DVDFile

There's a whole lotta Star Trek here. Let's start with how various DVDFilers over the years have felt about the four films included here in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Movie Collection:

Generations (Dan Ramer): The odd numbered film curse strikes again. With Generations, Paramount passes the baton from Classic Trek to Next Generation. Alas, despite the considerable efforts by cast and filmmakers, the plot leaves much to be desired.

Having finally transitioned into retirement after a delay long enough to save the Federation from a nasty plot portrayed in The Undiscovered Country, Kirk (William Shatner), Chekov (Walter Koenig), and Scotty (James Doohan) are invited aboard the latest incarnation of the Enterprise, NCC-1701B - an Excelsior-class starship and quite possibly my favorite configuration - for its maiden voyage. This is to be a brief milk run from space-dock to Pluto and return with copious press in attendance to mark the occasion. The ship is under the command of Captain John Harriman (Alan Ruck), and it's hard to believe that any officer as inept as Harriman could have been selected for such an important post. When faced with a crisis, a distress call from the transport Lakul reporting that its convoy has been trapped in an unknown spatial/temporal distortion three light-years from Earth, he freaks, provoking Kirk to guide the incompetent officer. The Enterprise warps off to save the day, which leads to an heroic death by our intrepid captain... or does it?

Flash forward about eighty years. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Enterprise-D are summoned to help a Federation science platform that has come under attack. The aggressors are the Romulans, a plot thread that is simply abandoned. The only survivor is Dr. Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell) an alien with great longevity that we first saw onboard Enterprise-B during the rescue. We soon learn that Soran is trying desperately to return to the Nexus, the spatial/temporal distortion encountered decades before. The Nexus provides immortality and bliss; simply think your desires and they are fulfilled. It seems that Soran was pulled unceremoniously from the Nexus and he wants back. We never learn how he first came to be within the Nexus, nor do we learn how he was pulled out - additional abandoned plot threads. He is the ultimate sociopath, uncaring as he destroys millions of lives with a star killer that permits him to manipulate the gravitational influences on the path of the Nexus. And he's oblivious to the consequences of trading the assistance he needs for the secrets of that device - an ultimate weapon - to Klingon renegades, led by the Duras sisters, seeking to unseat the leadership on their home world. After all, once he's within the Nexus, the fate of the galaxy simply won't matter.

Picard follows him to the surface of a planet from which Soran will launch another star killer and be swept away by the Nexus. Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) has his hands full as well. The Klingons have attacked the Enterprise after stealing its shield modulation frequency through Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge's (LeVar Burton) sabotaged visor. The Enterprise primary hull is forced to crash-land on the planet's surface after separating from the secondary hull due to a warp core confinement failure. It's not a pretty sight. Soran succeeds in imploding the star and the shockwave destroys the planet and the Enterprise survivors, but not before Picard and Soran are catapulted into the Nexus. And that's where Picard finds Kirk, who with no sense of time, has been living quite contentedly for almost eighty years. Before you can say quadrotriticale, the two captains join forces and, with previous guidance from Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), think their way back to the planet only several minutes before Soran was to launch the star killer. Conflict ensues and the good guys win, but not before a noble but ludicrous end to our beloved Captain Kirk.

This plot has so many holes that available space doesn't due them justice. Why didn't Soran suit up and launch himself out of an airlock in the vicinity of the Nexus?  Surely, with his resources, he could have appropriated a shuttle. Why did Kirk and Picard return to when they did?  Picard didn't even need Kirk; he could have gone back and had Soran taken into custody when he was picked up at the science station. Why weren't there two Picards when Kirk and Picard returned to the planet from the Nexus?  Why would one of the most sensitive and highly classified pieces of data (the shield frequency) be displayed in the clear on an engineering console?  Need-to-know protects classified data from even those who have suitable clearances. And for heaven's sake, why aren't there any seatbelts on the Enterprise?  The storyline is a mess, illogical and not self-consistent. This is an inauspicious introduction of the Next Generation to the big screen.

First Contact (Mark Keizer): When The Next Generation debuted, there was doubt that the new show could capture lightning in a bottle, just as the original show did starting in 1966. But not only did TNG equal its predecessor, it surpassed it. Much of the credit goes to Patrick Stewart, inarguably the finest actor ever to wear a Starfleet uniform fulltime. Stewart's gravitas was dramatic without being too fanboy. He was Shakespearean without being too pompous. I truly believe that if Patrick Stewart had not played Captain Picard, the franchise would have died with The Next Generation.

In fact, the last great sign of life in the Star Trek universe was the release of First Contact in 1996. It's the only Trek film (with the exception of Nemesis, itself a heartbreaker) that looked like a "real" movie. It felt as big and was put together as professionally as any James Bond movie or Jack Ryan adventure. The script is tight and exciting, with light dollops of humor and a memorable villain. The effects looked big in budget and grand in scale. The story treads on dangerous ground, because it revolves around a time travel, a concept that Trek loves dabbling in, even if it risks turning off non-believers. Here, the crew of the Enterprise stumbles upon a plan by the Borg to travel back to 21st century Earth and stop humanity's first warp speed flight. The voyage, piloted by Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell), attracted the attention of a passing Vulcan ship, which then landed on Earth, marking first contact between humans and an alien species. But the Borg seek to change all that and the Enterprise follows them back in time to insure Cochrane's flight takes off as planned.

The film also features a fine and creepy sexual undertone, certainly a first for the franchise. Although the Borg, half-organic, half-machine, are stripped of all individuality, they do have a leader. Played with conviction and lots of facial makeup by South African-born Alice Krige, the Borg Queen captures android crewmember Data (Brent Spiner), straps him to a gurney and grafts real skin onto his arm. She then blows on it, which basically turns him on. As the first PG-13 Star Trek film, director Jonathan Frakes (who doubles as First Officer Riker) squeezed all he could from the new ratings frontier.

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