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STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)
Reverse the polarity, muthafucka! Star Trek: The Next Generation is the only TV show I can think of that ended not only on a high note, but on its highest note - series finale "All Good Things..." is the best TNG episode ever, ask anyone. It was smart, epic, and had an affecting humanity to it. The future for Trek had never looked brighter. Generations is the first "new Trek" movie, and it's totally the opposite of that - it's dumb, small-scale and hesitantly machined for the gimmicky purpose of bringing the TNG crew to the big screen. With about 40 minutes involving none of the TNG crew (or Captain Picard, at most), ST:G is probably the most confused of the Trek movies, trying to cram in a lot of things to make a lot of different people happy, often pretty gracelessly. I doubt you'll find anyone who's entirely satisfied with Generations, but you could do worse. By 1994 you already had, twice (by 2002, twice more). The first eighteen minutes take place in the "old Trek" days, with Kirk, Scotty, and Chekhov attending the media-frenzy launch of the Enterprise-B, an Excelsior-class ship that surely sent Trekkers everywhere into paroxysms of joy, even though I think it's an ugly-ass design, gimme the E-C any day. The other members of the original seven, while absent, all get mentions except for Uhura. Scotty laughs at one of Kirk's jokes (James Doohan looks positively agonized at the prospect), Chekhov makes an exasperated oath in Russian, and Kirk is feeling his age and starting to regret not fathering any kids that lived. This is seriously like...four movies now where he has a midlife crisis. I wanted to slap him and say "Dude...you're old. It's okay." Very little on the E-B works (hey, just like E-A!) and it's not long before there's a space emergency and it's the only ship in range to deal with it. In range of Earth. Seat of the Federation. Only ship...Earth. Right, same thing happened at least twice in the movies so far, but this only-ship-in-range-of-Earth ship doesn't even work. The rescue mission is a heavily qualified success, qualified in that it involves things like "phasing in and out of the space-time continuum", exploding panels, and "hull integrity down to 82%", etc. Also, a lot of people die and Kirk is sucked out into space and disappears into a giant energy ribbon. Forward to the "new Trek" days, where the holodeck is being used for Worf's promotion ritual. As a geek-out moment it's a little quirky in that it's set on a sailing ship, but mostly it's a lame and irrelevant bone thrown to Worf's fans, who I'm sure were glad to see him get promoted but then we never see him do anything as a Lieutenant-Commander we didn't see him do as a Lieutenant. More importantly to this movie, this is the scene where the android Data figures out he's not going to get any more human without that emotion chip. Now, I've mentioned my problem with Data wishing he was human. It's cheeseball pandering to give us somebody who isn't human, whose nature is very different but very much its own and wonderful, but who wants to give that up in a quest to become human - and ask us to cheer that somebody on in that quest. How lame would Spock or Worf have been if instead of embracing, understanding and mastering their natures, they just wanted to be human? Super-lame, that's how lame. Data's desire to become more human reaches an impasse on the holodeck here, when an attempt at merrymaking that blows up in his face - namely, pushing Dr. Crusher overboard into the holographic sea. As a sight gag, it only kind of works because Crusher's fall knocks Worf back into the drink as he's trying to climb up. But as a transgressive act (LaForge and Troi are both utterly shocked by it), it's pretty harmless (it's just holographic water, after all - she'll dry off as soon as she leaves the holodeck) and the victim of the joke seems ill-chosen. After all, as an android, Data dealt very little with the doctor - there's no history there, it's just a random crew member falling into water. I know this is a little deep to look into a fairly simple sight gag, but this is supposed to be a huge turning point in Data's existence, and I don't buy that an experience this harmless and mundane is likely to be a life-changer for anyone - Data's gaffe here should've been a LOT more inappropriate. Like, doing it to Picard, just after Picard finds out his nephew died. Anyway, Data convinces LaForge to install the emotion chip in his head, a decision LaForge presumably spends the rest of the movie regretting, as he shows superhuman patience in dealing with Brent Spiner's mugging and giggling and overacting at every turn. Data in this movie is occasionally funny, more often annoying (apparently, that was the intent) and occasionally painful - though smaller in scale than the Data singing scenes in later movies, he does get a vanity moment where he sings to himself while looking for lifeforms. Data's emotional journey (culminating in him crying with joy because he saved a cat - ugh) is the B-story here, and it sucks. The A-story has the TNG crew dealing with mad scientist Dr. Soren (Malcolm McDowell) who's willing to commit unbelievable acts of destruction in order to return to a magical happy land called The Nexus, in whose "time has no meaning" mumbo jumboness Kirk has incidentally been stuck. Soren has struck a deal with some nasty Klingons (the makers of ST:G were digging pretty deep into TNG villains when they chose fairly obscure Klingon bitches Lursa and B'etor for this movie), necessitating a not-bad space battle later in the film (whose big victory moment is a recycling of the big victory moment FX shot from the previous Trek movie - LAME!). The Nexus is the movie's biggest failing, and like all bad ideas in Trek movies, it never turned up again in any of the TV series. It's described by Guinan (for once, without a goofy hat) as a place of pure joy that you'll never want to turn yourself away from. Sounds like the christian heaven, where you're just so happy to be with god that you won't care anymore that almost everyone you ever cared about is being raped and tortured for all eternity at his whim. In practicality, The Nexus takes the form of each visitor's more earthly (but inevitably wholesome) desires. For a place of pure joy you'll never want to leave, Picard sees through it all in three minutes. Which, granted, is an eternity in a scene like this - Picard's idea of pure joy is apparently Christmas with a nauseatingly adoring flock of children and a working carousel in his house. Kirk takes longer to come to, his idea of pure joy being horseback riding, cooking, his dog still being alive, and his last girlfriend still available. I guess that's arguably the C-story, where both Kirk and Picard are feeling their age and twinges of regret that their decisions in life have precluded other possibilities (namely, having a family). The C-story sucks even worse than the B-story, because it all takes place in The Nexus, except for the part where Picard cries, something I don't think anyone wanted to see. Kirk has to be actively pursued and convinced by Picard - it's a good thing William Shatner is so likeable as Kirk, because I would've lost patience with just about anyone else who was having so much trouble seeing through the place when we as an audience are so far ahead of him. We never get to see Soren's or Guinan's idea of pure joy; one assumes he's back with his family (killed by the oft-mentioned Borg), and Guinan, who knows. The Nexus is also used essentially as a time travel device, since Time Has No Meaning in it. That's how Kirk is able to join Picard with about 20 minutes to go in the movie and save hundreds of millions of people from Soren's dastardly plan. Oh yeah, and Kirk dies heroically, though in a rather unexpected setting. Kirk's death was led up to in rumors running back two or three films, and I doubt anybody expected it to happen on a rock in the desert. Still, there's something nicely understated about Kirk's death, when everything else about Kirk has generally been overstated. Except for the Kirk-featured bookends, ST:G feels basically like a one-part Picard- and Data-focused TNG episode, with some stuff for LaForge (getting tortured) and Worf (getting promoted) but leaving Riker, Troi, and particularly Crusher with almost nothing to do. Of course, the next three TNG movies were all Picard- and Data-focused as well. I'm coming down pretty hard on Star Trek: Generations, and that's probably because it, along with the two other Star Trek movies left I haven't reviewed yet, has always hovered somewhere between approval and disappointment and now I'm certain what side of the divide this one falls on. For all that though, except for those painful Nexus scenes, Generations is watchable and inoffensive and occasionally even has some really inspired moments - in particular, the point where Soren's plan for getting into The Nexus is figured out by Picard and Data (just don't think too much about things like gravity, mass, the speed of light, and the like). Soren's ray gun actually does explosive damage to things it hits, and all those "exploding panel" scenes necessitate some pretty badass stunts by Star Trek standards. There's a thrilling crash at the end, some of which we get to see twice. They destroyed the Enterprise like fifteen times in the TV series - they knew they had to make it count this time, and they succeeded at making it extra cool. The movie looks pretty slick for a movie from a guy coming from director David Carson's background, which is all 80's and 90's TV. If you've got the release with the commentary from the writers, give it a listen; it's one of the best commentaries I've heard, and they're pretty honest about what works, what doesn't, and why the movie's such a jumble. (c) Brian J. Wright 2007 BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |