Star Trek Generations

Star Trek Generations
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Carson
Produced by	Rick Berman
Written by	Rick Berman (story) Ronald D. Moore Brannon Braga (story and screenplay) Gene Roddenberry (creator)
Starring	See table
Music by	Dennis McCarthy
Cinematography	John A. Alonzo
Editing by	Peter E. Berger
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 18, 1994
Running time	118 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue	$118,100,000 (worldwide)
Preceded by	Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Followed by	Star Trek: First Contact

Star Trek Generations is a 1994 science fiction film, and the seventh feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It is the first film in the series to star the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The film's tagline was "Two Captains, One Destiny". Although most of the Star Trek films contain a colon in their title, the official title of this film is Star Trek Generations (with no colon). It was shot in Overton, Nevada, Paramount Studios, and Lone Pine, California. While the film did reasonably well at the Box Office, it received mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

Retired Captain James T. Kirk reluctantly attends the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise-B, which is running on a skeleton crew and has several major subsystems still under construction. During the voyage, Enterprise is pressed into a rescue mission to save two ships from a strange energy ribbon. The Enterprise is able to save some of the El-Aurian refugees, including Tolian Soran and Guinan before both ships are destroyed, but then becomes trapped in the ribbon itself. Kirk travels to the Engineering decks to alter the behavior of the deflector shields, allowing the Enterprise to escape. However, as the crew recovers, they find the section that Kirk was in has been exposed to space, Kirk himself missing.

Seventy-eight years later, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D receives a distress call from the Amargosa solar observatory; they find that everyone, except Soran, has been killed by the Romulans. Data, who recently installed his emotion chip, and Geordi LaForge search the station, discovering trilithium in a hidden room. As they analyze it, Soran appears and knocks LaForge unconscious, and threatens Data at gunpoint while he launches a missile containing trilithium at the Amargosa star, causing it to supernova. Soran and LaForge are transported to a Klingon bird-of-prey belonging to the Duras sisters, while Data is rescued by Lt. Commander Worf and Commander Riker just before the station is destroyed.

Captain Picard learns of Soran's past and turns to Guinan for help. She explains that Soran's goal is to return to the "Nexus", the energy ribbon the Enterprise-B encountered. Picard and Data perform an analysis to track the path of the ribbon, observing the effects of the local gravitational field on it and altered by Soran's actions. They determine that Soran is likely attempting to reenter the Nexus on Veridian III by destroying its star; as one planet in the system is heavily populated, Picard orders the Enterprise to the Veridian system to stop Soran. Upon arrival, they encounter the Duras sisters, who offer to trade LaForge for Picard, which he accepts. Picard is transported to the planet's surface and finds Soran working on another missile installation, shielded to prevent Picard from interfering. LaForge is brought back aboard the Enterprise, unaware that his visor is transmitting a signal to the Klingons. When the Duras sisters discover the Enterprise's critical shield frequency, they launch an all-out attack on the ship. The Enterprise is able to counterattack and destroy the Bird of Prey, but has taken critical damage to the warp core. Riker orders an evacuation to the saucer section and subsequent separation before the core explodes. The saucer section is forced to crash land on Veridian III.

Meanwhile, Picard has found a hole in Soran's shield, but is too late to stop him launching the missile. The Veridian sun goes supernova, destroying all the planets and the Enterprise saucer section, but Picard finds himself safely in the Nexus. After encountering a ghost of Guinan, Picard finds that Kirk is also safe in the Nexus. Picard approaches Kirk as one Starfleet officer to another, and convinces him to return to Picard's present to help stop Soran. Kirk agrees, and the two leave the Nexus, ending up on Veridian III minutes before Soran launches the missile. Together they are able to distract Soran long enough to lock the missile in place, causing it to explode on the launchpad, killing Soran. However, Kirk is mortally wounded from the encounter, and as he dies, Picard assures him that Kirk helped to make a difference. Picard buries Kirk before traveling to the wreckage of the saucer section and reunite with his crew as they are evacuated from the planet.

Cast

Tim Russ makes a brief appearance as an unnamed human officer aboard the Enterprise-B. Soon after the film's release, Russ would assume the role of the Vulcan tactical officer Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager. An episode of Voyager, "Flashback", established that Tuvok served aboard the USS Excelsior during the events of the previous film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Themes

As in several earlier films, Generations contrasts a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants (Soran) with men who are willing to put aside everything they love and cherish to save others. Kirk makes the ultimate sacrifice, as does the Enterprise-D, in one of the most spectacular special effects sequences of the film series. A related theme is the contrast between Soran and Picard in handling personal tragedy. The Enterprise-B rescues Soran as his ship was being destroyed by the Nexus, and he became obsessed with going back into the Nexus. Soran's wife and children had been killed in a Borg attack some time earlier, so he seeks the Nexus as a means to return to them, ignoring the fact that the "reality" that the Nexus presents is illusionary.

Picard, on the other hand, learns early in the film that his brother Robert and nephew René were both killed in a fire on Earth. He had placed all his hopes of continuing the Picard family line with them, and laments to Troi that his life path will most likely not allow him to take on that task. However, when the Nexus presents him with a scenario in which he is married and has many children, he is able to overcome the temptation to stay in that "reality", realizing that it is a falsehood.

Lt. Commander Data also has to grapple with the effects of the emotion chip Dr. Soong had made for him, which he has La Forge install in his positronic net after a very embarrassing failure to understand humor. When it fuses with his positronic net, he is unequipped to handle the rush of unfamiliar emotional input, which threatens to overwhelm him. Recognizing and overcoming his own personal failings is his story arc, which also provides many of the comedic moments in Generations.

Much of Soran's motivations are meditations on time he has spent attempting to return to the Nexus. Soran's line, "They say time is the fire in which we burn...", is based on a line from a poem by Delmore Schwartz called Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day. Permission was sought to use this line in the film and Schwartz' name appears at the end of the credit. Malcolm McDowell was so taken with this line that he had it engraved on the watch he wears (as Soran) in the film.

Production

Rick Berman was asked to develop a Star Trek: The Next Generation movie in early 1993. Two different scripts were written, one by Maurice Hurley, script editor for season 2 of TNG, and the other by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, who had co-written several popular episodes. The latter was chosen.^[1]

Leonard Nimoy declined to appear in their film, and DeForest Kelley was unable to appear since his failing health prevented him from acquiring the necessary health insurance (a requirement for any actor). Their lines, as Spock and McCoy, were modified for James Doohan and Walter Koenig, as Scotty and Chekov. In Scotty's case, it created a seeming continuity error, given Scotty's dialogue in the TNG episode "Relics". In that episode, Scotty implied that he believed Kirk to still be alive, despite the fact that the scene's setting was after Scotty had witnessed Kirk's apparent death in Star Trek: Generations. The official Star Trek explanation for the inconsistency is that Scotty was disoriented when he uttered the offending line in the "Relics" episode, as he'd just been re-materialized after a 75-year stint in transporter stasis.^[2]

Production work on the film started immediately after Next Generation finished, with many staff members starting work on the film while still working on the television show or transferring immediately to the film production team as soon as their work on the television show finished.

During the film the newer Starfleet uniform design from Deep Space Nine is seen being worn by starship crew members for the first time, with some characters shown wearing the older Next Generation' versions of their uniforms early in the film, and later switching to the newer design. This echoes the early episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (specifically The Corbomite Maneuver and Mudd's Women) in which characters are shown wearing an older uniform design dating back to the pilot film, Where No Man Has Gone Before.

It should also be noted that one of the film's major villains, B'Etor, one of the two Klingon sisters, is not actually identified by name until the closing credits.

The director, David Carson, had no feature film experience, but had directed several episodes of Star Trek, including the popular Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the Deep Space Nine double-length pilot episode "Emissary."^[3]

Generations grossed $75,671,125 in the U.S. and $118,100,000 worldwide against a $35,000,000 budget.^[4] Although the film did relatively well internationally compared to previous "Star Trek" films, its final U.S. gross was seen by some as disappointing, considering the media blitz that accompanied the film and its impressive $23,116,394 opening weekend.

Paramount's Generations website was the first site on the Internet to officially publicize a major motion picture.^[5]

Reception

Critical reaction to Star Trek Generations was mixed. The film holds a rating of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 39 reviews^[6]. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a score of two stars out of four, saying that it's "undone by its narcissism. Here is a movie so concerned with in-jokes and updates for Trekkers that it can barely tear itself away long enough to tell a story. [...] In Star Trek Generations, the starship can go boldly where no one has gone before, but the screenwriters can only do vice versa."^[7]

James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave Generations two and a half stars out of four, saying: "Despite a reasonably original story line, familiar characters, first rate special effects, and the hallmark meeting between Captains Kirk and Picard, there's something fundamentally dissatisfying about [the movie]. The problem is that [...] too often it seems like little more than an overbudgeted, double-length episode of the Next Generation television series."^[8]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times said: "Generations is predictably flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat. And in an age when much fancier futuristic effects can be found elsewhere, even its tackiness is a comfort."^[9] Jeremy Conrad of IGN gave the film a score of 7 out of 10, saying that it "feels a little rushed and manufactured," but called it "one of the better of the odd-numbered Trek films."^[10]

Broadcast TV

The first broadcast United States TV airing of Generations was in 1997, when Fox aired the film. It was also aired notably on Friday December 31 1999 on Fox just a few hours before the Y2K problem was supposed to occur.

See Also

• For Game Boy and Game Gear game, see Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus.

References

External links

• Official Star Trek Generations web site
• Star Trek Generations at the Internet Movie Database
• Star Trek Generations at Allmovie
• Star Trek Generations at Rotten Tomatoes
• Star Trek Generations at Box Office Mojo
• Star Trek Generations article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki