Moore was making comments after he had been free from “Generations” for a few years. He was looking back over all four of the “Next Generation”-based feature films, and recalling which ones he liked working on, and which ones he didn’t. It seems that “Generations” was already unpleasant, but was even more unpleasant when compared to the 1996 film “Star Trek: First Contact,” which gave the filmmakers a lot more breathing room, creatively. “Generations” was a block-and-tackle setup with executive notes. Moore said: 

“The big difference between ‘First Contact’ and ‘Generations’ was right at the start, there really wasn’t a list of things to do. There was no mandate. When we did ‘Generations,’ there was literally a list of things that the movie had to accomplish. It had to be a transition from one cast to the other. You could only have the original series cast in the first 10 minutes. It had to have the Klingons in it, it had to have a big villain, it had to have time travel in it. It was all this stuff.” 

Moore also spoke on the DVD commentary track for “Generations,” and went into a little more detail. Early in the production of the film, executive producer Rick Berman said that “Generations” had to be a “passing the torch” movie from the original “Star Trek” to the new generation of actors. This was a dumb idea, as “Next Generation” had been very successful on its own for seven years, and already featured multiple cameos from original series actors. 

Paramount, meanwhile, wanted to save some money by hiring the original series cast, but only allowing them to appear in the first ten minutes of the movie. No one liked that.