforms were eventually nixed by producer Rick Berman. The decision was then made to use the uniforms from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), as well as the uniforms from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993). However, Playmates had already made an action figure line for this movie with the Enterprise-D crew wearing the aborted uniforms. It was too late to retract the figures, which is the only place the aborted uniforms can be seen.

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related movies

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) MOVIE IMAGES

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STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Captain Picard and his crew come across Dr Soran, a renegade scientist who has sinister plans. He must take the help of Kirk, who is presumed to be dead, in order to stop Soran.

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 18 November 2015

​​Pop Movee Rating

Paramount Studios was quick to capitalise on the small screen success of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, releasing STAR TREK: GENERATIONS in late 1994, only six months after the show finished its successful seven year television run. Off the back of the 25th Anniversary in 1991, Paramount expanded the Star Trek franchise, adding a second TV series with DEEP SPACE NINE in 1993 and engaging Rick Berman, the TV show’s Executive Producer, to develop a replacement series for THE NEXT GENERATION. In addition, the studio approached Berman in February 1993 to produce the next feature film utilising THE NEXT GENERATION cast.

Berman was quick to get to work:

​At that point, the plan was that I would co-write two scripts with two separate teams of writers and that I would be involved in selecting which one of these scripts we would do … One writer was Maurice Hurley, while Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga worked on the other script. We spent Spring 1993 writing both of these stories. By late Spring, the studio and I came to the conclusion that the script we wanted to pursue was one written by Ron and Brannon. The studio embraced their story very quickly and, by late Spring, we started working on the shotting script. The first draft was finished the first week in June ’93. Then we spent six months rewriting and polishing it, working with Patrick Stewart, Bill Shatner, director David Carson and the Studio.

Moore and Braga were experienced TNG writers and had contributed many of the show’s best scripts including the epic time-travelling finale ALL GOOD THINGS. What they came up with was a story that used characters from the Classic crew, including William Shatner’s James T. Kirk, as well as the entire NEXT GENERATION cast. There is no doubt that Paramount saw the marketing potential of bringing Shatner as Kirk and Patrick Stewart as Picard together in a story where the two of them have to save the galaxy!

The story sees the retired Captain Kirk attending the launch of a new Enterprise. Along with Scotty and Chekov, the Captain is thrust into action once more as the under-manned Enterprise ‘B’ is called to the aid of two El Aurian ships. Kirk helps save the day, but not before a mysterious energy ribbon tears through the hull, apparently killing him.

Seventy eight years later, in the year 2371, the Enterprise ‘D’, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, investigates a brutal attack on a scientific space station. One of the survivors is Dr. Tolian Soran, who also survived the El-Aurian incident that killed Captain Kirk.

Captain Picard learns that Soran is 300 years old and that he is desperate to return to the Nexus, the mysterious energy ribbon, where time has no meaning and a person can experience anything they desire. After attacking Geordi & Data, it’s revealed that Soran has been playing the Klingon sisters L’Ursa and B’Etor, along with Picard and his crew, to his owns ends in an effort to get back to the Nexus. Soran flees to Veridian III, the planet he believes is his best chance to intercept the Nexus, but it requires the destruction of the planet’s sun which will result in the death of millions of people.

Picard beams down to Veridian III to try and stop Soran. In the meantime, the Duras sisters attack the Enterprise, which suffers a warp-core breach which results in Jonathan Frakes’s Commander Riker to order an emergency saucer separation. The star drive section of the Enterprise explodes and the saucer crashes to the surface below after it is thrown off course by the shockwave from the explosion.

Picard fails in his effort to stop Soran and the Nexus engulfs both men as it passes through Veridian III’s atmosphere. Inside the Nexus, Picard discovers he can have anything he wants; including the family he has never been able to make time for throughout his career as a Starfleet officer. While in the Nexus, the Captain encounters Guinan and, with her help, he learns that he can leave the Nexus and return to a time before he entered. Before leaving, Picard finds James T. Kirk, who had been pulled into the Nexus seventy eight years earlier. Picard convinces Kirk to leave the Nexus and help save the galaxy one last time.

The two Captains return to reality and the surface of Veridian III before the Nexus energy ribbon arrives. After a desperate struggle, the two prevail and Soran is killed. Kirk, however, is mortally wounded in the fight. Picard tries to help, but Kirk’s injuries are too great. The legendary Captain of the Enterprise dies before help can arrive to save him. Picard buries Kirk and, soon after, is picked up by a rescue shuttlecraft and taken to the saucer crash site. In the shattered remains of the ship’s bridge, Riker laments the demise of the NCC 1701-D, but Picard, rather optimistically, assures his First Officer that it won’t be the last ship to bear the name Enterprise.

GENERATIONS is an ambitious story, simultaneously seeking to meet the needs of hard-core Star Trek fans, while delivering an action adventure story that appeals to a broader movie-going audience.

Unfortunately, the execution never quite matches the ambition. The inclusion of Kirk, Scotty and Chekov at the film’s beginning acts as an extended prologue that takes away from the TNG crew’s screen time. Moore and Braga’s script provides the Classic cast with their “moments” but it comes at the expense of Troi, Crusher, Work and even Riker.

In 1994, THE NEXT GENERATION crew were the reason people were watching STAR TREK and it was a shame that Marina Siritis, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn and Jonathan Frakes are relegated to marginal roles in a film that should have been their time to shine on the big screen.

Structurally, the screenplay, as it ended up on film, is massively flawed. The beginning of the Third Act stops the action dead in its tracks with Picard’s voyage into the Nexus, contriving the necessary situation for him to find Kirk and set up the film’s climax. The Nexus McGuffin, however, is a narrative cheat and takes for granted the emotional investment the viewer has made to this point in the story. Fifteen minutes of the film are spent delving into Picard’s psyche to determine whether his existential crisis about mortality is legitimate. This time should have been invested in hurtling the crew of the 1701-D toward their inevitable showdown with Soran, but it doesn’t; exposing another problem with the film’s story.

In addition to the film largely ignoring Troi, Crusher, Work and Riker, the Third Act also relegates Data and Geordi, creating a situation where six of the seven TNG cast members are all but missing from the last twenty minutes of the film. The story becomes a showdown between Soran and the newly-allied Picard and Kirk that lacks any sort of scale in terms of action – it’s three guys running around rocky terrain shooting at each other.

This is endemic of a script where the “stars” of the film are allowed to dictate the story in order to secure their involvement in the project. Numerous talented writers, including Nicholas Meyer & the late Michael Piller, have publicly commented on both Shatner and Stewart’s involvement in the story process on various Star Trek movies and, as much as what they may feel they know about their individual characters, writing feature films is not their profession. It creates the problem that has always existed with TREK films, where the secondary cast members end up being shut-out and elements of the fan-base get disappointed that their favourite character didn’t seem to do too much. 

A real high point for GENERATIONS is John Alonzo’s cinematography. Alonzo was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN and was known as a cinematographer who could capture emotionally moving images of people caught in the daily conflict of living. David Carson, the Director of STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, was full of praise for Alonzo:

I was incredibly honoured and flattered that he (Alonzo) would come and do the movie knowing full well that I was a first time director … But, what I really like is the daring that he has. He dares to do things and encourages me to dare to do things, which I’m a bit chicken about, I must say. Things that are unorthodox. He pulls off extraordinary looking things by daring to go further that other people I’ve worked with. He’s extremely generous with all his experience and knowledge.

Alonzo himself had this to say about his Star Trek experience:

What I looked for were things that I didn’t want to repeat from a photographic point of view … In a simplistic manner (television crews) do a two shot, over shoulder, over shoulder, close up, close up. That’s the most efficient way of doing it. In a feature film you don’t want to do that, you want to be more creative about. David (Carson) and I both had the same mind set. We were a bit of an island at one time because we were the only ones with that mindset. We were trying to preserve the integrity of a scope picture by using creative and inventive ways of showing a close-up; allowing an actor to move into his own close-up rather than dollying into him, shooting a scene in a two-shot and not using coverage.

So, is STAR TREK: GENERATIONS a good science fiction film?

The answer, sadly, is not really.

The scientific concept of the Nexus is a good idea but the appearance of the energy ribbon only happens twice in the film and only once does the viewer get a glimpse at understanding the attraction that it holds for Malcolm McDowell’s Soran. Picard’s own journey into Nexus is a passive action, as he is swept along for the ride, as it were, rather than being genuinely intrigued by what it may represent in broadening humanity’s understanding about the universe.

There’s also the major story flaw in having both Soran and Picard in the Nexus.

If Picard, while in the Nexus, has the power to return to any point in time before the explosion of Veridian III’s sun, would Soran not have a similar capability to choose not to leave? It’s hard to imagine Soran, a man so single-mindedly committed to existing in the Nexus, could be “dragged” from it into a confrontation where the odds were against him. The extension of this thinking is that multiple timelines must exist from the point at which Picard and Soran entered the energy ribbon. In one timeline, Picard prevails because he has the power to leave the Nexus and, in the other, he does not because Soran has the power to stay. This is but one example of why GENERATIONS does not rate as a good piece of science fiction. Science fiction stories that deal with time manipulation and do a good job telling them should be thought through well enough that the viewer is not left to speculate about loopholes in the plot. 

If GENERATIONS is not a good science fiction film, is it a good STAR TREK movie?

Once again, the answer is not really.

Too much focus is placed upon Picard and Data, while Shatner’s presence demands that Kirk receive an amount of screen time that is more than just a cameo. The writing for Picard also doesn’t impact the way it should. Ron Moore and Brannon Braga make Picard a very passive character in this story. The tragic news he receives at the beginning of the story renders Picard emotionally impotent for the most part and, only at the very end of the film, does he recover his mojo. Fans of the TNG TV series had been used to seeing Picard as the quintessential leader, while this film sees him withdraw from his crew’ leaving decisions to those around him. The worst example of this is Picard’s conversation with Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan when he first enters the Nexus. Gripped by his mortality crisis, Guinan challenges Picard to snap out of his funk and seek out Kirk in order to save Veridian III.

Frustratingly, the GENERATIONS version of Picard is a brooding, self-obsessed man and not one commonly associated with heroic action and adventure.

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS is not a terrible film. Despite plot gaps and uneven characterisation, the film has solid production value and adds some interesting footnotes to the STAR TREK canon. There are some strong scenes, but not enough to make the film stand out. It never quite manages to make the sum of its parts transcend into something better in order to fulfil the potential of bringing James T. Kirk and THE NEXT GENERATION crew together on the big screen!

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) USEFUL LINKS

Star Trek Generations - Wikipedia
​Star Trek: Generations (1994) - IMDb
​Star Trek Generations (1994) - Rotten Tomatoes

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