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''Get that bloody camera out of my face!'' Patrick Stewart blares at an Entertainment Tonight crew that has come to tape a segment on the command bridge of the starship Enterprise. Stewart is in the midst of filming the very last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation-the series signs off after seven seasons, with a two-hour finale the week of May 23-and the most beloved TV baldy since Telly Savalas is clearly in need of a stress pill.

In space, it turns out, sometimes people can hear you scream.

Of course, some backstage strain is inevitable whenever a hit series comes to the end of its run. But on the Next Generation set in late March, you could practically cut the tension with a phaser beam. One reason for the edginess is that the show isn't really ending at all-it's metamorphosing immediately into a movie franchise. Just four days after Stewart wraps the TV finale, he and his costars will move down the Paramount lot to Stage 7, where they'll try to make their cathode-ray characters fly on the big screen. This first Next Generation feature film, titled Star Trek: Generations and costarring classic Trekker William Shatner, will arrive in theaters this Thanksgiving.

Another cause for crankiness: Nobody here seems to have a clue why the show is being canceled. ''I haven't been given any reason that holds water,'' says Jonathan Frakes, who plays swashbuckling Commander William Riker. ''Maybe (Paramount) thought they couldn't do the movie and the TV show at the same time-although I don't know why the movie had to be made this year. Some of us kept hoping there would be an eleventh-hour reprieve, that Paramount would realize how much money the show has made for them and change their minds.''

Paramount's decision to cancel the series is rather odd. Next Generation has been a warp-propelled profit machine from the start-and is still the highest-rated syndicated drama in the history of television, with 15 to 20 million viewers a week. It has spawned two spin-offs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (now in its second season) and Star Trek: Voyager (which will debut in January 1995 as the flagship series of Paramount's planned fifth network). This year, Trek productions have taken over almost a third of Paramount's 30 soundstages, making the shows the biggest deal here since Cecil B. DeMille himself churned out pictures on the lot. Cancel Next Generation now? At the height of its success? Most illogical.

''All I can tell you is that the decision to end Next Generationafter a seven-season run was made at least two years and two Paramount regimes ago,'' says Rick Berman, an executive producer for the show since its October 1987 premiere. ''This plan has been around a long time, since before the studio asked us to do Voyager. You'd have to ask Paramount why they did it.''

Paramount's answer: ''It's always tough to cancel a series that's doing as well as Next Generation,'' says Joel Berman (no relation to Rick), the studio's executive vice president of domestic television. ''But the bottom line is that a successful feature-film franchise can be more profitable than a TV series. We thought it was time to launch Next Generation as a movie franchise, and we didn't think we could do the television series at the same time. Why would people go to movie theaters to see Next Generation if new episodes were available on TV every week? The movie wouldn't be as special.''


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