In the lead up to season three of Star Trek: Picard, Keith R.A. DeCandido will take a look at the last couple of times The Next Generation crew was together: the feature films Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002). In addition, you can revisit his rewatches of Generations from 2017 and First Contact from 2013.
Star Trek: Insurrection
Written by Rick Berman & Michael Piller
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Original release date: December 11, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. A joint Starfleet/Son’a team is observing what appears to be an agrarian pre-warp society, the Bak’u. Some are watching behind a holographically concealed duckblind, others are observing in cloaked environmental suits among the Bak’u.
Data is there to observe for reasons the script never bothers to explain, and he’s apparently gone binky-bonkers, as he starts firing on other members of the team (which confuses the heck out of the Bak’u, who just see random weapons fire seemingly coming from thin air). Data removes his helmet, so he’s now a disembodied head, and there’s also a tear visible in his neck. He uses his phaser to expose the duckblind.
The Enterprise-E is on a diplomatic mission to welcome Evora into the Federation as a protectorate. They only just developed warp drive a year earlier, but with the losses to the Borg and the Dominion, the Federation needs all the allies they can get. Because the Diplomatic Corps is busy with the Dominion War, the Enterprise is taking up a lot of the ambassadorial slack.
Admiral Dougherty, who is in charge of the Bak’u observation, requests Data’s schematics so they can shut him down. Data is holding the observation team hostage on the Bak’u world. Picard complies, but then diverts from their next diplomatic mission to head to the Briar Patch, the anomalous region where the Bak’u planet is located. (Dougherty had to leave the Briar Patch just to send a communiqué.) Worf stopped by to visit the Enterprise when they were hosting the Evora, and Picard asks him to accompany them to the Briar Patch. He comes up with a way to deactivate Data once they’re near him. Meantime, Riker and Troi research the Son’a, and discover that they’re imperialistic, having conquered the Tarlac and Ellora, and they provide ketracel-white to the Dominion, raising the question of why Starfleet is collaborating with these shitheads.
Dougherty’s contentious conversation with the Son’a leader, Ru’afo, is interrupted by Data firing on Ru’afo’s ship. When the Enterprise arrives, Dougherty makes it clear that deactivating Data permanently may be necessary. Picard asks that he and Worf implement their plan to capture Data, and if it doesn’t work, Picard himself will deactivate him. It’s his duty both as his CO and his friend. Dougherty agrees.
Data has not spoken a word the entire movie so far, and he refuses to respond to hails when Picard and Worf go after him in a shuttlecraft. However, when Picard sings “A British Tar” from HMS Pinafore, which Data was in rehearsals for a production of, the android responds by singing along. It distracts him long enough to allow the Enterprise shuttle to dock with Data’s ship. Data tries to shake them, but eventually Worf is able to board and disable Data.
Picard, Troi, Crusher, and a security detail beam down to “rescue” the hostages, who, it turns out, are enjoying a lovely meal in the company of the Bak’u. The Bak’u say that they could tell Data had damage to his positronic brain, but they couldn’t fix it. Picard is rather taken aback that the Bak’u know what a positronic brain even is.
Dougherty congratulates Picard on a successful rescue of his second officer and tells him to pack his bags and get out of the Briar Patch. Dougherty will stay behind to tie up a few loose ends.
La Forge examines Data and determines that he was injured in such a way that several of his memory engrams were damaged. The last thing Data recalls is following some children, but the only thing he remembers after that is singing “A British Tar.” Picard and Data beam down and retrace the android’s steps with Sojef, Anij, and Artim, the latter being one of the children Data was following. (Artim is also scared of Data, not without reason.) They go to a lake where they find a cloaked ship that has a holodeck inside—which has re-created the Bak’u village. It looks like the plan was to transport the Bak’u to the holoship without their realizing it and transport them to another planet.
A Son’a fires on the gang, but they stun him in short order. Picard is livid and beams back to the Enterprise.
Riker and Troi have started flirting with each other for the first time in years, even going so far as to kiss—however, Troi doesn’t like kissing him with the beard, so he shaves it off. Worf oversleeps and develops a pimple on his cheek. La Forge’s ocular implants are acting up. This will all probably be important.
Dougherty wants Enterprise gone, but Picard isn’t going anywhere. Crusher reports that the Starfleet crew are all in phenomenally and inexplicably good shape, but the Son’a have refused to be examined—Crusher puts them all in quarantine. This will also probably all be important…
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Picard himself is feeling a bit frisky, and he beams down to the planet to question Anij. She reveals that the Bak’u used to travel the galaxy, but they came to this world to settle down and return to a technology-free existence. The metaphasic radiation in the rings of the planet have a restorative quality. The Bak’u are all centuries old (except the children—the radiation doesn’t affect them until they’re fully matured). This is why Worf is re-experiencing adolescence, why Troi and Riker and getting all smoochy-faced, and why La Forge is having ocular implant issues—his eyes are regenerating, and now he can see normally. Picard finds him watching a sunrise for the first time without the aid of technology.
Picard confronts Dougherty and Ru’afo, the latter angrily demanding that his people be returned. Dougherty explains more calmly that there’s no Prime Directive violation here, as the Bak’u aren’t native to the planet, and the radiation is actually interfering with their natural development. Picard calls bullshit, and reminds Dougherty that the history of forced relocation is universally awful. However, Picard’s threat to go to the Federation Council falls on unimpressed ears, as the admiral claims to be working under orders from the Council. The Son’a are the only ones who’ve been able to figure out a way to harvest the metaphasic radiation, but the process will make the planet uninhabitable. And there’s only six hundred of them…
Picard pointedly asks how many Bak’u there have to be before it becomes wrong, and Dougherty doesn’t really have an answer to that (nor should he), but instead tells him to lodge a protest, for all the good it’ll do.
Returning to his quarters, Picard removes his rank pips and then changes to civilian clothes, preparing to protect the Bak’u on his own. The rest of the senior staff figures it out, not being morons, and offer to help—and since he’s symbolically renounced his rank, they refuse to follow his order to not help him.
Data, Worf, Crusher, and Troi beam down with him to evacuate the Bak’u to the mountains, which are laced with kelbonite that resist transporters and sensors, and also using transporter inhibitors. Picard orders Riker and La Forge to take the Enterprise out of the Briar Patch and contact the Federation Council to put a face on this mission, make it clear that this is an evil plan of evil.
Ru’afo goes to his ship’s “body shop,” where the Son’a undergo various surgical procedures to extend their lives. The duckblind crew is let out of quarantine and comes over from Enterprise and one of them, Gallatin, is reunited with Ru’afo. They talk about how hard it was to be among the Bak’u and Ru’afo tells him to get the holding cells ready, which is ominous…
Ru’afo convinces Dougherty to let his ships escort the Enterprise back to the Bak’u planet before they can contact Earth. He also sends ships down to beam the Bak’u offworld, which doesn’t entirely work, though they do destroy some of the transporter inhibitors. Gallatin suggests they use isolinear tags to break through the transporter inhibitors and the kelbonite.
The away team manages to get most of the Bak’u into the caves, though some of them are beamed to the Son’a ship after getting hit with the tags. Some Son’a attack frontally and are wounded. Crusher examines one and is stunned to realize that the Son’a and the Bak’u are the same species. Picard and Anij are hit with tags and beamed to the Son’a ship.
Two of Ru’afo’s ships attack Enterprise, including using a subspace weapon at one point—subspace weapons were banned by the Khitomer Accords—but La Forge saves them by detonating the warp core in the subspace tear created by the weapon. Riker then uses the ramscoop to gather up some of the funky dust in the Briar Patch and toss it at the Son’a, who ignite it with their weapons and blow themselves up. Enterprise then proceeds out of the Briar Patch.
Picard gets to the truth: the Son’a are Bak’u youth who rebelled and were kicked off the planet. They turned to surgical means to extend their lives once denied the metaphasic radiation, and became conquering assholes. Dougherty is appalled to realize that his search for the fountain of youth has instead put him in the middle of a blood feud. Ru’afo reminds us all that he’s the bad guy by killing Dougherty.
Picard, however, manages to turn Gallatin—it’s not that hard, as he’s been having second thoughts ever since the Bak’u treated them so kindly when they were “hostages”—who helps Picard contact Data and Worf on the surface to engineer a plan. Data uses a shuttle to fire tachyon bursts at Ru’afo, forcing him to alter his shield harmonics. During the split second that he does that, Worf beams his bridge crew to the holoship, which has been reprogrammed to be a duplicate of Ru’afo’s bridge. Before Picard can destroy the collector, Ru’afo manages to regain control of his ship and beam over to the collector to activate it manually. Picard also beams over to stop him and destroy the collector manually. Ru’afo’s remaining crew takes the bridge keeping Worf from beaming Picard out, but Riker returns with Enterprise in the nick of time to rescue the captain just before the collector goes boom.
The Federation Council is reconsidering the whole thing. Picard promises to return to spend time with the Bak’u in general and Anij in particular. Worf also encourages Riker to continue his being all flirty-pants with Troi. And Gallatin is reunited with his mother.
The Enterprise leaves the Briar Patch. How they get very far without a warp core is left as an exercise for the viewer…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently messing with Data’s memory turns him into a silent revenge machine. Sure. Also subspace weapons are unpredictable and the only way to stop them is to be the hero of the story and therefore whatever crazy-ass notion you pull out of your ass will work because of plot armor.
Thank you, Counselor Obvious. Troi’s only contributions to the plot are to restart her relationship with Riker, research the Son’a, and have a ridiculous conversation with Crusher about how firm their boobs feel.
There is no honor in being pummeled. Where First Contact contrived a good excuse for Worf to be present for the Borg attack, this movie makes no such effort, just saying he’s there and stuff and having him leave his important post in the middle of a war to hare off to the Briar Patch and rescue Data. However, he does get to kick lots of ass, deactivating Data, blowing Son’a shit up, and holds his own when Ru’afo’s people take back the bridge (it’s like, five to one, and he lasts several minutes before being taken down). Because Worf isn’t allowed to be a complete badass, we make sure to give him a pimple, growing hair, mood swings, and crappy sleeping habits thanks to the metaphasic radiation…
If I only had a brain… Data has apparently not only figured out how to turn off the emotion chip, as established in First Contact, but remove it, as the only time it’s mentioned is when La Forge tells Picard that he didn’t bring it with him to the Bak’u world, as if it’s something in his toiletry bag. He and Artim eventually bond, with Data wishing he could experience the changeability of childhood.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. We’ve got Riker and Troi renewing their relationship (which will culminate in marriage, as seen in the next movie, and building a family, as seen on Picard), and we’ve got Picard and Anij making goo-goo eyes at each other all movie.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. The plan is to use a holoship to fool the Bak’u into thinking they haven’t left their planet. It’s not clear how they were going to explain away the lack of metaphasic radiation, but it’s likely that Dougherty came up with the holoship plan thinking the Bak’u were primitives, with Ru’afo not disabusing him of the notion.
In the driver’s seat. Having lost Hawk in First Contact, this time around the ship is flown by a Trill named Kell Perim. Though at one point, Riker takes on manual flight control, which is, I kid you not, a joystick. Sure.
I believe I said that.
“It took us centuries to learn that it doesn’t have to take centuries to learn.”
–Anij being deep.
Welcome aboard. Besides the usual gang, we’ve got the great F. Murray Abraham as Ru’afo, Anthony Zerbe as Dougherty, Donna Murphy as Anij, Daniel Hugh Kelly as Sojef, and Michael Welch as Artim. Also here are past and future Trek guests Gregg Henry as Gallatin (also in Enterprise’s “Dawn”), Stephanie Niznik as Perim (also in Enterprise’s “Rogue Planet”), Michael Horton as Daniels (also in Voyager’s “Retrospect” and also previously playing Daniels in First Contact), Rick Worthy as an Elloran (also in Voyager’s “Prototype” and the “Equinox” two-parter, DS9’s “Soldiers of the Empire,” and the recurring role of Jannar in Enterprise’s third season), Bruce French as a Son’a (also in TNG’s “The Drumhead,” Voyager’s “Caretaker,” and Enterprise’s “The Andorian Incident”), and the late great Joseph Ruskin as a Son’a (also in the original series’ “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” DS9’s “The House of Quark,” “Improbable Cause,” “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” Voyager’s “Gravity,” and Enterprise’s “Broken Bow”).
Trivial matters: The script for this movie was the last Trek work by Michael Piller—the show-runner for TNG from its third season onward, and the co-creator of DS9 and Voyager—before his death in 2005. The tumultuous process of writing the script was chronicled by Piller in a behind-the-scenes book that he wrote called Fade In: The Making of Star Trek Insurrection, but it wasn’t published during Piller’s lifetime due to its brutally honest nature. Piller’s widow Sandra finally published the book in 2016.
This is the first Trek movie to have no scenes taking place on Earth, and one of only two with that distinction, the other being Star Trek Beyond.
The movie has no stardate, so it’s not clear when it takes place in relation to DS9. Because Worf was absent for most of “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” did not appear in “Prodigal Daughter,” and only his Mirror Universe counterpart appeared in “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” it’s assumed that the movie takes place at the same time as those three episodes, thus allowing for Worf’s absence.
The Briar Patch will be seen in Enterprise’s “The Augments,” where Dr. Arik Soong will coin the term for that region. That episode will also establish that this same region is called Klach D’Kel Bracht by the Klingons; a famous battle was fought there, according to DS9’s “Blood Oath.”
The Son’a are described as supplying ketracel-white to the Dominion. They are referenced as still doing such in DS9’s “Penumbra.” The Son’a Empire is also mentioned in the alternate timeline seen in Picard’s “Penance.” They also appear in the Terok Nor novel Day of the Vipers by James Swallow and the videogames Hidden Evil and Armada.
A Tarlac appears in Voyager’s “Life Line,” in a masseuse role similar to that of several female Tarlacs in this movie.
Evora are seen again onscreen as background extras in episodes of DS9, Voyager, and Lower Decks, and their homeplanet is visited in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Past Life by Robert Greenberger. Your humble rewatcher’s novel Articles of the Federation established that the first Evora in Starfleet was killed in action a few years after this movie.
The novel Section 31: Abyss by David Weddle & Jeffrey Lang establishes that the holoship was a creation of Section 31 and that Dougherty was working with the Son’a on 31’s behalf.
The period between this movie and Nemesis was chronicled in the nine-novel series A Time to…, written by John Vornholt, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, Robert Greenberger, David Mack, and your humble rewatcher. Among other things, the miniseries chronicles the progression of Riker and Troi’s relationship that started in this movie and culminates in marriage in Nemesis.
Perim and Daniels appear in several works of tie-in fiction that take place around this movie. Perim in particular is developed in the aforementioned A Time to… miniseries, while Daniels is fleshed out in the Slings and Arrows miniseries of novellas by J. Steven York & Christina F. York, Phaedra M. Weldon, William Leisner, Terri Osborne, Robert Greenberger, and your humble rewatcher that chronicles the year leading up to First Contact.
The Khitomer Accords were signed shortly after The Undiscovered Country.
A scene was filmed with Armin Shimerman as Quark on the Bak’u planet at the end of the movie, but it was cut.
Your humble rewatcher had Picard use what Anij taught him about finding a perfect moment in time to help him get out of a bad situation in the novel Q & A.
Troi declares that she never kissed Riker with the beard, even though they kissed in TNG’s “Ménàge à Troi,” and Troi also kissed the bearded Tom Riker in TNG’s “Second Chances.”
Make it so. “Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?” On the one hand, of all the Trek movies, this has the most Trekkish plot: our heroes being heroes and saving people from a forced relocation which, as Picard pointedly tells both Dougherty and Anij, is icky.
I just wish it was the plot of a better movie.
I actually had more fun watching this movie this week than I did the last time I watched it, which was more than fifteen years ago, mainly because the message is a strong one. I also enjoyed the Riker-Troi flirting a lot more, particularly in light of having seen Riker and Troi as a married couple, not just in Nemesis as newlyweds and in Lower Decks on Titan, but mainly in the great Picard episode “Nepenthe.” (And there promises to be more of that in season three of Picard.) Though I do not understand why he shaved the beard (and am very glad he grew it back…).
One of Picard’s best lines was in, of all places, the dreadful first-season TNG episode “Justice”: when asked by Data if he’d sacrifice one life to save a thousand, he said, “I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that.” This movie embodies that, particularly when Dougherty tries to dismiss his objections because there are “only” six hundred Bak’u. And I like Ru’afo using the Federation’s recent troubles, not just in the last movie but on contemporary episodes of DS9 as an argument that the Federation is dying. Just in general, you can’t go wrong casting F. Murray Abraham as your villain (his Salieri in Amadeus remains one of the finest bad guys in cinema history), and he’s delightfully nasty here.
But the movie ultimately feels more like a middling episode of TNG than a feature film. There are far too many tired Trek tropes here, starting with the Evil Admiral, a well that TNG in particular dipped into way too often, and continuing to the technobabble-laden space battle that has all the excitement of a badly programmed eight-bit video game (complete with joystick!). Not helping the former is that Anthony Zerbe is precisely nowhere. I mean, if you’ve got to have an Evil Admiral, at least cast somebody with the chops of a Terry O’Quinn or a Jean Simmons in the role…
Plus, there are humorous bits shoved in that are, well, not funny. Worse, they mess with the tone of the story, whether it’s Picard, Data, and Worf inexplicably bursting into Gilbert & Sullivan or Crusher and Troi talking about their boobs (with Data then doing likewise with Worf, to make it even more cringe-y) or Worf’s pimple.
Then we have the regression of Data. It was Michael Piller who codified the notion that Data was emotionless when he took over as show-runner in season three of TNG, and he reverses Data to that point in the movie by casting the emotion chip aside and having Data act like the same struggling-to-be-more-human android he was on the show, casting aside years of development in order to have him bond with Artim. Snore.
One of the strengths of TNG was that it was a really good ensemble. One of the reasons for the anticipation of Picard’s upcoming third season is getting the band back together. And one of the weaknesses of the TNG films is that the ensemble is muted in favor of it being the Picard-Data-and-Worf show. On the original series films, this worked better because Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were always the Big Three, with Sulu, Scotty, Uhura, and Chekov always being support staff, as it were. But the four TNG films reduce Riker, Troi, La Forge, and Crusher to near-irrelevance, and it’s not a good look for this cast in particular.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing for and about Star Trek since the turn of the millennium, including 16 novels, 13 novellas, eight short stories, six comic books, a reference book, and a bunch of RPG material, as well as reviews, articles, think-pieces and rewatches for a variety of magazines, essay collections, and web sites, including on this site since 2011.
Reposting some of my comments from the 2013 rewatch, because I’m lazy:
This is one of the few Trek films that tries to tell the kind of idea-driven story the series did, and I commend the attempt, but it suffers by being forced into the shoot-em-up action-movie mold, with tacked-on battles that just get in the way of the story and with overdone attempts at comedy that often fall flat.
The ending was definitely a problem, a gratuitously violent imposition on a story where it didn’t fit (although the original ending, where Ru’afo was de-aged into an infant, would’ve been much stupider). And I hate how the movies following Generations progressively undid Data’s character growth in that movie. The emotion chip that was permanently fused to his neural net two movies ago is now easily removable and ignored after a single “He didn’t take it with him” reference. It isn’t even clear whether the chip was put back in after they recovered Data (though the novels assume it was).
I hear the complaints about the Picard and Data (and Worf) show, and I think it’s one of the reasons why TNG didn’t really work as a film series nearly as well as TOS did. Simply put, Picard and Data were never that close on the series; they had a professional relationship and a mentor-student relationship, but if Picard had a personal issue, he’d talk to Guinan or Dr. Crusher about it; if Data had a personal issue, he’d talk to Geordi. They really don’t have the sort of chemistry that Kirk and Spock have (and they never could, because their temperaments are too similar). But because of the two-hour time frame, they can only focus on a few characters in a movie so of course it’s going to be the hero and the breakout character.
(This is also why PIC season 1 fell a little flat for me; I just couldn’t buy that Picard would still be in mourning for Data 20 years later)
Combine the TNG novel “The Battle of Betazed”, Worf’s storyline from the DS9 episodes “Image in the Sand” / “Shadows and Symbols”, and Ezri’s storyline from the anthology “The Lives of Dax.”
It shows what the Enterprise was doing during the Dominion war – rather than playing in haystacks and talking about boobs, they were rescuing the home planet of one of the regular characters from occupation. It has major storylines for Troi and Worf – we don’t need a third movie in a row (and soon to be fourth) that focuses only on Picard and Data. It finds logical ways to include both TNG and DS9 characters and sets. It introduces Ezri, who will become DS9’s new counsellor in season 7, and Vaughn, who will become DS9’s new XO in season 8. It has villains and a plot that matter in the larger scheme of the Trek universe, and battle scenes that are emotionally relevant to the characters instead of just random firefights. You could even cast the same actor from Dougherty to play Vaughn.
Boom, job done.
Not hearing good things about season 3 in the reviews that have come out. Sounds like more poorly lit, grimdark porn. I think, for the first time since Enterprise aired, that I’m going to skip out on a season of Star Trek.
Dear me, @krad, I could sense you were getting your fill (or rather more) of ENTERPRISE, but there’s no need to make yourself suffer for the sin of taking a break – I mean it could be worse, you didn’t go straight to NEMESIS, but if you’re going to run away from the worst bits of the NX-01 experience heading for INSURRECTION seems more of a lateral move than a clean break!
00 / KRAD:
Meantime, Riker and Troi research the Son’a, and discover that they’re imperialistic, having conquered the Tarlac and Ellora, and they provide ketracel-white to the Dominion, raising the question of why Starfleet is collaborating with these shitheads.
Maybe ending the Son’a’s ties to the Dominion was one of the terms of the bargain Doughtery struck with Ru’afo? That was always my head canon, anyway.
Even a line of exposition would’ve helped there and added to the stakes/reasoning for why SFC and the Fed Council were turning a blind eye to this.
But, I guess the DS9 connections wouldn’t work in the context of appealing to general audiences who didn’t watch the shows.
Not a terrible movie, but I always felt it was a shame they didn’t shoot for something more expansive and ambitious, like the first X-Files movie, which was released around that time and made use of the ongoing alien conspiracy plot of the series. If they could’ve worked the DS9 crew and the Dominion into this story (or another, better story), that could’ve been dynamite stuff. I mean, aside from the FX upgrade of seeing Odo and the Founders with T-1000 level shapeshifting effects, just imagine Sisko being forced to team up with Picard and the two growing to appreciate one another. Ah, what could have been…
I think the thing that bothers me most about this film is that the plot relies on our (alleged) heroes not doing their homework.
It doesn’t work if Dougherty knows the Son’a and Bak’u are related, because if he’d known that then the Federation likely never would have gotten involved to begin with. But then, why did Dougherty’s team not do any due diligence?
If anyone had at any point put the Feds, the Bak’u and the Son’a in the same room (which seems like how matters would have progressed if this had been an episode of the series), then, even assuming the truth didn’t come out, there still might have been some room for a negotiation, which would have been much more true to the spirit of Trek than most of what we see here.
Ironically, while I agree with Dougherty’s claim (falsely predicated, but that’s apparently not his fault) that the PD doesn’t apply because the Bak’u aren’t indigenous to the planet…or, to borrow a line from Buffy, “They’re just luckier than everyone else…”, it turns out that he was right for the wrong reason, which is that this is an internal conflict between the Bak’u and Son’a…so based on what we saw in particular in “Redemption”, the Feds should have buggered off once the truth was out.
And of course the question of why a settlement can’t be set up on the far side of the planet from the Bak’u is never asked. It’s disappointing that the ugly people are the villains and we’re supposed to side with the pretty people even though the pretty people show no inclination to help out anyone else who’s suffering. I know we’re told that the Son’a will only benefit from a concentrated burst of the radiation, but it’s not as though we’ve never seen the Feds work medical miracles before…
^Sorry, I messed up my PD conclusion there…the PD -should have- applied because this was an internal matter between the Son’a and the Bak’u…but wouldn’t that then mean that Our Heroes had no business getting involved? It seems a bit as though the Bak’u are reaping what they’ve sown here, and now have to deal with the angry kids they essentially sentenced to slow death.
In the new format of television this could be a great several episode story arc. Except it was a movie and it didn’t do it well. The Enterprise discovers an indigenous people living in peace who a more powerful group want to relocate to take their land- it’s the type of political allegory that Trek usually does well. In less than 105 minutes you try to introduce a new race who is suddenly very important because of the strategic value of where they are and an evil admiral is trying to violate the Prime Directive and a ground/space battle ensue with two different romantic storylines and the wacky android has gone wacky again. That’s A LOT to try to deliver in a short amount of time and it doesn’t.
Oh yes and Worf shows up for no particular reason. And the starship suddenly has a Thrustmaster joystick despite no ship we’ve ever seen before or after has (though SNW has a pirate wheel?) and Riker decides that he’d rather fly the ship than be in command. And Data’s fused emotion chip is now removed. And Data now floats although in the series he and Geordi talked about how he didn’t. And no one seems to think that the fact that the Ba’Ku can slow down time is useful? And Geordi can now see (don’t worry he can’t by himself by the next movie) and the warp core is ejected and everyone’s going through puberty- although Picard now wants the alien of the week instead of Beverly who he’s been crushing on (pun intended) for the last decade or so.
By itself the movie isn’t terrible but put in the framework of the rest of what we know about the universe it just fails under it’s own weight and implausibility.
@10/Mike Kelm: I don’t think the Ba’ku can literally slow down time; they can just alter their perception of time so it seems to pass slower to them.
Is this the only one of the movies to explore a genuinely thorny moral dilemma?
One other thought… in the span of less than 60 seconds Levar Burton showed why he may be the most underutilized of any of the main actors. The scene where he’s seeing the sunrise for the first time he does beautifully, but like many other parts it could’ve/should’ve had more time but was severely truncated by the run time.
Sarek: I’m not sure this dilemma counts as thorny. Pretty cut and dried, if you ask me…….
I mean, it’s thornier than, say, “What does God need with a starship?” I guess……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve often thought of this as the worst Trek movie simply bc I don’t think it does anything well. Everything about it is mediocre. At least with Nemesis I can appreciate its grim tone and thrilling action, or TFF’s Big 3 scenes (plus a fantastic Goldsmith score).
This story might have worked if it was just Data and a few other nameless Starfleet officers versus everyone else. It would have given it a real underdog angle. I didn’t for a second think these villains would defeat the TNG crew.
krad:
The conflict here is between two of Starfleet’s dearest values: progress, and self-determination for minority cultures. The story here makes an effective case for the latter of these values (and for once, we have a plot where Picard’s application of the Prime Directive seems morally compelling) – but it isn’t necessarily a simple question; to quote critic Roger Ebert’s 1998 review:
Is it a genuinely thorny moral dilemma because it takes place in the Briar Patch? Think about it…
Not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but the scene at the beginning where Picard is putting on the funny head-dress, he brushes off a blue alien who had some new scientific breakthrough about metaphasic radiation – that doesn’t require destroying a whole planet, or moving people, and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Briar Patch. The whole scene is something like 15 seconds. Also, it’s not just the Ba’ku on the planet, it’s all the vegetation and other wildlife. What right does anyone have to destroy that just to live longer?
When I rewatched Generations a week ago, I noted that we join a conversation in progress between Troi and Data — just before Spot is found in the Enterprise wreckage — wherein she asks why he chose not to remove the chip, which certainly suggests that it’s already no longer fused before end credits roll on that film. (He replies that he believes he’s learned to control his feelings rather than being controlled by them, which as expected results in a bemused look from the counselor.)
Please nobody interpret my pointing this out as either an endorsement of the advent of the emotion chip in the first place or how summarily it’s dismissed here…
I’ve always got the impression I like this one more than the majority. Aside from those who weren’t on Picard’s side over the morals of the situation, the main complaint seemed to be that it failed to take advantage of being a movie and was just an extended TNG episode. Nowadays, maybe people are more grateful for having an extra TNG episode!
I kind of wish they’d been brave enough to accept Worf was on DS9 and do the film without him, but I can see the appeal in getting all the gang back together. (Except Denise Crosby and Wil Wheaton, of course. People forget these days there was a time when they were as important as the other seven.) TNG may have been an ensemble show, but it rarely produced ensemble episodes, and the big two-hour “events” (‘The Best of Both Worlds’, ‘Redemption’, ‘Unification’, ‘Descent’, ‘All Good Things’) tended to focus on two or three out of Picard, Riker, Data and Worf and have the other three in supporting roles. ‘Descent’ came closest by giving everyone a role rather than token lines on the bridge or in senior staff meetings, and First Contact came closest to that. We were unlikely to get a film version of something like ‘Face of the Enemy’ or ‘Remember Me’ where the top-billed actor is just a spectator.
I believe F Murray Abraham is the last American actor to play the lead villain in a Star Trek movie, to be followed by three Brits and the Australian Eric Bana. (Something lampshaded when Benedict Cumberbatch appeared on a UK talk show.) Sadly, the film doesn’t really live up to its potential. It’s billed as “Picard commits an act of treason/mutiny against the Federation and turns his back on Starfleet to do what he thinks is right”. What we get is “Picard disobeys the orders of an obviously evil Bad Admiral, shoots some generic bad guy aliens and goes back to being captain of the Enterprise as if nothing happened”. (The tie-ins retconning Dougherty into a Section 31 agent manages to make him even more of an obvious bad guy.)
I watched this with some friends and one of them turned up about half an hour in. That kind of underlined that it starts with a big action sequence to get the interest, then the plot kicks in and there’s a lot of talking. Not necessarily a bad thing. I’m surprised there’s no mention of the Enterprise basically leaving Ru’afo to die in the collector explosion: I don’t mind it, but people on here tend to be a lot less bloodthirsty where movie villains are concerned than I am!
I actually like the “British Tar” scene, although the boobs talk is rather cringe. Troi was seen kissing a bearded Riker in flashback in ‘Violations’ and also kissed him in ‘Man of the People’ as I recall. Oh, and ‘The Outcast’, somewhat chastely. So, whoever wrote the line about her never having done it before here must have a very bad memory. (One of my biggest Lines I Wish They’d Done is when they’re in the bath together and Worf puts a call from Dougherty through: I really wanted Riker to say “Audio only.”) I kind of wish they’d committed more to the romance between Picard and Anij…who, of course, is never mentioned again.
Data’s memory fault causes his ethical subroutine to take over: He knows on a subconscious level that he needs to protect the Ba’Ku from Starfleet, even if he doesn’t understand why. The question of the Son’a setting up a colony on the planet is asked and answered: We’re told normal exposure would take too long to cure them. The only other mention of the Son’a in canon is an off-hand reference by Admiral Janeway at the start of Nemesis.
@20/cap-mjb
They also came up in a conversation between Weyoun and Damar in “Penumbra,” specifically in the context of their ketracel white production activities.
@21/jaimebabb: Yes, sorry, I meant other than the ones already mentioned.
I always thought the Baku village idea of paradise was exactly the type of paradise that would appeal to a TV writer who is sick of living in L.A. It’s clearly still in California and it’s still populated by generic Hollywood actors, but is has none of the traffic or other issues.
It’s always weird to me when Star Trek, of all franchises, does a mildly-technophobic, hippie planet story. If this story had been done on TOS, I feel like it would have developed very differently. Kirk obviously wouldn’t have been on board with the forced relocation any more than Picard was, but I’m laughing at how he would have responded to Anij’s question to Picard: “Where can warp drive take us except away from here?”
Kirk: “Yes, that’s the whole point of my existence.”
Of course, Kirk probably wouldn’t let his science officer leave his ship to observe said hippie planet in the middle of a galactic war, either.
@23/Devin Clancy – To be honest, all of the “paradise planets” that they go to on Star Trek seem decidedly Californian to me. I mean, technically all of the planets that they go to on all of the series except Discovery and Strange New Worlds are Californian, but you know what I mean. Technophobia on the level of the Ba’ku doesn’t make sense as an ideal in a place where the climate is actively trying to murder you.
Back when it first came out (1998/1999), I wasn’t the biggest fan of Insurrection. It definitely felt like an extended TNG episode on the big screen and nothing more. The plot itself, Picard rebelling against the Federation Council’s orders, demanded more consequences and impact.
And yet, over 20 years later, I’m not as critical of Insurrection as I once was. Between sprawling cinematic universes and the streaming market changing television shows and their classic episodic structure to 10 hour movies (that always seem to suffer from pacing issues, mind you), Insurrection stands out as a classic example of what Strange New Worlds did last year: bring a slice of episodic adventure with a clear beginning, middle and end. It almost feels refreshing.
It’s still not one of the greats amongst the Trek films. It suffers from glaring problems (the tonal shifts in comedy stand out like a sore thumb), but I can sit back and enjoy most of it and not nitpick it to a fault, the way I did it back in ’99.
The fundamental problem with Insurrection is that the whole tone and style don’t mesh with a plot that involves the Federation Council backing a forced relocation, to the point where Picard is forced to resign. The kind of story demands deeper consequences. Consequences that would fit well within the spectrum of DS9 at the time. And the movie is going for a more laid back TNG adventure. Michael Piller’s script and Jonathan Frakes’s direction all point to that tone. If it were just the So’na, we wouldn’t have that problem. We’d get a serviceable mid-tier TNG episode, and I would be fine with that. More often than not, that was the approach with TNG, and it worked beautifully. You’d get Picard moral speeches, Data’s lessons in humanity, and the crew working together to solve the problem of the week. I have no problem with a movie doing that.
But ultimately, the plot we get can and should have yielded deeper consequences. We should have had Picard going back and challenging the Council head-on. The issue is too hot-topic and too political to carry an adventure where they shepherd the pilgrims to the mountains.
Still, I can’t help, but enjoy large sections of the movie. For starters, the score. This is top-tier Jerry Goldsmith material. And every time I rewatch this, it makes me want to travel and visit the mountainous areas where the film was shot. Easily the best location work done for any of the films (even more so than ST5’s Yosemite Park scenes). Beautiful cinematography and camera angles. Even the VFX was half-decent by 1998 standards.
I adore Riker and Troi’s flirting and reunion. And even though I feel Piller dropped the ball by dropping the emotion chip, I still appreciate Data’s own story with Artim. Spiner always sells that childlike innocence and yearning to learn more. And I’m probably one of the few who enjoy Picard and Anij. I really felt Stewart and Murphy had chemistry. Always wondered if they crossed paths again between this movie and the events of Picard, decades later. Also, I always laugh at that little gag where Data stares at Picard/Worf through the shuttle’s windshield, with Goldsmith’s dramatic music cue providing the perfect tonal ‘balance’, in a way.
Does Generations count as having scenes on Earth if they really took place in the Nexus? The E-B is launched from Earth (or maybe Mars?) orbit, but they are never on planet.
I don’t hate this movie. I realize all the scripting problems. Particularly I also feel it doesn’t make sense to reset Data’s development by leaving the chip behind. We watched him struggle to understand emotion for seven years on the show. And even if he can’t for the moment “feel” emotion, doesn’t he now have the memory of what emotions are like? So his comprehension should be somewhat greater. It would be fast more interesting to have the chip in and have Data deal with more nuanced emotional dilemmas. His emotions are more integrated than in Generations, someone’s not deliberately trying to manipulate his fear like in FC–he’s just trying to navigate an emotionally heavy situation.
But on the whole I feel the film was at least enjoyable for me to watch, if not quite as thrilling as FC.
I did not love this movie when it first came out, but my opinion improved after seeing Nemesis, which I cannot bring myself to rewatch.
I do appear to like this movie more than most, probably because it is more trek-like than the other TNG movies were. The attempts at humour were very cringe-worthy, and the cramming in of action sequences remains one of the failings of all the TNG movies, but I still enjoyed it on first watch, and still appreciate it on rewatches. Possibly also helps that the next film was Nemesis.
Wasn’t the badmiral supposed to be played by BRIAN BLESSED?
Well I still think this is the second-best TNG film. Admittedly, that’s not saying a lot, but it’s gotta count for something! But seriously I do think it’s alright. If it were a TV two-parter it would probably be better, since it would focus on more of the crew and wouldn’t be able to afford big battle scenes. I will say this for it – there’s a case to be made that the Picard series is based more on the TNG films than the TNG series, but it’s certainly not based on this film in particular.
@32/David Pirtle: In some ways, the movie foreshadows the character work attempted in the first season of the Picard series… Picard rejects the Starfleet authority structure – the titular “Insurrection” – and asserts his own moral worldview, which is more than vindicated by the turn of events.
Semi-fun fact: Michael Welch went on to play Mike in the first four Twilight movies.
@34/bgsu98: Welch also played a teenage version of Richard Dean Anderson’s Col. O’Neill in a Stargate SG-1 episode.
I liked the British Tar scene too. Took me twenty years to realise the song is about people in the Navy violently rebelling against their evil superiors, just like the movie itself. Come to think of it, isn’t there an Asimov story where the humans have to chase down a robot that’s gone crazy, and it starts singing Gilbert and Sullivan too?
@18/elentarri: The blue alien was a Bolian, with a non-Bolian-sounding name (Jennifer the Andorian makes sense in that context), and he asked Picard on his way to talk to the Admiral if Picard had read his paper on “thermionic transconductance”, whatever that is. So no, “Marz Atislow” did not mention metaphasic radiation.
This movie. I don’t despise it like I do Nemesis (that movie crushed my heart, but that’s another thread). This is just a doofy TNG episode on the big screen.
One thing I never really forgave the last two TNG movies for was resetting Data and throwing away his growth in learning and understanding emotions. I waited on TNG for Data to gain emotions, he begins to explore them in Generations and First Contact, then all that is thrown away in Insurrection and Nemesis, and then Data is gone.
@36: That would be “Runaround,” from Astounding Science Fiction, 1942, and included in “I, Robot.” Speedy (SPD-13) quotes from several G&S works including HMS Pinafore, but not “A British Tar.”
In Ryan Britt’s review on this site, he pegs it as a Raiders of the Lost Ark reference. https://www.tor.com/2013/04/16/star-trek-insurrection/
I must now prove that I am not a robot to post this.
Ah, Insurrection, the odd one to place (in that First Contact is generally popular and Nemesis is not). I watched it between Christmas and New Year last year after hating it when it came out, and I loved it. I really did. It may have been a sugar rush from pilfered chocolate, as well as nice mulled wine, but I really enjoyed it.
Yes the humour is misplaced and cringe worthy (I love G&S but it just doesn’t work here), yes it marginalises Crusher and Troi (again), yes the whole “Worf has puberty” thing is just embarrassing, yes Data seems to regress to his development level of Season 1 or 2 of TNG, yes Dougherty (and I swear the only thing I remembered about him was very unique way of signing off on comms with that very tired-sounding “Dough-erty…out”) is up there with Kenelley, Pressman etc, and yes the baddies are a bit daft. And we haven’t even covered my main gripe, which is…
I find the Donna Murphy portrayal of Anij utterly tiresome. The direction appears to have been “go all slightly aloof hippy Earth mother” and she does that with a disengaged delivery partnered with tired platitudes in the script (“haven’t got round to it yet,” etc.). It is just vacuous, lazy and dull. I’m not a fully paid-up member of the “Picard must get together with Beverley” club; I could just as easily see them being very close friends rather than anything more intimate, so this is not frustration that the script has him fall for someone else. My gripe is that the character is awful and the delivery is wooden. Harrumph.
And yet I still love this film, surprisingly, why? Because…
– While I agree with KRAD that the TNG films push Riker, La Forge, (basically anyone who is not Picard or Data) et al to the margins, this is, to me, the one that does it the least. Certainly Worf, Riker and La Forge get bits to do.
– Troi and Riker finally get (back) together. This will be tragically used / abused in Nemesis but here it’s nice, it’s right, and the flirting etc. actually feels quite genuine.
– The joystick-as-control for an object the size of a small city is a curious new bit of pointless tech, but I still really enjoyed the B plot on the Enterprise as Riker and La Forge race out of the Briar Patch to alert Starfleet. It was also nice to see other members of the Enterprise E crew.
– Data has less to do than in the preceding or succeeding films: the endless faffing with Data and the Borg Queen was one of two things that nearly ruined First Contact for me (the other was the complete failure to acknowledge the effect of the part-assimilation of the Enterprise – does anyone know if that was addressed anywhere?) and Nemesis was a Data-fest disaster. I can handle “Data malfunctions / tries to be a child” if it means that other characters (really a misused Worf on the planet and the Riker / La Forge combo in space) get some dialogue and, y’know, screen time.
– The film looks gorgeous, and the music is something else. The scene (as is mentioned above in other comments) where La Forge sees the sun rise without implants or VISOR is beautiful in terms of cinematography, acting and music. It is a wonderful moment that makes us invested in the plot; when La Forge later explains why he is supporting Picard’s stand you know he means it (even if the acting is less convincing in the latter scene).
– I like the moralising, I like the question at the heart of the story, even if, as others have said, it could have benefitted from being more nuanced (and by less signposting of everyone not Enterprise-E or Baku as ‘bad’). But at least it has a concept at its heart: Nemesis only half-heartedly tries to come up with anything.
If memory serves this film had very limited promotion in the UK; I can remember, vividly, the blitz of advertising for The Undiscovered Country (and I was 9!), Generations and First Contact but I don’t think that Insurrection had anything like the promotion afforded to its predecessors. I can remember Patrick Stewart giving a very awkward interview in which he seemed very uncomfortable (and I think he largely focussed on the beginning where Data goes nuts) on early evening TV, and a couple of tabloid newspaper features (focussing on the joystick, for Christ’s sake), and, after release, a couple of TV adverts, but that’s it. I don’t think I knew anything about it until the week it came out.
I suspect that this will prove controversial, but the “Geordi sees a sunrise” scene actually kind of bothers me. Levar Burton plays it well (and at least it gives him something to do as an actor), but the thing is that, if they can give Geordi a VISOR or ocular implants that can see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, then logically they could have given him a VISOR or ocular implants that can see only visible light. That means that having enhanced vision must have been a choice that Geordi made. And why wouldn’t he? He was born blind; if he’s going to get vision, why not get the absolute most features he can? So for him, suddenly having organic eyes should be like if I woke up one morning and could only see a select few shades of green light; I’d find it limiting. It just seems like a failure of imagination, or to conceive of La Forge’s disability as anything other than a lack.
@38 Thanks. It’s hard to tell which one was the inspiration.
@20 – “The tie-ins retconning Dougherty into a Section 31 agent manages to make him even more of an obvious bad guy.”
That’s, to me, the biggest problem with Section 31. It’s not “The Federation has a secret group that does bad tings on the UFPs behalf”. That’s actually an interesting idea. How far would the Federation go to protect paradise?
Instead, Section 31 has become the go to “This person did something bad. They must be Section 31.” Blah. It excuses every Federation or Starfleet official from actually representing the UFP. If they’re evil, they MUST be Section 31.
Almost as bad is when Enterprise showed that Section 31 predates the Federation. So, we’ve had the super secret organization (That everyone on Enterprise knew about). And then Discovery has Section 31 operating openly. By the time we get to TNG/DS9, Section 31 is sooper-secret again. And in all that time, Section 31 has operated pretty much without anyone taking steps to put them out of business. Sure, what’s his name got eaten by nannies in Discovery but he was not the whole of Section 31. Hell, Kurtzman still wants to make a whole show about them. Three things that Trek has over played are the Mirror Universe and Section 31, with the Borg being the third. And the Section 31 series would give us two out of three.
Kirk broke the PD many times. But because Doherty does so, suddenly he belongs to a secret organization that “Eeeevvviiilll”.
Bee Gee and Gareth Wilson: The notion that the use of Gilbert & Sullivan in this movie needed either Raiders of the Lost Ark or Isaac Asimov to inspire it is, frankly, ludicrous. G&S are quite famous and popular and well-regarded all on their own, which is why all three works used them.
kkozoriz: You have put your finger on why I think the introduction of Section 31 is the single worst thing ever to happen to Star Trek.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The most interesting thing about this movie is the book Michael Pillar wrote about the making of it. It shows how a bunch of talented people with the best of intentions can make something so bad. Nothing about this movie is interesting, from the plot which is a mash up of TNG episodes, to the characters (humans wearing bland earthen-tone clothes), to the villain covered in so much makeup he can barely act in it. And that’s not to mention that the villains are probably right that it’s worth moving a few hundred colonists so that billions could benefit from the healing properties of the planet.
I respect them for trying to make a movie with a moral dilemma and to be more like the TV series, but unfortunately the end result was a 2 hour, big budgeted mediocre episode.
Tim Kaiser: There is nothing that is worth moving a few hundred colonists against their will. That’s kidnapping. That’s a crime.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@45/Keith: You can define it as a crime, but alternatively, you can call it an application of eminent domain for the collective good.
The needs of the many….
What’s really interesting in Insurrection is the contrast to the way a similar argument plays out in TNG “Journey’s End”. There *Wesley* makes an impassioned and idealistic argument against forcible relocation, while Picard stands for obedience to the chain of command.
Sarek: Even in eminent domain, you tell the people what you’re doing. You don’t secretly FedEx them to another location without their knowledge….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@46/Sarek: I’m not sure Wesley made an argument more compelling than “This is wrong.” And people who cite that episode as a counterpoint to this one tend to overlook the fact that a)the colonists in question were Federation citizens and thus the Federation had authority to make decisions that affected them (unlike with the Ba’Ku) and b)Picard ends up finding a way to not relocate them anyway (and makes an argument for them to Nechayev that’s probably better than anything Wesley came up with).
@40/jaimebabb: I agree with you about the Geordi sunrise scene. The idea behind the VISOR was supposed to be that it gave him the advantage of super-senses but was still a trade-off (in that it caused him constant pain and didn’t let him see things “normally”), but you’re right that it doesn’t really follow that they couldn’t have built him a prosthetic whose sensory range was limited to the human-visible spectrum, or one that could be reset to limit itself to that.
@46/Sarek: “You can define it as a crime, but alternatively, you can call it an application of eminent domain for the collective good.”
No, you can’t, because that’s a misuse of the concept of eminent domain. Eminent domain means that the government’s domain (rule) over its own territory outweighs its citizens’ domain over a privately owned piece of that territory if there is sufficient cause for the government to take control of that piece. But the Federation has no eminent domain rights over the Baku planet because it is not a Federation member. The UFP can’t exercise eminent domain over it any more than the US government can exercise eminent domain over property in Greece or Thailand. For one government to seize land in a different government’s territory isn’t eminent domain, it’s invasion.
“What’s really interesting in Insurrection is the contrast to the way a similar argument plays out in TNG “Journey’s End”. There *Wesley* makes an impassioned and idealistic argument against forcible relocation, while Picard stands for obedience to the chain of command.”
No, Picard does no such thing. In “Journey’s End,” he was ordered to relocate a colony for “the greater good,” but after talking with the colonists, he came to realize those orders were unjust and he managed to find a different solution. There’s a direct and consistent character throughline from there to here. Implicitly, he makes the choices he does in INS because of the realization he came to in JE.
I still think the most Star Trek approach to this problem would have been to gather all of the parties in the observation lounge, so to speak, and try to actually talk things out and find a compromise. You could still have the Son’a walk away from negotiations and be treacherous SOBs afterward, but at least then Starfleet/the Federation wouldn’t look awful as well.
Though, I am curious…Dougherty claims this operation has Federation approval…do folks tend to believe that, or feel he was lying, or feel he was misinformed? I always kind of liked the idea that the Federation had lost its way a bit, and had sanctioned the operation (though perhaps they didn’t have all of the information they needed either, much as legislators these days will sign off on things without reviewing the full text), and that Our Heroes would have to face some difficult questions as to why they’d interfered with a legitimate Starfleet operation.
Side-note: It seems sadly predictable that Dougherty ultimately confronts Ru’afo without anybody else in the room, as though the admiral’s entirely failed to notice Ru’afo’s instability and didn’t think that having at least one token security guard around might be a good idea.
That said, as the Bak’u aren’t on their homeworld, I am curious as to whether the planet really is their territory, in a legal sense, or whether they’re essentially squatters. If the planet is Federation territory, and the Bak’u knew it was Federation territory, then technically they shouldn’t be there in the first place. Again, for the purposes of this paragraph I’m looking at the situation from a legal perspective, not a moral one.
Though, looking at it from a moral perspective, I have to say, if I was told that my moving to a different town would save the lives of hundreds of people, I don’t know whether I’d be able to live with myself if I -didn’t- move. But then my memories of this film are fragmentary and I can’t recall whether the entirety of the situation is ever really laid out for the Bak’u.
The situation reminds me a lot, in general terms, of the Maquis situation, in that in both cases you have people faced with the prospect of leaving their homes in service to a greater good.
The Bak’ku were smug and annoying, but that aside I was always bothered by the fact that no one ever thinks to sit down and just ASK them if they were willing to relocate so the experiments could go forward. After all, doing so wouldn’t kill them, just end their immortality. And if they were as enlightened as the movie keeps insisting to us they are, wouldn’t they presumably find that a worthy price to pay to save and/or substantially enhance the quality of countless billions of lives? Seems like a very weird oversight…
@51/Siphedious: “I always kind of liked the idea that the Federation had lost its way a bit”
Yes, that’s always been my take on it. Remember that this movie took place during the Dominion War, and though they couldn’t tie into it too openly for fear of confusing casual viewers, INS was implicitly tying into the same theme as DS9 episodes like “In the Pale Moonlight” and the Section 31 arc, showing how the pressures of wartime tempted the Federation to compromise its principles in the name of survival. Dougherty and the UFP were desperate to obtain the rings’ healing properties because of their desire to heal all the casualties from the war, and presumably to maintain a larger, more capable fighting force. So they were willing to make ethical compromises to obtain that edge.
“If the planet is Federation territory, and the Bak’u knew it was Federation territory, then technically they shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
It isn’t Federation territory. The Federation believed the Bak’u were a pre-warp civilization protected by the Prime Directive, so of course they wouldn’t have laid claim to the planet.
“Though, looking at it from a moral perspective, I have to say, if I was told that my moving to a different town would save the lives of hundreds of people, I don’t know whether I’d be able to live with myself if I -didn’t- move.”
If you were asked, sure. That doesn’t give other people the right to force you to do it. The fact that some parents take their kids on vacations doesn’t mean it’s okay for a divorced dad to kidnap his ex-wife’s kids. The fact that you can go into a store and buy their merchandise doesn’t make it okay for you to go into the same store and steal their merchandise. The lack of consent is the dealbreaker, no matter how valid the act would otherwise be.
@52/Santos: “And if they were as enlightened as the movie keeps insisting to us they are, wouldn’t they presumably find that a worthy price to pay to save and/or substantially enhance the quality of countless billions of lives?”
I’m sorry, but that borders on blaming the victims. It’s not about what they would or wouldn’t have decided, any more than the wrongness of a sexual assault has anything to do with what the victim was wearing. The focus should be on the wrongness of what someone else chose to do to them.
@53 I strongly disagree. I am not saying they should simply be removed, but that it’s weird that nobody even thinks to ask them. It is no different than suggesting that somebody who inherited billions of dollars by pure random chance should consider using it to help other people. They shouldn’t be forced to do so, but I would posit that NOT doing so for the sake of saving the lives of others would make them a major jerks. Especially when they movie keeps insisting on their supposed moral superiority. They are basically sitting on the cure to ALL diseases in the universe, and they are hoarding it to prolong their lives forever. It is not “victim blaming” to suggest that this is maybe not ethical.
@48/Keith: Point well taken. Nikolai Rozhenko did the secret FedEx-ing thing in TNG “Homeward”, under somewhat different circumstances and with the best of intentions. Morally I think he made the right call in that instance (the natives were facing extinction) and find Picard’s fanatical application of the Prime Directive difficult to justify. But would Picard consider Rozhenko a kidnapper?
@50/Christopher: You are, of course, correct that eminent domain presupposes sovereign jurisdiction (a point that the Federation Council seems to have papered over in this case). But that is a legalistic distinction rather than a moral one. It doesn’t necessarily speak to the core tension between the end of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, vs inalienable human rights.
What I enjoy about Insurrection is that — via Data’s primitive ethical intuition, Geordi’s perception of the beauty of unspoiled nature, and our sympathy with Anij and the Baku — the story really provides a compelling argument that the rights of the few are inviolable even when weighed against the needs and/or value system of the many.
@54/Santos: “I am not saying they should simply be removed, but that it’s weird that nobody even thinks to ask them.”
And I’m saying that it would be insensitive even to put that conversation on the table as long as they’re under active assault.
@55/Sarek: “You are, of course, correct that eminent domain presupposes sovereign jurisdiction (a point that the Federation Council seems to have papered over in this case). But that is a legalistic distinction rather than a moral one. It doesn’t necessarily speak to the core tension between the end of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, vs inalienable human rights.”
Which is exactly my point. People who drag eminent domain into it are not only falsely using a concept that doesn’t even apply, but are trying to use a legalistic excuse to avoid confronting the moral wrongness of what they’re proposing.
“the story really provides a compelling argument that the rights of the few are inviolable even when weighed against the needs and/or value system of the many.”
Absolutely. “The greatest good” has been used to justify countless atrocities. The good of the many does not outweigh the good of the one, because the many consists of the ones. It’s a false dichotomy (at least when applied to people other than yourself, rather than for self-sacrifice as Spock used it). They’re one and the same. If a state sets the precedent that it’s okay to violate one group’s rights, there’s nothing to stop it from violating anyone else’s rights. The idea that it’s okay to victimize a few for the well-being of the many sounds good as long as you’re not one of the few — but once that door is opened, sooner or later you will be.
I’m pretty sure that when Troi and Riker are discussing the So’na producing ketrecel-white, they say, “during the war,” implying that this movie takes place AFTER DS9’s finale.
Daniel Friend: You’re misremembering the line. Here’s what Riker says:
“Look at this — the Son’a are known to have produced vast quantities of the narcotic ketracel-white. Their ships are rumored to be equipped with isolytic subspace weapons outlawed by the Second Khitomer Accords.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@ 51, Siphedious
On the subject of them being within Federation space, I’d like to point out that the planet is a colony world the Ba’ku settled three centuries ago in 2066. The colony is literally older than the Federation so any territorial claim even with their world being within the bounds of contiguous Federation space would still be completely invalid regardless of their technology level.
Another problem I have with Dougherty is that we have a fountain of youth planet and his solution is to pack up the planet’s special properties. But maybe I’m remembering wrong, but it seems like that would turn an infinite resource into a finite resource. Worse the effect isn’t permanent. As shown by Geordi’s eyes without constant exposure damage repaired by them reverts back. It’s an incomplete panacea. It’s like trying to steal the Holy Grail in The Last Crusade, you can’t take it with you.
If they sat down and had a chat with the Baku and politely asked them to share the planet, it would show how dumb their position was and render the point of the movie moot. So they decided that the bad guys were going to do bad things and create the conflict.
@60: They don’t want to share the planet with them though. They want them to leave the planet so they can render it uninhabitable with a rather extreme form of strip mining. (Indeed, by the end of the movie, with Ru’afo dead, it’s suggested at least some of the Son’a might return to the planet and settle there, even if it won’t be enough to save them in the long run.)
@61/cap-mjb: Thank you, that’s an important point that tends to get glossed over. Ru’afo didn’t just want to heal the Son’a; that was merely his cover story. His real ambition was to take revenge on the Baku. There was no possibility of coexistence until Ru’afo was no longer in power.
@63,
Yeah, that’s what I liked about the Sona’s final mention on DS9 during the closing months of the War.
For every Son’a that felt like Gallatin, there were obviously those who felt Ru’afo had it right and refused to consider reconciling. I like to imagine their continued alliance with the Dominion was motivated partly out of spite against the UFP for foiling Ru’afo and the grand plan (and the Son’a who allied with them).
What’s always bugged me about this movie are just the demographics. There are 600 people in the village but no one there ever dies. The children age at the normal rate so if the kids that we see in the movie are a representative sampling of the number of births within a period of 15 years or so, how come there aren’t way more villagers?
And then of course there’s the fact that the Son’a were a younger generation of villagers kicked out in the past. The Son’a apparently have enough people that they can enslave two whole species, invent metaphasic collector technology, and provide the officers on at least three warships. So how many children did the Ba’ku kick out to create the Son’a? It seems like it must have been the great majority of their population.
@64/jaimebabb: “The Son’a apparently have enough people that they can enslave two whole species, invent metaphasic collector technology, and provide the officers on at least three warships.”
You don’t need numerical superiority to conquer another people. Many conquering powers, e.g. the Romans and the Spanish conquistadores in the Americas, have done so by subverting a faction of the indigenous population to conquer and rule the rest on their behalf, or by plugging themselves into the top of the culture’s existing hierarchy and institutions. Or by taking advantage of a plague or other disaster leaving the population vulnerable.
By the same token, though Trek generally ignores this, officers are typically the minority of a military ship’s crew, with the bulk being enlisted personnel, or in this case slaves.
As for the technology, the Bak’u/Son’a are a very advanced civilization, for all that the Bak’u have chosen to live a seemingly simple life. So they may not have had to invent anything their ancestors didn’t already develop.
Also, the Son’a are really, really old and have been surgically prolonging their lives as much as they can. So they may represent more than one generation.
It does kind of beg the question of just how the Bak’u managed to kick the Son’a off the planet in the first place though, and why the Bak’u need the Federation’s help now. Is it that they had advanced tech at the time that they consequently dismantled? I imagine that’s the most likely explanation.
But also, how does anyone plan to keep the Son’a from returning, if not to try to harvest the particles again then simply to wipe out the Bak’u?
…or, for that matter, other races that may find out about the planet?