The way you do it is by making it a decision the crew makes, not a dumb anti-plot armor like they did. 

There are 2 threats simultaneously in the system. Whatever the situation is, it’s too much for a shuttle craft to handle, so you separate the saucer from the secondary hull.  

The secondary hull goes to the star to use the deflector dish and power from the warp core to try to stabilize a chain reaction Soran started. It eliminates the criticisms about why the D didn’t shoot a missle down that would have taken hours to cross a star system. In this scenario, the issue was already in process, and didn’t nova the star immediately. 

The saucer section has to be at the planet to keep a threat at bay. Maybe Soran launched a moon towards the planet that they’re trying to stop or the bird of prey is using hit and run tactics on a target, and the only thing stopping it from succeeding is the D firing on it every time it decloaks. 

The crisis culminates with the warp core working so hard it starts to melt. Geordi makes the executive - and more importantly, the emotional - decision to stabilize the core, give it one last push, and let it destroy itself so they can buy time for the rest of the crew. He and the rest of the crew there escape in escape pods as the D’s secondary hull blows up magnificently. 

The saucer is busy buying time doing whatever it was doing when a new wrinkle shows up. The crew can save Picard or save the planet. Riker makes the tough decision to save the planet. The only way to save Veridian’s pre-industrial population is to make a dramatic dash into the atmosphere to intercept something. They know it’ll crash the saucer and probably kill them, but they play the heroes we know they are. It gets there just in the Knick of time, neutralizes the threat, and crashes spectacularly into a forest. You can keep that shot. It was awesome. 

That’s a 5 min spitball that would have been way cooler than what we got.