Tobar said:
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Sheesh, this came out in '94? Man how time flies. Well, my chronological journey through Star Trek has brought me here. It's been and continues to be an interesting ride. I still don't get the harsh criticisms against this film. Yeah the Nexus is a stupid mcguffin along with the excuses for why Soran has to resort to what he's doing but darn it the film isn't all bad. It had strong ties to the show which had just wrapped up and then rolled into the production of this film. We get to see the end of Lursa and B'Etor as well as see the return of Guinan after a long absence. We also see a Picard acting like himself and not the action hero of the later films. Overall I felt it stayed pretty true to the soul of the show and that's why I like it.
Outside of this film, I'm sad we never got to see any resolution with Tasha's daughter Sela. She would have made an interesting movie villain. The Generation films in general I think would have been stronger if they had all been focused on tying up loose threads from the show. Oh well.
Listen to the writer commentary if you can. I'd say it's more interesting/entertaining than the movie itself.
In it, the two writers talk about maybe getting Nimoy in it and then not. And they talk about the other writers writing a competing Star Trek 7 that got passed over. They talk about how much easier it was to write the TNG finale than it was to write Generations.
But I thought this was the most interesting bit- one of them says he's more of a visual guy, and that he imagines every story he's about to write as an awesome movie poster, and then he tries to write a movie that matches that poster. His poster for Geneations- Two Enterprises. Two captains. Locked in mortal combat*. In the red corner, grimacing Kirk about to destroy Picard to save the Federation. In the blue corner, grimacing Picard about to destroy Kirk to save the Universe. And yet, what do the two captains do when they meet? Make egss. The writers weren't exactly sure how they ended up so far from their target. But this is the same movie where Picard sobs like a wee baby, so maybe that was a signpost on the way to eggmaking.
When I originally scoped my Star Trek DVD collection, I only wanted 2-4, 6 and First Contact. I'm something of a completist, and it was hard to only buy most of a series, but I talked myself into it. After a couple of years, I was no closer to buying 1,5 Insurrection, etc... but I felt like I really wanted to watch Generations again. Like you, I didn't find it to be as awful as I had remembered... nor is it that good. But I'm glad I have it in my collection and will watch it again someday.