Star Trek Generations is a 1994 American science fiction film and the seventh installment in the Star Trek film series. Malcolm McDowell joins cast members from the 1966 television show Star Trek and the 1987 sequel series The Next Generation, including William Shatner and Patrick Stewart. In the film, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D joins forces with Captain James T. Kirk to stop the villain Dr Tolian Soran from destroying a planetary system in his attempt to return to an extra-dimensional realm known as the Nexus.
Generations was conceived as a transition from the original cast of the Star Trek films to the cast of The Next Generation. After developing several film ideas concurrently, the producers chose a script written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga. Production began while the final season of the television series was being made. The director was David Carson, who previously directed episodes of the television series; photography was by franchise newcomer John A. Alonzo. Filming took place on the Paramount Studios lots, and on location in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, and Lone Pine, California. The film's climax was revised and reshot following poor reception from test audiences. The film uses a mix of traditional optical effects alongside computer-generated imagery and was scored by regular Star Trek composer Dennis McCarthy.
Star Trek Generations was released in the United States on November 18, 1994. Paramount promoted the film with merchandising tie-ins, including toys, books, games, and a website—a first for a major motion picture. The film opened at the top of the United States box office its first week of release and grossed a total of $118 million worldwide. Critical reception was mixed, with critics divided on the film's characters and comprehensibility to a casual viewer. It was followed by Star Trek: First Contact in 1996.
Plot In 2293, retired Starfleet officers James T. Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Pavel Chekov attend the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise-B. During the shakedown cruise, the starship is pressed into a rescue mission to save two El-Aurian refugee ships that a massive energy ribbon has snared. Enterprise saves some of the refugees before their ships are destroyed, but becomes trapped by the ribbon, and Kirk goes to a control room to help the ship escape. While Enterprise is freed, Kirk is presumed lost in space and dead after the trailing end of the ribbon tears open the ship's hull.
In 2371, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D is in a holodeck computer simulation, celebrating the promotion of shipmate Worf to lieutenant commander. Captain Jean-Luc Picard learns his brother and nephew have been killed in a fire, and is distraught that the Picard family line will end with him. Enterprise receives a distress call from a stellar observatory, where an El-Aurian, Dr. Tolian Soran, launches a probe at the nearby star. The probe causes the star to implode, creating a shockwave that destroys its planetary system. Soran kidnaps Enterprise engineer Geordi La Forge and is transported off the station by a Klingon Bird of Prey belonging to the Duras sisters.
Enterprise crewmember Guinan tells Picard that she and Soran were among the El-Aurians rescued in 2293. Soran—who lost his family when their homeworld was destroyed by the Borg—is obsessed with returning to the energy ribbon to reach the "Nexus", an extra-dimensional realm of wish fulfillment outside normal space-time. Picard and Data determine that Soran, unable to safely fly a ship directly into the ribbon, is altering its path by removing the gravitational effects of nearby stars. Soran plans to destroy another star to bring the ribbon to the planet Veridian III, consequently killing millions on a nearby inhabited planet.
Upon entering the Veridian system, Picard offers himself to the Duras sisters in exchange for La Forge but insists on being transported to Soran directly. La Forge is returned to Enterprise, but unwittingly exposes the ship's defense details through the transmitter installed in his VISOR device. The Duras sisters attack, and Enterprise sustains critical damage before destroying the Bird of Prey by triggering its cloaking device, and firing photon torpedoes when its shields drop. When La Forge reports that the starship is about to suffer a warp-core breach as a result of the attack, Commander William Riker evacuates everyone to the forward saucer section of the starship, which separates from the engineering section just before the breach occurs. The resulting shockwave sends the saucer-section crashing onto the surface of Veridian III.
Picard fails to stop Soran from launching another probe. The Veridian star's resulting destruction alters the ribbon's course, and Picard and Soran enter the Nexus before the shockwave destroys Veridian III. Picard is surrounded by an idealized family, but realizes it is an illusion. He is met by an "echo" of Guinan left behind in the Nexus. Guinan sends him to meet James T. Kirk, who is safe in the Nexus. Though Kirk is initially entranced by the opportunity the Nexus offers to atone for past regrets, he realizes it lacks danger and excitement. Having learned that they can travel whenever and wherever desired through the Nexus, Picard convinces Kirk to return with him to Veridian III, shortly before Soran launches the probe.
Working together, Kirk and Picard distract Soran long enough for Picard to lock the probe in place; it explodes on the launchpad and kills Soran. Kirk is fatally injured in the effort, and Picard buries him at the site. Three Federation starships arrive to retrieve the Enterprise survivors from Veridian III. Picard muses that, given the ship's legacy, the Enterprise-D will not be the last vessel to carry the name.
Cast
The main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reprise their roles in Generations: Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Frakes as Commander William Riker, LeVar Burton as Chief Engineer Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, Brent Spiner as Lieutenant Commander Data, Gates McFadden as Chief Medical Officer Commander Beverly Crusher, Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Commander Worf, and Marina Sirtis as ship's counselor Commander Deanna Troi. Recurring characters from the series return, including Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh as the villainous Klingon sisters Lursa and B'Etor Duras, Patti Yasutake as Enterprise nurse Lieutenant Alyssa Ogawa, and Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan.
Malcolm McDowell plays Tolian Soran, the film's antagonist. Marlon Brando wanted to play the role and informed producer Rick Berman about it, but Shelley Lanberg turned him down due to his high price demands. McDowell had worked with Stewart on stage decades earlier, and relished the chance to kill Shatner's character. He liked his character's spiked hair and black ensemble, and requested that his character not have alien features to avoid lengthy makeup sessions.
In the film's initial script, the entire principal cast of The Original Series was featured, but only three members appear in the film: William Shatner as Kirk, James Doohan as Scott, and Walter Koenig as Chekov. Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley declined to appear as their characters Spock and Leonard McCoy. Nimoy felt there were story problems with the script and that Spock's role was extraneous. Producer Rick Berman told the press, "Both Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley felt they made a proper goodbye in the last movie." Nimoy and Kelley's lines were subsequently modified for Doohan and Koenig. The news that not all of the Original Series cast was in the film was not passed to all of The Next Generation actors. When Goldberg arrived on set on her first day, she immediately asked to see Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed Nyota Uhura in The Original Series. When told that Nichols was not in the film, she said to Koenig, "The fans have been waiting for years to see Nichelle and me and Uhura and Guinan on screen together." Patrick Stewart said that he had made an effort to ensure the original cast's involvement in the film: "I didn't want us to sail into the future just as The Next Generation cast."
Alan Ruck plays Enterprise-B captain John Harriman. When approached for the role, Ruck assumed he would play an alien, saying, "Look, when I shave every day, I don't look in the mirror and say, 'Hey! There's a starship commander.'" Berman informed him that the character was from a wealthy and connected family, and was placed in command as a stepping stone to a political career. Jacqueline Kim plays Enterprise-B helmsman Demora Sulu. Kim consulted with art supervisor Michael Okuda to make sure her hand movements and manipulations of the ships' controls were consistent and accurate. Glenn Morshower played an Enterprise-B navigator; he apologized to the director for a poor first rehearsal, because as a Star Trek fan he was unused to performing along with actors he had idolized for years.
Many of the minor characters throughout the film appeared in different roles in the television series. Tim Russ, who appears as an Enterprise-B bridge officer, played a terrorist in "Starship Mine" and a Klingon in "Invasive Procedures", and later joined the cast of Star Trek: Voyager as the Vulcan Tuvok. Various background roles were played by the main cast's stunt doubles.
Production Development In 1992, months before the official announcement of a followup to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Paramount Pictures executives approached Star Trek: The Next Generation producer Rick Berman about creating another feature film. Berman informed writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga that Paramount had approved a two-picture deal approximately midway through The Next Generations sixth season. Moore and Braga, convinced Berman had called them into his office to tell them The Next Generation was cancelled and they were out of a job, were instead given the task of writing the film. Berman also worked with former Next Generation producer Maurice Hurley to develop possible story ideas, intending to develop two film scripts simultaneously and prioritize whichever was most promising. Executive producer Michael Piller turned down the opportunity to develop ideas, objecting to what he saw as a competition for the job. Moore and Braga's script was ultimately chosen. The writers spent weeks developing the story with Berman, before taking a working vacation in May 1993 to write the first-draft screenplay, completed June 1.
Moore described Generations as a project with several required elements. Berman felt that having the original cast of the previous Star Trek films felt like a "good way to pass the baton" to the next series. The studio wanted the original cast to only appear in the first minutes and Kirk only recurring at the end of the film. Other requests included a Khan Noonien Singh–like antagonist, Klingons, and a humorous Data plot. At one point, the writers toyed with the idea of pitting the two crews against each other. "We were obsessed with the poster image of the two Enterprises locked in combat: Kirk vs. Picard, One Must Die!" said Moore. Ultimately, the writers could not come up with a plausible explanation for such a conflict, and abandoned the idea.