Star Trek: Generations/Wall Banger

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Wall Bangers from Star Trek: Generations include:

  • Star Trek Generations isn't a bad movie overall, but it does have one moment at the beginning that's a monumental wall banger. The newly commissioned Enterprise-B is docked in Earth orbit, about to take a maiden tour of the solar system, when they receive a distress signal from a nearby ship. Since the Enterprise isn't combat ready, the captain says to relay the message to the nearest starship, to which he's told that they're the only ship in range. Wait a minute... they're the only ship in range of Earth?!?
    • This seems to be a common problem for the franchise. The same thing happens in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the probe's heading straight for earth and is days away - and they're still the only ship in range) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
      • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier doesn't even try to justify this. The Enterprise, with her systems in shambles and half her crew on vacation, is dispatched to a hostage situation with galactic implications simply because Kirk is teh awesome. If Starfleet had sent a ship with a functioning transporter, the movie would've been over almost before it began. * BANG* * BANG* * BANG*
        • All explained with what an admiral said to Kirk:

Kirk: The Enterprise is a disaster! There must be other ships available?
Admiral: Other ships, yes, but no experienced captains.

  • That only explains why they needed Kirk to go, not why they couldn't just get one of those inexperienced Captains to just pick him up to handle negotiations.
  • How about the physics failures? Even if the missile had gone to warp in order to reach the star almost instantaneously (which it didn't, but let's assume it did), it would still take many minutes for its effects to become visible from the surface of the planet. And destroying the star would do nothing to the trajectory of the Nexus: The mass of the star is still there even if you explode the star. You can't just get rid of it. And even if you somehow were able to suddenly annihilate the mass of the star, it would still take minutes for the gravity waves to reach the Nexus: The effect would not be immediate, even though in the movie it's shown as an immediate effect.
  • The Nexus:
    • Guinan says that it is such a happy place, you can never leave. But she got out of it, and so did the Big Bad. Picard only needs about 10 min before he decides to head out, and Kirk leaves with a moderate amount of arm-twisting. What?
    • The happiest place for Kirk wouldn't be some passive solar house out in rural Montana; it would be the bridge of the fucking Enterprise! He even says, while in the Nexus, that he regrets leaving the Enterprise. They made it look more like Picard yanks Kirk out of a melancholy phase of retirement than out of the happiest of all possible worlds! He should be exploring new worlds, having all kinds of lengthy conversations with Spock and Bones, and boning all manner of green women, not riding a fucking horse through the woods.
    • In the Nexus, the "reflex" of Guinan (or however they explained her presence there) tells Picard he can go to any place, any time. So he chooses the moment when the stakes were highest and likelihood of success the lowest, with Kirk as his only possible means of assistance? Why doesn't he travel back a week and simply arrest the bad guy? Or why doesn't Kirk travel back to the Enterprise B, find the younger version of Soren and show him how to modify the deflector so that Soren gets pulled into the Nexus when the energy arc hits the ship?
  • The defeat of the Enterprise-D, at least in the theatrical cut, is a massive wallbanger. The linchpin to the Klingons' success is being able to get the Enterprise's current shield frequency. That's all well and good. With it they manage to fire a single torpedo and get a direct hit. Then, the Enterprise crew inexplicably fail to change their shield frequencies (which they've done on several past occasions) and promptly get shot down for their stupidity.
  • Why didn't Picard just go back to the Enterprise beforehand and kick Dr. Soran into the handiest matter-reclamation bin? Or for that matter, why not just go back farther and save his brother and nephew as well? One of the film's messages is about accepting mortality, but seriously, if you had the ability to save someone you love from an untimely death, would you pass it up?
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Generations/Wall_Banger?oldid=1987136"