Star Trek Week: Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) is another one of those mid-to-late era Star Trek movies that is not quite as bad as everyone seems to believe it is.   

Simultaneously, it isn’t a particularly strong entry in the feature film canon, either.

But if Insurrection had aired as a TV-movie, by contrast, I suspect fans might have been quicker to warm to it. 

The movie, with a screenplay by the late Michael Piller, boasts the aura of a glorified two-part TV episode, and in some sense, that’s a virtue.  The story doesn’t push as hard as some tv-to-film adaptations might (like Generations, for example…), and Insurrection doesn’t seem to have anything to prove.  

For instance, there’s no original cast member present here in hopes of drawing older fans, and no signature franchise villain (like the Borg, or Klingons), either.  Instead, attention lands squarely on the Enterprise-D crew.  This is the first time this team must carry a film based entirely on its own chemistry and screen presence.

Many of the flaws that later scuttled Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) are also, alas, at work in Insurrection.  

These include a central plot line that, upon close examination, doesn’t make an abundance of rational sense, plus a rather forgettable villain, and a by-the-numbers action denouement, with lots of shooting and running, and bad guys engulfed in rolling balls of fire.

And yet, oppositely, Star Trek: Insurrection features some lovely and visually-poetic moments too.  These primarily concern the human penchant to race through life, make decisions in a hurry, and not stop to smell the roses. 

This adventure gives the stalwart Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) cause to “slow things down” and enjoy an extended moment of peace and romance on a distant Shangri-La.  The movie is meant to be a long breath of fresh air too, and with some nice location shooting in Alaska, and good character moments it is that…for a while, anyway.

Much of this ninth feature film to carry the franchise name Star Trek explicitly involves a good central conceit, too: that perception dictates life, not vice-versa.   Insurrection vets this conceit with some fine visuals, and even some strong (circa 1998) special effects.

That good, solid work is undone, however, to a large degree, by the unnecessarily crass humor -- pimples and “boobs” -- and by many of the head-scratching narrative and plot contortions, which force a fiery confrontation when one isn’t, ultimately, necessary.

I realize my next statement will be sacrilege to some fans, but despite all these flaws, I actually find Insurrection to be the most “fun” of all The Next Generation movies.  I didn't say best, mind you.  Just the most fun.  

By contrast, Generations is morose, broody, and overblown, First Contact is a first-class horror show, and Nemesis is dark and dreary to the point of mental exhaustion. 

Thus one might make the claim that for all its flaws -- and for better or worse -- Insurrection most clearly and plainly echoes the TV series which spawned it. 

So if you are a Next Generation fan, it’s difficult to see the grounds for dismissing Insurrection out-of-hand.  If you think the cast, and this iteration of Star Trek is worthy, Insurrection comes closest to recreating the feel of the syndicated spin-off.

“Where can warp drive take us, except away from here?”

While on a diplomatic mission to meet a race recently made a Federation protectorate, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) learns that his android crewman Data (Brent Spiner), has apparently acted in an uncharacteristically violent fashion while on an away team on a distant planet.

Picard takes the Enterprise into a remote area of space, the Briar Patch, and at Admiral Dougherty’s (Anthony Zerbe) urging, captures the apparently-malfunctioning Data.  La-Forge (Levar Burton) and Picard soon learn that Data acted against Starfleet  orders because he learned a dark and upsetting secret.

In the Briar patch is a world inhabited by 600 aliens called the Ba’ku.  The rings around that world emit a unique brand of “metaphasic” radiation that makes these lucky humanoids, essentially, immortal.  Hoping to harvest that radiation, Starfleet has teamed up with a race of dying, aged aliens called the Son’a on a mission to trick the Ba’ku, and relocate them to another world.  Data learned of this covert mission, and sought, after being damaged, a way to stop it.

Picard refuses to permit this crime against the sovereignty of the Ba'ku, and resigns his command of Enterprise.  Together with his top crew members, Picards sets to defend the peaceful Ba’ku from Daughtery and the vengeful Son’a leader, Adhar Ru’afo (F. Murray Abraham), aware that his actions will have repercussions throughout the quadrant.

Soon, however, Picard learns that a dark history exists between the Son’a and the Ba’ku, even as he falls in love with the beautiful native, Anij (Donna Murphy)...

“Nothing More Complicated Than Perception.”

I wrote in my introduction about how Star Trek Insurrection really concerns perception, and the notion that perception shapes your feelings about your life, or about life in general.  The film’s opening scene is a perfect and clever evocation of this idea, a nice example of  cinematic form reflecting content. 

The opening credits showcase a veritable planetary Shangri-La.  Jerry Goldsmith’s pastoral music suggests an absolute paradise of peace, nature, and harmony.  And then -- suddenly -- the perspective changes.  The “peace” we have just witnessed gives way to malevolent surveillance, as intruders appear, lurking in this Garden of Eden, gazing down with avarice and obsession upon that placid village terrain.  But to the inhabitants of the Ba’ku village, nothing has changed.  They don’t know they are being observed.

At first, we in the audience perceived the village as immaculate and perfect, a place of absolute harmony.  But just one perception shift later and we see that is not the case at all.  Paradise is endangered.  A serpent is present.  This perception shift also sets up the movie’s dynamic conflict of nature vs. technology.

In its own not-entirely-confident way, Star Trek: Insurrection tries to play this “perception” card in a consistent way throughout its running-time. 

For example, we quickly meet the Son’a and they are a physically-repulsive race of mad schemers.  In the film’s third act, we learn that they are actually identical, at least in terms of DNA, to the harmless Ba’ku…the peaceful people who inhabit the village mentioned above.  As audience members we could never have seen this “identity” coming because the flesh-impaired Son’a look completely different, and ac completely different.  We perceive them as a different race all together.  Our perception has been off all along, and so we could not understand "the truth" of the situation.

The perception of Data changes too. He is not merely malfunctioning, we learn, he is acting according to some “moral and ethical” sub-routine.  Only from the outside, we can’t understand his behavior, initially.

And then Insurrection even includes in its coda a nice little grace note in which Riker wonders if his perception of Troi is affected too by the metaphasic radiation.  Worf assures him the answer is negative. Riker’s feelings for her have never changed.  He’s just finally acknowledged his long-standing "perception."

The overall lesson in Insurrection, of course, is one for Picard.  As the movie starts, he is rushed and harried, pining for his days as an “explorer” and rushing from one diplomatic appointment to another. His perception is one of never-ending duty, constant responsibility...exhaustion, even.

Starfleet and the Federation are in much the same boat.  Recent conflicts involving the Borg and the Dominion have sapped it of its strength, and now the Federation is rushing about, making rash decisions, in an attempt to survive a challenging, perhaps life-threatening time.

But the decisions it makes while rushing about madly like this? 

Not entirely good ones, clearly.

Like adding a Federation protectorate just one year after a membership petition. 

Or allying with the shadowy Son’a, who boast an ulterior motive for staking a claim to the “metaphasic” radiation inside the Briar Patch.

I find it intriguing that this plot line about “rushing” was put forward in 1998, at the dawn of the 24-hour cable news cycle, and the Internet or dot.com “bubble.”  It was a new age of information overload when, suddenly, we could look at our computer or TV screens all the time, and thus came to expect instant gratification, instant updates, and so forth.  There was a rush to judgment before all the facts were known.  We see this same trend today, to an even more alarming degree. 

The un-excavated message of Star Trek: Insurrection, therefore, seems to be: take your time and get it right. Learn the facts.  Make a reasoned decision. Don’t rush through things just because you can rush.   CNN, j'accuse.

When we look back at this era of 1997 - 1999 today, we can see, for one example, how the nation rushed headlong into the impeachment of President Clinton over a personal moral indiscretion.  Had the nation slowed down and taken a collective breath, it might not have wasted all the time, resource it worth it?  Would stepping back and not rushing have changed the course of American history?s and energy to prosecute him.  Today, with all the history now known, Clinton is a beloved national figure for both Republicans and Democrats, the most popular leader figure in the country.   So was

Insurrection absolutely seems wary of this human tendency to leap, to rush, to push forward aggressively without proper reflection.  And the film even makes its Ba’ku citizens a brand of enlightened luddites, for lack of a better term, way of technology and its "gifts."  Troi notes that, again, the Ba'ku possess “clarity of perception.”  Oh, they have warp drive, and can repair a positronic brain, all right, but they have eschewed such advances because they believe “When you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man.” 

In other words, the Ba’ku don’t want to rush into a decision they might regret, as the 24-hour cable news shows seemed to be rushing America in a direction that, in hindsight, it might not have wanted to go, had a longer breath been taken.

For a franchise that is all about exploring the vast unknown, Insurrection makes a remarkable case that a “single moment can be a universe in itself,” and the visuals in which Picard and Anij linger in “slowed” time captures this idea poetically, with birds flapping their wings in slow-motion, water flowing a drop at a time, and so-forth.  It’s a beautiful conceit that reminds us explicitly of the things we miss out on when we rush, when don’t pay heed to the stimuli around us.  We live in a universe of wonders, if we stop to notice them.

I love this leitmotif in Insurrection, and can always revisit the film because of it.  I think this leitmotif gives Insurrection value above its reputation.  

Unfortunately, other stuff is hard to love. 

For example, Riker and Geordi begin to show the effects of the metaphasic radiation before they ever beam down to the planet surface.  This fact suggests that the radiation emitted from the planetary rings can penetrate the void of space, starship hulls, and perhaps even shields.  This knowledge thus suggests that there is no reason for the Federation to be involved with the Son’a.   It can offer its people the rejuvenating impact of this space “spa” without collecting the radiation with a harvester. 

On the contrary, Starfleet could just send giant space-borne love boats -- loaded with senior citizens -- out to the Briar Patch to cruise around the planet and absorb the radiation from the rings.  This plan wouldn’t help the Son’a of course, but it would allow the Federation to obey its own laws and edicts, and also glean the positive impacts of the metaphasic radiation.

If Starfleet and the Federation need not be involved, as the facts suggest, this story falls apart, since it is about corrupt Federation involvement, and Picard's revolt against it.

Star Trek: Insurrection also never makes a solid case that the Son’a could not move back to the Ba’ku planet and form a colony on a different continent or something like that, and also be healed. Daugherty notes that some Son’a will die without the concentrated effects of the rings, but at the end of the movie, Gallatin (Gregg Henry) returns, happily, to the village, and seems just fine.  Isn’t this a case of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few? Ru’afo may have reached the end of his “genetic manipulation” but the other Son’a could simply return home and allw the metaphasic fountain of youth to revive them.

Also, it seems abundantly rude and short-sighted that the Ba’ku would not be willing to share their world with visitors.  They are 600 in number.  There’s a whole universe out there of sick and dying people.  There’s an undercurrent of selfishness in Ba’ku behavior that runs counter to the movie’s belief that they are an evolved, peaceful people.  They seem too passive in their involvement with the insurrection, letting Picard and his people do all the hard work, and too secretive and close-to-the-vest about their real motivations.  It's hard to stick up for a people -- no matter how evolved -- who won't fight for the (adopted)  home-land.

I also find it difficult to believe that the Federation can’t find some way to mimic Son’a technology, or harness the metaphasic radiation harmlessly for concentrated effect.   Like much of the major plot-line, this seems contrived.

All of these dominoes force Picard’s resignation, and act of insurrection, but even that act feels forced.  The story is constructed on a shaky foundation.

Star Trek: Insurrection’s humor also occasionally leaves something to be desired, as it is unnecessarily crass.  Would a professional woman and Starfleet officer of the 24^th century really refer to her breasts as “boobs?”  Why has a grown-up Worf reverted to puberty and been saddled with a giant zit?  Is the metaphasic radiation turning him into a teenager? 

There is precious little explanation for this level of reversion -- Picard doesn't grow hair for instance -- and so Insurrection goes for easy and crass laughs, when it should be smarter and wittier than that. 

And, having learned nothing from Kirk, Spock and Bones’ill-advised rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in The Finale Frontier, Picard, Data and Worf here sing Gilbert and Sullivan in an absolutely groan-inducing sequence.  And Patrick Stewart -- who normally exudes power and dignity -- is downright embarrassing doing a mambo dance.  This is not how I want to see Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

I suppose this kind of humor is a subjective thing.  I did laugh, for example, when Riker activated the Enterprise’s “manual steering column,” which is, essentially, a video game joystick.  This moment thus proves (comically) that the other bridge personnel on the Enterprise are entirely extraneous, which is a fact I often suspected…

Lastly, when you finally get down to it, Insurrection is yet another Star Trek movie about a revenge-mad villain attempting to unleash a weapon of mass-destruction. It’s a Wrath of Khan repeat, with the Briar Patch doubling as the Mutara Nebula. 

This unnecessary repetition of a Trek touchstone is a shame, because there are some moments in Insurrection that are not only delightful and true to Star Trek’s highest ideals, but downright lyrical and poetic.

I like Insurrection better than Nemesis, for instance, because I feel that there is real heart behind it, and an appropriate message for our times, about smelling the roses.  The movie is all-too-flawed, to be certain, but it isn't flawed because of  a craven desire to "appeal" to all audiences, for instance.  Insurrection fails, perhaps, by honoring the spirit of the TV series that spawned it too closely.

That's the kind of failure that, as a Star Trek fan, I can live with.

But again, if you like Next Gen, and love these characters, exactly what's the beef with the good-hearted Insurrection?