A Brief Guide to Star Trek

defeat Soran. The pair is able to leave the Nexus at a time before they entered, thus stopping Soran, but Kirk’s life is the price.
    The death of Kirk was to be a central part of
Generations
from the beginning, following the same treatment of Spock in
The Wrath of Khan
. Paramount insisted the writers consult with Shatner before taking such a dramatic step, and they were surprised when he agreed quite readily to the development (although Shatner would later resurrect Kirk in novel form in a series of co-written stories). Other characters were further developed too, with Picard suffering a family tragedy and Data exploring his capacity for emotions, giving both actors dramatic challenges and new ways to look at their very familiar TV characters.
    Hoping for a Khan-like villain in McDowell’s Soran, the writers of
Generations
further raided the
Star Trek
movie back-catalogue by lifting the destruction of the
Enterprise
from
The Search for Spock
. This time it was
The Next Generation
’s sleek
Enterprise-D
that would be wrecked – allowing for the long-planned saucer separation sequence that had been little seen on TV (most notably way back in ‘Encounter at Farpoint’). ‘It was something we always wanted to do [more] on the series, but didn’t’, admitted Braga. ‘Saucer separation was expensive and elaborate.’ The resulting sequence, in which the saucer section of the
Enterprise
crashes to the planet Veridian III, was achieved using somewhat old-fashioned physical model techniques at a time when many movies were exploring the possibilities of computer-generated imagery (CGI), ironically something
Star Trek
had pioneered in the second and fourth original cast movies.
    ‘We wanted to explore mortality’, said Braga of
Generations
, ‘[but not] in the religious way that
Star Trek V
[did]. The film isabout time – Picard is obsessed with what his future holds, and his impending death [while] Kirk is a man looking at what he did or didn’t accomplish in life. The Nexus in space-time gives both men a chance to cheat death, until they realize it’s part of life. It’s really about how these different characters come to terms with their personal dilemmas.’
    Released in November 1994, just six months after the final episode of
The Next Generation
aired on TV (compared to the decade it took
The Motion Picture
to reach the screen),
Star Trek Generations
opened to a mixed reception from fans, critics and the wider public alike. The film had racked up a production cost of $35 million – having started off with a budget of $26 million: controversial reshoots of the climactic battle to the death between Kirk and Soran and enhanced special effects shots added $4 million, following a failed test screening in September. However, the movie grossed $75 million in the US and $118 million worldwide, following a $23-million US opening weekend. The
New York Times
’ Janet Maslin complained that ‘
Generations
is predictably flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat’, indicating that the makers had failed in their objective of making a film that would appeal to a non-
Star Trek
audience in the style of
The Voyage Home
. Roger Ebert, writing in the
Chicago Sun-Times
, thought
Generations
was ‘undone by its narcissism. [It is] a movie so concerned with Trekkers that it can barely tear itself away long enough to tell a story. I was almost amused by the shabby storytelling’.
    Lessons would be learned from the critical failure of
Generations
. With the obligation felt by
The Next Generation
creators to the crew of the original
Enterprise
discharged by this movie, the next film would be entirely theirs and it would involve no ‘shabby storytelling’.

    One of the problems with
Star Trek Generations
may have been its very proximity to the TV series that spawned it.
Star Trek
fans were desperate for a new movie in 1979, as it had been adecade since the
Enterprise
crew had been seen on the big screen, apart from in a two-dimensional animated form. The struggle to revive
Star Trek
throughout the 1970s had been followed closely by fans who witnessed the project mutate from a movie to a new TV series and back to a movie again. When
Generations
was released in 1994, it came mere months after the conclusion of seven years of TV adventures, while
Star Trek
on television was an ongoing concern in the shape of
Deep Space Nine
and the