FULL DISCUSSION - Star Trek: Generations

I know it's pointless, but I have to point out your constant joke about David. Carol asked Kirk to stay away. He wasn't a deadbeat dad by choice. It's explicitly stated in the movie that he was doing what she asked.

A lot of the shortcomings in the script come down to studio mandates and limited time. The script didn't get the final polish it needed to tie some of the plot beats and storylines together more cohesively, and the studio hamstrung the writers with the requirement to make a "passing of the torch" movie and then refused to give them enough money to execute it fully. Still, I love this movie. It was my first theatrical Star Trek experience. My mom's family decided to go see it after Thanksgiving dinner, and that was the only time anything like that ever happened. Core memory.

My main problem with them killing off Picard's family is that the movie doesn't really do anything with this. They don't really tie it into the plot, or give us any real payoff from it, so it feels pointless. As you said, it would have been way better if Picard saw Robert and his family in the Nexus, and/or used his loss to bond/reason with Soran. They could have had an epic moment between Picard and Robert in the Nexus that gives Picard a new lease on life. But instead it kind of just gets completely forgotten in the second half of the film, so it feels like there was no point in even doing it.

I agree with Josh's takes on the Nexus and Kirk's death. I've been into watching a lot of Near Death Experiences lately that talk about an afterlife that exists outside of time. I have a similar head canon. The Nexus is basically "fake heaven." People desperately want to get back there and stay there, but it isn't real. It's actually more like a trap. And if you're there, you can't die and go to Real heaven because there's no time and no aging. So kirk really did "save" Guinan from it, and Picard saved Kirk from it so he could go to Real heaven. And Real heaven is the greatest adventure of all where it's not fake, hence the "oh my" as Kirk dies. Also I'm pretty sure that the reason why Soran is so desperate to get back to the Nexus is because there, his family is still alive, and his homeworld hasn't been destroyed. He doesn't care if it's fake so long as time can't affect him anymore.

No Ensign Gates in Generations but Lieutenant Jae is there! She’s also a background artist but was in even more TNG eps than Ensign Gates, appearing in 63 episodes whereas Ensign Gates was in 46 eps.

They've said that the Holodecks use transporter and replicator technology together. Stuff like water can be assumed to be actually replicated water. I'm sure you can ask the Holodeck to remove it but if you don't you walk out wet

I agree with Josh that the Data plot would have been way better if it had centered around grief and tied in to Picard's story. However, I think that's another area where the writer's hands were tied. They were told that Data's plot had to center around humor and be funny for he audience. They wanted Data to be the comic relief character for people who didn't watch TNG. That also explains why his humor was so odd and out of place for TNG. They didn't want it to feel TNG. Personally I hate decisions like this. Either make Trek or don't. Don't try to cater to a completely different audience. If you want new people to come, just focus on making your product good. When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

Speaking of the many similar ST character name that start with S, according to the book The Making of Star Trek (1968, by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry), Robert Justman proposed that Vulcan names always start with "SP" and end with "K" with five letters total, e.g. "Spock." The list he offered is hilarious: Spook, Spuck, Spack, Speek, Spouk, Spaak, Spilk, Spiak, Spunk, Spank, Spink, Spenk, Sponk, Spilk, Spalk, Spelk, Spolk, Spulk, Spirk, Spark, Spork, Sperk, Spurk, Spawk, Spauk, Speuk, Spuik, Spouk, Splak, Splek, Splik, Splok, Spluk, Spakk, Spekk, Spikk, Spokk, Spukk, Spark, Sperk, Spirk, Spork, Spurk, Spxyx. (The repeats are in the original.)

I thought all civilians had rooms in the saucer section so why were kids moving before the separation?

Brent Spiner came up with the Lifeform song on his own and everyone else reacted naturally since they didn't expect it.

IMO there is one good TNG movie and it wasn’t this one. Though I suspect you will enjoy more of them than I did. Now that you’ve seen this - give Galaxy Quest a rewatch. There are a ton of TNG references in that movie. Y’all watched it too early. It will be a ton of fun now.

still say Picard should have used the nexus to go back in time a few weeks could have saved his family and stopped Soran and saved two suns, and the crew of the station

Kirk getting sucked out of the Enterprise-B and getting into the Nexus was about the same as Picard getting sucked into the Nexus just before the planet exploded so if you say Kirk died before going into the Nexus then so did Picard.

Whoopee Goldberg said she was never invited to any of the Star Trek Conventions. The other actors never knew that and just assumed she didn't want to go to them.

I blame everything bad on Rick Berman cause fuck him.

Soran does one of those open face Klingon punches to Betor I think that he learned Kling Fu? There’s a Shatner novel where Kirk gets resurrected and he comes back defeats Worf and when he fights Riker it’s played up like only Riker is a match against his Kirk Fu.. it’s like Kirk Vs Kirk 😂

I hate to tell you guys this but the Klingon ship being destroyed and everybody on it you’ve seen it before. It reused footage from Star Trek 6

They wanted to destroy the Enterprise in all good things but saucer crash would have looked cheap because of the tv budget.

Since time has no meaning in the Nexus, in the minutes he was there before being beamed out he possibly spent lifetimes there from his perspective. All with his family again.

One of the things that occurred to me is when the echo of Guinan from the Enterprise-B encounters Picard in the Nexus she knows him because she met him in the 19th century in “Time’s Arrow Part 2”. He wonders how she can be in the Nexus if she’s on the Enterprise (the Enterprise-D) and she knows that future her is on that ship with him because of meeting him 400 years earlier and knowing the Enterprise was his and Data’s ship.

I loved the Data humor stuff. Maybe there's more they could have done with his emotional development but it's still great for what it is.

The TNG crew were supposed to have brand new uniforms. In fact, the Playmates Star Trek action figures for that movie had them in the new uniforms. There was an early teaser with a scene that showed Geordi in the new uniform. They reminded me of what they wore in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” with color on the collars and then rank striping on the sleeves like the classic TOS uniforms.

I think the riker line was suppossed to just be a joke to lighten the tone at the end. Its funny because in the shatner verse novesl, a series of books where shatner kind of wrote the plot, Kirk gets resurrected by ther borg who want to understand the unique human quality that has allowed them to be defeated, kirk escapes and there isd this whole thing involving Mirror kikr who apparently preserved himself in a pod and eventually he tries to go back to where the "first federation" home base was which are actually the preservers but hes killed by them asnd kirk who has follwed them gets to transcend into a non-corporeal being by means of the preservers and thus never really "dies" The novel;s arent cannoin but were pretty good, but the "im going to live forever" reminds me of a line from that where kirk thinks "some jounreys werent meant to end"

Regarding the uniforms - if we go back in DS9, Jadzia and Julian both arrived in a TNG style uniform. I like the idea that they had different uniforms to wear. It would make more sense for the bridge crew to be in the TNG uniform and other personnel maybe wearing the DS9 jumpsuit. I did like that Troi did some counseling in the episode as opposed to using her powers for something else. Also, not sure how they could go back in time to Ten Forward and arrest him when he apparently hasn't done any crime yet.

RE Time Travel: Primer doesn't make sense, but I'm pretty sure that's only because I'm too dense to understand it.

'Next time we see Worf in First Contact better have the right rank pips' - Ohohoho- ho..... Oh you'll see. Well, glad you guys kinda liked it. Got a somewhat S1, S2 DS9 vibe from you guys. That 'it's fine', mining for the best moments thing. The lifeforms song that you guys were meh on. Ol' Brent adlibbed that with everyone's real reactions around him lol. WELL ACTUALLY- not movie but I do know some good internally consistent time shenanigans stories. internally - as in they lay down their excuses pretty well. Aight, we got an order for a Vulcan on Voyager, send that back a few decades.

Great discussion guys! Nothing much else to add besides major agreement with Josh in how the simple act of Picard smiling produces such joy in me, and I think most people. Partly because he's been through so much, that he can attain a sliver of contentment well, if anyone deserves it!

I think when your at the point where your ok with killing an entire planet of people youre a bit beyond reasoning it out.

Back then lots of people would go to Star Trek movies, or be dragged to them, but didn't watch the shows, so it very much had to work for them, so it's best seen as a sequel to VI, not a follow on to All Good Things when many of the audience hadn't even seen TNG.

Time travel never fully makes sense, but some stories handle it a lot better than others, so I really disagree with that binary view of 'who cares, it's always stupid'. Either don't use it, or set clear standards and stick to them, but don't be lazy or stupid if you add it to your story.

From what I've read the decision to make it so dark was because the production team all thought the TNG sets would look cheap on the big screen under normal lighting. The scenes shot on TNG sets in STV/STVI were also very dark.

Worf's knees being red when climbing up the boat from the water is reportedly due to wet paint from the boat getting on Michael Dorn's knees. So just a production issue.

As somebody who wanted to carry on the family line but has to rely on sibling's children for it Picard's situation in the movie hits way harder these days than it ever did as a kid. I wish the Nexus had been Picard at Robert's house preparing for the birth of Rene's kid or something, so we explicitly give Picard the chance to get back what he has in real life lost, like Kirk and Sorin, instead of just a random vision of something that could have happened.

My ranking of the 7 you've seen best to worst: 6, 7, 3, 2, 4, 5, 1. This was actually the first TNG thing i saw. I'd watched all of TOS and the films, some DS9, some Voyager, but never TNG until this premiered on UK tv. I knew all the TNG characters by name and sight, but very little else at the time.

I thought the lighting was a result of Picard being very depressed and turning out all the lights in the room (both his quarters and his ready room) and also the Amagosa Sun shining in the windows.

Why didnt Soran just recreate his family in a Holodeck and lock himself inside? It would be just as real as the Nexus.

A super contorversial take. i can kind of understand Soran's pov. So we've had episodes like the earl;y one where the guy implants himself in data to survive where they say "you dont get to survive when you take someone else life" But since we dont have replicators, most people accept killing other sentient beings to survive is acceptable. Data gets to live basically forever. But someone taking his life would be wrong, because they have a "natural lifespan." From an El-Aurien perspectiive, life is very long. It would make some sense that they would be even more afraid of death. But when you think about- Soran is saying "I am doing what I need to to survive." yes these other people will die, but they were all going to die anyway eventually. What difference does it make if their lives end a few decades before mine when i can extend my life indefinitely. That sounds strange to us, but think about how we view the lives of say, some instects whose lifespan is a few weeks. Or to push it over to DS9, the viewpoint of th Founders, who are basically imortal, but see humanoids everywhere who are inferior to them but grow to dominate and destory the ecosysetms of "lesser beings" because they consider the nature of their own lives to be more important. Again, I'm not saying I agree with this, but it is an interesting philosophical question, especialy when we are dealing with other life forms with different perspectives, and from an in universe viewpoint, using our human standards to make judgements on other life forms. To the Founders, they look at huamnoids and basically like an infestation of rats that multiply and destory everything else in their path while having a very limited, alien existence and prioritizing only the value of life like them, and often not even that (no changeling has ever harmed another) When modern people talk about engineering mosquitoes to wipe out other mosquitos to prevejnt the spread of malria to other humans.. One could make the argument this is no different then how the founders see us., or how an El-Aurian sees a few moree decades of the lives of other species veruss their own eternal surivival.

Really, Data should have asked for a leave of absence for him to figure out his emotions, not continue to serve his poisition when he clearly was not in control. It is interesting you guys seem very forgiving of a lot of stuff here based on "its a movie, there was studio interferene" etc when yoiu dont usually accept that sort of thing. The only parts that made me laugh there were the "lifeforms" and this is revolting. I feel like yes, because its a movie, they overdid and should have played it more subtle, which is not Spiner's thing, as opposed to the way some people perjoratively describe this movie, "the one where Data says "SHIT"

Ever notice when talking about the solar probe taking however many seconds to reach the sun, Riker says “pretty big margon of error” and Picard replies “much too big”? Well, that doesn’t make sense in the context of the scene. Because they are talking about destroying a probe in seconds before it reaches the sun, you would WANT a big margin of error. They talk about this in the commentary and how no one thought of it until Rick Berman’s son saw the premiere and brought it up to his dad. Fascinates me how things like that get by everyone (writers, director, executive producer, actors saying the lines….) in a big budget film.

I like Soran saying the line about “Time is the fire in which we BURN” because it shows how this species has an ability to say the perfect thing. (Guinan would say the perfect thing to clarify or uplift; Soran, here, says the perfect thing to wreck Picard.) Definitely a much stronger version of what a “bad” El-Aurian would be like—much better than the one on DS9 (maybe that one was just bottom of the barrel).

Picard lost every physical altercation he had in the show. The most successful punch he ever threw was a suckerpunch to a Ferengi in "Captain's Holiday." Even in Starship Mine, he lost that scuffle. He's GREAT at winning through clever tactics, and getting in sneaky moves that requires quick thinking, but in straight physical fights, guy whiffs every time.

@1:20:56. I did not think I'd enjoy listening for f***** an hour-and-a-half to two guys talking about this movie, but it's cool I did! Great discussion! High A!

Funny thing, when I was watching the movie along with you, I was passing you up on numerous occasions. I thought, "Is the 4K Ultra a longer version than mine?" Then I realized I was watching a fanedit version that trimmed the excess (including needless exposition). And the fanedit version is better because of it! I replaced my original digital file with the fanedit because it was that much improved!

I'M surprised you like the Data plotline. To me, it takes years of character development and the huge setup of the emotion lock out chip and throws it away for a recurring gag.

so this is pedantic but its probably not "fake water". The way the holodeck seems to work is that while most things are forcefields and light, it does replicate some matter for things that would be easeir that way then dissolves the matter when the program is done, explainin both why wesley was wet and why the picture moriarty drew could be brought outr of the holodeck. People are always textured forcefileds and light but some things like paper and some water are replicated then dissolved. That at least is consistent with what we've seen on screen.

Can we please get a full video on Voyager before you start watching? What are your hopes, wishes, fears, expectations for the show? Including little things like that you would like a Vulcan or an Andorian on it. I really enjoyed that video before DS9. DS9 and Voyager are my favourites so I'm absolutely hyped for you watching them both side by side.

I really like your interpretation of Kirk giving up heaven to be a hero one more time. Makes me appreciate what they were going for more.

I am totally on board 100% with Alex's assessment: this was an okay movie. It was a passing of the torch, now go on and make your own movies.

During the promotion scene at the beginning, Picard and Riker are talking about weather or not Worf will be able to jump up and get the hat without falling. Riker says "no one's ever made it before" something to that effect. It made me think that this is how everyone's promotion ceremony happens and we're just seeing it for the first time. Could you imagine Deanna trying to do this🤣

Interesting fact about Malcolm McDowell, he is the uncle of Siddig El Fadil aka Julian Bashir. Also an interesting fact about Ensign Gates actress Joyce Agu, is that her and her then husband won the 7th season of the reality show The Amazing Race.

Josh, it's interesting you refer to Generations as 2-TV episodes with a bigger budget. That is how I feel about Star Trek 3. Like you, I am okay with that to a certain extent (because after all, these come television) but there are certain parts (like you pointed out for Generations) wherein that approach does fall short.

Alex, good point about Picard not trying to talk and bond with Soran about the loss of their respective families. Missed opportunity.

Have I missed the Patreon takes?

Absolutely agree about data wanting the emotion chip because of the Picard situation would be a better choice. That way their discussion in steller cartography would have hit more. Also do you guys now plan on watching the documentary that aired after all good things? If not no biggie.

The "Risk is our business" quote is from "Return to Tomorrow".

About the "Oh my" line, Shatner wanted Kirk to see a sort of a final frontier in his last moment. Although he wasn't happy with the one they put in the movie, he wanted to do another take with Kirk saying the line in a more elated way, with sheer awe and wonder of what he was seeing. Because, in his own words, that was how Kirk always embraced the unknown, with curiosity and wonder.

The first time I watched this I think I was 8. Data's humour is spot on for an 8 year old, my sister and I quoted his lines all the time!

The Nexus would need to be tethered to every point in the Galaxy and every moment throughout time for the gymnastics the script requires. If they wanted to make a film about confronting reality, instead of withdrawing from it (a narcotic analogy), then don't write this level of nonsense. Write a grounded plot with a character arc for Picard and/or Kirk. The Generations script is like trying to assemble something out of wood shavings instead of shaping the block of wood appropriately.

Yeah a good Saturday movie when cleaning, but not great, I also prefer it to feel like a double length episode turning on lights would have helped. My movie ranking in this group best to worst is 4, 3, 2, 1, 6, 7, 5.

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If you're curious what the new uniforms would have looked like, the action figures for this movie had them. They put the figures into production before the movie was made. They're somewhere between the regular TNG ones and the dress uniform.

To clarify on the uniform thing, both of those variations have co-existed since "Emissary" on DS9. Think of it being like the USMC having their standard MCCUU camies and more formal service uniform. Starfleet wasn't transitioning between old and new uniforms, they just opened up restrictions on which uniform could be worn and when.

I will always think the ending of this movie should have split Picard and Kirk up for the climax. Kirk goes back to fight Soren because he wants to make a difference and ends up dying alone after beating Soren. Picard accidentally ends up on Earth saving his family from the fire because that's subconsciously where he really wanted to be. Since they didn't do that, everytime I watch the episode Family, it's just tragic

If you want the movie to end with Kirk and Picard taking down Soran on a mountaintop in hand to hand combat; you kinda don't have a choice but to find a way to take the Enterprise off the board. Otherwise this is a very easy to solve problem when you have access to transporters or even a ship that can just wipe out the whole mountain top with some photon torpedos.

Without spoilers of course, I do have to wonder what your takes on the rest of the movies will be. You both have a different taste compared to the 'average' Trek fan, so I'm prepared for you not liking movies I like and being really into movies I'm indifferent about (though to be honest, even the 'indifferent' is an overstatement - I like all the Trek movies, just to varying degrees).

What was that email surprise about at the end of your TOP 26 TNG?

Re, the uniforms: it’s actually exactly what you thought, Josh…they had brand new “movie” uniforms all designed and anticipated they’d be wearing. In fact, there was a round of toys that went out where the characters had those new uniforms on (the only place you can see them, as far as I know). But I also love what they ended up going with, the mix of DS9 and TNG, as if the crew is either in some kind of transition to new unis or they can choose whatever they want from a few options.