Review of Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) by Robert B — 07 May 2009

"I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral.

I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical.

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical".

This should have been a fun film. References to Gilbert & Sullivan, Uncle Remus stories and even previous Trek Next Gen episodes. A big heavy and a world to save. The rights of the few VS the greed of the many.

But it fell short. Why?

1) Why is that everytime there is a "perfect world" it has to be a relative bunch of blonde haired white humans.

2) the bad guys have to be "ugly.".

3) The film relatively ignores the Trek canon on the day regarding the Dominion War and possible intigration of previous Trek canon. An example: Having the Ba'ku be escaped 20th century genetic supermen like Khan and his group ( an idea later explored in the 4th series Enterprise) would have been a stroke of story telling genius to tie this film closer to the Trek universe (specifically Trek 2 film) and give the story an underlying plausibility of yet another group of "humans" on yet another planet.

4) the jeapordy could have been increased by making the DS9 Dominion War storyline more relevant. Maybe the Briars Nest Nebula is a strategic point near the war etc... Also one of my minor nitpicking points that the DS9 series didn't play-up the Enterprise being lost or presumed lost with a throw away line during the DS9 show before this movie came out.

Again the set design is rather pedestrian on the bad guys ships. In other words lame.

These are a few things I thought about while watching this film. In short the film makers gave a half ass job performance and ended up with a half ass film.