4K UHD Blu-ray Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection

When William Shatner’s James Kirk closed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country by affirming the symbolic importance of the USS Enterprise over any individuals who might pilot her, his uncharacteristic humility was a tacit nod to the fact that by 1991, his was no longer the definitive Star Trek crew. For many fans, that honor belonged to the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in 1987 and whose philosophically minded stories were in sharp contrast to the original series’s more picaresque portraits of cosmic exploration. In fact, many regarded Shatner’s spacefaring swashbuckler as passé compared to the stoic Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).

But if the more action-driven original show was an unlikely subject for translation to the realm of big-screen blockbusters, the reflective tone of TNG presented an even tougher challenge. Perhaps that’s why 1994’s Star Trek: Generations feels like such a miscalculation of the show’s strengths. Chief among those assets was the ensemble quality of the cast, which is completely jettisoned in favor of a narrative built around a fan-service meeting between Kirk and Picard. This reduces major characters like Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and the existentially tormented android Data (Brent Spiner) to one-note subplots in order to arduously set up the conditions to allow two men separated by centuries to meet on screen.

And when this meeting finally occurs, Picard behaves like an awed fan around Kirk—prefiguring the trope in modern blockbusters in which newly introduced characters serve as audience surrogates and basically just wallow in the glow of a nostalgic legend. And while not even Shatner would argue that he’s a better actor than Stewart, Kirk’s cajoling gregariousness instantly cuts a better star profile on a big screen than Picard’s taciturn energy. If someone watched Generations absent any familiarity with TNG, they would be forgiven for thinking that the new Enterprise crew as nothing but pale imitators of the old one.

Thankfully, things got on track for the next film, 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact. Frakes, who had directed a number of the show’s episodes, took over behind the camera for his feature debut. As had been the case when Leonard Nimoy began to helm some of the TOS films, Frakes masks his inexperience with large-scale filmmaking by relying on the expertise of crew while using his status as one of the cast to get richer performances from his peers.

Here, the TNG cast gets to show off their longstanding chemistry and further develop their characters. There’s also a greater grasp of the show’s resolute optimism in the way that the crew, flung back in time to an Earth still mired in war and greed, burst with enthusiasm to bear witness to the technological breakthrough that will advance humanity not just into the stars but its utopian maturation. In fact, it’s likely the crew’s resolute faith in a better tomorrow that helps bring it about as their warmth touches the harder hearts of 21st-century mankind.

For a film that brings back TNG’s definitive enemy, the Borg, and works better as an action movie than any Star Trek film since 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, it’s almost surprising that First Contact plays out much of its drama on an intimate scale. Picard, still traumatized by his experiences with the Borg, betrays anguish that shatters his usual calm, while the reactions from his subordinates shows how much he’s cemented their trust and loyalty. Data’s comical histrionics in Generations are nowhere to be found here, as he evinces the same Pinocchio-esque longing to be “real” as he does on the show, culminating in a brilliant fake-out that fits his character perfectly while adding further dimensions to his already complex nature. This is the platonic ideal of a TNG movie, forward-moving but never rushed, action-packed but always driven by small, significant choices on the part of its characters.

Many Star Trek movies are likened to super-sized TV episodes, but 1996’s Star Trek: Insurrection feels more like three or four completely unrelated episodes mashed together. Frakes returns as director and prioritizes small character beats for the cast, often at the expense of the main plot, which allegorizes historical displacement of populations for resources in the attempted seizure of a planet whose radiation has created a Fountain of Youth.

This storyline creates a tonal clash with the mostly whimsical moments of character interaction, particularly as the planet’s effect on the Enterprise crew cause them to regress to hormonal teenage behavior. But things do occasionally click, be it in the way that Picard, in a show-stopping monologue, rails against the selective morality of relocating “just a few” denizens to siphon their world or a tender moment where the blind Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) gets the chance to see a sunrise with healed eyes and stands in silent awe. Frakes’s generosity with his co-stars throws off the tempo of the overall movie but pleasingly basks in suck moments.

Sadly, little praise can be directed at Stuart Baird’s Star Trek: Nemesis. Concerning a Romulan plot headed by Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a corrupted clone of Picard, this is the most action-driven of the pre-reboot Star Trek movies, sparing almost no moments of cast bonhomie or individual development. And yet, this is also one of the most sluggish movies in the whole franchise, with no propulsive urgency to Shinzon’s cookie-cutter plot to foment instability and war. With early-aughts generic backgrounds of cold metal and neon-green lighting, Nemesis looks as anonymous as it feels, almost resembling an unrelated sci-fi movie whose plot is flimsily and hastily developed around the Star Trek brand. It’s a sorry note on which to conclude the adventures (at least until Picard) of the most widely beloved Enterprise crew.

Image/Sound

As was the case with the recent UHD release of the first six films, Paramount Home Entertainment created new 4K scans of the original negatives of these films and bolstered them with Dolby Vision, and the results offer a marked improvement over the previous Blu-ray editions. All four movies show richer detail and deeper color contrasts, with the verdant greens of Insurrection and the nighttime exteriors of First Contact receiving the most significant boosts in clarity. Skin tones are more natural, while the textures of the costuming are sharper than ever. Each disc comes with a lossless 7.1 surround soundtrack, a slight upgrade from the 5.1 mixes of the previous Blu-rays. The audio mixes are consistently immersive, evenly distributing sound effects and music into boisterous tracks that nonetheless never overwhelm the dialogue, which is clear in even the most chaotic and loud moments.

Extras

Paramount ports over the avalanche of bonus features that these films have amassed over the years across various video releases, with each film given multiple commentary tracks that pull in directors, writers, and in some cases even superfans. Each has its own flavor: Frakes’s commentaries for his directorial efforts tend to be full of anecdotes and praise for his costars, but he isn’t especially prone to offering up analysis, while both Stuart Baird and producer Rick Berman’s commentaries for Nemesis reveal where that project went wrong (that is, in the director’s indifference to the project and wider Stark Trek continuity and Berman’s misguided focus on corralling TNG into a blockbuster). Each film also comes with extensive featurettes on everything from costume and makeup design to the crafting of screenplays to visual effects, as well as bonuses such as deleted scenes. This is an embarrassment of riches that offers insights into what went right (and, just as often, wrong) with these films.

Overall

An integral part of the geek canon, the uneven Star Trek: The Next Generation films receive their best-to-date video presentations in the form of a significant A/V upgrade from Paramount.