One Of Star Trek Generations' Biggest Plot Holes Only Exists Because Of A Cut Scene

David Carson's 1994 film "Star Trek: Generations," the most useless movie in the series, features a colossal negative space wedgie called the Nexus, a free-floating energy ribbon with no known origin that tore through the galaxy at regular intervals. The Nexus destroys ships, but also manages to bodily suck up victims and deposit them in a Heaven-like pocket dimension where time has no meaning. 

At the beginning of "Generations," in the year 2293, Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) is sucked up by the Nexus. Later in the movie, in the year 2371, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is as well. At the time, Picard was busy fighting a Nexus-obsessed scientist named Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell) who was willing to destroy a star system in order to "steer" the Nexus into him. Picard failed, and the star system was destroyed. 

Because there's no time in the Nexus, Picard and Kirk are able to meet face-to-face inside, essentially arriving at the same moment, despite entering 78 years apart. Picard convinces Kirk to leave the Nexus because he needs help stopping Dr. Soran's plot. The pair exits the Nexus right next to Soran, giving themselves only about 10 minutes to stop him.

Keep in mind, time has no meaning in the Nexus, so Kirk and Picard could have exited at any time in history. Given that power, why did Picard choose to exit only ten minutes before Soran destroyed the star system, and not a full hour? Or 12 hours? Or a year, for that matter? It's a plot hole that has bothered Trekkies for years. 

As it so happens, a 1996 interview with "Generations" co-screenwriter Brannon Braga, printed in Sci-Fi Universe Magazine, explains why this plot hole exists. There was a deleted scene in "Generations" that explained everything. 

It's the Prime Directive.

The Nexus, to elaborate a little more, must have some kind of psychic quality, because when Picard arrives inside of it, he envisions a placid alternate life for himself where he has a big family and a loving wife. Picard realizes it can't be real, and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) appears to him and says that, no, it isn't. She was also swept up by the Nexus years ago, and she's able to leave a kind of psychic message for Picard. She's the one who tells him he can exit the Nexus at any place, and any time. 

At that point, Picard's imagination should have been inflamed. To heck with Soran and his petty plot, why not go back in time and prevent any number of war atrocities? I know that Picard abides by a temporal Prime Directive and wouldn't want to muck around with history, but surely he could think of something better to do than go back in time ten minutes to have a fistfight with Dr. Soran, right? 

When asked, point blank, about Picard's unimaginative decision, Brannon Braga had a ready-to-go answer. Braga confessed only that his movie "was full of f***ing plot holes." As for the Picard-Exit conundrum, Braga said: 

"That's one of the plot holes, unfortunately. There was a speech in the movie that explained all that [...] but we cut it. You know, it's the Prime Directive. You can't go screwing up the timeline. He can't go back to when Soran was born; the further back he goes, the more he risks. We cut the speech because it was a little too expositional and a little boring."  

Okay, I guess that makes sense. But I like exposition. 

Indeed, the exposition would have helped a great deal to make "Star Trek: Generations" more cogent. The movie has themes of time, and of time running out. "Time is the fire in which we burn," Dr. Soran even says at one point. A conversation about the immutability of history would have been thematically appropriate as well as plot-necessary. 

"Generations," however, is a mess beyond just the Nexus-Exit plot hole. Nerds have picked apart this 1994 movie with a scalpel, the most notorious dissection being the extended, 30-minute video essay from the folks at Red Letter Media, from the trivial to the egregious. Like, why did Dr. Soran kidnap Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton)? Or if retaining the timeline was so important, why were Kirk's remains left on the surface of Veridian III? Why was the Enterprise-B the only ship in range of a crisis point when it was right next to Earth, the seat of the Federation? Stuff like that. 

But there are other issues besides. "Generations" stood as a "pass the torch" movie from one "Star Trek" generation to the next, and was clearly made for casual filmgoers who might be unfamiliar with "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987 – 1994). This was a mandate from the higher-ups. The problem was, "Next Generation" had already been on the air for seven years by the time "Generations" had come out, and the original crew exited the stage in 1991's "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," so the torch had already been passed. The idea that we needed another movie to get Kirk and Picard together was a churlish idea from the start. 

It's not one of the better "Star Trek" movies.