Star Trek: Generations Parent Guide

A retired Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) and his remaining crew are invited to the maiden voyage of the newly christened (and not completely equipped) USS Enterprise-B, but before they can get far, they encounter two refugee ships being torn apart by a bizarre energy wave. Although they can only rescue a few refugees, the ship does manage to break free of the wave. But it does so at great cost: Admiral Kirk is killed in an explosion while reconfiguring the deflector dish to save the ship. Seventy-eight years later, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) encounters a survivor from those long-destroyed ships who is determined to re-enter the energy wave, and Picard will have to summon all the help he can find to save a system with hundreds of millions of inhabitants.

Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley both declined to reprise their roles (as Spock and McCoy respectively), as they felt that they had satisfactorily wrapped up their characters in The Undiscovered Country), and I’m inclined to agree with them. None of the original cast, save Shatner, has significant screen-time or makes any contribution to the plot that couldn’t have been provided by any other cast member. Thankfully, they don’t take up much runtime, but the question remains, why bother?

It is, however, fortunate that Kirk is a starring character in this film. Without his arc, the movie isn’t much different than your average TV episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. While this means that it’s a bit better written than most of the earlier films, it also would have made it a little unsatisfying, especially releasing just months after the final episode of Star Trek: TNG.

Parts of the film are particularly impressive, especially its phenomenal practical effects. While the production team is still getting some good mileage out of old models (see the Klingon Bird-of-Prey that’s been in every movie since Wrath of Khan), the stand-out effect is the Enterprise crash. Heartbreaking as it is for a long-time fan to see the Enterprise destroyed (again!), the effects are spectacular. The crash was shot on a 40x80 foot set, with a 12 foot saucer, which is huge. Interior shots had the advantage that The Next Generation was done shooting, and the sets had to be removed for Voyager, so the team could weather them a lot more aggressively than they might have if they needed them next week.

This isn’t the strongest film (as far as I’m concerned, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is unbeatable), but it is a worthwhile watch. It does a respectable job of marrying classic Trek with the modern interpretations as it signals an end for both the original cast and the TNG TV series, while also heralding the upcoming films with the Next Generation cast. More importantly, Generations conveys a meaningful message about the importance of family and the hazards of prioritizing work over your personal goals.