Written by Mr. Mouseburger 5th Jan 2007
Kindly submitted by Mad Movie Mathew
Picard has been defeated. Never one for hand-to-hand skills, he quickly gets a beating in a limp bout of fisticuffs with Soran, who destroys a star system in order to get to the Nexus. The Nexus collides with the planet's surface, taking Soran and Picard into it. Picard, after being a little distracted by the joys of the Nexus, rushes off to find a man who can help him defeat Soran a second time. Captain Kirk.
They both exit the Nexus to battle with Soran again on Veridian III. Or do they? Some people argued the events following might have just been in Picard's version of the Nexus, where the idea of what makes him happy is defeating Soran. What do you think? Do you care?
Anyway, getting back to the action, Soran finds himself confronted on a bridge again - but this time it isn't Picard - it's Kirk. Realising he is cornered, Soran dives off the bridge. Picard and Kirk agree that they must work together to stop Soran - Kirk will fight Soran and in so doing enable Picard to thwart the launch of the missile which Soran has set up to blow up the universe's sun.
Kirk chases Soran, who manages to put a gun to Kirk's temple. All looks lost for Kirk, when Picard suddenly dives on Soran from behind and the two Captains grapple with him and move the gun away.
Soran hits Picard with his free hand, sending him tumbling down a rock face. Kirk hits Soran and they have a fight. This ends with Kirk punching Soran off the edge of a cliff, but he grabs a rope that's somehow connected to a platform on the land above.
Picard walks up to Kirk. "I thought you were going to the launcher?" asks Kirk. [slightly paraphrased by Mouseburger] "Where is the dramatic tension in that?" Picard explains. Soran by this time has recovered and he uses his control pad to cloak the missile launcher, before a rope loosens, which causes Soran to fall several feet and drop the pad (for increased dramatic tension) tantalisingly onto a rickety bridge.
The Captains both spot the pad and begin running towards it. Kirk runs onto the bridge to grab the pad. But Soran, several feet away, fires at the bridge with his gun, causing an explosion that splits the bridge in twain. Picard manages to rescue Kirk, while Soran, spotting the Nexus approaching, rushes off to meet it.
After some generically bland Star Trek dialogue, along the lines of "lets work together", it is agreed by both Captains that Kirk will go for the remote while Picard heads off to fight Soran.
Moving carefully across the shaking half of the bridge, Kirk stops at the end, calculating the jump to the other half. We can see the beams on the other side buckling (Yet more dramatic tensions folks) and Kirk realizes that this may be his final act (we can tell by the close-up and the melancholic music playing). He makes the jump, and several beams snap, causing the bridge to slide into a steep angle. This makes the pad fall into Kirk's hand. With a last heroic act, he points the pad at the launcher and de-cloaks it for Picard. The rest of the beams then fail and the bridge falls down the cliff, taking Kirk with it. The bridge crashes far below, off-camera.
However, this is a mainstay of the Star Trek franchise, and so the scriptwriters were not going to let him shuffle off this mortal coil in such an undignified way. Instead they write in a moving death scene, between him and Picard.
Soran has been defeated by this point, and Picard looks to see where Kirk was, when he spots the bridge and Kirk's body underneath. He moves some pieces away, and miraculously Kirk still has a few breaths left in that rather ample frame of his.
"Did we do it? Did we make a difference?" Kirk asks.
"Oh yes,we made a difference. Thank you" Picard replies.
Kirk struggles for breath and realising these are to be his last words, says [slightly paraphrased by Mouseburger]
"I am about to die, but to all those Trekkie fans out there who have never really warmed to Picard in the TV series, i am giving my [William Shatner's] wholehearted approval to accept Picard as the captain of the Enterprise henceforth."
With that, the smile begins to fade as the reality of what he has said hits him. "Oh my..." he utters, as he fades from life and into a new frontier.
Additional trivia material was supplied by Mad Movie Mathew, and so i have added it here:
Mad Movie Mathew wrote
For people who think this is not a fitting end for Kirk, in the original script (and first ending, as seen on the Special Collector's Edition DVD), his death was far more low-key and less heroic. In fact, the whole climax is different. Kirk appears on the bridge, and it goes straight into a one-on-one fight with Soran. Picard, meanwhile, starts fooling about with the missile launcher, and at one point accidentally cloaks the missile. Picard yells at Kirk, who has just knocked Soran out, "there's a pad in his right pocket!" As Kirk works the pad, Soran wakes, and spots his gun, knocked down onto the floor in the ensuing struggle. The launcher decloaks, and Kirk smirks, "the 24th Century isn't so tough". At that moment, Soran shoots him in the back. The climax continues (again, differently to the theatrical cut) and then we get the Picard/Kirk talk before Kirk's passing. Pathetic.
Hehe, I like the truncations. I did think I went a bit overboard with dialouge quoting, but at least you have more to work with, I guess.
Offscreen Killing? The landing happens offscreen.
We dont mind lots of info, especially if they are for more obscure films because, as you say, we can always truncate it.
When I submitted this, I think a mistake slipped through the gap:I should have put 'pad', but obviously my brain was moving faster than my fingers...
You remember that Alternate Ending? Here it is on YouTube. And boy, is it awful:
[www.youtube.com]
Anyways....just another case of Shatner stealing the glory of the rest of the crew. Isn't "Oh my." Sulu's line?