Fix Star Trek Generations

[BigJKU316]

This may have been done before but the fixing Enterprise and fixing Voyager threads got me thinking about this POS. So lets say you are told to reshoot Generations and make it not a steaming pile of junk. How do you handle it?

Lets assume the following directives are in effect.

1. It has to include the original cast, but if you give them a big enough role then you could have all of them.

2. Kirk must die.

3. The original cast must end the movie in their own timeline, to preserve continuity with their various apperances in TNG.


Other than that it is wide open. What do you have?

[Praeothmin]

Other then not making it?

Then I guess we would have a parallel movie, a little bit like "All Good Things...", where you follow the parallel investigations of Soran's Nexus machinations in both times, TOS and TNG.
In TOS, this happens right after TUS, so the E-A doesn't have time to go back for decomissioning, and needs to jump into action immediately while still damaged.

Both sides' attempts to disrupt the Nexus at first fail because both teams are actually unknowingly working against one-another, i.e. each of their solutions actually cancels the other one, until they find a way to communicate together, and we see them attempt to solve this problem together.
Both ships could be attacked and outnumbered by Klingons from their own time periods (the TOS ones because the resentful ones for TUS plotted with Soran from that time to destroy Kirk and the TNG ones as we saw, featuring the Duras sisters with a few ships) while implementing their respective solutions, during battle you suck both ships in the Nexus, and we see them fighting side by side, the E-A acting as a Firgate to the E-D's Battleship...
We then see them kill the Klingons, but the E-D gets heavily damaged after kicking so many Klingons asses, and barely has enough power left to implement its part of the solution, and then we see both ships get kicked out of the Nexus where the E-D's Battle section needs to be evacuated, and the Saucer barely makes it before the explosion.
The E-A, while also heavily damaged, limps back to Starfleet headquarters for final decomission...

But I like my first option better...

[Tyyr]

I'm thinking about it but honestly one of the biggest problems Generations had was including the original cast.

[Captain Seafort]

I'm thinking about it but honestly one of the biggest problems Generations had was including the original cast.

One of? It was the fundamental problem of the entire film - the started with the teaser poster of the E-A and E-D fighting each other, and when they couldn't find a sane way to produce that (or realised how stupid it was), kept trying to work TOS in rather than starting over. See Chuck Sonnenberg's review for details.

It also didn't help that they went straight from AGT to Generations, rather than having a break - that meant that a) they didn't have time to think things over and b) were still in a TV series mentality. The result is that the film is really just a double-length episode and of the ten such episodes in the series, four of them were easily superior to the film.

[Tyyr]

I've seen it and you can make the case that it's the biggest problem but even taking them out you're left with the TNG crew looking like chumps in what amounts to an overblown random episode of TNG.

[BigJKU316]

I'm thinking about it but honestly one of the biggest problems Generations had was including the original cast.

I agree. But thats what makes looking at it and including that interesting. Otherwise any generic space adventure would fit just fine, so its not much of a challenge then as one could write just about anything they wished. Heck, with a few minor tweaks you could just do any of the other TNG cast movies without much trouble.

From what I hear that decision came down from higher ups. So if you are the writer/director what do you do given those restrictions?

I think I drop the Nexus plot entierly. Not sure where to go from there but that was just awful stuff really.

[Captain Seafort]

Bugger - took too long editing my post.

[Tyyr]

I agree. But thats what makes looking at it and including that interesting. Otherwise any generic space adventure would fit just fine, so its not much of a challenge then as one could write just about anything they wished. Heck, with a few minor tweaks you could just do any of the other TNG cast movies without much trouble.

From what I hear that decision came down from higher ups. So if you are the writer/director what do you do given those restrictions?

I think I drop the Nexus plot entierly. Not sure where to go from there but that was just awful stuff really.

I understand, I just have to get that off my chest. It's the one thing I'd change for sure with Generations.

The Nexus has to go. There are so many plot holes and vagaries in that thing that I don't know if you can recover it enough to make it useful. Sorin desperately needs some build up and motivation. The Duras sisters need some reason to even be in the movie. The Ent-D needs to go out in a blaze of glory with her crew fighting against all odds and winning but the ship being to damaged to save. Data needs to desperately be toned down. The emotion chip thing wasn't awful but it was so overblown.

[Captain Seafort]

Data needs to desperately be toned down. The emotion chip thing wasn't awful but it was so overblown.

Damn right he does. His entire contribution to the plot (and the film as a whole for that matter) can be summed up by the fact that when I first saw Generations I thought it was by far the best aspect of the film.

I was nine at the time.

[SolkaTruesilver]

how about, for a change, not focusing on the Captain as "the Main Character"?

TNG was much less Captain-centric as a serie than TOS was. They seem to forget that when they write the movies.

Thu, you end up with plots like "Picard's struggle with the death of his family/a 60-year old villain", "Picard's struggle against the Borg", "Picard's struggle against a 80-year old villain and him falling in love", "Picard's struggle against his clone".

I don't mind character-centric movies. I just don't think, if you want to make an action movie, Picard was the best character to put the focus on. Take Riker, Worf, Data, if you really want an action movie of the like. If you put Picard as an Action Hero, you still need to fill a niche with Worf, which puts him into the comic relief character

Have Picard as a brillant strategist and diplomat, but in a Morgan Freeman-like role of the Captain providing support. (Give him good lines). In short, give a great moment to all the characters depending on their characterisation. Show that it's not always about phasers firing.

[Mikey]

Well, in all of the best of Star Trek the action has been dressing rather than the focus. I think there are a few organic reasons why the captain tends to become the focus of the plot:

1) He's the captain - in the final analysis, the buck stops on his desk. He's the one who has to make the tough calls, and he's the one who shoulders the responsibility of the missions. He is the face of Starfleet Command to the rest of the crew; and he is the embodiment and representative of the crew when dealing with Starfleet. Picard as captain also played up the important distinction of the degree of separation from the crew necessary to perform his duty, while still maintaining a certain engagability - as well as the sacrifices that go along with that maintenance.

2) Patrick Stewart. Things might have been somewhat, if not completely, different had an inferior actor portrayed the role of Picard. When you're down by 2 in a basketball game with 3 seconds left on the clock, you want the ball in the hands of your strongest player.

3) 'Trek is designed to be character-centric. One thing that has not changed about Star Trek since GR's original idea was that, for all the settings and plots about spaceships and aliens and the far future, it is finally about humanity. This isn't an interpretation - it is what Gene stated explicitly shortly before he died (and on other occassions.) Portraying a theme of humanity in a franchise that is mostly built for commercial television means, for good or ill, that it needs to show this by being about humans (and a Vulcan in TOS.) So, with the focus thusly being about people, the centrism of the show will naturally gravitate toward the captain, for reasons discussed under "1.," above.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I fully agree with #3.

#2 can be done by still writing a very Picard-esque amazing role. Patrick Steward was simply great in the X-Men movies, yet he wasn't the main character. What undermined his importance in the movies was simply because Xavier's power were so powerful he couldn't be part of the climax without having an auto-win character, so he had to be disable/killed before the showdown. But in a Trek movie, you can still have Picard calling the shots for the protagonist, offering support, stalling the bad guy, etc... while being played brillantly.

#1 kinda mix with my points for #2. You don't need the captain to be the center of the movie. I can remember more than a dozen of episodes where a single crewman was the center of the storyline, but still have the captain in the background calling the shots. Why can't you apply this formula to a movie? Picard was just the greatest character to be the aloof/authoritarian captain, wise man, uptight and diplomat. In the movies, we got to see him up-close and personnal. It just.. wasn't right.

[kostmayer]

I wanna change so many things I'm not even sure it could still be classed as the same film.

I'd have the Enterprise going up against a far superior force, yet staying behind and fighting it out rather then retreating for the sake of the mission - ala Yesterdays Enterprise. Keep the saucer crash though, it was the best bit in the film.

Geordi needs to make at least a passing comment bemoaning the fact he was being held hostage and tortured yet again.

Defeats the object of the film maybe, but I'd skip having the old cast about - TUC was a damn near perfect send off.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Defeats the object of the film maybe, but I'd skip having the old cast about - TUC was a damn near perfect send off.

Make them face an old threat that was foreshadowed in the original serie.

Have them consult stuff made by the original cast. Maybe have holograms, audio records, or anything from the original cast. Have the ennemy aliens/menace refer to them being frightened to face against "Kirk the Mighty", I don't know.

There is still a dozen way you can plug the original serie and do a proper trans-generational era without bringing old has-been and eclipsing the new actors.

[Captain Seafort]

Make them face an old threat that was foreshadowed in the original serie.

Have them consult stuff made by the original cast. Maybe have holograms, audio records, or anything from the original cast. Have the ennemy aliens/menace refer to them being frightened to face against "Kirk the Mighty", I don't know.

There is still a dozen way you can plug the original serie and do a proper trans-generational era without bringing old has-been and eclipsing the new actors.

Why? McCoy passed the baton all the way back in Farpoint, Spock did it in Unification, and Scotty turned up in Relics. TUC was the end of the road for TOS, and it ended as it should have - with the old crew sailing off into the sunset. Generations should have been about TNG properly spreading its wings and growing into a movie series of its own, not a glorified TV episode hamstrung by the two requirements of "kill Kirk" and "blow up the Enterprise".