Star Trek: Insurrection
The title’s the first big warning sign. Star Trek: Insurrection? Oh yeah. What’s next? Star Trek: Fracas? Star Trek: Imbroglio? Star Trek: Brouhaha?
Look, I’m a bit of a Star Trek geek. Part time, of course – I’m not one of those really freaky Trekkies who tries to speak Klingon and convince others that the correct term is “Trekkers.” I just happen to think by its last few seasons “The Next Generation” was a pretty good TV show (and “Deep Space Nine” a better one), and that some of the Trek movies have been quite enjoyable. If that makes me irretrievably nerdy and socially inadequate in your eyes, well that’s your call, not mine. But I assure you I’m not one of those who thought that the sun shone out of Gene Roddenberry’s warp coil and that everything Trek is wonderful. Star Trek: Insurrection, for example, is a lot of things, but “wonderful” it ain’t.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. The film follows the crew of the Enterprise E, led by Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) as they attempt to save the peace-loving people of a planet that has the power to indefinitely prolong lifespans. They have been under anthropological study from a hidden “duck blind” in the hills, but when the android Data (Brent Spiner) malfunctions, he attacks the anthropologists’ headquarters and reveals it to the people. The Enterprise crew get pulled into the action, and it turns out that the Federation has entered into a dubious treaty with a race who need the properties of the planet to survive. Part of the deal is that the current inhabitants will be relocated by secretly transferring them to a holographic simulation of their real village. Picard and the crew defy Starfleet orders and act to prevent the relocation.
This plot will sound a little familiar to longtime viewers of the TV show, as it’s cobbled together from bits and pieces from numerous different episodes. Consider:
- In “Who Watches the Watchers?” a hidden “duck blind” in the hills above a village fails and leaves the Enterprise crew to undo the resultant cultural damage;
- In “Thine Own Self” a damaged Data is lost in a preindustrial village and must be recovered;
- In “Homeward” an attempt is made to relocate a village full of people by transferring them to a holographic simulation without their knowledge; and
- In “Journey’s End” the Federation attempt to forcibly relocate a group of colonists in order to protect a treaty with an untrustworthy species.
Add special effects and stir.
I suppose the derivativeness of the premise isn’t a problem in itself: you could play the same game with Generations and First Contact. (Perhaps the real problem is that they chose such dull episodes to rip off this time). What can’t be denied is that Michael Piller has taken the material and turned it into a dud script. Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore, who wrote the previous two installments, seemed to have adjusted better to writing feature films. Those efforts were better paced and more focussed: they didn’t try to do everything that the TV show did. Generations concentrated on providing a smooth transition from crew to crew, while First Contact went for action and adventure.
Insurrection, on the other hand, tries to be everything to every fan. The big explosions and shootouts from First Contact are still there, but Piller tries to lighten the mix by throwing in lots of little “character” moments. Riker and Troi finally get back together (something only the saddest and most obsessive fans of the show will care about), Geordi gets his eyesight back, and Data befriends a little boy and sings some Gilbert & Sullivan (an awful scene – reminiscent of the infamous “Row Row Row Your Boat” scene in Star Trek V). While I like the idea of giving all the cast members something to do, most of these bits are dopey, or rushed, or both. The result is a bit of a mishmash that ultimately doesn’t really get any aspect right.
Even the action doesn’t work. We know the basic rules for Trek combat: each ship has shields, and when one ship loses its shields, each subsequent hit causes consoles to explode and people to fly across the bridge. In this film, though, this basic setup gets obscured underneath a pile of technobabble, as the enemies use weapons that causes some kind of space-time rift, which can somehow be closed by ejecting the warp core, and then the Enterprise can ignite some gasses or something… The problem with technobabble isn’t so much the jargon: it’s that the writers make it up as they go along and create completely arbitrary outcomes. It gives the impression that the Enterprise wins the space battle not because its crew outwits the enemy, but rather because they use bigger words.