{"id":3447,"date":"2023-06-28T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3447"},"modified":"2023-05-19T15:04:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T14:04:35","slug":"trekaday-094-star-trek-insurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/06\/28\/trekaday-094-star-trek-insurrection\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday #094: Star Trek Insurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"

NGM03 Insurrection<\/strong> (\"3).\u00a0<\/span>Michael Piller had saved Star Trek<\/strong> once. Could he save it again? <\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cCreative Consultant\u201d on DS9<\/strong> and Voyager<\/strong>, who had turned the ship around back in 1989, was asked to write the screenplay for the third Next Generation<\/strong> film and nobody knew the show and the characters better than he did. His original pitch was a riff on Heart of Darkness<\/em> and The Magnificent Seven<\/em> with Picard as a lone figure, desperately defending a benighted group of settlers from a seemingly-invincible foe. As loving retold in his amazing (but unpublished) book on the subject, following endless fretting about what the studio wanted, what the studio thought fans wanted, what Patrick Stewart wanted, what Rick Berman thought Patrick Stewart wanted, what Brent Spiner wanted, what director Jonathan Frakes wanted, and finally what the studio wanted, again, we got\u2026 this. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a curious film and one which keeps sliding off my brain. I watched it first on a plane \u2013 hardly ideal \u2013 and I kept falling asleep half way through and having to go back and find what I missed. When I finally had it on DVD and watched it all the way through, it still struck me as piecemeal and inconsistent. Not maddeningly sloppy the way that Generations<\/em> is, but light years away from the focused thrill ride of First Contact<\/em>. The usual criticism of Insurrection<\/em> is that it feels like an overlong episode of the TV show, and reading Piller\u2019s book, you can see how that happened. His huge movie-sized idea of a story was drawn back into the gravity well of the TV series. But most TNG<\/strong> two-parters have been hugely entertaining, so if Insurrection is just a 100 minute episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/strong>, well I can think of a lot worse things to watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Let\u2019s give it a spin. <\/span><\/p>\n

The opening is very unusual for a Star Trek<\/strong> film \u2013 all bucolic calm and cheerful domesticity. Star Trek<\/strong> films tend to open with death and destruction (Motion Picture<\/em>, Wrath of Khan<\/em>) or catching up with the gang (Search for Spock<\/em>, Voyage Home<\/em>, Generations<\/em>). The calm-before-the-storm is a perfectly fine way to start a story, but not a particularly interesting one. Nor is the revelation that this community is being covertly studied all that shocking or surprising, being familiar from TV episodes like Who Watches the Watchers<\/em>, while Data-goes-rogue-in-a-pre-Warp-society is a re-run of Thine Own Self<\/em>. Even the \u201cBriar Patch\u201d is just the nebula from Wrath of Khan<\/em> with a new name. Part of the problem is that the B’aku society is so blandly generic. TNG<\/strong> figured out what a pre-Warp civilisation in the 24th century would look and feel like and has stuck to it, even though this is going to the backdrop for this whole movie. Even Michael Westmore hasn\u2019t been inspired to give them three noses or six ears or whatever. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another problem with this opening is that it\u2019s all played from the point of view of people we haven\u2019t met, don\u2019t know and don\u2019t care about. So this feels simultaneously low-stakes and confusing. But, anyway \u2013 Data blows the gaff on whatever this is, for as-yet unknown reasons, and reveals himself while beating up and revealing his comrades. Darn it, if only the Federation had some kind of magical technology that could \u201clock on\u201d to him and instantly \u201ctransport\u201d him out of there. Oh well. One for the boffins to keep working on, I expect. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now we catch up with the gang, but the supposedly amusing hijinks of Picard\u2019s diplomatic quickstepping feel like the plot is losing momentum, not gaining it, for all the script\u2019s hurried enthusiasm to make this veteran crew feel like first-year cadets who are complete beginners at this kind of ambassadorial function. And now it turns out that the Enterprise<\/em> is <\/span>two days<\/span> away from the plot (and the flagship of the fleet is not equipped to enter the region in any case, although the unspecified properties of the \u201cBriar Patch\u201d are never particularly relevant as it turns out). <\/span><\/p>\n

Adding a bit of class is F Murray Abraham as Ru\u2019afo, who also gets some nifty makeup effects, but who is bossing Admiral Dougherty around (Anthony Zerbe, familiar from the James Bond film Licence to Kill<\/em>, and he weirdly gets the same death scene there as here) like he\u2019s the Federation and Starfleet are his soldiers. Adding-the-backstory-on-the-hoof can make for propulsive storytelling, but it can also lead to bewilderment, as here. Who are these people? What are they doing? And why \u2013 other than the still-inexplicable involvement of Data \u2013 should I care? <\/span><\/p>\n

Inside and out, the Enterprise<\/em> has never looked better, with the bridge striking a nice balance between the beige comfort of the TV version and the shadowy gloom of Generations<\/em>. But the whole set up is unnecessarily confusing, laboriously moving our people into place instead of having them there from the beginning, telling the story from odd viewpoints, rarely getting me terribly invested in what is happening, and Patrick Stewart hamming out HMS Pinafore<\/em> doesn\u2019t help matters much. <\/span><\/p>\n

The next phase of the story kind of undoes a lot of what was set-up over the previous half-hour. The society which must not know of the existence of the Federation turns out to be post-Warp not pre-Warp after all. Data is put back in his box. The fact that it took the Enterprise<\/em> two days to arrive was never relevant \u2013 it could have been an hour and things would have turned out just the same. And once the decoy village was built, there seems little purpose in continuing to wander around in secret, calling into question the continuing need for the \u201cduck blind\u201d at all. Rather than be present and see what happened to cause Data\u2019s malfunction, we have to learn about it after the fact, when we already know the outcome. And what we discover is yet another lift from a TV episode, this time Homeward<\/em> with its Holodeck simulation of familiar surroundings. (And it\u2019s surprising to say the least to discover that the computer on this super-secret installation will obey voice commands from literally anyone. Still, I\u2019d find Patrick Stewart\u2019s commands hard to ignore too.) <\/span><\/p>\n

When it finally comes to light, the MacGuffin turns out to be that the planet is an orbiting fountain of youth, thanks to some exotic \u201cmetaphasic radiation\u201d \u2013 which like most radiation affects the cells in the bodies of adults differently than it affects the cells in the bodies of children (\u201cDon\u2019t ask me to explain it,\u201d growls Admiral Badguy). Given that this is a series which gave us a 137-year-old McCoy in its pilot episode, it\u2019s an odd thing to choose as the fulcrum of the rest of the plot. Anyway, rather than work with the inhabitants, and send scientists to study the radiation, the Federation in its wisdom has decided to partner with Galactic \u201cthugs\u201d the So\u2019na and take control of the planet in total secrecy. This undermines Star Trek<\/strong>\u2019s traditional sunny optimism for no very good reason, but now at least \u2013 nearly half-way through the film \u2013 we understand who the badguys are, what they\u2019re trying to do, and what we need to do to stop them. This is all that remains of Michael Piller\u2019s original pitch: Picard standing against the Federation to protect the 600 inhabitants of the village. <\/span><\/p>\n

It all comes down to Picard\u2019s captain\u2019s yacht vs Salieri and the rest of his flat-faced gang. I\u2019m just not sure I want the Federation to be the badguys in my Star Trek<\/strong> film \u2013 and if that is what I\u2019m going to get, I\u2019d like the stakes to be a bit higher than the fate of one small collection of twee adobe huts. The revelation that the So\u2019na and the Ba\u2019ku are the same species likewise is only of conceptual interest \u2013 it never hits with any emotional resonance, because we don\u2019t know these people. They can tell us that they recognise each other, but I don\u2019t feel anything. Similarly, a small collection of subplots listlessly orbit the main story without feeding into it in any meaningful way (Data and the moppet, Picard\u2019s banal love story, Troi and Riker getting it on), and then they are all unceremoniously discarded for that whizz-bang ending. Only LeVar Burton\u2019s little speech about sunsets has any real power. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everything looks great, with very decent computer effects, dramatic camerawork and lighting from Frakes and cinematographer Matthew F Leonetti. Patrick Stewart and especially Brent Spiner are excellent (with the rest getting a little more screen time than is typical, but still no real input into the plot \u2013 unless Riker getting a shave counts as character development), but after the great success of First Contact<\/em>, this is a major disappointment, and the silly jokes which plague the script don\u2019t help, from Data\u2019s assessment of Riker\u2019s smooth jaw, to his use as a flotation device, to Worf\u2019s irrelevant puberty, to the \u201ctoning\u201d experienced by Crusher and Troi. Three stars reflects both the fact that this is a slick, well-produced product with strong performances and also how much I enjoy seeing the rest of the crew rally around the Captain, even if the justification is both weak and slightly sour. The most effective material in the whole film is probably the space battle in the Briar Patch. It\u2019s in no way new, goodness knows we\u2019ve seen space battles before, but it has an energy and a desperation which the rest of the film sorely lacks \u2013 especially, the ersatz Death Star ending with its laborious countdown and endless flitting between ships (and where the bright blue windows make it look as if the effects team forget to put the stars in). Using the Holoship trick against Ru\u2019afo is cute too. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are a handful of brief mentions of the Dominion, but this doesn\u2019t feel at all as if the Federation is at war. Once again Worf is onboard the Enterprise<\/em> for no adequately explained reason. He reports late to the bridge (presumably because he was never formally transferred to this ship and so was never rostered). The title was one of about a dozen which were considered. Why “Insurrection” was chosen is something of a mystery, as no insurrection (violent uprising against a ruling power) is ever depicted.<\/span><\/p>\n

How long will it take the Enterprise<\/em> to get everyone home without their warp core, bearing in mind it took them two days to get there at presumably maximum warp?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NGM03 Insurrection ().\u00a0Michael Piller had saved Star Trek once. Could he save it again? The \u201cCreative Consultant\u201d on DS9 and Voyager, who had turned the ship around back in 1989, was asked to write the screenplay for the third Next Generation film and nobody knew the show and the characters better than he did. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[12,19,79,535,528],"class_list":["post-3447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tng","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-TB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3448,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions\/3448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}