Star Trek Generations
1991’s Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country turned out to be more than a dignified and fitting sendoff for William Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk and his gallant original crew, breathing fresh life into the franchise one last time and allowing them all to go out on the high note which they deserved. It was already a given at that point the film franchise would now continue with the Next Generation crew led by Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and featuring a handpicked ensemble that tried but ultimately failed to live up to the high standards of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura. The worried producers were well aware that a major story hook was needed for The Next Generation’s first cinematic outing with the unimaginative solution being that Shatner would be reluctantly recruited to symbolically “pass the torch” to Picard and hence legitimize the whole operation. Shatner responded by accepting the offer (good) before turning around and announcing that this WOULD be his final go around as Kirk and more significantly, made public the major story point that indeed, Kirk would die onscreen in order to make his retirement from the role abundantly clear, a promise which he would honorably keep until this day while still carrying on an acting career of notable regard. This 1994 release represents that effort, a mostly botched transition attempt that for starters, saw Shatner give BY FAR his worse, most indifferent performance as Kirk, breezing his way through the film with one eye on his paycheck and another on his incoming offers for future endeavors. Another issue was with the major threat to the galaxy that was brought forth by the writers and after V’Gers, probes and Khan, what we get here is just a ribbon of energy that not only floats through the universe, but also takes any person that gets sucked into it to what is called The Nexus, essentially a recreation of Heaven where one is consumed by nothing but pure joy and happiness with the lead villain (Malcolm McDowell, still very high up on the list of the most underrated actors to ever live) wanting nothing more than to enter it and escape from the misery of reality especially after his family had been plowed under and killed by The Borg. So how is this guy a villain?? Apparently according to the logic of the story, McDowell’s scientist must perform some Armageddon like mechanics in order to place himself into The Nexus, thereby killing millions of innocents who reside on nearby planets. None of this is very well explained, with some lip service given to Romulan involvement and McDowell forming a tenuous alliance with two rogue Klingon sisters commanding a Bird Of Prey in exchange for a supposed superweapon which he claims to have designed (yes, this all comes across as being just as bad and convoluted as it sounds). But first things first: 78 years earlier, we are treated to the historically documented death of Kirk when he, Scotty and Chekov are (retired) guests of honor on the maiden voyage of the newly commissioned version of The Enterprise (with Nimoy, Takei and DeForest Kelley all laughingly turning down worthless cameos in this scenario), and we already know that we’re all in deep shit when the new captain is revealed as being played by Alan Ruck (best known as the eternally socially awkward best friend of Ferris Bueller himself, Cameron) with the other new crew members being just as obviously and monumentally incompetant as well. When Captain Cameron flies the ship directly into a danger zone on its maiden voyage and he starts panicking openly in the process (literally acting just like Cameron having an anxiety attack), Kirk must leave the VIP section where he is surrounded by throngs of adoring reporters (putting Scotty at the navigation helm since the initial blast sent the younger crew members soaring away like ballet dancers) and head on down to the hull of the ship in order to save the lives of everyone onboard. Of course, Kirk succeeds, but gets blasted out of the ship and into the heart of The Nexus (technically still alive but presumed dead by historians), while at the same time McDowell finds himself rescued and is none too happy about it (we’re told that McDowell is an alien who is over three hundred years old but he appears to have the same appearance and characteristics as any other human). With Kirk in a holding pattern for the time being, we get the first onscreen, cinematic appearance of The Next Generation crew in one of their favorite pastimes: fucking around on The Holodeck pretending to be pirates on a giant ship since they enjoy it so much. Stewart’s still got his usual bunch from the TV show: bland as white bread second in command Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), the robotic cyborg on a never ending quest to be human Data (Brent Spiner), blind as a bat Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton, who never gave up his day job as the host of Reading Rainbow during his Star Trek run), the glass ceiling busting Klingon Starfleet Officer Worf (Michael Dorn), the attractive female ship doctor Beverly Crusher who knows she can never fill McCoy’s shoes so she compensates by barely ever getting involved in the main storylines (Gates McFadden), the gorgeous, ethereal empath Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis, still the hottest babe in Trek history) and last and probably least, the ship’s bartender (Whoopi Goldberg) who often seems to have an acute psychic ability but just kind of floats in and out of the story arcs since Goldberg was considered to be too big of a star to be a fully credited cast member (reportedly she was only involved on account of being a Trekkie and had the role custom written for her). Picard is suddenly afflicted with an existential crisis: his beloved nephew (and only heir) has just died at a young age and Picard has now become obsessed with his decision to forego having his own family in order to serve in Starfleet and whether that was really the right thing to do. Meanwhile, the erstwhile Data has just had an “emotion chip” implanted in his head so that he can feel more human and when it malfunctions, we get treated to Spiner overacting like it’s nobody’s business in one scene after another. Once Picard figures out McDowell’s plans, he beams down to McDowell’s location (leaving Riker in command of The Enterprise who promptly crashes it into the same planet Picard has just beamed down to) where McDowell has activated an impenetrable forcefield to protect him but still feels inclined to carry on small talk with Picard as he prepares his equipment to enter himself into The Nexus. When Picard finally gets to him, he finds himself completely and utterly defeated by McDowell, whose plan goes off without a hitch, killing millions as well as destroying the Enterprise and its crew. But wait! Picard has followed McDowell into The Nexus where the rules of time and space don’t apply and after a comforting simulation of having a family and celebrating Christmas, he finally comes across Kirk, who is utterly happy and at home having gotten a second chance to be with the love of his life. After rousing Kirk out of his lethargic state (although not really), Picard convinces him to join him in a literal do over of Picard’s monumental, failed attempt to stop McDowell (i.e. since Picard wasn’t man enough to take down the bad guy on his own, he has to bring in The Man to make it a 2 on 1 on the second try which makes Picard look really bad here). Kirk finally agrees since he was always infamous for being the glory hound and hence we go from there, a still flat and tepid final showdown that only inspired Star Trek fans to turn on this movie with a vengeance, drawing boos and walkouts during many of the initial screenings and giving it a black mark in most peoples’ eyes that still lingers to this day. Admittedly, McDowell does give the best performance here as the quasi villain (even as he has admitted to NOT being a Trekkie and like Shatner, was just doing it for the payday) but the whole exercise is just so clumsy and ham fisted that it was practically a miracle when The Next Generation crew were able to pull it together for the next movie (First Contact) which turned out to be one of the best in the franchise, thus proving that the gimmick of bringing Shatner back one last time was both unnecessary and unfair to the cinematic development of the Next Generation crew…
3/10