There were only two ways for "classic Trek" cast members to appear in a movie with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation: either Capt. Kirk and his contemporaries would have to be very, very old, or there would be some time travel involved in the plot. Since geriatric heroes aren't very exciting (despite a welcomed cameo appearance by the aged Dr. McCoy), Star Trek: Generations unites Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) and Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in a time-jumping race to stop a madman's quest for heavenly contentment. When a mysterious energy coil called the Nexus nearly destroys the newly christened U.S.S. Enterprise-B, the just-retired Capt. Kirk is lost and presumed dead. But he's actually been happily trapped in the timeless purgatory of the Nexus--an idyllic state of being described by the mystical Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) as "pure joy." Picard must convince Kirk to leave this artificial comfort zone and confront Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell), the madman who will threaten billions of lives to be reunited with the addictive pleasure of the Nexus. With subplots involving the android Data's unpredictable "emotion chip" and the spectacular crash-landing of the starship Enterprise, this crossover movie not only satisfied Trek fans, but it also gave them something they'd never had to confront before: the heroic and truly final death of a beloved Star Trek character. Passing the torch to the Next Generation with dignity and entertaining adventure, the movie isn't going to please everyone with its somewhat hokey plot, but it still ranks as a worthy big-screen launch for Picard and his stalwart crew. --Jeff Shannon
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
