20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek Generations
17. The Saucer Crash Landing Was Originally Written For TNG's Season 6's Cliffhanger Ending
One of the most spectacular moments in the movie is the crash landing of the Enterprise's saucer-section, which impacts into the jungle on the planet Veridian III.
As unforgettable as it is, the sequence was actually originally written for The Next Generation's season six cliffhanger "Descent: Part I," but the SFX team insisted that they would struggle to execute the scene to satisfaction on a TV budget, and so recommended that it be saved for the next film.
And so, that's precisely what happened, with co-writer Brannon Braga holding onto the idea and finding a way to slot it into Generations.
Given that the sequence's VFX are impressively well-aged for the most part, it was absolutely the right call to hang on and wait for the money to match the scale of the idea.