Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you're curious about a nerd's views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I've watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!
For NOW, this will just have Generations, but I'll repost it each time we watch a new movie, which will be later. We're only jumping into Generations for now, cause the other movies take place further down the timeline.
Star Trek: Generations - 2.5/10
The movie starts with like, a 3 minute scene of a bottle flying through space. It feels like they just up and ripped off the opening Myst.
Anyways boom it's for the Christening of the Enterprise B! We've got some TOS characters back with us, Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov. It was GOING to be Bones and Spock with them, but Spock was like "not unless you change the script, because what's written here, anyone could be saying these lines". And then they proved it, by replacing them. Anyways, they leave space dock around Mars or whatever, and get a distress call. Some energy field is b lowing up some refugee ships. 3 light years away, but they're the only ship in range. Did the Borg destroy the entire fucking Federation fleet several years in advance???
Well considering they're rescuing El-Aurian refugees who are RUNNING from them, I mean, maybe? But nah we don't gotta worry about where the El Aurians are going.
This entire scene is like, about Kirk wanting to take over the Enterprise, but it's not his place no more. When the captain needs to do some dangerous engineering stuff, he tries to put Kirk in command but Kirk is like "no, this is your place now, I'll do it", which is weird. Are there no engineers on this ship???
Also there's a cameo, one of the El-Aurians is Guinan! Ah, she's fleeing her planet, and just now appearing on Earth.... EXCEPT THAT WE'VE SEEN HER ON EARTH IN THE 1800S. My chat had to tell me to "stop thinking". This is gonna be hard.
Anyways yeah the dangerous situation Kirk put himself into for no reason pays off and he fucking dies. The entire deck he's on is ripped off, and he's presumed dead, no body ever found.
78 years later!
One of the ACTUALLY good parts of this movie, a cute scene where they're all on the Holodeck goofing off to celebrate Worf's promotion. There is something... weird, though. Data appears stunted, despite being here for 7 years with friends, he doesn't understand spontinaity and humor in a way that causes him to throw Crusher overboard. Riker is gushing over women. Picard gets bad news and then locks himself in his mind palace, refusing to talk about it.
It's like all the characters very suddenly reverted character growth they had gained over the past 7 years of their lives. In order to make these characters someone you can get into as a newcomer to Trek, they are dumbed down to their most basic components. Maybe I'm reading too far into it.
Data is like "Clearly my not having emotions is bad cause I hurt a friend, so it is time." and they pull out the Emotion Chip! Yes, Data originally was like "No I can't use this cause when I DID feel emotions I was manipulated to hurt my friends". Now it just makes him hate alcohol. Another actually good scene.
They get a distress signal from a research station under attack. On it they find dead Romulans searching for Trilithium (I know we've had Trilithium do something before, it's new and does other stuff now, don't think about it), and a living guy, Dr. Malcom McDowell. I mean, Dr. Soran, who we saw at the v ery beginning begging that he NEEDS TO GO BACK, and here he's... very clearly evil. When he demands to go back on the station to get research, and Picard says no, he gives a weird villain monologue about how time is running out.
Okay, two things about visual things this movie is doing. 1) The lighting is dog shit. Everything is so fucking yellow, or way too dark. Why. It's like, SHOCKINGLY bad. The only scenes with good lighting were the first scene, and the one where they're literally outside on a boat. And 2) The costuming. Half of them are wearing TNG uniforms, and half are wearing DS9. Why? Why?????
Data has a scene where he constantly makes jokes. I know big movies need like, a comic relief, but why did they make it Data? The emotional center of the entire cast?? I only have one thing I can say about this.
Anyways woah no way, Soran is evil! He's actually developing a weapon that blows up suns. He attacks Geordi and Data (who is stunned by fear), and managed to escape with the weapon and Geordi as a hostage as he's rescued by his benefactors, Lursa and Betor. Y'know, the Klingon sisters. He also tortures Geordi and is like "TELL ME ALL YOU KNOW ABOUT TRI-LITHIUM". My man. YOU'RE the one who made the bomb. You're the leading expert. It'd be like me kidnapping the WR holder of Mario 64 and being like "TELL ME ALL YOU KNOW ABOUT TALL: TWINS TOWER."
We learn more about Soran through Guinan. Apparently he and she were both in The Nexus, a kind of thing that travels in an energy ribbon. It's "like being inside of Joy" itself. So a Lotus Eaters situation, kinda. Though the details are murky and it kinda makes little sense.
Anyways there's a stupid situation where they do a prisoner exchange between Geordi and Picard (for some reason they negaotiate with them I dunno why), and Picard goes down to try and negotiate, because Soran is gonna blow up a sun to drag the Nexus towards him, which will also blow up a planet with millions on it.
This scene happens.
The Sisters have hacked Geordi's VISOR, and wait until he goes into Engineering so they can find out what Shield Frequency they're at. Then they attack through the shields and blow them the fuck up. Riker is very VERY bad at being in charge (JUST ROTATE THE SHIELD FREQUENCIES, OR FIRE SOME TORPOEDOS RIKER? WHY ARE WE DOING THIS FANCY SHIT WITH THEIR WARP COILS?) but eventually, many casualties later, they manage to blow up the Bird of Prey, killing the sisters. Oh well, our major Klingon villains are dead. I guess now we need to make Gowron a villain now.
Oh no, the attack causes a WARP CORE BREACH! Instead of ejecting the warp core, or like, trying anything, Geordi goes "NOTHING WE CAN DO TIME TO EVACUATE", and they prepare to seperate the saucer from the rest of the ship. They have to MANUALLY seperate the ship, which uh... is not how that works.
Look, half of this movie can be summed up as "Rick Berman did not know how anything in Star Trek ACTUALLY worked".
They finally put Troi in charge of piloting the Enterprise btw. And now this happens. (tbf there was no actual helm control)
I really cannot stress enough, it's really stupid that what is described as a 20 year old junker Bird of Prey beat the Enterprise in a fight (yes they also died but they TOOK OUT THE ENTERPRISE). In an episode, if a Bird of Prey fired upon an unshielded Enterprise, it wouldn't matter, cause the Enterprise would spin around and blast them the fuck away. Maybe they'd get a few casualties, maybe if they're LUCKY they hit the warp core and there'd be an ejection. But they'd have to be REAL lucky to get that hit in. But no, here, Riker just kinda spun the Enterprise around and showed them their ass and let them get eight to ten shots in.
I guess none of it really matters though, because Soran shoots a missile to the sun, which reaches it in 5 seconds (I guess it's going at warp??????), and the wave takes Soran and Picard away, while everyone else is seen, on screen, fucking exploding. Rip to EVERY member of the Enterprise I guess.
Picard is now in the Nexus, living a happy life with a family he never got to have. I guess he's always wanted to have a Victorian era british family or some shit like that. But he realizes this is wrong. He can leave, though, if he breaks away. And he can go to any time, because time has no meaning, so he's gonna go back to right before Soran blew up the star. Uh, I'd think maybe go back before that, but whatever works. An Echo of Guinan tells him all this. Though he needs help. Luckily, there's someone else here in the Nexus with him...
Kirk meeting Picard should have been more exciting.
Anyways, Picard tries to convince Kirk that he needs to go with him to save millions of lives. Kirk is like "fuck that shit I wanna make eggs kiss my wife and ride horses. Because all captains need to ride horses." Also his wife here is uh, Antonia. Apparently it was SUPPOSED to be Carol Marcus, but Paramount demanded it changed. Why? Why???
Obviously Kirk comes around, because nothing here is ACTUALLY real, nothing matters.
Kirk goes back, and the two of them fight. It's three old men fighting on a big metal thing. It's not quite as good as Metal Gear Solid 4, though I would love if Soran kissed Picard in the middle of this. There is a lot of stupid shit in this fight scene. Soran installed a cloaking device on his missile for no reason. Malcolm McDowell gives a really weird expression as he explodes. And THE stupid thing happens. An event so legendary that it changed pop culture lexicon for ALL time.
They dropped a bridge on him.
Apparently Malcolm McDowell took this job EXPRESSLY because he was going to be the man who killed James T. Kirk, which is the best shit, and I love it.
Plot conclusion. Picard finds out that Riker destroyed the Enterprise, which was prolly a big fucking shock. The Enterprise couldn't be salvaged, but they go aboard the rubble and find what they can. Data saves Spot (also he keeps his emotion chip, which... feels weird cause I feel it never comes up again), and Picard throws some of his important memorabilia away, only collecting a family portrait, cause that's what's important I guess, and it also fits the thesis of the movie. And then they leave the Enterprise just sitting there on the planet, forever. Yeah just.... leave Federation secrets sitting on this fucking planet, okay whatever.
This movie is bad! It is not good! Like, duh, it's really bad. A lot of the ideas of it are just, bad. The major ORIGINAL concept and thesis for this movie is "we need to kill Kirk". That's it. That's the plan. And they fucked even that up. Almost every plot point is very poorly concepted. The Nexus is stupid, Data's emotions are unpleasant to watch except for a single scene and a bad waste of Brent Spiner acting. They bring back Kirk and don't give him a big damn hero moment, and no, jumping one foot onto a collapsing bridge does not count as a big exciting heroic sacrifice.
