The movies starring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation are notorious for their wildly varying quality, with plenty of highs and lows for Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and friends. The Star Trek: The Original Series movie franchise wrapped up successfully with 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. By 1994, Paramount was ready to pass the cinematic torch to the highly popular cast of TNG.
After enduring a bitter backlash among longtime fans and behind-the-scenes production chaos in its early days, Star Trek: The Next Generation became a cultural behemoth by its fourth season, by many metrics a more successful series than Star Trek: The Original Series. TNG generated massive revenue for Paramount through its unique first-run syndication distribution format, and adorned everything from lunch boxes to a massive array of action figures. Paramount assumed the TNG cast would go on to even greater heights in their own film franchise, and while they did occasionally deliver some thrilling cinematic moments, it’s a decidedly mixed bag.
5 Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Insurrection is often derided as more or less being a mediocre two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but few episodes of TNG are as dull and wrongheaded as Insurrection. After Lieutenant Commander Data (Brent Spiner) malfunctions while on a covert mission, Captain Picard and the USS Enterprise-E are roped into a scenario where Starfleet are attempting to relocate the colonists known as the Ba’ku who occupy a planet with regenerative powers, essentially a fountain of youth.
Picard stands up for the Ba’ku, opposing their relocation on ethical grounds, but he’s missing the big picture. The Ba’ku were not natives to their restorative planet, they were colonists who lucked into immortality. At the height of the Dominion War, the planet’s medical potential was crucially important. Beyond the shaky morals, Star Trek: Insurrection is the first movie in the franchise to use exclusively CGI space effects, and the work has aged very poorly. Ru’Afo (F. Murray Abraham) is one of Star Trek‘s most forgettable villains. Ultimately, Insurrection commits the worst crime a Star Trek film can – it’s boring.
4 Star Trek: Nemesis
The final big screen entry starring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Nemesis is a mess. Its attempts to tell a massive, epic story and give Picard his own ultimate villain in the vein of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) both fail spectacularly. Picard is confronted by a young clone of himself named Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who has teamed with the underclass Remans to conquer Romulus. Future A-list movie star Hardy gives a fascinatingly weird performance as Shinzon, but the character is ultimately written as a cartoonish mustache-twirler unworthy of Hardy’s talents.
Star Trek: Nemesis most infamously features the death of Data, who sacrifices himself to save Picard and destroy Shinzon’s ultimate weapon. Clearly meant to evoke the death of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, Data’s death is instead abrupt and unfulfilling. Nemesis was directed by Stuart Baird, a studio hand who had no knowledge of or appreciation for Star Trek‘s history. Nemesis served as a sour end to the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s theatrical film franchise.
3 Star Trek Generations
Star Trek Generations should have been a layup. It featured the much-anticipated meeting of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his franchise predecessor Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). It was also coming hot off the heels of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s wildly popular final season, with the franchise in general in the best shape of its quarter-century run at that point. Generations was poised to be a coronation.
And yet Star Trek Generations is a decidedly underwhelming affair. Despite a truly great performance by Patrick Stewart, the movie’s plot revolving around the dimensional ribbon called the Nexus barely makes any sense. Captain James T. Kirk’s death from falling off a collapsing bridge feels surprisingly small scale. The destruction of the USS Enterprise-D smells of cheap stunts meant to surprise the audience at the expense of one of the most iconic aspects of the series. Brent Spiner also gives arguably his worst performance as Data; augmented by a new emotion chip, Data becomes an obnoxious clown for large swaths of the movie. Generations stands as one of Star Trek‘s great missed opportunities.
For a brief moment, it seemed as if Paramount had figured out how to make Star Trek: The Next Generation movies with the release of Star Trek: First Contact. A white-knuckle, horror-tinged time travel romp, First Contact brings in the TNG era’s greatest enemies, the Borg, who attempt to prevent humanity’s first contact with alien life in the mid-21st century. While Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) attempts to salvage the historic first contact mission on Earth, Picard engages in brutal combat with the Borg aboard the USS Enterprise-E.
Star Trek: First Contact works in all the ways Star Trek Generations didn’t. The story is relatively straightforward for a time travel tale, it’s surprisingly action-packed, and features one of the franchise’s greatest villain turns via the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). First Contact is arguably the best looking of the TNG films as well, courtesy of director Jonathan Frakes. Star Trek: First Contact is not perfect – its alteration of the nature of the Borg remains controversial – but it’s a delightful thrill ride that proved the TNG cast were worthy of their cinematic promotion.
1 Star Trek: Picard season 3
It’s become a bit of a cliché for writers and producers of heavily serialized television series to refer to their shows as “ten-hour movies.” In the case of Star Trek: Picard season 3, that sentiment is actually true. The final season of the show chronicling Jean-Luc Picard’s twilight years reunites the good Admiral with his Star Trek: The Next Generation crew to save the Federation from a vast conspiracy involving the Changelings and the Borg. After the first two polarizing seasons of Picard, season 3 was almost universally praised, embracing the things about TNG that worked so well while still evolving the characters and their worlds.
The cast has simply never been better, particularly Jonathan Frakes as an older, looser Captain Will Riker, and Micheal Dorn as the newly pacifist Klingon warrior Worf. The season’s final two episodes trump any other movie moments for the crew, reuniting them aboard the restored USS Enterprise-D to take on the Borg one last time. It’s a thrilling conclusion to the story of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one of the franchise’s towering achievements.