Two years after James Kirk died in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, I recall
finding a book on the shelves at my local Barnes & Noble called "The
Return" - written by William Shatner and Judith & Garfield
Reeves-Stevens. The cover showed a reprise of the GENERATIONS movie
poster with the tagline "Legends never die..." I picked up the book
reflexively and considered for a moment what I was holding. Placing it
back on the shelf, I realized that the damage done by the movie was too
significant to erase with some make-good, non-canon fanfic.
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"If this doesn't go well, I'm sure they'll find a way to write me back in after the fact." |
STAR TREK: GENERATIONS didn't just kill off Captain James T. Kirk, it
carved him into a hollow, depressing figure who resented being the
savior of the Federation. In trying to reveal some new insight into the
nature of this iconic hero, the film's writers, Ronald D. Moore and
Brannon Braga, ended up contradicting the soul of Kirk.
Let's start at the beginning of GENERATIONS to see how wrong they got
it. When we last saw Kirk, he was signing off on 25 years of his storied
career in Starfleet by magnanimously saying "This ship and her history
will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their
posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we
have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going
where no man - where no one - has gone before."
Cut to about a year later, where Kirk, Pavel Chekov and Montgomery Scott
are dignitaries attending the maiden voyage of the new Enterprise,
NCC-1701-B. In about two seconds of this sequence, it's clear that Kirk
is miserable in his retirement. It makes sense that he would feel this
way, even despite his last log entry from STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED
COUNTRY. Being master and
commander of a starship was Kirk's first, best destiny (as his best
friend, Mr. Spock so eloquently said in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF
KHAN). And perhaps a year with no mission or crew took
its toll on Kirk. How many times is enough to save the galaxy? Maybe for a
high-functioning specimen like Kirk, the answer is never.
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Steady... |
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... as... |
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... she goes. |
Yet the script beats its audience over the head with Kirk's misery. It
went from a cute moment where Kirk eyes the empty center seat on the
bridge to a not-so-gentle exchange with Scotty essentially saying "Quit
being such a bitch, sir." All of this melodrama felt like watching a man
seeing his true love marrying some unworthy bastard (here, Captain John
Harriman, played by the perennial beta-male, Alan Ruck). This is not
STAR TREK. The launch of a new ship, let alone an Enterprise, should be a
sacred moment- an affirmation of Starfleet's mission to discover new
frontiers.
So, while we're being told the new captain is a wimp and that Kirk is a
god, some random cosmic disaster quickly requires the Enterprise's
attention as being "the only ship within range" despite its location
within our solar system. I'm sure Moore & Braga chuckled when they
wrote that line in their hotel room in Hawaii (yes, they sequestered
themselves in paradise to pen this film). As Harriman tentatively calls
the shots, we see Kirk grimacing, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
Oh yes, another TREK trope surfaces- all Starfleet captains become
fully incapable when Kirk is in their presence. You see what happens
when you let fans write stuff?
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The ribbon is gonna get you, the ribbon is gonna get you, the ribbon is gonna GET YOU! |
The Enterprise-Beta discovers a ribbon in space that's tearing apart
some random refugee ships. Kirk nudges Harriman to use the Enterprise to
save the remaining passengers, even if she's one Tuesday away from
having anything useful put aboard her. Things go well enough until Kirk
has to run down many decks (since the ship has no one younger or
qualified to do so) and recalibrate the deflector dish to go from suck
to blow and free the ship from the squiggly space ribbon's gravity. As
Kirk makes the final adjustments down below, the ship is returning to
safety and BAM! Kirk gets lashed by the ribbon at the last second,
presumably sucking him into space. Kirk is dead.
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I never trusted the Klingon fire marshal, and I never will... |
The next several dozen, painful minutes of GENERATIONS consist of
another Enterprise captain, Jean-Luc Picard, having his own midlife
crisis about being in Starfleet while his brother's family just died in a
tragic fire back home. In a tearful, orange-lit scene in his quarters,
he tells Counselor Troi "I took some comfort that the family would go
on, but now there'll be no more Picards." Alright, so we have Kirk
lamenting being out of the service and we have Picard whining about
never making baby French kids who sound British. Clunkiness aside, at
least the characters are matching up to their superficial labels.
Meanwhile, Riker is trying to tell Picard that Geordi's been kidnapped
by some jerk named Dr. Soran, who just blew up a nearby star. Confused
by all of this stuff, Picard goes to the ship's fortune teller, Guinan,
who fills out matters by telling Picard that Soran is trying to get back
to the ribbon that we saw in the film's opening. Guinan tells Picard
"The ribbon is a nexus, like the pool bar at the Hilton Hawaiian
Village® Waikiki Beach Resort!" Paradise is an all-inclusive bar
package, according to the ship's bartender (and the film's
screenwriters).
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Data, show me every mutant in this sector. |
Picard gathers himself enough to do some science with his robot butler,
Señor Data, who's having his own goddamn identity crisis about not
getting humor. With his emotion chip jammed in his skull, Data not only
still doesn't get humor, but he's gone completely weepy all damn day.
"Picard and Data have a cry" should have been the movie's title. But
back to the "plot"- Picard goes to the sweet TV room that we've never
seen before on the series and he makes Data punch in some calculations
to determine that Dr. Soran is exploding stars to make the ribbon come
to him! JUST LIKE GUINAN ALREADY TOLD YOU, JEAN-LUC.
Soran plans on getting back into the ribbon by destroying a star in a
random solar system, redirecting the ribbon to fly into his wrought iron
platform on a planet with some low-stakes, preindustrial humanoids in
its system. Phew, I can barely keep up with this garbage either. Let's
take a quick break here to also mention that Spock and McCoy were
originally planned to appear with Kirk in the movie's prologue but
Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley both declined to do so because they
thought the script sucked. Nimoy also turned down the producer's offer
to direct the film, another bad sign in the film's early stages of
planning.
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Insert Burning Man joke here. |
Where were we? Ah, Soran succeeds at blowing up the star and catching a
ride on the ribbon, killing everyone (including the Enterprise-D's crew
and Spot, who had all just suffered the ship crash landing on a nearby
planet). Movie over!
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Jean-Luc's paradise disturbs me in ways I cannot begin to describe. |
No, goddamn it, not so fast! Picard got snagged by the ribbon too and
ends up in a Dickensian Christmas paradise with an imaginary family of
his own (where he's comically still dressed in his STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE
NINE space jammies). His new kids are cute, his new wife is a Vanessa
Redgrave-type lady, and everything is so wonderful! But something's
wrong... Picard just feels it because he's a space hero who is true of
space heart. Befuddled but happy, his trusty plot expositor, Guinan,
shows up again! Guinan, what are you doing in the ribbon, it didn't
touch you back on the planet! No, she says, the ribbon kinda touched me
seven decades ago when Kirk saved us from entering Paradise with Soran
in the prologue. Well, enough of this weird-ass happiness, Picard says, I
want to go back to reality- 5 seconds before I fucked up and failed to
stop Soran. Sure, Guinan says, but you're gonna need some help from the
captain of all captains, James Tiberius Kirk!
Picard, still in the ribbon, asks Guinan to get him into Kirk's version
of Paradise. Oh this is going to be great. I bet it's Kirk on the
original Enterprise bridge with all of his greatest hits of space ladies
fawning over him, right? Okay, maybe not, but how about Kirk with the
original crew back on his last Enterprise, after Spock says "Go to
Hell!" to Starfleet for telling them to go home for decommissioning.
Finally, the two crews in one movie, as it was meant to be!
No.
What we get instead is some random mountain cabin with Kirk, in HIS
space jammies, chopping wood outside. Why? As Kirk will tell Picard,
through a series of meandering exchanges (that involve eggs and a random
Great Dane showing up), he's happily shacked up with a beautiful woman
named Antonia. Antonia is so beautiful that the camera never
dares to show her face because the males (and females) in the theater would
likely spontaneously combust-- just take Kirk's word for it. As Kirk
talks about his 3,772nd girlfriend to Picard, he also mentions that he
hated being in Starfleet because it forced him to not have a family
life. Woah, now- what did Kirk just say?
The writers took Picard's punk-ass character arc and plopped it right
onto Kirk. This "woe is me" nonsense may have barely made sense for
Picard in the first place (he was worried about not planting his space
seed) but we're suddenly told that Kirk regrets breaking up with the
invisible Antonia and choosing to return to Starfleet?
The timing of this moment in Kirk's past takes place is very important-
taking place right before STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN. Kirk dealt
with a significant share of tragedy back then- losing Spock, his son,
David, and the Enterprise in an effort to stop Khan and Kruge from
destroying untold numbers of lives. But this also precedes Kirk saving
billions on Earth from the space whale probe, when he traveled back to
1986 to meet the mom from SEVENTH HEAVEN. And finally, this takes place before Kirk foils the plot
of those seeking to cause a full-scale war with the Klingons. But no,
Kirk wished he never left the cabin and Antonia. The whale probe alone
should negate this line of thinking. This whole shoehorned contrivance,
which contradicts everything we see of Kirk in the beginning of the same
movie, is a terrible piece of writing. And it get worse! Picard tells
Kirk he's not thinking clearly but Kirk wants to ride his horse instead
of being lectured by Picard. After making a dangerous jump and not
feeling any fear from it, only then does Kirk realize that nothing in
the ribbon is real or worth keeping. Well, thank the God of Sha Ka Ree
for horses!
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My horse's name is "Star," yours is named "Fleet." |
Kirk agrees to help Picard stop Soran by returning to 5 seconds before
Picard originally failed and off they go to save the Veridian cave
people (who must also be hot as fuck, because we never see them either).
But Kirk dies again.
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Did we do it?! |
Kirk fell down a broken catwalk, which fell on him after he fell off
some rock bullshit, come on, I can't even try to explain this garbage
anymore.
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Did we make a DIFFERENCE?! |
Kirk, on his death (rock)bed, tells Picard that making a difference is
fun and then he croaks. Picard covers Kirk's corpse with 66 rocks on
Veridian because fuck the Prime Directive, that's how Kirk would have
wanted it (please find his space pants, you primates!). And then Picard
catches a timely rescue shuttle back to his busted Enterprise which
crashed for no good reason.
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This should keep the coyotes away. |
I'm not reviewing the movie here, but I have to express how this is my
least favorite STAR TREK story. Kirk is given the worst possible
sendoff. By making him regret saving the galaxy (and Antonia!), the
writers turn Kirk into as non-Kirk a Kirk as possible. I could have
accepted Kirk dying if he was acting like himself. At least his first
death on the Enterprise-B showed Kirk doing his thing-
one last bit of heroics to save a namesake ship that he always loved.
Instead, we get a confused man who decides to do the right thing when
his horse doesn't scare him. And only then, it's to see him fall to his
death on a planet that means nothing to us. And as for Picard, he never
speaks of children again because he knows that he doesn't want to end up
like that depressed guy who made eggs for his imaginary girlfriend.
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Maybe Jim imagined her all along... |
The End.
P.S. Spot lives.
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"Hey, yellow guy, did you assholes let the therapist drive this ship?" |
Enjoyed every word of it. An epic piece of writing and a spot-on treatment of how one of my most beloved childhood heroes was given a meaningless death by a couple of assholes who fundamentally failed to understand the character.
ReplyDeleteFakeEyes22 says:
ReplyDeleteThis movie tells us that Kirk is miserable in retirement and also tells us that retirement is his personal paradise. He wants so desperately to be a Captain again but mostly wishes to never be one at all.
It swiftly solved the raging Kirk vs. Picard debate at the time by demonstrating that either choice is a stupid choice. I watched this movie and wondered what Sisko was doing. I chose him at this point.
Data sang a silly song about life forms. That was fun.
Reading this was also fun. Ribbon is gonna get you!
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Everyone should try to watch this. Very amazing. cash for cars hyannis
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