Theatrical Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

[Richard--W]

Title: Star Trek: Insurrection

Tagline: The battle for paradise has begun.

Genre: Science Fiction, Action, Adventure, Thriller

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Gregg Henry, F. Murray Abraham, Anthony Zerbe, Donna Murphy, Stephanie Niznik, Rico Bueno, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Michael Welch, Mark Deakins, Michael Horton, Bruce French, Breon Gorman, John Hostetter, Rick Worthy, Larry Anderson, D. Elliot Woods, Jennifer Tung, Raye Birk, Peggy Miley, Claudette Nevins, Greg Poland, Kenneth Lane Edwards, Joseph Ruskin, Zachary Isaiah Williams, McKenzie Westmore, Phillip Glasser

Release: 1998-12-11

Runtime: 103

Plot: When an alien race and factions within Starfleet attempt to take over a planet that has "regenerative" properties, it falls upon Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise to defend the planet's people as well as the very ideals upon which the Federation itself was founded.

Who is credited with inventing the Kobyashi Maru?

was that Harve Bennet?

was it sourced from an actual construct, out of Japanese military culture?


Who came up with the idea of the Genesis project?

It's an excellent sci-fi concept.

was that Harve Bennet?

 

[Lord Dalek]

The Genesis Device is the only part of the Jack P. Sowards script to make it into Wrath of Khan without getting a major overhaul by Nicholas

Meyer. I assume Meyer created the Kobayashi Maru himself when he rewrote the entire film from scratch, albeit uncredited.

 

[Richard--W]

Have you read Jack B. Sowards script before it was changed?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In his autobiography, Nick Meyer explained that after someone (quite possibly Roddenberry, who wasn't happy to have been removed from the producer's chair) leaked that Spock was to die and fan outrage started to pile up, he was looking for a way to get people to forget about that and get into the movie fresh, and that opening the movie in that way seemed to be the best way to move past that. I don't think his book states whether he invented the actual term, but I think the idea of having key crew members "die" in the simulator to open the picture, before the audience realizes that it's just a simulation, was his.


I read the Sowards draft a long time ago and I'm pretty sure I don't have it anymore, but I think it's out there somewhere for anyone willing to do a detective work. Now that you mention it, I'd actually love to spend an afternoon reading all of the different drafts by different writers on that film to see exactly what came from where, and what didn't make it. It's been summarized in many accounts, but I'd love to actually see the pages.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I've been making my way through "Deep Space Nine" for the first time, and midway through the last season I think I'm roughly at the point chronologically when Star Trek: Insurrection takes place. I remember not liking it when it originally came out, and I was interested in seeing if the additional context of DS9 would make a difference in my appreciation of it.

I actually liked the first act quite a bit more than I remembered; the staging is really effective: First this idyllic, almost Amish community, that could be thousands of years old. Then the reveal that Starfleet and an unknown race are watching from the 24th century equivalent of a duck blind. Then the reveal that Data is on the surface, and has blown everything to hell. Everything through Geordi LaForge fixing Data works really well for me.

The core of the movie, though, I think plays even worse with the additional context of DS9. This is the only TNG movie to take place during the Dominion War, a war that the Federation is losing badly. Millions of Federation citizens have been slaughtered, and the ranks of Starfleet are badly depleted -- those that remain are the exhausted, the wounded, and the demoralized. The regenerative properties of the planet, if properly harvested, could tip the scales and change the balance of power. 600 people versus billions or even trillions of others seems like easy moral arithmetic.

Nor would it be the Federation's first forced relocation. It sold out its own citizens in order to make peace with the Cardassians, and scooped them up from the planets that were ceded by treaty.

Further complicating the case for Picard's stance is the fact that the Ba'ku aren't even native to the planet. They've only been there a few hundred years. It's less a case of the Federation colonizing an inhabited world and decimating the native population than it is a case of England and France battling for control of North America. And they are a warp capable society, so the Prime Directive doesn't apply.

So at the end of the day, Picard gets to keep his moral high ground and gets the girl, and the Federation as a whole suffers. In peacetime, when the Federation wasn't facing an existential threat, I think Picard's stance would have been stronger. But by the same token, it would have been harder to believe under peacetime circumstances that the Federation Council would have gone along with this in the first place.

It also seems like a heck of a dangling thread that the Federation knows about a literal Fountain of Youth planet but chooses not to follow up on it in any meaningful way. Even if the planet's rings aren't mined for their medicinal properties, 600 people in a single settlement still leaves a whole lot of planet for peaceful co-existence. And how do you ration access to a planet that would allow you to live forever?

The CG spaceships also don't quite hold up like the physical models do in the earlier films. Far better than the television models, but just a little too clean, with lighting that doesn't quite feel natural.

On the plus side, the film finally rectifies the ill-advised choice to pair Troi up with Worf toward the end of TNG's television run. Since then, Worf has married someone else and been widowed on DS9, so it's not really a love triangle anymore. And the youthful impulsiveness brought out by the planet allows Riker and Troi to indulge their younger, more passionate sides.

 

[Sam Favate]

I agree with your assessment of this movie. It wasn't a bad film, but it was a tremendous letdown after First Contact. It really suffered from needing to be a movie that could reach all audiences, which meant the producers wouldn't allow it to touch on what was happening in the contemporary Star Trek universe. Still they could have crafted something that put the crew in the context of the Dominion conflict, and one that made more sense why Worf would be there.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I revisited this one tonight on Ultra HD disc. While I still think it's flawed on a fundamental level, it's one that I appreciate more each time I watch it. I think it's a shame that Frakes got punished for its underperformance, because a lot of the problems are conceptual; I think the execution really shines.

Star Trek: Insurrection is a miscalculation, or at least an imperfect expression of the root idea behind the story. That story has a Federation, weakened by prolonged conflicts with The Borg, the Dominion, and Romulans, seeming to turn to desperate measures and commit acts that defy their ethical principles. It’s fertile plot ground.

One of the things I really like about the movie is the way it puts Picard and the idealized crew of the Enterprise up against the more morally gray vision of the Federation developed by DS9.

But it also highlights one of my frustrations with the movie: It takes place during the Dominion War, but we never feel the toll it's taken or the desperation it's engendered in the Federation.

Ideally, instead of this story, we should have gotten a full-on war movie, the Enterprise pitted against the forces of the Dominion.

But even with this concept, I think it would have worked better if the stakes had been more dire. Show us the countless dead and wounded across the fleet. Explain to us how the processed particles would save countless lives and get countless officers and crewmen back in the fight at a time when they're needed more than ever.

The whole thing feels oddly bloodless, which makes Picard's ethical stance a bit too easy.

Complaints about films based on TV shows feeling like extended episodes have often been unfair, but budget aside, that’s exactly what Star Trek: Insurrection looks like.

You're not wrong, but it's one of the things I really like about this movie. It's a decent two-parter, but with the budget to do it right.

The opening premise is basically an expansion and extrapolation of the plot from "Who Watches the Watchers". But I really appreciate how this village has geography and scale, and was constructed on location with real skies and real scenery. How many times in TNG did we go down to a planet, and all we saw was one intersection or one plaza that happens to be roughly the size of a sound stage? Getting to see a settlement as it should be is really satisfying here.

The Son’a sets are dull, and small (consider the scene where Admiral Dougherty and Ru’afo come to blows), there’s no imagination or excitement in that setting, and it’s something that is part of a fabric of ordinary that is felt everywhere in the film.

I do agree with this. The Son'a ships aren't really any better than what we get for alien ships in any of the TV series. And considerably worse than what we get for ships in the Paramount+ series.

I don't think it really hurts the movie, but there's definitely a clear contrast with the far more sophisticated Enterprise-E sets that were carried over from First Contact.

We rarely disagree but we do here as I think the visual effects in this film are terrific.

There are definitely some issues; the compositing of the drones during the chase up to the mountain caves being one example that Neil identified which also stood out to me. But there are a lot of beautiful shots too. The Ba'ku planet, Earth-like but with rings, really holds up. And the gaseous environment of the "briar patch" makes for some gorgeous space visuals.

The themes in it are timely and serious, and yet the movie also takes time to take a breath and give the crew some time to explore their feelings and emotions.

One thing I definitely appreciate is that it provided an excuse to get Riker and Troi back together. I never understood why the show never got them back together, especially with the weird detour into a Worf/Troi pairing that never worked.

The downside of introducing Donna Murphy's character is that we don't get to see Picard and Crusher with their guard down. The circumstances of this story would have provided a rather unique opportunity for them to explore who they are to one another without all of the baggage of their age and complicated personal history getting in the way. Crusher has even less to do in this one than she did in First Contact.

For one, “Insurrection” is a meaningless title. There is no insurrection in the story at all.

There actually is, on two fronts. Picard's steadfast defense of Federation principles in direct defiance of orders he considers immoral can be considered an insurrection of sorts. And the whole conflict between the Son'a and the Ba'ku was the result of a failed insurrection when the Son'a were younger, that resulted in their exile.

Brent Spiner famously wanted Data killed off in this film, and with the scripts he was getting, can you blame him? All Data does is go rogue, get controlled, or change his personality.

I appreciated Data's storyline more this time around. I appreciated the way he and the young boy learned from one another. By the end of the movie, I felt like he was further along his journey toward becoming human. And I liked how his triggered fail-safe was the inciting incident for the whole movie.

Only LeVar Burton gets a moment to shine, while the rest of the cast stumble through bad jokes. The humor, once again, just doesn’t work.

While the humor doesn't always work, it played better for me than most attempts at humor in this era of Trek. The attempts at humor in Generations were a lot more cringeworthy.

But I definitely agree about LeVar Burton. That scene where Picard joins LaForge as LaForge witnesses a sunrise with his own eyes for the first time is really something special. It's also one of the only times the movie highlights the personal cost of Picard's moral stance: LaForge's natural sight is temporary because Picard denies the Federation the means of turning this planet's special sauce into a functional therapeutic.

The makeup effects are lazy. The Son’a have stretchy faces meant to gross us out, especially when blood drips through their thin skin. The lesson here must be that if someone’s looks aren’t pleasing, they must be bad people.

I don't think the point was to make them look monstrous; rather it was taking Hollywood's obsession with plastic surgery and other deaging regimens to their logic extreme. The Son'a all had a few face lifts too many.

Meanwhile, the Ba’ku are all beautiful white people (there is not a hint of diversity among them, a mistake that would never be made today). So, beautiful white people - good; people who look different - bad. I expect more from Star Trek.

This is something I didn't notice any time I've watched the film, but it's definitely a valid criticism.

In-universe, perhaps the Ba'ku come from a solar system with a weaker sun or evolved on a planet on the outer edge of the habitable zone, so that the habitable regions are all equivalent to Scandinavia in terms of climate and sunlight.

But from a production standpoint, if you're giving us a species that is outwardly indistinguishable from humanity, then you have a responsibility to provide a greater degree of representation.

Since the 90s, there’s been a phenomenon of writing characters in long-running franchises where they must always have a personal stake in the outcome of the story. (See: every James Bond movie since 1989.) I think that’s misguided, and that effective stories can be told about people just doing their jobs or living according to their beliefs. But in this sense, Insurrection is a throwback. Picard and crew have no personal stake here, beyond living up to the ideals that brought them to Starfleet.

Another good point. By blockbuster standards, the stakes here are pretty low: several hundred people on the planet, the few dozen Son'a, and one starship are all that are in play. The real tension is whether Starfleet will hold onto its principles or not.

Further complicating the case for Picard's stance is the fact that the Ba'ku aren't even native to the planet. They've only been there a few hundred years. It's less a case of the Federation colonizing an inhabited world and decimating the native population than it is a case of England and France battling for control of North America. And they are a warp capable society, so the Prime Directive doesn't apply.

So at the end of the day, Picard gets to keep his moral high ground and gets the girl, and the Federation as a whole suffers. In peacetime, when the Federation wasn't facing an existential threat, I think Picard's stance would have been stronger. But by the same token, it would have been harder to believe under peacetime circumstances that the Federation Council would have gone along with this in the first place.

This doesn't bother me quite as much as it did when I wrote the above, probably because I'm not immersed in the ravages of the Dominion War now like I was when I watched it then.

The Son'a aren't overly sympathetic; they fucked around and found out, and it's not Picard's fault that they'll die before the effects of the planet could heal them naturally. They've also well exceeded their natural lifespans at this point, so it's not like their deaths will be untimely or violent. They were facing death from old age essentially.

So I do think Picard is justified in not allowing the Federation and the Son'a to stripmine the planet for raw materials.

It also seems like a heck of a dangling thread that the Federation knows about a literal Fountain of Youth planet but chooses not to follow up on it in any meaningful way. Even if the planet's rings aren't mined for their medicinal properties, 600 people in a single settlement still leaves a whole lot of planet for peaceful co-existence. And how do you ration access to a planet that would allow you to live forever?

But this still really bugs me. Just because this small group of pacifists happened to find this planet first a few hundred years earlier, they get to have a monopoly and exclusive jurisdiction on the Fountain of Youth? For the Ba'ku to insist on it would be incredibly selfish and unneighborly.

Let the Ba'ku remain in their village and protect their way of life by granting them exclusive dominion over all they can see from their village.

But let the other continents on the planet be settled, open up health spas that will allow patients afflicted with illnesses beyond the medical capabilities of the Federation to heal.

I think of Riker and Troi's son, who passed away between Nemesis and the first season of "Picard". They took him to Nepenthe, because its soil had some restorative properties. But that's weak sauce compared to this planet. Why didn't they just move to Ba'ku, and let the planet's rings heal him?

 

[Josh Dial]

I absolutely love the overture from Insurrection (Ba'Ku Village). It's one of my favourite pieces from Jerry Goldsmith (my favourite is his piece for the Soarin' Over California attraction). 1:00 to 3:00 is so good.