First Contact<\/a><\/i> (1996), the Next Generation<\/i> crew wanted to do something lighter and fluffier, and it shows. But instead of making a time-travel comedy like The Voyage Home<\/i> (1986) or a straightforward romance or exploring any of a number of story possibilities that were bandied about every week on the original TV show, they fell victim to the mentality which holds that every sci-fi movie must, of necessity, be a space-battle movie. And so, instead of making an action movie with conviction a la First Contact<\/i>, they made a half-assed action movie instead.<\/p>\nIndeed, the defining moment in this film, for me, has always been the scene where the \u201cdrones\u201d find our heroes, and the people and the machines just stand there and look at each other, like they don\u2019t really<\/i> believe that there\u2019s anything all that big at stake or anything all that threatening going on, so they have time to pose before they start zapping each other again. Utter dullsville.<\/p>\n
To be sure, there are some interesting ideas at play here. Michael Piller, who wrote the script with producer Rick Berman, says he wanted to write a story that got back to Gene Roddenberry\u2019s \u201coptimistic\u201d view of the future, but he sure picked an odd way to do it \u2014 the story is all about how the Federation, forced to do anything to ensure its survival, gets involved in extremely murky and deceptive interplanetary dealings, and how it is up to Picard and his closest friends to defy the Federation for the sake of higher principles. This sort of thing is certainly very much in the spirit of Roddenberry\u2019s original series \u2014 remember the episode where Kirk came up against a Starfleet officer who was involved in a Vietnam-like conflict on another world? \u2014 but how it reflects an \u201coptimistic\u201d view of the future is a little beyond me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a shame that the screenplay zips by some of the most interesting bits of dialogue in order to get back to the action, the action. The situation in which Picard finds himself is open to a number of moral interpretations, but the film is too eager to keep things simple: the Ba\u2019ku are good guys, period, while the Son\u2019a are bad guys, period (except for the guy who turns against them after a particularly stern bit of speechifying on Picard\u2019s part).<\/p>\n
Patrick Stewart says in one of the extras that one of the film\u2019s key themes is, \u201cIs it always acceptable that the good of the many should be used to overwhelm the needs of the few?\u201d That\u2019s an interesting new spin on one of the key questions behind The Wrath of Khan<\/i> (1982) and The Search for Spock<\/i> (1984), but one question nobody really asks is whether the Ba\u2019ku really do \u201cneed\u201d to remain on this planet, which they happened to colonize a few hundred years ago. That might have been interesting to explore.<\/p>\n
Still, ya gotta love Picard\u2019s moral absolutism, in the scene where the vice admiral says, C\u2019mon, the Federation\u2019s plans will only affect 600 people, and Picard replies, \u201cHow many people does it take before it becomes wrong? Hmm? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral?\u201d Moments like that give me just a taste of the Trek<\/i> that I know and love. So does the score by Jerry Goldsmith; until today, I had not seen this film since its initial release, but I have listened to the soundtrack repeatedly, and it was interesting to see which long-forgotten visuals had inspired the music that I know so well.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, when watching a film for the first time in years, you start to think about all the other memories you associate with the era in which the film was made. This is especially true with the Star Trek<\/i> movies, which came out regularly at two- to four-year intervals between 1979, when I was in grade four, and 2002, when I was a full-time freelance writer living with my brother in downtown Vancouver; each film marks a different phase in my life. It\u2019s interesting to think that this was the last film that came out before I moved out of Surrey, or that it was the first film that came out after the youngest of my siblings had finished high school, or that it was the first film that came out after I left university behind me for good, or that I wrote an article on this film that was one of the earlier pieces I sold to a non-student publication.<\/p>\n
Insurrection<\/i> feels like it was made yesterday, but actually, quite a bit has happened since then. Time does fly. Which is kind of an interesting reaction to have to a film in which characters find \u201cthe fountain of youth\u201d and learn how to stop time in its tracks!<\/p>\n
JUNE 17 UPDATE: I forgot to mention one thing \u2014 at 103 minutes, Insurrection<\/i> is also the shortest<\/i> of all the Star Trek<\/i> films. And despite its brevity, it still feels a little padded. That\u2019s just one more thing that makes the movie feel so easy to dismiss.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) was easily one of the most inconsequential films in the entire Star Trek franchise, and, oddly enough, the new \u201ccollector\u2019s edition\u201d DVD makes it seem like even less of an event. For one thing, this is the first two-disc set in the entire series that has no audio commentary track whatsoever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Star Trek: Insurrection<\/i> (1998) was easily one of the most inconsequential films in the entire Star Trek<\/i> franchise<\/a>, and, oddly enough, the new \u201ccollector\u2019s edition\u201d DVD makes it seem like even less of an event.<\/span><\/p>\n