A Brief Guide to Star Trek

of Picard pursuing his rogue android friend seemed to work well, but Piller and Berman knew that Data would have to have very good reasons for turning on Starfleet. The result of their thinking through the problem was to posit an upcoming alliance engineered by powerful forces between the Federation and the Romulans. This outline again met with resistance from Paramount executives, who considered the proposed film too political, and from star Patrick Stewart who wanted to continue the development of Picard as an action hero as seen in
First Contact
.
    Stewart – credited as an associate producer on the film – had some other ideas for the movie. He agreed with Piller’s desire to produce a lighter film that would show the crew having more fun, but he also felt that the stalled romance Picard had enjoyed with Alfre Woodard’s Lily in
First Contact
had not gone far enough. Stewart was also keen on the discarded fountain of youth idea, perhaps feeling that Picard should face the same ageing issues as Kirk had previously. ‘The script ended up having input from Patrick Stewart, from the studio, from me, and slowly the story started changing’, remembered Berman. ‘I think maybe it’s a little like that old story about a camel being a horse made by committee. Instead of setting it aside and coming up with another story, we took that story and started bending it, twisting it, changing it and making it more upbeat. I don’t think the script ever quite solidified.’
    Piller worked on a new script, confining Data’s rebellion to the opening of the film only (and excusing his actions by having him really on an undercover mission on behalf of Starfleet, investigating a rebel faction), while the villains became the Son’i, a race persecuting the child-like Ba’ku and in league with renegade Federation officers to steal the power of rejuvenation their planet seems to provide. Final changes saw the Son’i become the Son’a; the Ba’ku turned into adults; the addition of a love-interest figure for Picard in the Ba’ku woman Anji (filling the Alfre Woodard romance role); and the action quotient was increased dramatically.
    Jonathan Frakes returned to direct the film, although he was later to express concerns about what he saw as weaknesses in the screenplay. As the villainous Son’a leader, Frakes cast F. Murray Abraham as Ru’afo, the latest in a series of
Star Trek
movie villains who would live in the shadow of
Star Trek II
’s Khan. Starfleet renegade Admiral Dougherty was played by Anthony Zerbe, while ‘love interest’ Anji was Donna Murphy. Despite a budget in the region of $58 million,
Star Trek: Insurrection
(as the film was dubbed after the titles
Prime Directive
and
Nemesis
were rejected) managed to look like a very cheap film, or – in the view of many critics – an overextended television episode.
    Rick Berman later admitted that
Star Trek: Insurrection
was ‘a less-than-stellar follow-up to
First Contact
, which had been so up and so exciting’. Critics agreed, with the
Chicago Sun-Times
’ Roger Ebert dubbing the movie ‘Inert and unconvincing. The plot grinds through the usual conversations and crisis . . . there’s a certain lacklustre feeling.’ Ebert’s more serious criticism concerned the basic premise of the movie: that the rights of 600 indigenous people should outweigh the potential of immortality for all, the ‘greatest good for the greatest number of people. The filmmakers have hitched their wagon to the wrong cause’.
Variety
agreed, comparing the film unfavourably with the previous, action-packed movie: ‘a distinct comedown after its immediate predecessor, the smashingly exciting
First Contact
.[It] plays less like a stand-alone sci-fi adventure than like an expanded episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
.’ It had long been a struggle for those behind the
Star Trek
movie to find stories ‘big enough’ for cinema, compared to the often low-key (but nonetheless fascinating) moral dilemmas faced by the various
Enterprise
crews on television. It had been an issue that had plagued Paramount executives in the ten-year development of
The Motion Picture
and it would be an issue that would trouble director J. J. Abrams in the creation of his second
Star Trek
film. Many fans would regard
Star Trek: Insurrection
as the movie that was ‘truest’ to the television series that spawned it precisely because it came across as a television-scale instalment, rather than an action