And the plot does not always keep up with the action. In the opening minutes, starships explode, beings evaporate and retired Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is lost in space in what appears to be his final act of courage. Why? It’s all because of the appearance of a mysterious ribbon in the sky-or in Star Trek technobabble, “a conflux of temporal energy.” Later the ribbon becomes the obsession of the villainous Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell), a 300-year-old alien who is addicted to bliss, The only way he can obtain the ultimate fix is to be absorbed into it, where existence is timeless. McDowell gets to chew up the scenery with lines like “Time is the fire in which we burn.” His character wants to blow up suns (of course killing millions of beings) to force the ribbon to swing by his neighborhood. The ribbon’s time-warping aspect allows the implusive Kirk to team up with Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), his cerebral successor of some 80 years in the future, for the first time in screen history.
Once again, it’s up to the Starfleet’s good guys to stop the bad guy. The clash also settles, with surprising finality, the question that has dogged Star Trek fandora: who is the better captain, Kirk or Picard? Only one walks away. Another surprise is the film’s confident humor. Director David Carson, who has ably directed recent Star Trek television episodes, gives the android Data (Brent Spiner) considerable room to play scenes (and steal many) for laughs. The earnest, Oz-like tin man in search of a heart discovers fun (and later fear and remorse) when he has an emotion chip installed in his positronic noggin.
While Shatner gets a fair amount of screen time, two veteran shipmates (James Doohan as Scotty and Walter Koenig as Chekov) make only token appearances. This movie is really a star vehicle for the cast of “StarTrek: The Next Generation,” the popular television series Paramount canceled last May in hopes of increasing Star Trek revenues at the movies. By the looks of “Generations,” it’s the sort of green-blooded logic even Spock could appreciate.
