Star Trek Revisited Part V
Decided to re-watch the Star Trek films in order. It's been some time since I've seen them, and I never did watch the last two Next Gen films. Here's a few quick thoughts:
Star Trek: Generations: Whee! Off we go into the land of post-Original Series films! It's dark and scary in here, kids. Stick close, and keep your hands inside the ship at all times. Kicking things off is the baton hand-off from Kirk to Picard. As Star Trek: The Next Generation comes to a close on the small screen, her cast is launched onto the big screen, but we have an almost literal hand-off. Spock, Kirk and McCoy were initially supposed to be the hand-off team, but Nimoy declined and DeForest Kelley's health was too precarious, so the task fell to Doohan and Koenig, respectively. As Kirk, Scotty and Chekov are guests at the launch of the Enterprise B, amid media frenzy at Kirk's very presence, a distress call comes in from less than 3 light years away and, of course, the Enterprise is the closest thing to it. The greatest of all Star Trek cliches, of course, recycled many times. But, as in films past, this new ship is not entirely working correctly, with no photon torpedoes, no medical team, and led by Captain Cameron (Alan Ruck), with no Ferris Bueller at his side to give him a day off. When Kirk volunteers to help do some technical jiggery-pokery to keep the ship from being eaten up by a mysterious energy ribbon, the ribbon tears through the hull, apparently destroying Kirk. Among the beings rescued by the Enterprise are Guinan, whom we know from TNG as the bartender in Ten-Forward, and Doctor Soren, played by the always delightfully bug-eyed Malcolm McDowell. 70+ years later, the crew of the Enterprise D must investigate a space station that has stopped communicating as Picard receives some devastating family news. Doctor Soren is on this station, of course, and nothing good comes of it. In swift order we find out Soren is koo-koo for Nexus Puffs, and wants desperately to get back to it. To do so, he's shacked up with Klingon sisters Lursa and B'etor, who just want Soren's sun-destroying weapon to re-conquer the Klingon Empire. *yawn* To me, the busty Klingons are utterly wasted, and then literally wasted, as they get destroyed by Riker after using Geordi's VISOR to spy on the Enterprise and gain critical info that allows them to launch a devastating attack. Picard has followed Soren, who intends to destroy the sun of the local star system, which will force the Nexus ribbon to the planet, where he can rejoin its time-neutral glory. Inside the Nexus, Picard has an excessively Victorian/Dickensian (the wealthy end of Dickens) fantasy family, but is dissuaded from falling for it by an "echo" of Guinan, who leads him to Kirk, who conveniently has also just arrived, due to the time-neutral essence of the Nexus. Together, they go back to the moment before Soren fires his rocket to kill the local sun. With Kirk handling most of the fisticuffs (naturally), they defeat Soren, but Kirk finally bites the big galactic weenie in the process. Dying not alone, as he speculated in Final Frontier that he would be, and not offed by Klingons (as he probably would have wanted). In the meatime, the damage to the Enterprise causes a warp core breach, and the crew evacuates to the saucer, which separates and crashes on the surface.
This movie isn't bad. It's long. It's a good story, but one that's drawn out and badly paced, much like The Motion Picture, though not quite as bad. When Picard enters the Nexus, save for the saucer crash, the film comes to a grinding halt. The necessity of establishing the Nexus's time-neutral properties means we get an extended and rather dull (if personally touching) fantasy for Picard, and then have to deal with Picard convincing Kirk that his personal fantasy is not real. By the time we get back to the action, we almost forget why we're there. I've never made any secret of the fact that I despise Data. As a Spock-substitute, he makes a great doorknob. The sci-fi writer's obsession with androids and robots who dream of becoming human is older than Bradbury, who himself made good use of the idea a few times. On the show, Data's extended forays into becoming more human just served to irritate the shit out of me. Not that Brent Spiner is a bad actor, it's just that Next Generation's writers leaned on him way too heavily, the way Marvel Comics leans on A-list fanboy attractors like Wolverine to sell comics. So when Data installs his emotion chip, he of course becomes the most obnoxious creature in the galaxy and it overloads his neural net, but he is then unable to remove it. The whole scenario is really a plot contrivance to keep Data, whom writers tend to waffle between depicting as a Kal El level Superman and a child-like, naive genius with Asperger's, from being super when Soren attacks him and Geordie, ensuring Geordie will be captured by Soren and given to the Klingons, and then used to spy on his own ship for the attack that destroys it. The film often feels like an overly long and not quite completely thought out episode of the series, sort of like "Time's Arrow" on steroids. Overall, though, it's a good film, just not a great film, but a serviceable intro for this cast to features.
Story: Okay. Serviceable. The Nexus energy ribbon is never adequately explained, but then again, it's just a plot device to get Kirk & Picard together.
Effects: Pretty damn good, actually. The saucer crash sequence is quite well done. Since the ship was designed and built for television, the Enterprise D had to be offed to make way for a new ship design, one made specifically for features, but in the same way that the model used in the original series couldn't be used for The Motion Picture.
Acting: Shatner isn't too cheesy, and has some good depth of character stuff, especially in the Nexus, when he thinks he may have wasted the last 10 years of his life going back to Starfleet. This echoes his dismay at the beginning when he is introduced to Sulu's now adult daughter, and wonders when the hell Sulu had time for a family. The Next Generation cast is suitably good, especially, of course, Patrick Stewart, who can act rings around pretty much anyone out there, and LeVar Burton, who is on par with Stewart, IMHO.
Make It Not So: I hated the whole Nexus thing. There are huge chunks of the story that just don't work for me, but I accept it, it's Star Trek.
Irritating Data Moments: All of them? At first his shtick is amusing, when he finally gets humor, but after a while, he just gets grating. He does get to say "Oh, shit!" I seem to recall this causing a great deal of controversy among the Trekkies.
Star Trek: First Contact: Boy, howdy, this is by far the best of all the Next Generation films, and one of the best in the entire series. Picard's greatest fears come to light when the Borg finally engage in an invasion of Federation space, specifically Earth. The Enterprise defies orders and hits in the action just in time to witness the Borg creating a temporal anomaly in order to go back in time and assimilate earth just 2 days before the legendary Zefram Cochrane makes his first warp journey, which causes a passing Vulcan scout ship to take notice and make first contact, thus setting up the entire Federation and Starfleet, indeed, the entire future of mankind. When the Enterprise follows and goes back in time, they destroy the small Borg sphere, but not before the Borg ninja-beam onto the ship, because they're swift like that. Tricksy Borgses. As Picard leads a team to assess the damage to Cochrane's encampment, the Borg get busy assimilating the Enterprise starting with engineering. Sadly, it turns out that Cochrane is a money-grubbing alcoholic, and kinda old. When previously seen, back in an episode of the original series, he was significantly younger.* Oops! As Picard has to deal with his most primal fears concerning the Borg, and Riker & Troi have to convince an increasingly agitated Cochrane that he must make his journey, the film alternates between action and deadly seriousness on the Enterprise, and a comedy of errors on earth.
Like the original cast member's second foray, this film is a snappy, zippy adventure. It's both fun and gripping, with some great dialogue and quite good acting all the way around. good pacing and a tight script keep this one humming right along to a satisfying conclusion. I'm always bothered by time travel scenarios, and exactly how the Borg do their voodoo here is never explored, and then, to get back, the Enterprise crew simply explain they'll recreate what the Borg did based on sensor readings. Shhh. Much like the "slingshot around the sun", it's just best not to examine it too closely. The spacewalk sequence is a bit much, but tolerable.
This movie just crackles with delightful sequences. Drunk Counselor Troi having to keep Cochrane amused (Troi: I'm just trying to blend in! Riker: You're blended alright.); Cochrane's quick unease with his place in history; the use of the Emergency Medical Hologram (the ever-wonderful Robert Picardo, more or less doing his same role from Voyager). There's just so much right with this movie that it's easy to overlook the clunky stuff. Why dwell on plot holes and unexplained crap, like why isn't there a line where someone explicitly tells Cochrane not to mention his visitors from the future who helped him do all this work and make the first warp journey, when you have unbelievably amazing scenes between Patrick Stewart and the fiery Alfre Woodard (who really has some spectacular lines, and some of the funniest: "It's my first ray gun"), and an explosive confrontation between Worf and Picard that probably would have made Gene Roddenberry shit his pants. Woodard in particular steals every scene she's in and provides the perfect logical counterpoint to Picard while Data is off being assimilated and cock-teased by the Borg Queen. Genius casting, really.
My big problem with this movie is the Borg Queen herself. From the moment the writers on The Next Generation started to tinker with the basic Borg formula and introduced methods of de-clawing them ("I, Borg", in particular), the Borg started getting shittier and shittier. With the Borg Queen we now have a central authority figure, though really just a mouthpiece. She really isn't their leader so much as she is an identifiable spokesperson, a manifestation of the Borg collective consciousness. Still, her role as a central authority figure only serves to degrade the Borg further, and the retconning of her as having been present at Picard's assimilation in "Best of Both Worlds" just irritates the shit out of me.
All told, though, this movie is just fan-fucking-tastic.
Story: A++ Snappy, witty, full of great lines and so tightly paced it's like an amusement park ride.
Effects: Spot-on. New Enterprise is an outstanding design. The new uniforms, variants of the DS9 ones, rock. My favorite Star Trek uniforms, really. I love the old school nacelles on Cochrane's missile ship. Boing!
Acting: Ahhh.... perfection. The right combination of cheese and salsa makes this some pretty tasty con queso, mi amigo. Alfre Woodard and Patrick Stewart make sweet, angry acting love. Michael Dorn, I <3 you. When he says "If you were any other man, I would kill you", you know he really means it.
Make It Not So: Many crew get Borgified, which is not, alas, Swedish. The stickiness of time travel leaves a faint scummy film behind when it isn't properly utilized or explained. Data. Ugh.
Irritating Data Moments: Not too many, he's actually fairly decent in this one. It's only logical that he would be the apple of the Borg Queen's eye, but we have more "I want to be human" crap slathered on, too. *barf*
* I know, I know, they "fixed" this in The Star Trek Encyclopedia by stating that Cochrane's older appearance in 2063 was due to radiation exposure and that his more youthful appearance was restored by the Companion, whom we saw with Cochrane in "The Metamorphosis" original series episode.
Star Trek: Generations: Whee! Off we go into the land of post-Original Series films! It's dark and scary in here, kids. Stick close, and keep your hands inside the ship at all times. Kicking things off is the baton hand-off from Kirk to Picard. As Star Trek: The Next Generation comes to a close on the small screen, her cast is launched onto the big screen, but we have an almost literal hand-off. Spock, Kirk and McCoy were initially supposed to be the hand-off team, but Nimoy declined and DeForest Kelley's health was too precarious, so the task fell to Doohan and Koenig, respectively. As Kirk, Scotty and Chekov are guests at the launch of the Enterprise B, amid media frenzy at Kirk's very presence, a distress call comes in from less than 3 light years away and, of course, the Enterprise is the closest thing to it. The greatest of all Star Trek cliches, of course, recycled many times. But, as in films past, this new ship is not entirely working correctly, with no photon torpedoes, no medical team, and led by Captain Cameron (Alan Ruck), with no Ferris Bueller at his side to give him a day off. When Kirk volunteers to help do some technical jiggery-pokery to keep the ship from being eaten up by a mysterious energy ribbon, the ribbon tears through the hull, apparently destroying Kirk. Among the beings rescued by the Enterprise are Guinan, whom we know from TNG as the bartender in Ten-Forward, and Doctor Soren, played by the always delightfully bug-eyed Malcolm McDowell. 70+ years later, the crew of the Enterprise D must investigate a space station that has stopped communicating as Picard receives some devastating family news. Doctor Soren is on this station, of course, and nothing good comes of it. In swift order we find out Soren is koo-koo for Nexus Puffs, and wants desperately to get back to it. To do so, he's shacked up with Klingon sisters Lursa and B'etor, who just want Soren's sun-destroying weapon to re-conquer the Klingon Empire. *yawn* To me, the busty Klingons are utterly wasted, and then literally wasted, as they get destroyed by Riker after using Geordi's VISOR to spy on the Enterprise and gain critical info that allows them to launch a devastating attack. Picard has followed Soren, who intends to destroy the sun of the local star system, which will force the Nexus ribbon to the planet, where he can rejoin its time-neutral glory. Inside the Nexus, Picard has an excessively Victorian/Dickensian (the wealthy end of Dickens) fantasy family, but is dissuaded from falling for it by an "echo" of Guinan, who leads him to Kirk, who conveniently has also just arrived, due to the time-neutral essence of the Nexus. Together, they go back to the moment before Soren fires his rocket to kill the local sun. With Kirk handling most of the fisticuffs (naturally), they defeat Soren, but Kirk finally bites the big galactic weenie in the process. Dying not alone, as he speculated in Final Frontier that he would be, and not offed by Klingons (as he probably would have wanted). In the meatime, the damage to the Enterprise causes a warp core breach, and the crew evacuates to the saucer, which separates and crashes on the surface.
This movie isn't bad. It's long. It's a good story, but one that's drawn out and badly paced, much like The Motion Picture, though not quite as bad. When Picard enters the Nexus, save for the saucer crash, the film comes to a grinding halt. The necessity of establishing the Nexus's time-neutral properties means we get an extended and rather dull (if personally touching) fantasy for Picard, and then have to deal with Picard convincing Kirk that his personal fantasy is not real. By the time we get back to the action, we almost forget why we're there. I've never made any secret of the fact that I despise Data. As a Spock-substitute, he makes a great doorknob. The sci-fi writer's obsession with androids and robots who dream of becoming human is older than Bradbury, who himself made good use of the idea a few times. On the show, Data's extended forays into becoming more human just served to irritate the shit out of me. Not that Brent Spiner is a bad actor, it's just that Next Generation's writers leaned on him way too heavily, the way Marvel Comics leans on A-list fanboy attractors like Wolverine to sell comics. So when Data installs his emotion chip, he of course becomes the most obnoxious creature in the galaxy and it overloads his neural net, but he is then unable to remove it. The whole scenario is really a plot contrivance to keep Data, whom writers tend to waffle between depicting as a Kal El level Superman and a child-like, naive genius with Asperger's, from being super when Soren attacks him and Geordie, ensuring Geordie will be captured by Soren and given to the Klingons, and then used to spy on his own ship for the attack that destroys it. The film often feels like an overly long and not quite completely thought out episode of the series, sort of like "Time's Arrow" on steroids. Overall, though, it's a good film, just not a great film, but a serviceable intro for this cast to features.
Story: Okay. Serviceable. The Nexus energy ribbon is never adequately explained, but then again, it's just a plot device to get Kirk & Picard together.
Effects: Pretty damn good, actually. The saucer crash sequence is quite well done. Since the ship was designed and built for television, the Enterprise D had to be offed to make way for a new ship design, one made specifically for features, but in the same way that the model used in the original series couldn't be used for The Motion Picture.
Acting: Shatner isn't too cheesy, and has some good depth of character stuff, especially in the Nexus, when he thinks he may have wasted the last 10 years of his life going back to Starfleet. This echoes his dismay at the beginning when he is introduced to Sulu's now adult daughter, and wonders when the hell Sulu had time for a family. The Next Generation cast is suitably good, especially, of course, Patrick Stewart, who can act rings around pretty much anyone out there, and LeVar Burton, who is on par with Stewart, IMHO.
Make It Not So: I hated the whole Nexus thing. There are huge chunks of the story that just don't work for me, but I accept it, it's Star Trek.
Irritating Data Moments: All of them? At first his shtick is amusing, when he finally gets humor, but after a while, he just gets grating. He does get to say "Oh, shit!" I seem to recall this causing a great deal of controversy among the Trekkies.
Star Trek: First Contact: Boy, howdy, this is by far the best of all the Next Generation films, and one of the best in the entire series. Picard's greatest fears come to light when the Borg finally engage in an invasion of Federation space, specifically Earth. The Enterprise defies orders and hits in the action just in time to witness the Borg creating a temporal anomaly in order to go back in time and assimilate earth just 2 days before the legendary Zefram Cochrane makes his first warp journey, which causes a passing Vulcan scout ship to take notice and make first contact, thus setting up the entire Federation and Starfleet, indeed, the entire future of mankind. When the Enterprise follows and goes back in time, they destroy the small Borg sphere, but not before the Borg ninja-beam onto the ship, because they're swift like that. Tricksy Borgses. As Picard leads a team to assess the damage to Cochrane's encampment, the Borg get busy assimilating the Enterprise starting with engineering. Sadly, it turns out that Cochrane is a money-grubbing alcoholic, and kinda old. When previously seen, back in an episode of the original series, he was significantly younger.* Oops! As Picard has to deal with his most primal fears concerning the Borg, and Riker & Troi have to convince an increasingly agitated Cochrane that he must make his journey, the film alternates between action and deadly seriousness on the Enterprise, and a comedy of errors on earth.
Like the original cast member's second foray, this film is a snappy, zippy adventure. It's both fun and gripping, with some great dialogue and quite good acting all the way around. good pacing and a tight script keep this one humming right along to a satisfying conclusion. I'm always bothered by time travel scenarios, and exactly how the Borg do their voodoo here is never explored, and then, to get back, the Enterprise crew simply explain they'll recreate what the Borg did based on sensor readings. Shhh. Much like the "slingshot around the sun", it's just best not to examine it too closely. The spacewalk sequence is a bit much, but tolerable.
This movie just crackles with delightful sequences. Drunk Counselor Troi having to keep Cochrane amused (Troi: I'm just trying to blend in! Riker: You're blended alright.); Cochrane's quick unease with his place in history; the use of the Emergency Medical Hologram (the ever-wonderful Robert Picardo, more or less doing his same role from Voyager). There's just so much right with this movie that it's easy to overlook the clunky stuff. Why dwell on plot holes and unexplained crap, like why isn't there a line where someone explicitly tells Cochrane not to mention his visitors from the future who helped him do all this work and make the first warp journey, when you have unbelievably amazing scenes between Patrick Stewart and the fiery Alfre Woodard (who really has some spectacular lines, and some of the funniest: "It's my first ray gun"), and an explosive confrontation between Worf and Picard that probably would have made Gene Roddenberry shit his pants. Woodard in particular steals every scene she's in and provides the perfect logical counterpoint to Picard while Data is off being assimilated and cock-teased by the Borg Queen. Genius casting, really.
My big problem with this movie is the Borg Queen herself. From the moment the writers on The Next Generation started to tinker with the basic Borg formula and introduced methods of de-clawing them ("I, Borg", in particular), the Borg started getting shittier and shittier. With the Borg Queen we now have a central authority figure, though really just a mouthpiece. She really isn't their leader so much as she is an identifiable spokesperson, a manifestation of the Borg collective consciousness. Still, her role as a central authority figure only serves to degrade the Borg further, and the retconning of her as having been present at Picard's assimilation in "Best of Both Worlds" just irritates the shit out of me.
All told, though, this movie is just fan-fucking-tastic.
Story: A++ Snappy, witty, full of great lines and so tightly paced it's like an amusement park ride.
Effects: Spot-on. New Enterprise is an outstanding design. The new uniforms, variants of the DS9 ones, rock. My favorite Star Trek uniforms, really. I love the old school nacelles on Cochrane's missile ship. Boing!
Acting: Ahhh.... perfection. The right combination of cheese and salsa makes this some pretty tasty con queso, mi amigo. Alfre Woodard and Patrick Stewart make sweet, angry acting love. Michael Dorn, I <3 you. When he says "If you were any other man, I would kill you", you know he really means it.
Make It Not So: Many crew get Borgified, which is not, alas, Swedish. The stickiness of time travel leaves a faint scummy film behind when it isn't properly utilized or explained. Data. Ugh.
Irritating Data Moments: Not too many, he's actually fairly decent in this one. It's only logical that he would be the apple of the Borg Queen's eye, but we have more "I want to be human" crap slathered on, too. *barf*
* I know, I know, they "fixed" this in The Star Trek Encyclopedia by stating that Cochrane's older appearance in 2063 was due to radiation exposure and that his more youthful appearance was restored by the Companion, whom we saw with Cochrane in "The Metamorphosis" original series episode.