STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (Star Trek VII)

by William S. Kowinski

"What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again…?"

Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day
by Delmore Schwartz


In 1994 Star Trek was at a kind of summit. It was taken there by six mostly successful feature films and by the unprecedented success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first cable television series to regularly attract more viewers in major markets than any network series broadcast at the same time. TNG was also a creative success, nominated for a Best Drama Series Emmy in its seventh season, a year of classics like Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks, Picket Fences and NYPD Blue (the winner.)

It was at this point that Star Trek was truly becoming a franchise, or perhaps even more specifically, a corporation, with (for the first time) a single CEO and creative team in charge of Star Trek on television and in feature films. It’s not that Rick Berman didn’t have bosses over him. He was being pressured to turn out a feature film immediately after TNG’s 7th and final season, and its schedule kept getting cut back. He had been told to develop two new Star Trek TV series, not only to replace TNG but to keep two Star Treks on the air simultaneously. But for the first time, there was a single creative group in charge of executing these plans—in charge of making all the Star Trek in the commercial universe.

TNG was being ended as a TV series so that this crew of popular and globally familiar characters could replace the aging original series cast as stars of Star Trek movies. TNG’s successor series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, was already in its second year of broadcast. And another series, Star Trek: Voyager was in full development, slated to be the flagship of a new cable network (reviving the Paramount dream of more than a decade before, of a network headed by the return of the original crew in a Star Trek: Phase Two series, aborted weeks before production was to begin in favor of the first Star Trek feature film.)

The theme of the seventh Star Trek film was in its title: Generations. It was the transition from the original series—the TOS generation and Star Trek’s 23rd century, to the TNG generation and the other 24th century crews. On the screen, it was the transition from the TOS actors to the TNG actors, symbolized in a story that featured both Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. But creatively, it was also the transition to the generation that had begun with TNG.

Text continues after photos. Thanks to Trekcore for most of the screen caps.

There were still strong connections, especially through Gene Roddenberry, who had developed TNG. As executive producer for its first years, he nurtured the next generation of producers and writers. Rick Berman professed fealty to the Roddenberry universe, or the Roddenberry formula for Star Trek’s success. GR had mentored and deeply impressed young writers and creative producers like Ron Moore and particularly Michael Piller, and the TNG actors who would assume more creative responsibility for the feature films as time went on.

The balance between the generations involved in this film was always weighted towards the new, but over time it became more so. After the decision was made to include the original crew in some opening scenes, several TOS actors declined. It’s been reported that Leonard Nimoy was approached to direct the film, but was told that there wasn’t time to make the changes in the script he requested, so he declined. Instead, David Carson, who had directed TNG episodes and other television, became the director of “Generations.”

The script was written by the team of Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, young writer/producers whose first assignments were for TNG and then DS9. Berman had also asked TNG writers Maurice Hurley and Michael Piller to develop stories for the feature. Piller declined to engage in this competition, and Hurley’s story wasn’t chosen, though it was felt to be strong enough to consider for a subsequent feature.

As Braga and Moore described the process (on the DVD commentary and in various interviews), it involved assembling certain pieces: getting Kirk and Picard together (despite a separation of some 80 years), Kirk’s death, the crash of TNG’s Enterprise-D, etc., while meeting studio demands that it be comprehensible to an audience that somehow didn’t know much about Star Trek, that it include the ever-popular Klingons, a larger-than-life villain like Khan, a comic turn for Data.

They also had to respond to the preferences of the main actors, William Shatner (as Captain Kirk) and Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard of the 24th century Enterprise-D.) For at least part of this time, Braga and Moore were also writing the TNG finale on television, the now classic “All Good Things…” There was even overlap in the filming of the last episode and filming scenes of the movie.

The idea of one generation succeeding another involves the consequences of the passage of time, so it is appropriate that the theme of “Generations” is the central human dilemma: we live consciously in a continuous present, yet we move through time to periods of change, and ultimately, inexorably to death, which is very difficult to comprehend, to face and to keep in consciousness in our daily lives. As Braga and Moore say, this is a particularly powerful theme when dealing with heroes whose epic adventures and accomplishments are larger than life, yet they too grow old, and they also die. Can they deal with that prospect? Does it enhance their heroism, or mock it?

How Star Trek heroes deal with time and mortality is probably the most persistent single theme in the ten feature films. It is there from the first one, when Kirk struggles with his real intentions in taking over the Enterprise from his younger successor. Kirk’s aging is again a theme in Star Trek II (The Wrath of Khan), along with Spock’s death, and in III with his return to life. The possibility of being unable to adapt to change and outliving their usefulness is a topic of concern and conversation between Kirk and Spock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which in Star Trek is the future but in Shakespeare, it’s death.)

Time and mortality would return as a major theme in Star Trek: Insurrection, and death and change in Star Trek: Nemesis. In “Generations” it is a persistent theme linking heroes and villain, as well as linking the generations.

Risk is part of the game...

The film begins with a transition, though the emphasis is on birth: the champagne bottle tumbles slowly through space, moving clockwise and at times resembling the turning hands of a clock, a mesmerizing depiction of time—until it smashes against the hull of a new starship, launching the Enterprise-B.

Members of the old Enterprise crew—Kirk, Scotty and Chekov—are coming aboard for the ceremony. With perfect, gently satirical pitch, they are met with a media frenzy, and gushed over by the new and younger crew as “living legends”—that is, living fossils, no longer of use except as symbols of their past.

A major subtheme immediately emerges, when Chekov introduces Kirk to the new Enterprise helm, Sulu’s daughter: a transition literally from one generation to another, which reminds Chekov of his age and past (“I was never that young,” he observes, and Kirk responds, “No? You were younger.”) It reminds Kirk of how he used his time, or rather, how he didn’t use it: he never had a family. Facing Sulu’s grown child, he is facing a nasty quality of time—once it is past, it is gone forever. Kirk can fix many things, and even cheat death. But he can’t become young again and live his life again differently so that he would have the company of a family, now that he's lost the family of his ship and crew. “Finding retirement a bit lonely, are we?” Scotty says, tactlessly but accurately.

There is a tension between the generations, seen on this bridge. The younger generation is now in charge, and views the older with awe but also with some insecurity, and paradoxically, with a certain dismissiveness that older people in this society often experience: because they are not young, and especially if they are officially “retired,” then they are irrelevant and even incapable.

Given the situation, it’s appropriate that the older generation is seated off to the side—but Kirk can’t help wanting to be back in the Captain’s chair, while Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck) can’t help glancing at Kirk’s reactions to what he’s doing. When Harriman insists that Kirk give the order to “take us out,” the applause is genuinely honoring, yet also dismissive, as if this is all the living legend can still manage to do. ("Take us out" was also the order Kirk gave upon assuming command of the refitted Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture--which also made his need to command the Enterprise a theme.)

But then, something happens. Two transport ships are caught in what appears to be an energy ribbon. The Enterprise, out for a p.r. spin around the solar system but largely unequipped for duty, is the only starship within range to respond. Harriman is cautious but tries what he can think of, with no success. One of the transports explodes. Harriman asks Kirk for help, and Kirk practically leaps to his aid. He counsels getting within transporter range and beaming aboard threatened passengers. Harriman worries that the Enterprise will be endangered by contact with the ribbon (which it will be) but Kirk makes the perfect observation : “Risk is part of the game if you want to sit in that chair.”

It’s vintage Kirk, and in its way, an explanation for his life, but to risk everything he must minimize what he has to lose, like a family. For him, remaining unencumbered was part of being Captain—or at least, Captain Kirk.

Scotty beams survivors aboard—El Aurian refugees whose planet was destroyed by the Borg. We’ve met one member of the mysterious El Aurians in the TNG series—Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg), the enigmatic bartender of Ten Forward aboard the Enterprise-D, and a confidant with a special relationship to Captain Picard. We see her among the survivors, looking dazed as Chekov tries to comfort her in sick bay. He’s had to subdue a male El Aurian who insisted he must “go back.” This will turn out to be Dr. Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell.)

But the energy ribbon is now pulling the Enterprise in, and Captain Kirk must once again save the day—not by leading as Captain, but by action. He makes it possible for Scotty’s plan to work, and the Enterprise B escapes. But not before the edge of the energy ribbon takes out a piece of the hull, and Captain Kirk with it.

This opening sequence is like a continuation of Star Trek VI and the original crew movies in general. It has that combination of style and daring, action and economical storytelling in both the “A” story (the plot) and the “B” story (which elaborates the theme.) The acting of the original cast members sets the tone: Shatner brings his customary energy and charm, and the economy of his movie roles, and both James Doohan (as Scotty) and Walter Koenig (as Chekov) have some of their best moments of the film series.

The new actors rise to the occasion. Alan Ruck plays all the appropriate tones and colors of Captain Harriman, a difficult feat. Though it is seldom singled out, the performance that carries the emotional moods of this section is by Jacqueline Kim as Ensign Demora Sulu. She is the actual next generation, and we see her excited, happy to meet Kirk but not intimidated, passionate and competent under pressure. But it is her reaction to the prospect that something has happened to Kirk that keys the emotion of this scene.

We see Chekov and Scotty looking out into space after their vanished Captain and the final end of their era, standing with Harriman, who already looks more seasoned and stalwart.

Now comes the moment of transition: a pictorially beautiful one. The camera pulls back from the devastated trio, swoops around the wounded Enterprise-B to return to the star field of space. And slowly, the small white points in the blackness fades into the rippled blue of the ocean. The title says “78 years later.” So it is moving forward into the future—yet the images are from the distant past: a sailing ship, called Enterprise.

There is a certain elegance in this, as time takes on another dimension. The past is about to become an important element, as it relates to family, to personal meaning, to the vicissitudes of life, and to death.

It is a ceremony on the holodeck of the Enterprise-D, although that is not immediately apparent, especially to those unfamiliar with TNG. What we see is a sailing ship at sea against a brilliant blue sky, where we are introduced to the TNG crew, all in 18th/19th century naval uniforms (the Horatio Hornblower era.) As a set piece, it is gorgeous to look at, and it’s well-written, acted and edited. The ceremony—an initiation marking the promotion of Worf (Michael Dorn )-- illustrates a deference to naval tradition that has emerged now and again in Star Trek films, which tells us something about Picard’s own feeling for tradition that will soon become important, as well as illustrating the romance of exploration that Star Trek takes into space (In jump-starting the U.S. space program, President Kennedy referred to space as “the new ocean.”)

It is a daring and even elegant way to introduce the TNG crew—but is it effective? I recall my response to the film the first time I saw it. I loved the opening sequence aboard the Enterprise-B. But I was puzzled by the choice of this scene as the transition to the 24th century. It’s when I started feeling a bit uneasy.

In their commentary, Moore and Braga admitted that in writing this movie they were “concerned with not doing what was expected.” They’d originally written a very different scene, in which a couple of bored and somewhat comic young 24th century Starfleet officers at an isolated outpost are complaining about how nothing ever happens there when a Romulan Warbird drops dramatically out of warp and attacks, with the Enterprise-D in hot pursuit.

The writers say that TNG series producer Jeri Taylor thought it was too standard a scene, and she suggested something very offbeat, like a closeup of Picard pushing an egg across the floor in Ten Forward with his nose. They essentially took that suggestion, and though they don’t admit it was a mistake, they more or less imply that it was. And it probably is. Because what we don’t see in the transitional scene is Captain Picard as a hero, as the 24th century descendant of Captain Kirk.

Though it’s not a fatal flaw, I don’t think Picard as a character ever quite recovers for the rest of the film. This failure to establish Picard as a hero in the first scene has an immediate consequence to the theme: though we are about to see the impact death and regret has on him, we don’t see the contrast of the theme as the writers state it: we don’t see a hero being forced to confront mortality, because Picard isn’t really established as a hero. TNG fans of course know that he is a hero. But it hasn’t been established in the film, and even fans can feel the lack of that emotionally.

The sailing ship idyll continues with Picard rhapsodizing about the solitude of the sea, while Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) has an impishly different view (“ bad food, brutal discipline, no women”), until Picard is interrupted by an urgent personal message. This is when we see for certain this is a holdodeck projection, signaling the end of illusion. We see Picard’s devastated reaction to the message, but he keeps it private and returns to the 24th century part of the ship—soon followed by Riker and the rest of the crew, responding to an emergency: a nearby space observatory is under attack.

The Enterprise-D arrives to find the attack on the Amargosa Observatory is over, leaving most aboard dead. One survivor is Dr. Tolian Soran. He claims to have seen nothing, but the Enterprise crew establishes that Romulans attacked the station, searching for something. At this point Soran appears to be a gentle, befuddled scientist. But on the Enterprise, he insists on seeing Captain Picard, to say that he must return to the station to finish an experiment. Picard has been very distracted since the message, and now tries to dismiss Soran’s concerns but Soran stares at him and utters the first of several observations he makes about time. “They say time is the fire in which we burn,” he says. “We leave so many things unfinished in our lives. I know you understand.” Picard looks stricken. We will soon discover why.

(Braga said that he had scoured a book of quotations for observations on time, and he and Moore had wound up modifying or making up their own. The exception, however, is the first ---“Time is a fire in which we burn”--- from the poem by 20th century American poet Delmore Schwartz quoted above, which has other thematic resonance for this film.)

From Guinan, TNG fans knew El Aurians are long-lived--she was visiting earth in the 19th century when she met a time-traveling Picard in one of my favorite TNG two-parters, “Time’s Arrow.” She implied to Data she was there to “listen.” Later in the film, Soran will explain that El Aurians are a race of listeners. In this case, Soran has heard something in Picard that we haven’t learned yet.

By this time, the comic subplot of Data and his emotion chip has begun. It started on the sailing ship, when Worf’s promotion ritual concluded with a hazing, as Worf is dunked in the ocean. When the android Data (Brent Spiner) is puzzled as to why this is funny, Doctor Crusher (Gates McFadden) tells him to get into the spirit of things—to be spontaneous. So he throws her overboard. The rest of the crew stares at him, and it is his failure to understand why this act wasn’t funny that prompts him to take the extreme step of installing his emotion chip, which until now he thought might endanger his neural net.

Even casual TNG watchers would know that Data could feel no emotions. In the episode “Brothers,”, he met the man who created him (his “father”) who has summoned him so he can install this chip, to give him the emotions he lacked. However, the signal he sent also attracted Lore, Data’s “evil twin,” who stole the chip. Data retrieved it, and was about to destroy it when Geordi LaForge (Levar Burton), his closest friend among the crew, intervened.

It turns out that the chip does unleash Data’s sense of humor, however questionable it is. (As for his lack of understanding of why one of the dunkings was funny and the other one wasn’t—well, that’s not clear to me either.)

Some people like the comedy that ensues, others don’t. I liked it for itself, and for the dimensions it added to Spiner’s characterization. ( A look at the shooting script also impressed upon me the comic timing of two pros like Spiner and Whoopi Goldberg’s, in the contrast of the dialogue as written with the dialogue as they deliver it in their Ten Forward scene.) Data’s emotions are integrated into the story and supports the theme. With a stronger, clearer central drama, this comic relief might even have been Shakespearian.

When Worf discovers that the Romulans were searching for trilithium, an experimental compound theoretically capable of exploding a star, Riker sends Geordi and Data back to the observatory to search for any signs of it. When they find it in a hidden weapon, Soran suddenly appears, and now reveals himself to be a confident, determined villain. He attacks them, stunning Geordi while Data cowers—he has discovered a new emotion: abject fear. “Don’t hurt me,” he pleads. Now that he has felt joy, he can feel fear—the threat to take away that joy, and replace it with pain. It is from this arc of experience that the fear of death is derived.

At this point we finally learn what terrible message Picard received. A concerned Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) find him in his ready room, apparently still in denial, looking through a family scrapbook. In showing her photos of his older brother and his nephew, he suddenly breaks down, and admits that they were both “burned to death in a fire.”

The scene between Patrick Stewart and Marina Sirtis is beautifully played. The dialogue is different (shorter, sharper) from both the shooting script and the novelization. But the most shocking element of it is that Picard cries. His tears within the scene are dramatic and appropriate, and they help to account for the catharsis that evidently happens here, because after this scene, Picard is much more focused on the unfolding crisis. He starts to become a hero.

Later, in the impressive stellar cartography room, Picard will refuse Data’s request to be deactivated—Data’s emotion chip has indeed fused with his neural net, and after his episode of fear, followed by shame and guilt, he cannot cope with his insistent emotions. Picard will tell Data that dealing with emotions is part of being human, and acting in spite of distracting feelings is part of his duty as a Starfleet officer. Picard’s own tragedy gives important weight to these words.

In their commentary, Braga and Moore say that Picard crying was a mistake. In terms of Picard’s character and within the TNG saga, it is not—it’s part of TNG’s emphasis on the relationship of the inner and the outer, the importance of the psyche and of self-knowledge and self-expression in acting wisely as well as decisively. But in terms of this movie, it does not work as well as it could have, if Picard had been established as heroic in an earlier scene.

The ready room scene is the first extended statement of the theme of mortality, family and time. Like Kirk, Picard has given up having a family in order to pursue his vocation in Starfleet. Even though he is not retired from Starfleet, as Kirk was, he admits to Troi that he’d become aware that for him “there are fewer days ahead than there are behind”—in other words, that he is moving towards his death. But though, like Kirk, he had no children, he did have his nephew, Rene. (We saw them together on earth in the TNG episode, “Family,” where Rene’s dreams for his own life seemed to have more in common with his uncle’s than his father’s.)
He took solace, he said, in the idea that the family would go on. But now, it would not. The Picards had a long and proud history, but it would stop. His death would be an even greater finality.

Their discussion is interrupted by a bright flash—the Amargosa star has exploded. A shock wave is about to destroy the Enterprise and the observatory. Riker and Worf transport to the observatory to rescue Geordi and Data, but Soren—who has ignited the star—escapes aboard a renegade Klingon vessel, taking Geordi with him.

Riker gets Data back to the Enterprise, which warps away in the nick of time. In the meantime Dr. Crusher has discovered that Soran had been rescued by the Enterprise B, along with other El Aurians—including Guinan.

Picard goes to Guinan’s quarters, where she tells him about the Nexus. She and Soran had been there—within that energy ribbon—when the Enterprise-B brought them back. Being in the Nexus, Guinan said, was like “being inside joy.” Soran’s wife had died in the Borg attack, but in the Nexus he was reunited with her, and together they would live an ideal life forever. Guinan warned Picard that if he ever got in the Nexus, nothing would matter to him but staying there, just as nothing mattered to Soran but getting back.

Eventually Picard realizes that Soran is exploding stars to alter the trajectory of the Nexus ribbon’s transit through the galaxy, so that eventually it will intersect with a planet where he will be ready to be absorbed into it again (he can’t fly into it because the ribbon destroys ships.) Picard and Data figure out where this planet is, and that Soran will have to explode its star, which will send out a shock wave that destroys all the planets in that system, including one with 200 million inhabitants.

The Enterprise goes there, Picard beams to the surface of Veridian 3—a rocky, desolate looking spot—where he confronts Soran, who safely engages him in debate from behind a force field. Picard at first tries to get him to see the connection between what he’s doing, and what the Borg did to him. He specifically mentions the killing of his wife and children. Soran seems troubled for a moment, but shakes it off. “Nice try.”

Soran reveals why he is so intent on returning to the Nexus. “There was a time I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” he says, as he works on his death-dealing equipment. “Then the Borg came and they showed me that if there is one constant in the universe, it’s death.”

He even began to accept that fact: everyone dies—it’s just a matter of how and when. “You will, too, Captain. Aren’t you beginning to feel time gaining on you? It’s like a predator—it’s stalking you. Oh, you can try to outrun it with doctors, medicines and technologies, but in the end time is going to hunt you down and make the kill.”

“It’s our mortality that defines us, Soran,” Picard says. “It’s part of the truth of our existence.”

“What if I told you I found a new truth?” Soran says, his eyes bright. “The Nexus?” “Time has no meaning there. The predator has no teeth.”

He uses terms of a basic survival instinct, a life force, that sees death as a violent predator. Even a being who lives for hundreds of years, as El Aurians apparently do, wants to deny death its dominion. In the Nexus, Soran can have his wife and children back but not as in life: he and they will essentially be immortal.

Eventually Picard finds a way through the force field, but his attempt to stop Soran by fighting him is no more successful. Soran launches his trilithium missile, the sun collapses, the Nexus ribbon takes him--- and Picard disappears as well.

"Fire!"

"Oh, shit!"

In the meantime, we’ve learned that Soran’s Klingon confederates are the Duras sisters. Series fans know them as the conniving women who tried to install the young Duras heir as Emperor but failed, due mostly to the intervention of Worf and Picard. (They are also famous for introducing Klingon cleavage.) Soran provided them with schematics for a trilithium weapon apparently in exchange for transport and technology. When Soran brought Geordi back to their Bird of Prey to interrogate him (inflicting torture which was mostly cut from the film, thankfully), he also modified Geordi’s VISOR so it transmitted visual signals back to the Bird of Prey after Geordi was returned to the Enterprise. This allowed them to learn the Enterprise shield frequency and successfully attack it. Though the Klingons are destroyed in the battle, the Enterprise suffers a warp core breach. Riker orders everyone into the saucer section, and it is separated from the drive section where the warp core explodes.

The saucer is thrown out of orbit, and its crash landing onto the surface of Veridian 3 is a major moment in the movie. The landing is successful—but in the shock wave resulting from the exploded star, the saucer is totally destroyed, along with the rest of the planet. All appears to be lost.

But then there’s Captain Picard, blindfolded and spinning. And we’re in the Nexus.

Picard "inside joy"

For the movie’s writers, the Nexus was first of all a device to avoid the expected mechanism of time-travel in getting Captains Kirk and Picard in the same place at the same time. But why “Nexus?” The word means a point or means of connection, and Braga and Moore said their original conception of it was as the place where past, present and future meet: the Nexus. But in the story, it is more like heavenly wish-fulfillment, a kind of super-holodeck (which may be why Picard is relatively quick to get outside its spell. He’s had lots of holodeck experience, whereas others—like Kirk—have not.)

The Nexus is apparently also a place to revisit your past starring roles. Picard turns out to be in the midst of a Dickensian Christmas (though the script etc. refers to it as a 24th century French Christmas, it’s clearly 19th century England.) Patrick Stewart’s celebrated one-man show was a version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” which led to a movie version. Later we will catch our first glimpse of Captain Kirk chopping wood—exactly as William Shatner is first seen in his starring role in Incubus (1965), one of the most unusual movies of all time, as the dialogue was spoken entirely in the artificial language of Esperanto.

Picard finds himself in what he recognizes as his home, surrounded by his wife and children—and his nephew, Rene—on Christmas day. He is dazed and dazzled and clearly “inside joy.”

Picard’s yearning for a family and the continuation of tradition that this scene dramatizes has been set up by the ready room scene, but for TNG fans it also has seven years of history behind it. In the TNG pilot, Picard confesses to Riker that he is uncomfortable around children. But over the years he develops a surrogate father-son relationship with Wesley Crusher (son of Beverly-- it turns out (in the 7th season episode "Attached") he’s been in love with her for years-- and of his best friend in Starfleet who was killed in the line of duty.) More specificially, he visits his family on earth directly after his assimilation by the Borg and rescue, and sees a kindred spirit in his nephew, who he calls "uncle" as a joke between them.

Then in an episode Picard is trapped in a turbolift with three children, and relates to them very well; they seem to have bonded by the end. In season 7, for awhile he believes that he in fact has a son and is trying to get to know him, before it turns out not to be true. Picard’s interest in history is also well-established in the series, and his ancestors become a plot point in the 7th season episode, “Journey’s End.”

But probably the most important backstory to this scene is what happened to Picard in the episode, “The Inner Light,” when an alien probe caused him to experience someone else’s life over many years, including the birth and nurturing of two children, and a grandchild. For the first part of this experience he retains a belief in his Picard identity, but it merges with the life he experiences, so when he admits that he once believed he didn’t need to have children to complete himself, but now he can’t imagine life without them—he is speaking as both Picard and Kamin, the identity he is experiencing.

But in the Nexus he can experience having a family fully as Picard, complete with connection to his Picard ancestors. There are even a portraits of them in this house, including one of the Picard who fought at Trafalgar (though presumably on the losing Spanish/French side), looking very much like this Picard in the holodeck sailing scene.

But this family is clearly idealized, and he has doubts (the twinkling of ornaments reminds him of the exploding star, or so the writers and director intended. I didn’t get it until I read about it.) Then Guinan appears (or her “echo” that remains in the Nexus) to tell him that anything he wants is possible, even leaving the Nexus. He asks for her help in going back and stopping Soran, but she suggests someone else.

"...because while you're there, you can make a difference."

Picard comes upon Kirk cutting wood, outside a house in a mountain forest, near the moment of Kirk’s arrival in the Nexus. We discover the elements of his Nexus as he does: the house he used to own, a clock he had given away, a beloved dog who had died but appears alive at the door. As Picard tries to talk to him, he realizes this is the morning he tells the woman he intended to marry that he is instead going back to Starfleet. But he is feeling his regrets. When Picard asks him to help him stop Soran, he refuses, shocking Picard, and perhaps us.

At first he is flippant. “You say history considers me dead? Who am I to argue with history?”

“You’re a Starfleet officer! You have a duty!” Picard says.

“I don’t need to be lectured by you,” Kirk says. “I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers. Besides which, I think the galaxy owes me one.” The “one” the galaxy owes him is a life, with love and family.

Though his words are biting, and could even be said in bitterness, his tone is gentler, more ironic. Now he explains himself simply to Picard. “I was like you once—so worried about duty and obligation I couldn’t see past my own uniform. And what did it get me? An empty house…Not this time.” Kirk is determined to ask Antonia to marry him, and experience the life he didn’t have before.

But the scene changes, and Kirk is in his uncle’s barn in Idaho, about to ride off and meet Antonia for the first time. Picard saddles up and follows him. On the way, Kirk leaps a ravine, then stops, looking back. He rides back and leaps it again. By this time Picard has arrived. Kirk tells him that he made that jump fifty times, “and every time, it scared the hell out of me. Not this time.” It’s that fear that gave the experience its flavor, and told him it was real. Now he realizes none of this is real.

“Nothing here matters.” And so he makes another leap—from one set of regrets to another, from family to the one we saw was powerful in the opening scene. “Maybe this isn’t about an empty house. Maybe it’s about that empty chair on the Enterprise. Ever since I left Starfleet I haven’t made a difference.”

Now with his playful, open smile, Kirk faces Picard. “Captain of the Enterprise? Close to retirement?”

“I’m not planning on it.”

“Let me tell you something—don’t. Don’t let them promote you. Don’t let them transfer you, don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship because when you’re there…you can make a difference.”

“Come back with me,” Picard says urgently. “Help me stop Soran. Make a difference again.”

But though Kirk has made his decision, he doesn’t adopt Picard’s urgent tone or earnest manner. Instead he varies his earlier line about history: “Who am I to argue with the Captain of the Enterprise?” Then he continues in this remarkable attitude. “I take it the odds are against us and the situation is grim?” It is so cavalier that it’s almost mocking—it’s so knowing that it almost takes us out of the story, but not quite—because this is Captain Kirk as we’ve seen him in the last few films, but maybe a little more so. No one else could get away with that line.

He relates this ironic self-knowledge that we’ve seen in the last several original cast movies to one of his Star Trek’s founding concepts: “You know if Spock were here, he’d say I was an irrational, illogical human for taking on a mission like that.” Then he smiles. “Sounds like fun.”

And there we have the key to Captain Kirk’s approach to life—his joy is in action, in risk and daring, for the greater good. In that sense, his Nexus is being Captain Kirk—and his past, present and future come together in this moment.

Kirk and Picard return to Veridian 3 as Soran is preparing his launcher, and they confront him on the mountainside. Eventually, after many punches are thrown and shots fired, Picard reaches the launcher as Kirk risks his life on a shattered suspension bridge to retrieve Soran’s hand-held device that controls the launcher. He succeeds, and Picard re-programs the launcher—though the countdown continues, the clamps are locked so the missile blows up, killing Soran. But meanwhile the bridge has fallen, taking Kirk with it to the bottom of a canyon.

Picard emerges from the dust to clamber down to Kirk. Kirk’s dying words recapitulate the themes he set in the horseback scene. “Did we do it? Did we make a difference?” he asks. Picard says they did, and thanks him. “Least I could do,” Kirk says, “for the Captain of the Enterprise.” And adds, somewhat painfully but joyfully, “It was fun.” This is Kirk’s affirmation of life—of his life. Making a difference is his fun—the two, the goal and the process, are bound together. Then he seems to see something—death approaching perhaps, or beyond this life, and says finally, “Oh, my.”