It succeeds at one of those tasks. It utilizes visual effects (including what I imagine must be a combination of CGI and miniatures) which continue to hold up 16 years later. Barring a handful of obvious blue screen shots involving close-ups of characters, the seams are difficult to spot (at least on my tiny television).
The story starts off well enough with an extended opening prologue of an action sequence in which Captain Kirk, Scotty and Chekov are invited aboard the newly christened Enterprise-B for her maiden voyage. Upon reception of a distress signal they venture into a strange ribbon in space known as the nexus where two ships are caught and on the brink of destruction. They manage to save some forty people by transporting them aboard. Included among the rescued you will recognize Whoopi Goldberg, a “Next Generation” series regular as Guinan the bartender, and Malcolm McDowell as Soran, screaming that he must be sent back. During the chaos, Kirk is lost in space as the nexus destroys a large part of the ship’s hull.
78 years later we join the Enterprise-D, captained by Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) with First Officer William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and other series regulars. Data (Brent Spiner) is having trouble understanding humor so he implants an emotion chip, thus providing a bit of strained comic relief. He’s like the party guest who tries too hard to please everyone by laughing hysterically at every joke, no matter how inane. It starts to grate on you after a few minutes, but I suppose that’s the point, as he begins to grate on those around him as well. Chief Engineer LaForge is in some danger when he is taken prisoner by the Klingons, but ultimately he returns safely. Worf is given little to do and Counselor Troi offers her usual pseudo-psycho babble to Picard.
The movie gets going when they come to the aid of a space station that has been attacked. Among the survivors is Soran, still alive after all this time owing to the fact that he's some kind of being that lives a long time, and developing a weapons system that will allow him to redirect the nexus (scheduled to return to this part of the universe in a couple of days) so that he may reenter it. In the process he has struck a deal with a rogue Klingon ship just so that the script has some way to keep the Enterprise thoroughly entrenched in other matters while Soran hatches his scheme.
Guinan, who was once there herself, explains why Soran is obsessed with returning to the nexus. It is a kind of enveloping energy that wraps you entirely in feelings of joy. The elation is so strong that once inside you will lose all sense of reason and will never want to leave its throes. Here is an interesting premise – the kind of idea the original series was predicated upon – but the screenplay by Ronald Moore and Brannon Braga (both regular writers on “The Next Generation” series) doesn’t have the courage to tackle thought-provoking material and instead lapses into a realm that defies thought.
Soran succeeds in his plan to fire a rocket from Veridian 3 to destroy its sun in order to redirect the nexus to cross paths with him on the planet’s surface. Picard unwittingly gets caught in the nexus as well. For a force described as being the ultimate happiness inducer, Picard finds it relatively easy to extricate himself from its power. The nexus is supposed to give you a complete sense of fulfillment yet it manifests itself in the most pedestrian way possible – Picard finds himself in a Victorian Christmas scene with a wife and loving children and his nephew, recently killed in an accidental fire. Then Guinan, whose sole reason for existing in this script is exposition, shows up to provide just that.
After deciding that reality is more important, somehow he is able not only to leave his nexus, but enter someone else’s. And so he locates Jim Kirk (who didn’t actually die 78 years ago, but entered the nexus) at the exact moment he has also entered. The timing issue is never resolved. Moore and Braga were obviously hoping no one would think for even a moment about the logic of this. Kirk’s nexus involves reliving a scene from 9 years earlier (for him) or rather 87 years earlier (for Picard) when he told his bonnie lass that he was returning to Starfleet. He, too, is easily convinced to leave this scene that is supposed to provide the utmost joy and happiness.
Then, as if the logical inconsistencies weren’t enough, they are both able to return to the moment before Soran fires his rocket! But isn’t Soran already in the nexus and so living out some ultimate fantasy? So have Picard and Kirk traveled back in time? Actually Kirk has already traveled into the future from the past and now into the past of the future. But whose future? Or are we meant to assume that Soran’s version of the nexus, his ultimate fulfillment, is the moment before firing the rocket that blew up the sun that sent him into the nexus? And is that a possible paradox?
So Kirk and Picard work together to stop Soran from destroying the sun which, by the way, sent out a tremendous energy shockwave that destroyed the Enterprise in the first go-round. Yet you can’t help but realize that Picard has altered history while in the nexus. So is this real? Or is the entire future of “The Next Generation” crew just Picard’s nexus fantasy? Surely that’s not meant to be the case which means the last quarter of this film is an absolute mess. It’s a wonder that this was the story idea that was finally allowed to come to fruition.
David Carson is obviously a capable director. For a man making his feature film debut after many years of television (including a few episodes each of “Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” the action is handled quite well. It’s always clear and brisk. My guess is that the film was done in by producers who insisted on the inclusion of characters from the original series, irrespective of their inclusion making any sense. The original script was reportedly written to have Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but when Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley wouldn’t/couldn’t participate they were replaced by James Doohan and Walter Koenig. Hence the bizarre moment when Chekov “recruits” two nurses to head to sick bay to deal with the injured. With 16 years of hindsight, there was little reason to put those parts into the script.
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