Star Trek Generations: Broken Bridges to A New Era

When I first saw this movie, I absolutely adored it.  "All Good Things", the final epic episode bookend of Star Trek The Next Generation had just aired and it was good to see our old friends of the Enterprise D were still boldly going, now on the big screen.  This story had lots of call backs to episodes and moments past in Trek, such as Data's emotion chip, and characters moving forward, like Worf getting promoted to Lieutenant Commander (how often do we see a promotion on screen on Trek?).  We also had Guinan and her race, the Al Aurians, and we saw a bit of their history as refugees after being driven from their home world by the Borg.  Of course, we also have the very cleavagy Duras sisters in all their glorious skankiness.

But now that I'm almost a generation removed from this adventure, how does it hold up over time?  Or does it?  Well...more or less.  What it does well, it does very well.  Our beloved crew, our first friends from Trek's 24th century, are right there, recognizable and lovable.  Our ship, the Enterprise-D, still there, still lovely.  We even get to see some new things, like the Stellar Cartography, a beautiful stellar mapping and plotting room.  We also see the launching of the Enterprise-B, whom lore suggest was one of the hardest luck ships to bear the name of Enterprise, some of the original crew (Kirk, Scotty and Chekov...after Nimoy and Kelly turned down the offers to appear).

The story in brief, the Enterprise-B on a brief pre-commissioning cruise, mostly for the benefit of the press, goes out on a jaunt and because it is the nearest available ship, gets thrown into an impromptu rescue mission for a couple of Al Aurian ships stuck in the pull of some kind of interstellar "energy ribbon".  The mission is partially successful, but history records Kirk was lost on this mission.  Fast forward to the twenty-forth century, the Enterprise D responds to a distress signal at a stellar observatory and finds Dr. Tolian Soran, an Al Aurian scientists, another survivor of the Borg massacre, one who lost his family, and one who has encountered this energy ribbon before...

SPOILERS...

I'm not going to rehash the whole thing, and again, it was great to see our beloved characters again and this, this attempt to bridge the old and the new.  But...what doesn't work...frankly, though it was great to see our people from the twenty-third century, Scotty and Chekov felt tacked on.  As spectacular as the crash scene with the Enterprise-D was, it partly felt like the merchandise people said, we need to clear out the old ship so we can sell new models.  And finally, Ronald D. Moore has expressed regret how Kirk's death was handled.  For such an epic character, his death felt...lacking in proper epicness.

A mixed bag, but again, if you love these characters, you love this universe, there is plenty to like, even now in the 21st century.  As the cinematic entry to the 24th century, there have been rougher landings...