star trek movies

It has been noted by many people that the "Star Trek" movies historically have done poorly if they have an odd number, but well if the have an even number.

Personally, I think the highlight of the Star Trek movie franchise was II, III and IV. STIV:TVH proved to be the downfall of the franchise since its humor gave it a wide appeal in the mainstream. Ever since then, the studio wanted the humor played up, usually to the detriment of the movie, because they were hoping to have the same level of breakthrough.

The TNG movies, in my opinion, have been largely disappointing in that they have yet to be real movies. So far they've been done in the same manner as long episodes. Bor-ing. The Classic Trek movies explored and developed the characters, and showed things happening in their lives. So far, the Next Generation movies have just been more of the same as the series.

I did think "First Contact" nearly succeeded as a suspense film -- actually, it half succeeded. The Borg half of the movie was, as you indicated, phenomenal. Its treatment of the Borg built excellently on what we had seen of them in "Q Who" and "The Best of Both Worlds," and Patrick Stewart did a great job capturing the emotion Picard would have to feel after what the Borg did to him.

But the Zephram Cochrane storyline flopped. It had some amusing moments, true, but it didn't work well with the rest of the movie, I thought. Really, it duplicated the errors of "Star Trek6: The Undiscovered Country" -- it showed they were trying to do a serious movie but they wanted to have the humor in there too. It was as though they couldn't decide what sort of treatment to give the movie.

What I would have liked to have seen is something along the lines of what we saw in ST:TMP and even in ST2:TWoK. Scatter the characters about. Riker's been in line to get a command of his own for years. Picard could be promoted to the rank of admiral. Geordi and Data could have promising technical careers inside Star Fleet; Worf has ties to his clan within the Klingon Empire, as well as his years-long assignment to Deep Space 9. It makes no sense for them all to still be in one place, particularly since the ship was destroyed at the end of STG. Maybe there's a compelling reason to bring them back together, like we saw at the start of ST:TMP, but give us a sense that their lives have gone on.

Paramount got greedy and milked the cash cow to death, that's all. When ST:TMP came out, there hadn't been any new Trek on TV for eight or nine years. Star Trek Generations came out three months after the series went off the air, while DS9 was still broadcasting new episodes. Since then we've had "Star Trek Voyager" and "Enterprise," and we've seen the movie franchise deteriorate further and further. Star Trek has been on the air continuously since 1989 -- why should any Trekkie but the ones so rabid they insist on being called "Trekkers" pay to see "Nemesis" at the theater?

No thanks, I'll wait until it reaches Bluckbuster.