Star Trek: 10 Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive

The idea of passing the baton from Star Trek: The Original Series to Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn't a bad one, the problem was that the task had already been done. Kirk's parting log in The Undiscovered Country spelled it out in no uncertain terms: "This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man...where no one has gone before."

Star Trek Generations (underrated though it may be) commits the cardinal sin of forcing the character back into action when his usefulness within the story is peripheral at best. The film drags Kirk from the rest of his life simply to end it, when the notion of the character – the man – living out the rest of his life off screen proves more promising and ultimately more fulfilling than anything any screenwriter could dramatize. Kirk could've died on the bridge of the Enterprise or smushed under a bridge on Veridian III, it doesn't matter because the character's story had ended by the time writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga decided to put him in his grave.

Kirk's death in Star Trek Generations isn't bad because of the way he went out, it's bad because the writers thought the only way to resolve the character and move the franchise forward was to kill him.