Paramount Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard
The first six “Star Trek” films featured the beloved cast from “The Original Series.” Fans got to see the continuing adventures of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and the rest of the crew of the Starship Enterprise on the big screen.
On the whole, these movies were highly successful for Paramount. They helped spawn interest in bringing “Star Trek” back to television audiences. It’s easy for some to look back and rip “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” for its inconsistencies. Or “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” for not making a lot of money at the box office — it cost about $30 million to produce and grossed just $53 million, according to Forbes.
The plain and simple truth is that Hollywood doesn’t continue to make sequels if the films aren’t successful. That being said, as costs rose, Paramount looked for a way to continue the franchise without paying top dollars to Shatner and Nimoy. According to a story written by J.M. McNab, this was one of the main reasons why “The Next Generation” was made. Paramount thought they could restart Trek on TV with a new cast, which had lower salary demands.
‘Star Trek: Generations’
After the success of “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” and the high ratings of “The Next Generation,” Paramount made the decision to end one crew’s mission and re-assign another. The crew from “The Original Series” enjoyed their six-film renaissance, and the cast from “The Next Generation” took over the movie portion of the franchise.
There was just one catch — how to pass the torch. Screenwriters Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga came up with a story that involved the two legendary captains — Kirk and Picard (Patrick Stewart), working together. This was a feat, as the two time frames these characters inhabited were about 85 years apart. Moore and Braga, who are now beloved by most Trek fans for their years of work on “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager,” came up with a clever way to transport both captains into a timeless space, where they could join forces and defeat a common foe.
That clever way was the Nexus, which streamed through the galaxy as an energy ribbon. This power could be harnessed for destructive power, as Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell) demonstrated. Those who could enter the Nexus were essentially in heaven, as described by Eric Diaz of Nerdist.
The Final Battle
Picard found himself at Christmas with a wife and children. He later found Kirk chopping wood, riding horses, and cooking eggs in a rustic cabin. The two joined forces to stop Soran, making for a climactic ending for the film and Captain Kirk. After defeating Soran, Kirk died when the bridge he was standing on collapsed. Picard buried the legendary captain under a pile of rocks and was picked up by a waiting shuttlecraft.
But, thanks to a new theory put forth by Trek fan T. Lo Czech on Facebook, Picard may have never left the Nexus at all. Czech’s theory reads as follows:
“How did Picard return to the real universe [after] leaving the Nexus? My theory: He never left. The Enterprise is destroyed. All crew dead. And all episodes and movies are still produced by Picard’s mind within the Nexus.”
The Fan Theory on the Plot Hole
FacebookFan Theory on ‘Star Trek: Generations’
Czech does make a compelling point. Viewers can go back to the moment right after Picard convinced Kirk to stop Soran and see for themselves. There is no explanation of how the two got out of the Nexus and back to the planet Veridian III to stop Soran. They just appeared.
While Czech’s theory is unlikely to be proven right, it does have some merit. In fact, one writer might agree that the entire fight sequence between Kirk, Picard, and Soran shouldn’t have happened the way it did. That writer is William Shatner himself, who was so motivated after the release of “Generations” to set things right that he wrote a series of novels that tell quite a different ending for Kirk.
In those books, known to fans as the “Shatnerverse,” Kirk is brought back to life by the Romulans and Borg for nefarious purposes.
In Czech’s defense, there have been stories that have been explained away or retconned when the writers box themselves in or when fans grow tired of the storyline. One of the most famous examples of this was in the 1980s, when the primetime soap opera “Dallas” killed off a leading character, only to bring him back a season later. All episodes in which the star (Patrick Duffy) did not appear in, happened in another character’s dream.
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Source: Heavy
