Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - The Next Generation - Movie Week 2!

[Moggy]

Nemesis is way better than some people make out, it's way above Insurrection (Easily the worst Trek movie overall) and Final Frontier (second worst Trek movie overall).

You'll get no argument from me there.

[Tineash]

Nemesis is way better than some people make out, it's way above Insurrection (Easily the worst Trek movie overall) and Final Frontier (second worst Trek movie overall).

You'll get no argument from me there.

Long-time Trek writer/producer and screenwriter for Insurrection, Michael Piller, wrote a whole book about the creative process behind the film (spoiler alert: it was a strawberry floating mess). The book is a great read! You can find it here.

Edit: and all Patrick Stewart’s suggestions will help you understand what happened with Picard, too.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Given that you'll most likely have watched everything by the end of the year Moggy, have you decided what you are going to watch after Star Trek?

Genuinely think you should give The Orville and Babylon 5 a shot.
The Orville is on Disney+ and is basically a modern, legally distinct, version of TNG. It's absolutely fantastic too, with this years Season 3 being a huge step up on an already good show.
Babylon 5 was contemporary with DS9 and is very similar in that it's about a space station and there's drama and intrigue. I've never watched it all myself, but it's on my list to get back to.
I don't think there's anywhere in the UK to legally stream it, though you can buy it digitally on Amazon. Or there's always "alternative sources".

[Moggy]

Given that you'll most likely have watched everything by the end of the year Moggy, have you decided what you are going to watch after Star Trek?

Every episode of Coronation Street, should only take me 2 months.

I don't know if I want to go straight into another sci-fi show after this. Plus Trek is never ending, so I'll soon have new Discovery and Picard and who knows what else next year.

[Lagamorph]

I'd give another shout out to Babylon 5, especially seasons 1-4 and the movies.
It was all free on IMDB TV/Freevee (Including the movies) until recently, but sadly seems to have been removed from the free service now.

I also really enjoyed the Crusade spin-off from the last movie, but sadly it got cancelled after 1 season without ever resolving its plot.


Sadly a lot of the CGI hasn't aged hugely well, and can't ever be remastered as none of the original files remain. Once they had finished rendering all the CGI for an episode and had the final cut they had to wipe everything except the actual CGI models in order to make the CGI for the next episode since storage cost too much for them to keep and archive everything. So much like DS9 a remaster of the show would require all of the CGI re-doing from scratch, which would just be prohibitively expensive. The CGI was also all done in 4:3 format, even though the show was shot in widescreen, but the live action was cropped to 4:3 so that's what they did for the CGI since cropping it would've distorted the image.

[Moggy]

I've never seen Babylon 5, but am I right that its CGI was made with Commodore Amigas? I seem to remember that being a famous fact back in the '90s.

[Lagamorph]

I've never seen Babylon 5, but am I right that its CGI was made with Commodore Amigas? I seem to remember that being a famous fact back in the '90s.

Yep, at least in the early parts. A dozen networked Amigas. They eventually upgraded to Pentium PCs as the show got more popular and was given more budget.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Given that you'll most likely have watched everything by the end of the year Moggy, have you decided what you are going to watch after Star Trek?

Every episode of Coronation Street, should only take me 2 months.

I don't know if I want to go straight into another sci-fi show after this. Plus Trek is never ending, so I'll soon have new Discovery and Picard and who knows what else next year.

I can understand that. Might be nice to take a break and watch something else.

Both series are worth getting to at some point. Orville especially needs as many people as possible to watch it if we want them to give them a season four.

[Jenuall]

First Contact


I think this is still probably my favourite Trek movie, partly because the TNG gang will always be my crew (it was my introduction to the whole show and the series that I watched the most of as a kid) and also because it was the first Trek movie that I properly sat down and watched end to end - I had dipped into bits of the original cast movies before but not having a connection to TOS at that point I never really engaged with them and so First Contact was my real Trek Movie cherry popping moment!

It also helps that it's just a great movie! It's got a good central premise, is well paced, looks lovely with some great special effects and model shots, has a good mix of heart, humour and drama and makes a pretty good use of the whole crew overall.

The Borg Queen is a great character here (and soooo much better than the Picard S2 version ) and her interactions with both Data and Picard are excellent. The Borg in general are well represented - a good level of threat from them and pretty consistent aims and behaviour which isn't always the case!

Only real downside for me is the complete throwaway nature of the time travel element to the story. So the Borg just have the technology to create time tunnels to the past, but only chose to do this as a last resort? Why not just use that straight away and then there lives would have been so much easier! Also how exactly did the Enterprise just manage to replicate this situation to return home fine? Did they install a new chrono-drive or something? I'm sure they'll be using time travel all the time now that they've nailed it...

[Moggy]

The Borg Queen is a great character here (and soooo much better than the Picard S2 version )

Tip: It's pointless spoilering something about a future series if you don't say that it's a spoiler for a future series. Because otherwise people think it's a spoiler from the movie you're discussing and then they end up reading it.

No big deal btw! You've just ruined everything.

[Jenuall]

The Borg Queen is a great character here (and soooo much better than the Picard S2 version )

Tip: It's pointless spoilering something about a future series if you don't say that it's a spoiler for a future series. Because otherwise people think it's a spoiler from the movie you're discussing and then they end up reading it.

No big deal btw! You've just ruined everything.

Spoiler for Picard S2: it's gooseberry fool

[site23]

It sure is.

[gaminglegend]

The only real issue I find with the Movies aside from the usual when you make things bigger for a movie against the TV show (the ship just feels wrong for me compared to the series versions)..

Is Picard. And from what I understand a lot came from Stewart himself (and later in TNG) to wanting more romance & action scenes and a lot of them just seem a bit naff.

Whereas say the romances with Vash, Daren and Crusher at least seem to develop well and feel natural.

Insurrection by far suffers the most from that.

Nemesis feels very much a product of the time just coming out of the 90’s and into 00’s. I don’t think it’s bad, and really wish we now had gotten a sequel a few years later but I think it’s also a film where the world outside of Star Trek had evolved and it just felt tired.

And the cast look visibly older which hurt a little to see in a way

[Monkey Man]

[Jenuall]

Nice. Goes at about the same pace of Moggy's watching!

[Moggy]

It's better than 99% of Trek episodes.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Star Trek: Insurrection - 6/10

I think I'm always pleasantly surprised whenever I revisit this one. It's nothing particularly special and seems like it could have been a two-part season finale (In fact it feels like a few elements from TNG episodes have been blended together) were it not for the space battles and bigger budget. But it's a bit more laid back than First Contact and seems determined to have more "humour" involved.

Ultimately I think it's just "fine". It's not bad, but it's not particularly great either. Very middle of the road.
Some of the CGI hasn't aged well at all though.

It's better than 99% of Trek episodes.

Better than 100% of Season 1.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Star Trek: Nemesis - 7/10

Like I've said before I never really got all the hate that this movie gets.
It's a little flat in places I guess, but the action sequences are fun and there are some genuinely nice character moments.

I guess if I had a criticism it would be that the plot is pretty thin and falls apart a bit when you actually think about it.
I think Hardy does his best with Shinzon, but it's not one of his more memorable roles.

Again, Crusher gets next to nothing to do. She analyses some blood and that's it. Genuinely think she has 4/5 lines in the whole movie.
Troi fares a little bit better, but the mind-rape sequence is not particularly nice. At least she got to do the telepathic aiming, which was cool.

I do love the ship fight though. Especially where they actually take the time to manuever to keep the weaker shields away from weapons fire.
Then the ramming attack on the Scimitar.

So all in I enjoy it, but I recognise it's flaws.

Definitely one of the weaker movies.

[Cheeky Devlin]

And with that we prepare to wrap up our Next Generation adventure.

The 5-Year Mission continues with Deep Space Nine, starting this Sunday!

[Cheeky Devlin]

So as all good things come to an end, we too reached the end of our TNG run through.

It's still the gold standard for Star Trek frankly.
While I think DS9 is the best show overall, there is nothing that embodies "this is what Star Trek is" quite as perfectly as Next Generation does.

It's casting was perfect, it's stories compelling and it gave us fantastic episodes of television more often than not.

Yes it stumbled a bit in it's first two seasons, but once it hit its stride it's unbeatable.

Lets hope Picard Season 3 doesn't do them a dis-service.