Obviously there are folks who are not exactly fans of Generations.  It's not my favorite of the bunch, but I do enjoy it.  I admit, my enjoyment has deteriorated over time.  I probably would have rather watched a movie following the Enterprise-B.  Ah well, it's still fun, but still I want to gripe about it since I watched it recently.

Why didn't the Enterprise change their shield frequency?  It seems pretty obvious that such was the Duras sisters' trick, as all weapons went right through.  You'd think that would have been their first action.

If shields are so easy to penetrate once the frequency is known, why didn't the Borg try that trick when they first encountered the Enterprise in Q Who and hacked their computers?

Why did Picard have to pick up Kirk and fight Soren on Viridian III?  It seems it would have been far easier to interrupt his plans by returning to when he first met him in Ten Forward and Soren stated he needed to get back to the station to complete his work.  If he had delayed him for even a few minutes, it would have stopped Soren's plans right there.  He then could have helped deduce Soren's involvement in blowing up stars and stealing trilithium research and could have locked him up for a long time.

Usually Star Trek has some sort of technobabble to explain the unexplainable, so why is there some "nexus" that escapes the meaning of time and gives everyone lasting happiness?  Unless this is like a little crack in space that leads to heaven, it's just too contrived for me.

So there's my rant.  And yet I still like it :)

darth_ender said:

Obviously there are folks who are not exactly fans of Generations.  It's not my favorite of the bunch, but I do enjoy it.  I admit, my enjoyment has deteriorated over time.  I probably would have rather watched a movie following the Enterprise-B.  Ah well, it's still fun, but still I want to gripe about it since I watched it recently.

Why didn't the Enterprise change their shield frequency?  It seems pretty obvious that such was the Duras sisters' trick, as all weapons went right through.  You'd think that would have been their first action.

If shields are so easy to penetrate once the frequency is known, why didn't the Borg try that trick when they first encountered the Enterprise in Q Who and hacked their computers?

Why did Picard have to pick up Kirk and fight Soren on Viridian III?  It seems it would have been far easier to interrupt his plans by returning to when he first met him in Ten Forward and Soren stated he needed to get back to the station to complete his work.  If he had delayed him for even a few minutes, it would have stopped Soren's plans right there.  He then could have helped deduce Soren's involvement in blowing up stars and stealing trilithium research and could have locked him up for a long time.

Usually Star Trek has some sort of technobabble to explain the unexplainable, so why is there some "nexus" that escapes the meaning of time and gives everyone lasting happiness?  Unless this is like a little crack in space that leads to heaven, it's just too contrived for me.

So there's my rant.  And yet I still like it :)

Glad we're all in agreement. :)

What is a bit of a bummer is that the movie had lots of potential.  There was resolution for the Duras conflict, resolution for the Lore conflict (in Data finally using the emotion chip), Kirk and Picard getting together like everyone wanted, the Enterprise-B, the death of the Enterprise-D, nice special effects, and in my opinion some good humor.  But sadly, the nexus gimmick and the otherwise rather thin plot failed to carry the story sufficiently.

Oh, and something that has always bugged me: what on earth happened during Geordi's interrogation?  I mean, why is it that really the only bit we see shows Soren questioning Geordi about trilithium, when clearly he knows little about it and Soren himself is the most knowledgeable fellow on the subject around?  What was he trying to gain?  My understanding is that there was some lovely torture to go along with this, but since most of it was cut, the whole scene serves literally absolutely no purpose in the end.

darth_ender said:

Glad we're all in agreement. :)

What is a bit of a bummer is that the movie had lots of potential.  There was resolution for the Duras conflict, resolution for the Lore conflict (in Data finally using the emotion chip), Kirk and Picard getting together like everyone wanted, the Enterprise-B, the death of the Enterprise-D, nice special effects, and in my opinion some good humor.  But sadly, the nexus gimmick and the otherwise rather thin plot failed to carry the story sufficiently.

Oh, and something that has always bugged me: what on earth happened during Geordi's interrogation?  I mean, why is it that really the only bit we see shows Soren questioning Geordi about trilithium, when clearly he knows little about it and Soren himself is the most knowledgeable fellow on the subject around?  What was he trying to gain?  My understanding is that there was some lovely torture to go along with this, but since most of it was cut, the whole scene serves literally absolutely no purpose in the end.

'Tis a good point.  Might have been too much for his younger audience members.

BTW, I've been wanting to say this for a while now, but never had the chance.  I've really come to enjoy his character above almost any other in TNG.  He is good-hearted and good-natured, he befriends Data and almost any other "different" character, and yet he can be flawed and impatient.  I enjoy his humanity but his unconditional acceptance of others.  Plus I was a childhood fan of Reading Rainbow, so he probably appeals to a warm spot in my heart there too.

Oops, didn't even think of Roots.  And I remember that episode of Reading Rainbow.  I loved it for sure!

SilverWook said:

The way Picard's brother and nephew were killed off still seems incredibly random and cruel to me. (Who the heck dies in a barn fire in the 24th century?) The episode Family has been essentially ruined for me thanks to Generations.

It wasn't that random. They wanted to reinforce/introduce Picard's need for children to carry on the family name. As long as his nephew was around he didn't have to carry that burden.

I still hated it though. 

SilverWook said:

And shouldn't there have been a "echo" of Soran running around in there somewhere?

Good point, that.

The movie has some good moments and has a lot of boxes to check but the logic of the nexus falls apart if you try to make sence of it.

I don't hate the movie but it definitely falls short of it's potential. It quite likely had to do with the crew spreading themselves thin over mutiple projects.

I can appreciate it for laying the groundwork for First Contact - a movie that really floats my boat.

SilverWook said:

Obviously, Relics was made when Generations was but a nervous twitch in the screenwriter's eye, and nobody caught the error.

Ronald D. Moore said:

The only way to address the Scotty/Relics issue in Generations was not to have Scotty in the movie at all. I wasn't willing to make that trade for the sake of a single line that can easily be rationalized away by saying "Scotty was momentarily confused." I still wouldn't do it.

Source

I was looking at Shatner's book Memories today, and it makes me sad.  His interactions with other members of the cast caused a lot of damage, and I genuinely believe it was largely unintentional.  The other actors were so professional, you'd actually believe Doohan and Takei loved Shatner as much as Scotty and Sulu loved Kirk.  But sadly such is not so.  It's interesting that I hadn't realized till my later years how annoying it can be that Kirk really does hog the spotlight in the episodes and movies.  Perhaps in the 60s that was what audiences wanted: a captain who could do just about everything from quoting Milton to beating off 4 armed soldiers with his bare hands and shirtless rolls, while still having the wits to defeat enemy ships.  But this clearly caused a lot of hurt feelings.  It's one thing I really enjoy better about TNG, as the various cast members all get their time in the limelight, all get to be heroes, all get to specialize in one thing or another at such a level that their expertise is indispensable.  But still, it really makes me so sad to see what efforts Shatner has made to patch things up, and to see that he still has been unable to do so, particularly with George Takei.

Shatner has bear hands?  Holy crap!  I never noticed.

But, yeah, I've read Shatner's book, as well as Takei's and Doohan's.  I read Shatner's first, and I do agree it legitimately seems like he was just completely unaware of how he came across to his co-stars.  And it makes sense that Nimoy and Kelley were his friends.  Kelley's character had really good standing, and he was usually pretty magnanimous about his role in the spotlight being often eclipsed by the other two, and Nimoy's character's popularity rivaled even Kirk's, so he was in no position to feel overshadowed.

The thing is, when I read the latter two autobiographies, I expected quite a bit more detail about Shatner's faults.  I'm not saying I wanted a bash fest over him, but I did expect to come out of them knowing exactly why the rest of the cast harbored such enmity towards him.  Sadly, I never really felt I learned that in as much detail as I liked.  I think Takei and Doohan were really pulling punches, really trying to come across as professional.  In the case of Takei's, it felt like, "Well, you know, Bill was doing that stuff that you all know Bill does.  You don't really need me to explain it to you, right?"  And in Doohan's, he flat out says, "I don't like Bill," but he too doesn't go into much detail as to why that is.

There are a few good examples in Takei's book, though, like what was supposed to be the Captain Sulu scene in TWOK.  That Shatner just didn't seem interested in doing the scene and really just phoned it in because it wasn't about him, and it really offended Takei.