[8.0/10] For a very long time, the endless Trekkie debate of Kirk vs. Picard was a no-brainer for me. Captain Picard was *my captain* -- the dignified, humane, paragon of leadership who elevated the role and the franchise with his very presence. And Captain Kirk was the womanizing, slobber-knocking, bundle of ham from an outdated predecessor who had become the girdle-squeezed butt of the joke by the time I was coming of age.

But *Star Trek Generations* capstones an enjoyable, year-long exercise for me, one where I watched every episode of *The Original Series* and *The Animated Series*, all of the Star Trek movies featuring the original cast, and even a handful of sundry episodes of *The Next Generation*, *Deep Space 9*, and *Voyager* where crewmembers from the first ship to bear the name “Enterprise” appear. (Not to mention one well-meaning, star-studded fan film.) And in that time, I’ve come to appreciate the man known as James T. Kirk.

He was a captain for a different time, both in-universe in the 23rd Century when Starfleet was still taming the frontier of space, but also in the real world 1960s, where *Star Trek*’s multicultural ideas and progressive leanings often understandably gave way to the politics and perspectives of the era.

And yet there’s a remarkable continuity of character between the Kirk who strode the bulkheads in 1967 and the one who made his (for now at least) last canon appearance in 1994. When I watched *Generations* in the 90s, Kirk was an abstraction to me, the hazy, outmoded counterpoint to Picard, saddled with years of jokes about Shatner’s acting style and the chintziness of those early outings. And yet here, with nearly three decades’ worth of adventures from Kirk and performances from Shatner, this collision of worlds, this meeting between two captains, is more momentous, and meaningful, than the young, dismissive Trekkie who first watched this film could understand.

*Generations* then, makes the bold but unusual move of having the movie both begin and end with Kirk’s death. It opens on the deck of the Enterprise-B, some years after Kirk and his cohort have retired, with the Captain, Scotty, and Chekov brought on as mascots to christen their replacements. It’s clear that Kirk feels uncomfortable in his new figurehead role, itching to give orders and jump into the fray, even when he’s more legend than man sitting on someone else’s ship.

So naturally, something goes terribly wrong; one of those mysterious, dangerous translucent clouds that always seems to pop up in Trek stories is threatening people’s lives, and when the new captain can’t handle it, Kirk and his compatriots spring into action, with the daring, conviction, and willingness to take risks that became their calling cards. In trademark style, Kirk manages to save the day, but this time the incident seems to take his life.

And then we jump seventy-eight years into the future (well, further into the future). That’s one of the most impressive things about *Generations*. It is both the first *Next Generation* movie, but also a transition away from the original cast movies, and it manages to thread that needle surprisingly well. It begins with that epic tribute to the derring do of *The Original Series* and ends with Kirk dying (for real this time) after saving the day one final time, but manages to fit those events as natural elements of the broader story being told about the crew (and most notably the captain), of the Enterprise-D.

It’s a story of those captains from very different eras, not just the world of Star Trek, feeling like time may have passed them by. A surprising number of Star Trek films have been about feeling your age and worrying that time may be running out. But it feels particularly relevant here. The original cast had completed their last film, and would hereafter be reduced to cameos and legends. And the *Next Generation* team had wrapped up its seventh and final season, and were hoping to make the jump to films, but it was precarious shift. For all anyone knew, this would be the last major cinematic adventure for either branch of the Star Trek tree.

So *Generations* has a reflective quality. Before the life-saving hullabaloo at the top of the film, Kirk notices that the Enterprise-B is being helmed by Sulu’s daughter, and remarks on Sulu finding the time to raise a family. After a fun nautical sequence to introduce the *TNG* cast, Picard receives cause to reflect on his own family, as he learns that the brother, sister-in-law, and nephew we met in post-Borg episode “Family” have perished in a fire.

And even that reflection is cause to contrast and compare the two captains. While not facing the same situation, Kirk expresses his wistfulness in wry comments to his buddies, with that bit of Shatner whimsy and sarcasm that reveals the character’s worries but maintains the too-cool-for-school facade. Picard, meanwhile, has to be coaxed to grieve by Counselor Troi, and there Patrick Stewart gives the performance of the film, weeping over the life his nephew will never have the chance to lead, feeling the responsibility of his family name possibly ending with him.

It’s the two shows, two captains, and two sensibilities, in miniature. There’s the sly devil pausing for a moment and feeling uneasy in his role but diving in quickly to save the day, and there’s the polished statesman, attempting to maintain his dignified veneer, only to let the raw emotion pour out of him when the time is right.

That’s something Data experiences here too. Aside from the Captains, Data’s serviced the most by *Generations*’s script. It features him having Geordi install his emotions chip, in an effort to continue to expand his attempt to become more human. That often provides the comic relief for the film, which tends to go pretty broad and even create a fair amount of tonal whiplash for the film. It’s fun to see Data cheerfully declare his hatred of a drink, or cheer on the Enterprise defeating an enemy, or come up with a song about scanning for life forms, but it doesn’t always fit into the atmosphere of a particular moment, and some of it’s pretty cheesy.

But the character choice gains strength when the film plays it for drama rather than for laughs. While the humor of experiencing every human emotion of the course of a day or so has comic potential, the episode also finds the power in experiencing mortal fear for the first time, guilt over your failure to overcome it, and the sense of being overwhelmed by a cacophony of feelings you cannot ignore. But when Data is forced to bounce these concerns off his captain and confidante, and experiences genuine joy and relief for the first time, the payoff is tremendous. It’s an uneven arc, one that misses as much as it hits, but it centers on the search for the heart of humanity at the core of Star Trek and delivers when it needs to.

The same cannot really be said for the film’s major plot. For all of *Generations*’s lofty themes, it is required by movie law to have a villain, a major threat, and some wacky science fiction excuse to pair up the two guys on the poster. None of them is bad exactly, but none of them really soars or syncs up naturally with the depth of the theme.

That sci-fi wackiness is The Nexus, some supernatural plane or alternate dimension or other such treknobabble-filled wonderland where you experience nothing but happiness. It turns out that Kirk didn’t die, and was instead swept up into The Nexus’s otherworldly embrace, and what do you know, Picard gets swept up in it too.

As means of explaining why Kirk could be alive and kicking (or at least nudging) nearly a century after his heydey, The Nexus is fine. Frankly, any excuse was going to be a bit cheesy, but *Star Trek* is no stranger to mysterious cosmic phenomenon or time-altering shenanigans.

But the execution is off. For one thing, the villain’s motivation hinges on his desire to get back to The Nexus at any cost, given how utterly blissful it is, and Guinan emphasizes her desire to forget she was ever there because otherwise its pull would be too strong, and warns Picard that he won’t care about anything else but his personal joy within it. But when, inevitably, Picard arrives there, he has a brief (if potent), helping of the familial joy he had previously regretted missing out on, but then pretty quickly resolves that he must go back to save the day.

And though the episode spends a little longer on Kirk’s version of Heaven and the paths not taken (which make for a good detour to further establish his own motivation and character details after the opening sequence), he too pretty easily decides that it isn’t real and so he’s ready to go back to the real world and fight the good fight. Maybe you can chalk it up to Picard and Kirk being such Great Men™ that they can withstand temptations that make other men crumble, but it feels more like a cheap way to put them together and get them where they need to be with minimal fuss.

Similarly, the attack by and collaboration from The Klingons feels less like an organic part of the film, and more like something that gives the non-Picard members of the *TNG* something to do while Picard is off in la la land, and to supply the legally required amount of explosions, stunt work, and outer orbit action. It’s all fine on that front, if a bit saggy, with the Enterprise’s planetary crash proving a particularly tense sequence, but for the most part it comes off like tossed-in fireworks for fireworks sake.

Then there’s Dr. Soren, the aforementioned villain who often seems similarly extraneous. Malcolm McDowell gives the mostly perfunctory bad guy his level best, and at times feels like a modern day equivalent to Khan in *Star Trek 2*, spouting shopworn first year philosophy clichés but doing so with gusto.

The problem is that Soren works better as a symbol than he does a character. He is the personification of Kirk and Picard’s fears, of what they might turn into if they hold onto their regrets of the past. He is desperate to avoid the emotional pain from the loss of his family, to avoid the inevitability of death, to declare that nothing matters because time will always catch up with you. In many ways he’s a strawman, or a caricature, of the contrary position to the parable Kirk and Picard are supposed to be receiving. But he at least has flavor, mainly from McDowell’s performance, even if he’s more of a vessel for ideas than a fully-formed person.

But as clunky as the devices for uniting the two captains are, and as superfluous an obstacle as Soren feels at times, the thematic foundation of the film is sound and, at times, affecting. Kirk laments his stepping away from the Captain’s chair because that chair gave him the ability to make a difference. Picard, realizes that the differences he makes in his life, differences he could make by virtue of sitting in that chair, matter more than what he leaves behind.

As much as the two captains are different, as much as their very presence in the same scene feels like a bit of a clash of energy in the way that Picard’s face-to-face encounters with Scotty and Spock never did, *Generations*’s greatest achievement is finding the common ground between them. Here are two men of different eras, of different perspectives, who are nonetheless united in their desire to save the galaxy, who feels the same pull of the families they’ll never have, but are buoyed by the thrill of adventure and the duty and honor of fighting the good fight every chance they get.

Both shine in the admittedly contrived moment when they resolve to go back, because the odds are against them, like they always are, because there’s some madman with a superweapon, like there always is, and because they’re the only guys in the universe who can manage to stop him, like they always do. There’s the hint of a fourth wall wink to that, but also the sense of admiration, of the years of enjoyment and endearing adventure both men and their compatriots have delivered in this vein over the years.

And so they do it once more. Wouldn’t you know it, while Picard alone is no match for Soren, the two captains together are more than the maniacal doctor can handle. (And it’s a nice touch that the more staid Picard’s fisticuffs don’t quite do the trick on Soren, but the rough and tumble Kirk, far more adept at situational pugilism, gets to triumph in one last throwdown.) There’s symbolism there too, in the melding of these two separate schools of Star Trek -- the swashbuckling James T. Kirk and the problem-solving Jean Luc Picard, as necessary to win the day, neither able to succeed without the other. In the end, Soren is defeated, the Enterprise-destroying supernova is undone, and the galaxy is safe once more.

But there’s a cost to it, and after making a daring leap to grab the macguffin to stop the doomsday device, Kirk plummets to his doom, with just enough life left in him to offer some dying words.

And they’re damn good words too. It’s no small thing to have to come up with the last words Captain Kirk will ever say, nor to deliver them, but writer and performer deliver on both fronts. It’s a moment that Shatner lives up to, very much living up to the devil-may-care attitude and wry sense of humor he always brought to the captain’s chair. His “oh my” in the face of death borders on cheese, but feels true to the actor, and the character, in their final moments together.

And so does his epitaph on nearly thirty years of adventure -- “it was fun.” *The Original Series* will never be my Star Trek in the same way *The Next Generation* was. I’ll never be able to trade the greater focus on diplomacy, the stronger philosophical bent, and the gravitas of Patrick Stewart, for the capture-followed-by-pugilism formula, the shoestring charm, and the over-the-top glory of William Shatner.

But by god, *The Original Series*, and all that branched out from it, was fun, and occasionally even as profound as its more serious-minded successors. *Generations* takes the heavy emotional baggage and burden of command of Picard, matches it with the sly winks and quick fists of Kirk, and positions them as equals, both worthy of admiration and affection, even if they don’t necessarily seem like a natural fit.

And that’s the same conclusion I’ve reached after a year of balancing my own childhood memories and affections for *The Next Generation* with the new-to-me adventures of their forbears. There would be more adventures to come for the crew of the Enterprise-D (soon to be Enterprise-E), but this was the last stand for Kirk as we knew him. He wasn’t my captain, an honor that could only be bestowed on the man I watched with the eyes of youth, but James Tiberius Kirk, and the men and women who stood alongside him, were still worthy of the place they carved out in so many hearts and minds, and so too found their place, however smaller than their larger than life presence, in mine.