MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: Generations (1994) Discussion > The writers really missed a trick with t...

The writers really missed a trick with this.

posted 11 years ago by chippa1976
15 replies | jump to latest

IMHO what should've happened is after Picard goes into the Nexus and meets Kirk, they go and find Soren, have their epic battle which gets increasingly more outrageous, eventually leading to starship battles(I'm assuming that you can't die or be killed by any means in the Nexus). Soren, finally gives in 'cos Kirk and Picard are ruining his Nexus experience. Then they explain that if he goes back to the Enterprise B with Kirk and configures the deflector relays to simulate the photon torpedo blast instead of kirk then he'll get sucked back into the Nexus. This frees up Kirk to continue in his own timeline. Meanwhile Picard uses the opportunity to go back and rescue his Nephew from the fire and BOOM! Everybody's happy!

I'm open to criticism for this scenario as it does essentially negate the entire film/storyline from the series(but isn't that what you wanted anyway?). I would love it if any of you could improve or build on this though. :-)

[–] chippa1976 11 years ago

I Think I should mention that I only just watched the movie for the first time in 15 years and have only spent about 5 minutes pondering this scenario so I'm not surprised if its flawed in any way.

I'd like to live forever but only for a little while

[–] j_imdb-619-957870 11 years ago

Or... Instead of asking Kirk to help him punch soran because he's a puss... He could have said, "dear nexus I want to go back a few days and have Kirk pinch soran in the face in ten forward". The end.

[–] chippa1976 11 years ago

Lol. It's funny to me that the major plot device is also the source of all the major plot-holes!

I'd like to live forever but only for a little while

[–] NoahBody 11 years ago

how clever to quote red letter media w/o giving them credit.

[–] Promontorium 11 years ago

Time travel is almost always stupid in Star Trek, and it's used way too often.

OP, your idea is pretty good. Good as the other one that was posted here that was proposed on "How it Should Have Ended". There really is no excuse for Picard to go back to just a few minutes before the rocket launch unless he was really worried about the timeline.

But the whole concept of the Nexus brings up a massive amount of problems. For one, if you can use the Nexus to travel to any time, not just your own past or future, no one in the Nexus is really there forever, because anyone's past can be re-written to where they never go in to begin with, but then, does their shadow stay in there? Or how about Picard? Where is the other Picard? Picard and Kirk go a few minutes before the rocket was launched. Picard was already there, there should be two of him. Unless he inhabited his own body. If so, then what about Kirk? You can inhabit or not inhabit?

[–] mikeyg24 11 years ago

Time travel is almost always stupid in Star Trek, and it's used way too often.

Have you ever experienced a piece of drama in which time travel made sense? The causality loop makes everything from 'Star Trek' to 'Back to the Future' nothing but pure nonsense from a scientific point of view but we all sit back and love it all the same.

Your's sincerely, General Joseph Liebgott

[–] avortac 10 years ago

"Have you ever experienced a piece of drama in which time travel made sense? "

Well, I don't know about DRAMA, but I have experienced a couple of things, like movies and such.

When you use the Predestination Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox), you can have a time travel story make perfect sense.

For a good (but not completely flawless) example, watch "The Terminator" (1984)

AND DISREGARD any so-called 'sequels', that destroy the predestination paradox that made the movie work so well.

The only problem with that paradox is, that .. well..

If I knew my destiny, I would DEFINITELY spite it as much as I possibly can. If someone tells me I am going to name my kid "John", I would put all my energy into naming him "Derek", for example.

ANYTHING but what I am told.. just to see what would happen!

Amazingly, the 'mother of the future' is so docile and such a sheep that she obeys the strange hobo that claims he's from the future completely and exactly, without question (after a certain point, anyway).

She doesn't even contemplate naming her son something else. THIS boggles my mind.. why wouldn't she tempt the fate just to see what would happen? It could be an important scientific experiment as well, to see, whether she actually CAN change her destiny or not, or if it indeed is a predestined thing! I mean, it almost makes no sense to obey and call the son "John", when you consider the knowledge and information that could be gained by this seemingly harmless experiment!

Aside from THAT (and the typical, misandristic, Cameron-style female-machoism), the movie's time travel story makes perfect sense.

Actually, now I just remembered a DRAMA where time travel makes sense - at least in some odd way.

Toki o Kakeru Shoujo - The Girl who Soared Through Time (free translation). I know 'leapt' is often used, but hey, it's not written in stone, and japanese is such a multi-layered language that it can't often be accurately translated to an single-layered language anyway.

The time travel makes sense, but of course it leaves a lot of questions, like where does the 'other you' go, and so on (she seems to disappear).

I have seen the eighties japanese version, and a short drama version by Morning Musume - they have slightly different endings, but otherwise, they are very similar. I'd recommend both of them.

[–] tlw013-1 10 years ago

The Final Countdown.

[–] bjlevine 10 years ago

Or Somewhere in Time. Bad enough that he thinks himself back in time. That watch was stuck in an infinite time loop (yet keeps on ticking).

My personal favorite is the movie The Grand Tour. Guy goes back in time one day to avert a disaster, and gets arrested. So who do you make your one phone call to?

"Lovey-dovey. Bonk bonk on the head!"

[–] tlw013-1 10 years ago

Bill and Ted once explored that interesting premise of making your present convenient by traveling to the past in the future (or traveling to 'now' later) to leave yourself some handy advantages. Those advantages appear as soon as the intention takes shape; is the need to travel back and follow through later now negated?

[–] KobiyashiMauru 10 years ago

Best time travel movie was Back to the Future (1985) the first one. Sorry.

[–] tlw013-1 10 years ago

One of my all-time favorite movies in general. If you ever have the opportunity to catch it in the theater, I strongly suggest it.

[–] Promontorium 8 years ago

I was about 12 years old when the fundamental nature of time hit me. Like a Nexus wave actually. It rattled me to my spooky bones.

I enjoy a lot time travel stories. And I find it fun that every story makes up its own rules.

As it comes to science, the only real answer is that time travel can't exist, because there is no such thing as a past or future.

There is only now. There has only ever been now. There will only ever be now. Our perception of time is really just the alteration of matter. Time, is just things moving around.

Time travel in fiction is often portrayed as a place, or many places. As if you could simply step into it. That's absolutely ridiculous. Right now is composed of everything that ever was or will be. Right now is 1950...rearranged. Right now is 2050, prearranged.

Taking this into consideration, there is one hypothetical means of "traveling through time"as presented in fiction. It would require absolute control of the entire universe. The ability to not only perfectly manipulate all of space, but to manipulate it completely and somehow either with the knowledge or pathway to transform all the matter in the entire universe to exactly the way it used to be arranged, except the matter of one's self, and the matter composed of the device doing the universal manipulation. But that little bit alone ensures it's virtually impossible to "time travel" even when able to control all of the universe. The damage could be mitigated if the matter that is being used by the traveler and the vessel is somehow supplanted by errant space debris that is wholly inconsequential to the development and progress of life in the universe.

Then in that instance, no paradox would exist. Even if you recreated a time when you were alive, and there was a second version of you. Even if you met your own parents, and prevented your own birth. None of it would be a paradox because you aren't really then. You're really experiencing what used to be, and is again, but even in that capacity it isn't truly what used to be, because time travel is impossible. You could recreate the universe of 1930 and kill Hitler, and you could somehow manipulate the universe right back to the relative time you left from. But even then you would never have really traveled through time, at that point you're God, and you're just toying with reality. Because time travel is impossible.

That's not to say there isn't this thing called "space-time" with relativity and all that. But all that again just boils down to things moving around. Not an actual dimension or "place in time".

[–] kurthowe 8 years ago

The whole "nexus" thing is all kinds of messed up. Kirk winds up there because the ship was too close to it. So what's Soran's deal with blowing up stars, bending it's path, in order to get in?? They could have provided a plausible reason for that (like it had to react to something the planet possessed for the transfer to succeed or the like). This single problem takes me right out of the story. And Data is annoying as *beep* on top of that.

[–] bjlevine 8 years ago

My theory is that Soran wasn't able to get back to the Nexus because he was already in there, like Guinan was, living happily with his family. Might have been interesting if the writers had explored that idea, leaving Picard to explain to the non-echo Soran that he could never get back to the Nexus.

But yeah, the Nexus is a bad plot device.

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