The last generation needed pensioning off, for sure, and none more so than Shatner. But, like the trouper he is, the old ham has not gone down without a fight. Surely the worst-kept secret about Generations is that Captain Kirk finally does the decent thing and dies - at the hands of a wonderfully bad-tempered Malcolm McDowell (who has received real-life death threats from enraged psycho-Trekkies for his pains).

What is perhaps less widely known is that the Captain's once mercifully brief death scene had to be re-shot after test previews, and drawn out into something altogether sillier and more melodramatic for the fan base. Thus we get Shatner's limited but idiosyncratic palette of facial expressions exercised to the full, as he tries hard to play a man called to meet his Maker without appearing pleased with himself for dying so splendidly. That he fails just makes it more fun.

Another incidental pleasure is the sub-text of Shatner hanging on to his defining role of Toupeed Crusader for grim life, and clearly resenting having to share precious screen space with his svelte and noticeably not-at-all-toupeed successor, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Stewart). One suspects Shatner came back for more than just the money - he just loves being Kirk - which adds poignancy; it neatly mirrors the film's plot strand about the hand-over of power from one commander to the next.

As in any standard television episode, the film focuses on a manageable few characters within a familiar formula, intertwining three plot strands: one adventure, one personal, one humorous.

The humour comes from Data (Brent Spiner), a previously Spockian font of logic implanted with a new chip which allows him emotions. The personal is the whole business of Kirk-meets-Picard. And the adventure is supplied by McDowell's mad-genius villain scooting around the galaxy wiping out entire solar systems in his quest to enter a kind of cosmic nirvana called the Nexus. This, in fact, is where Kirk meets Picard: the former has doddered there for about 80 years in a rapturous dream-time where his every whim is made real. (When he too is offered access to all the riches and wonders of the universe, Picard, true to form, asks for a nice cup of Earl Grey.) Eventually, the two team up and head back to the 'real world' to foil the villain's latest crackpot scheme. Two men went, only one would return.

For good or bad, Generations does resemble little more than a fair TV two-parter. True, the special effects are a lot more extravagant (although not wildly impressive in the current market), but the feel is pure Next Generation.

In some ways this is a good thing. Stewart has enough control over his character to carry it to the big screen without blowing it up into pastiche, and that is also true of the bigger picture. The first Star Trek movie came a full decade after the demise of the original series. It had to be wholly re-invented, which was never done quite right. The early movies and the cult series will always be remembered as separate things, whereas here we have a dove-tailed transition with no jarring anomalies or innovations.

Perhaps that is why, for all its novelty value, Generations gives no real spark of excitement - it is just business as usual on the bridge of the Enterprise. It would have been bolder, and perhaps wiser, to have skipped a generation and tried something fresh and new.

At least that way they could have avoided the now looming prospect of a superannuated Jean-Luc Picard and his middle-aged crew biddying about some future corner of the universe where Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the gang have all too frequently biddied before.