Star Trek: Generations Movie Review

The seventh Star Trek movie went where no man had gone before, at least not in Hollywood: Attempting to take an old and lethargic movie franchise and reinvigorate it with a new cast -- uniting both the original and new casts in one massive crossover movie.

Generations (having dispensed with the numbering of the sequels) is a fair enough film. It's massively contrived to be sure -- the Kirk-era cast and Picard-era cast were meant to be some 80 years apart -- but considering the difficulty of trying to combine two crews in one movie, Shatner & Stewart turned in a fair enough endeavor.

The story picks up during Kirk's ostensible retirement, as he takes an honorary spin on the rebuilt Enterprise (destroyed in a prior film) with an all new captain. No sooner have they left spacedock than they receive a distress call: Trapped ships on the verge of destruction. Shatner and his pals save the day, but Shatner gets sucked into space by an "energy ribbon" coursing through the solar system and wreaking all the havoc. Cut to 80 years later, and the fourth Enterprise (commanded by Picard and co.) discover that one of the original refugees (Malcolm McDowell) picked up on that fateful day is up to no good to try to get himself into the ribbon (which turns out to be able to take you to an idyllic universed based somewhere in your past). Going to the ribbon is too dangerous: He's getting the ribbon to come to him by destroying stars and altering gravitational forces, so the ribbon will plow through a point of his choosing.

It's all a somewhat silly way to get Kirk and Picard together (they meet in that magical world called "the Nexus"), and eventually they square off with McDowell. The final question of Kirk's fate is answered (and it ain't bery becoming of a hero who worked for decades, sadly). The new crew is firmly ensconced as the focus of the series. Special effects had continued to improve apace, with the film featuring an impressive crash landing of the Enterprise's saucer section into an earth-like planet.

The theme here is on the weak side, telling us to stop dreaming and live in the freakin' real world. At least it isn't highfalutin' Star Trek nonsense, though. This entry isn't particularly strong, but it isn't terribly weak, either -- it's probably the best of the "odd number" Trek movies ever made and does its job as a link in the chain from the original series to the next generation.

The new special edition disc features the usual text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda as well as an audio commentary from the screenwriters. Disc two adds deleted scenes (including Kirk's original death scene), behind the scenes features, and the usual making-of retrospectives.