I’m rewatching Star Trek: Generations for the first time since… oh, I don’t know, high school? And I still hate what they do with Data and the emotion chip.
The way Brent Spiner plays it, it’s like Data becomes a completely different person with the emotion chip. It makes me think of the one time as a kid when my mom got drunk — someone safe, whose presence I relied on became erratic and silly in a really stupid way. It’s just awful.
Of course, watching Picard overact in Generations — as if he were on stage, playing for a theater audience who needs to see his emotions from way in the back seats, rather than displaying genuine, subtle, complicated emotion — it just seems like the whole movie is overdone.
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Oh, rewatching Star Trek: Generations makes me shout at the screen… this would be why I haven’t watched it in such a long time.
Seriously, Picard is smarter than to require a very powerful android who is OBVIOUSLY malfunctioning (whether he says so or not) to keep working.
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Star Trek 7 premise: the nexus is PURE JOY
Picard, a man who hates children gets sucked up by the nexus: A GAGGLE OF CHILDREN SURROUND HIM
Uh huh. Yeah. That’s Picard’s idea of pure joy. IF ONLY HE’D KNOWN, then he wouldn’t have WASTED HIS LIFE being a starship captain.
Gah.
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Here’s what I can say for Star Trek: Generations — while I basically dislike it as a Next Generation movie, I actually do really like all the Classic Trek parts. I think the opening on the Enterprise B is funny, and Kirk’s part in the nexus is poignant, beautiful, and rings true.
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Also, yes, I did rewatch Star Trek III – VI. But instead of tweeting about III, I took copious notes preparing for the podcast I’ve been invited to participate in.
Star Trek IV remains eminently lovable & VI is a powerful work of art that transcends its place in the franchise.
As for Star Trek V, I was actually surprised by how close it comes to being a good movie…
But it fundamentally fails to sell the viewer on the idea that god is hiding on that one random planet, which makes it all kinda fall apart, ‘cause it really needs you to believe that.
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If for one second, the viewer had really believed the entity hiding on the random planet in Star Trek V was actually god, then this would be a fantastic line:
“What does god need with a starship?”
Unfortunately, the viewer has it figured out long, long before that moment.