Star Trek 7–10 (TNG films)

By far the idea I saw the most when looking up reviews and commentary about the movie online was the idea that Picard’s use of the Nexus Ribbon made no sense. I’m not sure how this plot point is that much more absurd than any of the other films, many of which feature ideas you have to turn your brain off a bit to make them make sense, but sure. First, Picard, upon Guinan’s advice after entering the Nexus and seeing its temptations of the happy family he never had, is able to exit from his newfound reality within the Nexus to find Kirk, who had somehow become caught in the Nexus eighty years ago, shown at the start of the film. Kirk somehow ends up in the Nexus instead of dying in space, sure, and Picard is able to go not just to any place in the Nexus (established) but any time (established) and thus meet Kirk right as he’s entered the Nexus (because otherwise we would have to deal with Kirk having lived an entire eighty years in the Nexus which doesn’t work with the storyline they want to develop, sure).

This all is fine to me, and doesn’t seem that much more absurd than anything else in Star Trek half the time, there is definitely a convenience factor here, but sure. I don’t mind suspending my disbelief, especially as the meeting between Picard and Kirk that follows was well done in my view, and had some nice commentary on mortality, which is a fitting theme for both characters. The basic premise of the TOS films was that Kirk et al. were taking out the Enterprise for one last dance—they’re old, but not quite ready to retire yet, and they have some final adventures left in them before leaving their starship days behind them. The films also discuss what it means to adventure on a starship, and how the main trio (Kirk, Spock, and Bones) never settled down and became family men. Picard is now entering a similar point in his life. Things are moving on—he finds himself getting older and lonelier, and at the start of the film loses the closest thing he had to a son, his nephew René. At the start of Generations, we see Kirk uncomfortable in his retirement, being gawked at by what must seem to him a child in charge of the new Enterprise. Given that the last movie ended with Kirk et al. essentially saying they still don’t want to retire, even if they’ll have to soon, it makes sense that there remains something to be done with Kirk. The meeting of the two captains, and their discussion about mortality, what makes life matter, and what it means to live a good life, was touching and seemed like a good melding of the two captain’s themes at these points in their careers. This makes overlooking the sci-fi mumbo jumbo that was plausible enough to me, fine in my book.

For some reason, however, people’s brains really seem to break at the notion that Picard decides to go back in time to right before Dr. Soran is able to set off his star-destroying weapon. The fact that this is such a point of contention boggles my mind. Is it convenient and upping the stakes to not give yourself a few more minutes to set things up? Sure. Does it make sense to actually go back days, months, years, even, to change a multitude of other events too? Of course not. Some people seem to be convinced that it is a plot hole that Picard didn’t go back in time to prevent his nephew René and brother Robert’s death that occurred at the beginning of the movie, before then going on to prevent Dr. Soran as well. Or, to even go further back than that, and also prevent any of the multitude of tragedies that occurred during TNG.

Did I watch the same film as everyone else? Even aside from the clear technical arguments (the Temporal Prime Directive exists, Picard has been shown to agree with it, thus he should not go back any further in time than he has to), this idea is monumentally silly purely for thematic reasons. The film very explicitly has Picard reject the fantasy of the Nexus Ribbon—he could have chosen to stay with the imagined family he never had (which included an alive René), as Guinan said he would overwhelmingly wish to, but he does not. Both him and Kirk come to the conclusion that the fact that these things aren’t ultimately real, and that you can experience whatever you wish rather than dealing with the consequences of the real world, makes it not worth it: this steals away the essence of life. To live a good life, they find, is to do things that matter and that have an impact on others. To use the Nexus Ribbon to rewrite a personal tragedy in Picard’s life would go against the text of the movie. Though they will of course still use the Ribbon to save the two hundred million lives that Picard barely failed to save from annihilation  moments ago—I’m sure the film would be remiss to have Picard discuss how the “new timeline” established by Dr. Soran must, too, be respected.

The only thing that did stand out to me as an oversight (though, I did not think of it when originally watching) is the fact that they detached and crashed the saucer section of the ship instead of ejecting the warp core, which was established to be in their capability in TNG and other shows. However, I liked the crash sequence (the scale felt appropriate, and it really felt like they were being jumbled around in there for once!) nor the new Enterprise-E that came in the next film. Again, these are by no means amazing films, but it’s Star Trek, this is par for the course, and I didn’t find anything here that stuck out to me in that regard. I can only imagine that the hate for this film came from people upset that Kirk died (though of course a hero’s death is clearly more fitting for him than a shitty retirement, and no, I don’t care that he died under a catwalk, it was good!), and/or people upset that Kirk and his crew didn’t feature as much as they may have thought (perhaps this was advertised as more of a 50/50 cross-over movie, when really this was more of a 80/20 cross-over movie, focusing on the TNG crew for most of its runtime), and/or people who just didn’t like the new guard taking over. That added context and potential disappointment has to make up for the incongruence here, because on paper I don’t see how this movie isn’t in the good half of the Star Trek film catalog.

There were many issues with the film, but nothing too terrible. First, for some reason the Son’a have a bunch of other races present in their ship? (Or they’re all the same race but look different for some reason). They always just referred to them as “the Son’a” though, and made no differentiation among the different members of the crew. This made the reveal in the end that the Son’a are the same race as the Ba’ku, an entire separate sect, fall a little flat for me. At first it seemed like it was just the two (named) guys who were actualy Ba’ku/Son’a, until they shortly thereafter showed a couple more random crewmates who looked the same race as them. Also, as a side note, the Son’a are definitely just reworked versions of the Vidiians, given that they couldn’t use them as they only exist in the Delta quadrant, right?

Second, The ending is hilariously insane. I guess the writers wanted to show that they realized the Enterprise could actually eject its warp core, so they did that after it took damage, making the conflict be that they were struggling to get into communications-range with Starfleet to get word out about the conspiracy on the Ba’ku homeworld, limping along at impulse speed. But then they decide that the Enterprise has to somehow still get back in time to miraculously save Picard aboard the exploding Son’a weapon, about two minutes later. Also, the Son’a were off their ship, then they were trying to get control of the ship but had no control, then they were on the ship and somehow had fully fooled Picard et al., it was all over the place. Truly I just had to laugh at the spectacle and enjoy it for what it is.

Finally, while I admire the principled politics the film espoused about forced relocations, upon later reflection (this did not come to me at the time of viewing), the film as a whole certainly would have been much stronger if it had made clear that there was an alternative to the forced dichotomy Vice Admiral Dougherty made (that we could either let the six hundred Ba’Ku stay on the planet, or we could make the planet uninhabitable in order to reap the health benefits of its regenerative properties throughout the galaxy). Perhaps, in the end, Starfleet could have simply committed to doing whatever it took to find a peaceful way to spread the benefits of the planet without killing it and relocating its people. Instead, we are left watching people squabble online twenty years later about a trolley problem between six hundred people’s way of life and the extension and health of untold billions of lives, and how actually Picard is a terrible man or whatever.

This may have simply been a classic problem of sci-fi power creep—the writers could have thought this was too much of a boon to just drop into the universe (all the sudden people could live potentially twice as long?), and so they’d rather stop it in its tracks rather than deal with the long-reaching implications of Dougherty and the Sona’s plan. But I don’t think this would be too out of left field. There’s no reason this couldn’t be just another advancement in technology in the Perfect Utopia of TNG’s Federation (we already have in-universe explanations for humans living longer in Star Trek’s time, which is why, for example, Picard is supposed to be fifteen years older than Patrick Stewart). Besides, it’s not like this is something they’d have to deal with in the short-term—with a solution like I propose, they could just punt it down the road, just as they did in that old TNG episode where they decided they needed to limit and eventually phase out warp drive due to a not-so-subtle climate change metaphor, which was of course never heard from again outside of a commitment to Solving Things Eventually).

Before getting to Data’s death and B-4, I want to quickly address two things. One, as I said, not every character is going to get their moment when you’re talking about four movies versus 178 episodes of TNG. Yet, Riker finally got his commission and moved on with Troi, Picard dealt with what it meant to be human and to leave a legacy, and Star Trek finally made some sort of movement on the Romulans, who until now have been greatly under-utilized (I assume this is because, like the Klingons, the Romulans were featured in TOS, but from what I’ve watched in the trilogy of series, they’ve basically just always been there as this boogeyman that’s never been touched on much, so now to end the film series with a potential for some movement toward peace with the Romulans seems fitting). I thought that was pretty satisfying as a send-off.

Second, many people seem to dislike the (for lack of a better term, apologies) mind rape scene with Troi, and say that it is meaningless, or out of left field. Well, for one, it is certainly not out of left field given that this has essentially already been done before with Troi in an earlier episode of TNG. And I certainly didn’t feel it was out of left field in the movie, I thought it was an incredibly chilling scene that showcased how disturbing Shinzon truly was. The scene comes after we had just seen Shinzon portrayed in a potentially sympathetic light after having dinner with Picard. Then, to establish the stakes, we find out that Shinzon probably has some sort of illegal weaponized radiation and surely can’t be up to any good, and Shinzon tells his viceroy that he was “just curious” about Picard. The assault on Troi then occurs and serves to sever any misplaced trust the audience may still have in Shinzon. This is I imagine the primary impetus for the scene, but it should be noted that this is not all, it also directly relates to the main plot, as Troi’s knowledge of Shinzon and his viceroy’s telepathic abilities directly leads to their downfall in the final battle when she uses this against them, essentially turning the tide of the fight. I am certainly not going to tell anyone how to feel if they disliked the scene or if it made them uncomfortable. The use of this kind of assault against Troi certainly should be open to criticism. But, to me, it heightened the experience of the movie for me, making Hardy’s character truly feel disgusting.

Finally, we have Data. Data’s death got me good. I was not expecting it, and it hurt. (I had a feeling either Data was going to be changed in some important way, or was going to die, just based on the general vibes I’ve picked up, even as I’ve tried to avoid spoilers. This is part of why I wanted to watch all the movies before jumping to Picard). It felt like a good end for his character, he who endeavored to learn from humans, to sacrifice himself for his greatest role model, a would-be father figure if it wasn’t for Dr. Soong. The call-back to Data’s whistling in the first episode of TNG, and B-4’s humming of Blue Skies, which Data had sung at Riker’s wedding, is making me tear up just thinking about it.

I see a lot of hatred for B-4 that I disagree with, however. I think it’s an understandable to worry that B-4 undermines Data’s death, but that is not how I read it when watching it, nor upon further reflection. I agree that they, a bit sheepishly, included the memory transfer idea as a potential what-if. But I just can’t see that we are supposed to take that possibility, evoked by B-4’s humming of Blue Skies, as an indication that all is well, that Data will live on. I read this merely as a bittersweet note to end on—B-4 is not Data, he is just an echo. As if you were a widow to a twin, and their sibling kept reminding you of who you lost. I believe this is supported by the film. First, in B-4’s final scene, we can see that he clearly has not massively changed upon the influx of Data’s memory engrams as Data would have hoped. The best he can do is merely regurgitate some of what he has been fed. Second, Data, in discussing why Picard is not the same as Shinzon, likens himself to B-4, saying that though they are identical in many ways (including of course, their memory engrams now, it would seem!), they are still not at all the same person. For Picard and Shinzon, the difference is that one works to better himself while the other resigns himself to sitting in his own muck. For Data and B-4, the difference is in the capabilities of their positronic brains, as well as their individual consciousnesses. The line is just too on the nose for me to think that the writers really want us to think that all the sudden Data and B-4 are the same, and that we should thus not ultimately care about Data’s death.

Now, if for some reason they bring back Data in Picard (which I will be watching next), I will eat my hat, because that will probably be a shame (though who knows!). But that’s how I saw it upon viewing the film, and I thought it was a beautiful send-off.