STAR TREK: GENERATIONS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The next First Generation "Star
Trek" film is also the first Next Generation "Star Trek"
film. A physical phenomenon that does nasty things to
time (and even worse things to logic) is loose in the
universe. Kirk gets to meet Picard and the two fight a
world-chewing villain. This one is a feast for the eye
and a famine for the brain. Rating: high -1 (-4 to +4)
[This review contains some spoilers of the early parts
of the film. Spoilers of later parts of the film are
saved for an afterword. You have to excuse me for not
taking "Star Trek" very seriously. Of late I find I am
just a "Babylon 5" sort of guy.]
There are two kinds of "Star Trek" fans. There is the kind who like action and special effects and the kind who like a well-thought- out science fiction idea. The most popular "Star Trek" films are the ones aimed at audiences who want to turn off their minds and just have a roller-coaster ride. In a small unofficial poll the best-liked "Star Trek" film is STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN. That film is built around a completely absurd plot device called the "Genesis Effect" that seemed to create and instantly evolve life on barren planets, moving suns in place as needed. The film did have good action and special effects, however, and many of the fans were not troubled by the film being built around a poorly-conceived premise. STAR TREK GENERATIONS should please the people who liked WRATH OF KHAN and should irritate the set of fans who were irritated at that film. This time the story is built around something called the "Nexus." This thing is described as a scientific phenomenon, but as used in the film it is pure pixie and fairy dust.
As the film opens, Captain Kirk and other members of the Corpulent Space Corps are guests aboard a brand new Enterprise under the fledgling Captain Harriman. The ship is not really provisioned to travel, but then this maiden voyage is intended only as a three-hour cruise. We all know, however, that the Enterprise's enterprises never run smoothly. This Enterprise is unexpectedly called to a rescue mission. Things do not go well for Harriman and most embarrassing of all for the new captain is that old Captain Kirk is, for the first time in his career, sort of killed. Unfortunately, Spock is not along to help Kirk through that trying first death. Meanwhile, 78 years later, the Next Generation crew is involved with a similar rescue. Curiously, they seem to rescue one of the same people that the earlier Enterprise rescued. He is one Dr. Soran (played by Malcolm McDowell), an inhuman non-human with his own plans for the weird temporal phenomenon that chews planets, attacks Starships Enterprise, and especially likes to suck up captains.
This is a film with a plot that goes in for quantity rather than quality. One film that is less than two hours long involves two Enterprise crews, renegade Klingons, enemy Romulans, an interstellar temporal thingee, a sailing ship, Jean-Luc Picard's family, a Christmas tree with odd ornaments, a new chip that greatly modifies Data, two different Enterprises on the brink of destruction, Captain Kirk's long lost love, some very funny-looking eggs, and a mad scientist. That is just a bit too much for everything to gel. What works the best are the acting--which most of these people can do in their sleep--and those special-effects action sequences. The space battle scenes are always impressive on the big screen, though hardly original. One sequence involving the Enterprise and the planet Veridian III actually is breath-taking. Not all the visuals work out so well, however. When blown up to ten feet across, Data's make-up looks not enough like the covering of a machine and way too much like clown's greasepaint. But in general the look is more polished than the script deserved. To have so many nice special effects lavished on the film and yet to have such a poorly thought-out script is a very negative indication of the filmmakers' opinion of their audience. Unfortunately the "Star Trek" people probably do know their audience only too well.
This film is a triumph of style over substance. It is far more an exercise in sci-fi than science fiction. I give it a high -1 on the -4 to +4 scale. I have to be honest and say that I walked out of the theater thinking this film was at least decent, but as the film started to gel in my mind and I realized some of the gaping holes in what I had seen, I realized this script had far too many problems to get near a camera.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
I would like to say a little more about why this thing called the Nexus has no place in a science fiction film. The Nexus seems to have attributes usually ascribed only to Heaven. It is a physical phenomenon that seems to pluck people out of our universe and somehow plop each person right into the best of all possible parallel universes for that person. There the castaway has things like a ready-made family. Picard has a wife and children who are not at all surprised to see him suddenly appear. Kirk, who has been in the Nexus for 78 years, seems to have just arrived. Kirk and Picard apparently manage to escape the Nexus only by wishing to be elsewhere. (Perhaps they clicked their heels together and said "There's no place like Veridian.") The concept is great for fantasy fans but has little to do with physics or any other science. It is an idea full of contradictions that seems to have been contrived only to give Soran a motive for his crimes--so it is a nice place to be--and to have Kirk and Picard come together in time--so it is a temporal phenomenon. Room is certainly left for a sequel since the interstellar transtemporal space ribbon is still zapping around out there were no one has gone before. Of course leaving room for a sequel in a "Star Trek" film is redundant.
Besides the foolishness of the main premise--and the fact that 47 people are pulled out of the heaven-like Nexus and 78 years later the Federation seems to have forgotten that the Nexus exists--there are other problems in the script. In one sequence Picard is crawling only very slowly through the hole in the rocks and is fired upon. There is no way he could have moved fast enough to get out of the way of the explosion, yet he sustains not even a scratch. A rocket fired from Veridian III to its sun seems to hit its target in seconds. In fact, based on timing we see, the filmmakers apparently thought the sun wasa small ball less than a mile overhead--this is a giant step backward in cosmology. The bug in Geordi LaForge's glasses is still broadcasting. Will he ever discover it? All these touches seem speak more of the first draft of a script than of a finished product. To have so many people working on the film and not to have anyone asking basic questions like "how do the captains get from the Nexus back to Veridian III?" indicates to me a very cynical attitude of the Star Trek organization--and this is the product of an organization, not just a few script-writers--toward science fiction fans. They have taken the attitude that their audience cares about visuals and not intelligence or even the basics of continuity in scriptwriting.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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