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Star Trek Generations Movie Review

Star Trek Generations is a 1994 science fiction film directed by David Carson and starring William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner. It’s a messy transitional entry.

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“Risk is part of the game

if you want to sit in that chair“

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Captain Picard and his crew come across Dr. Soran, a renegade scientist who has sinister plans. He must take the help of Kirk, who is presumed to be dead, in order to stop Soran. ‘The Next Generation’ was already ending its run in 1994 when this movie was released, which makes its timing super awkward and simply ridiculous.

The whole movie is misguided in its intentions. On the one hand, it tries to introduce Picard and give an ode to Kirk to satisfy casual fans who probably haven’t watched this new show, but on the other hand, it has way too many references and character-specific callbacks to the show that it’s almost impossible to be understood by regular viewers.

The movie did well at the box office, but it was heavily criticized by the critics to the point that it mostly got quite harsh reviews. I once again lie squarely in the middle. It’s not particularly good, but serviceable as it has far too many elements that I genuinely liked to call it mediocre, plus it’s far from the worst of the Star Trek movies.

I did like what they did with Data and that emotion chip subplot was well handled, albeit the character felt a bit too much like a comic relief, but still the theme of arising humanity in him was well explored. Other famous TNG characters are mostly underutilized, though Worf, Geordi and Riker all get a couple of solid moments.

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Star Trek Generations is all about Kirk, Soren and Picard. I actually liked all three of them and the performances were uniformly strong. Shatner was hammy, but fun; Malcolm McDowell is very cool and visually interesting as the villain; Patrick Stewart is reliably confident and nuanced as Picard. His emotional arc is the highlight of the picture. It’s a shame then that the scenes with these three in the second half felt rushed, underdeveloped and overly action-oriented with too much TOS-inspired dated punching brawls. The effects are quite inspired for the time, but unfortunately the movie mostly traded the SF elements in favor of silly action sequences.