If TUC didn't exist, then I would say TVH would have been an excellent and fitting end to the movie series. However, TUC does in fact exist, and is an excellent and fitting end to the movie series.
It's a hard choice to make, though, because TVH is my all-time favorite any movie.
Mine too, actually. In fact it's my first
Star Trek, before I knew any of the characters.
Had seen
Wrath of Khan as an 8yo but didn't absorb anything from it besides the really spooky collateral damage.
Voyage Home was the first time I "kinda sorta got it." We did some astronomy in my seventh grade science, so this was powerful stuff. The mysterious "not quite first contact" themes and environmental subtext (and haunting image of the Probe sucking up the ocean) made for a real larger-than-life experience. I actually think it was the best possible introduction to ST at the time.
Star Wars was CBS' Saturday Night movie that same weekend (I'm thinking it was February '87 by the time the scratched-up print of TVH came to our theater), and I saw that (as in "actually" watched it) for the first time as well. It was great.
The Undiscovered Country became my favorite ST for almost ten years before I finally acknowledged
Wrath Of Khan as a better movie. But lately I've come back around to
The Voyage Home. It's the one with the most
scale for me, it's got heart, you can tell the crew loved making it, and Nimoy loved his co-stars. The whole "ensemble cast" thing of TNG? Yeah, DS9 did it better kids. But TVH did it first.
One of the fascinating things that happened between 1986 and 1991 was that TNG did become incredibly popular. TFF (1989) arguably still marches to the beat of it's own drum, still sure of TOS's stewardship over the universe as the parent program; yes Herman Zimmerman tried to create a kind of 'legacy' visually towards TNG, but narratively it feels like everyone involved was still keeping a certain 'us vs them' separation you know? By TUC (1991) we had TOS characters talking of the Alpha Quadrant, and Worf (or an ancestor) as a guest character. Suddenly, TOS was playing with TNG's toys, rather than the other way around, if that makes sense... TNG had 'broken through' and TOS was in many ways now subconsciously a secondary tier of the franchise compared to the spin off. Interesting.
I feel like
The Final Frontier's lackluster performance and TNG's strong 3rd season both came together as the turning point for that. TNG I followed from the start, the movies I had to catch up on over time. And I have to tell you, I just assumed TOS was over with TNG happening. The idea that something might continue on after I'd caught up with it hadn't occurred to me either (solipsistic much?). First I knew of
The Final Frontier was I think Patrick Stewart (very briefly) announced it after hosting a broadcast of 'The Cage' (Writer's Guild strike delayed TNG Season 2 until Thanksgiving weekend if I recall, and Paramount probably released the Steward-hosted episode to TNG's syndicators as a kind of "Hey, we're still here").
It's always struck me that the last two films seem kind of invisible to the public eye compared to the First Four -- although that may be just my perception because of when I caught up. And people tend to confuse the two. "
Star Trek VI, is that the one where they go find god? Is that the one Shatner did?" I hear that a lot.
I pretty much agree with your sentiment, with one exception: I would have liked TNG to have taken place only twenty or so years after TVH, and have the new ship be the Enterprise-B, not the D (more on that in a sec).
Imagine this scenario: TNG starts with the Enterprise-A being retired after twenty years of service, and her replacement, the Enterprise-B, is revealed (the same model that we got in TNG, just with a "B" instead of a "D"). We see Kirk and crew for one final mission before the baton is passed to Picard and the Ent-B crew.
Roddenberry really didn't like the Harve Bennett films at all, and I think he wanted to get as far away from them as possible. TNG wears its dismissal of them (especially
The Wrath of Khan) practically on its sleeve. I feel like that's why the cheesy "bubble forcefield" TV effect, the skintight jumpsuits with primary colors, and the aesthetic rewind to
The Motion Picture with the "streamlined" look to the sets and its theme music. I also take the title Next Generation as referring more to the franchise than the characters. And Roddenberry wanted to disregard a lot of Classic TOS as well. TNG is in a lot of ways the same reboot that the Abrams movies are, and has always existed one parallel universe apart for me. I don't think there's any way he would have considered setting the timelines closer together.
It's often struck me though what Workbee just said about
The Wrath of Khan symbolically kicking off a new generation (as part of the old men retiring theme), and how that handoff was basically forgotten in the sequels.
Wrath of Khan was thought to be the last film, to the point that Nimoy thought dying in it was what made his involvement worthwhile. And it
works as an alternative "last" film, even with his spoken narration at the end (or perhaps especially with it). So it's unfortunate in a way that Meyer's, Bennett's and Roddenberry's plans couldn't have more tightly coalesced. I've never considered that possibility before.
(Though I do feel strongly about every production being it's own thing -- something I think Bennett and Meyer (and Nimoy) seemingly understood better than the studio/UPN/Berman Team did.)
