Hadn't the emotion chip fused itself into Data's neural net by the end of Generations? How did Geordi remove it, hammer and chisel?
I'm not sure how that would have been much safer - the chip fused (ie became part of) Data's neural net (his brain). So to remove it would be to remove a part of his brain, no matter how carefully done.
I remember going to see it in the theater a couple times when it came out but it hasn't aged well. The humor just seems forced when I watch it today. The whole "magic planet that heals you" is kinda cheesy as well. Picard's love story didn't work either.
It's the only film in a series of 13 major motion pictures that I actively dislike. That says a lot right there....and I'm a pretty forgiving Trek fan compared to most.
Definitively the best of the TNG films. The pace and delivery of the story was excellent. The bad guys were great in that they started out as an ally, but slowly evolved to end up as deranged freaks (I love it when a stream of blood pours down from a crack in Ru'afos forehead). However, in classic Star Trek fashion, one of them returns to his parents, thus adding nuance to a palette which is very black and white in the other (TNG) movies. As many have pointed out, it feels like an good old episode. Personally, I welcome this, seeing as the best episodes of Trek are among the best entertainment the world has seen.
Prior to watching any of the TNG films I made sure to take all of the criticism with a grain of salt because there seems to be a vast spectrum of differing opinions regarding the films because everyone watches the show/series for so many different reasons. I think there really is something to offer everyone. This movie is my favorite so far. As others have mentioned, I absolutely agree that it holds true to a good episode of the series. That was one of my first thoughts after it was over. Like on of those epsidoes that after watching i'd say to myself "Yep, that was a good episode". The kind that made me fall in love with TNG and hooked me in. I definitely enjoyed First Contact because I love all the episodes that they face the Borg, but I think I preferred the lightness of this one. I enjoyed the corny jokes and the pace, Troi and Riker FINALLY getting together again, Data exploring another part of humanity, etc. I could go on and on. Great movie
Exactly. At this point, I think they were just running out of stories to tell with the TNG crew. ...Because the creators liked inserting the number "47" into scripts at random? Exactly. Insurrection is like one of those utterly forgettable episodes that TNG did in their last couple of seasons. I haven't seen the entire movie in at least a decade, and at this point, the main thing I remember about it is spending the last half of the movie fixating on the bags under Riker's eyes after he shaved off his beard. Now THAT is an interesting concept for a movie. Picard and Riker being on opposite sides of a conflict is instantly intriguing.
My point being that there would have to be more to the Prime Directive than don’t interfere. Very seldom are two situations equal.
I think the fact that it's virtually indistinguishable from a typical 1-hour episode is what makes me think it is the worst of entire franchise. It's a crime to spend $60M (of 1998 studio budget money) on something that isn't even as remarkable or interesting as 2/3 of what I could have seen on television from the series, and I had to pay $8.50 to go see it. It's still the only Trek movie I didn't see more than once in the theater since TVH (when I was too young for repeat viewings). It was a completely underwhelming, luke-warm, "meh" experience...which is unforgiveable with a tentpole sci-fi adventure franchise like Star Trek. Even Nemesis, which many fans hate, was at least an attempt at something epic and game-changing. Insurrection was an attempt at...well....nothing really. I could have watched "Homeward" and "Journey's End" (both completely unremarkable, below-average 7th season episodes) back-to-back for free and from the comfort of my own home, and had virtually the same experience (barring Insurrection's beautiful cinematography and musical score). But...we all have different tastes. That's what makes life interesting...!
I don't think that having the Dominion in Insurrection would've been hard to do. Long before the MCU you had the X-Files doing a movie and keeping their series going so I'm assuming that 20th Century Fox assumed that not all the people who would go see Fight the Future were already X-Files fans despite the widespread popularity that series enjoyed at the time. A good story that could appeal to casual viewers and Trekkies, laden with the Easter Eggs and little connective tissues tying it to DS9, could've worked, and maybe made Insurrection a more memorable and consequential film, as well as viewing experience. The Insurrection that we got was basically a two part episode, designed almost in the episodic storytelling style, with only the Riker-Troi rekindled romance carrying over to Nemesis and beyond. Though to me, the out of character way Picard was acting in Nemesis and in ST: Picard could've been a lingering effect of his time in the Briar Patch. I didn't hate Insurrection when I saw it in the theater, and I still don't. There's a lot that I like about it. I liked F. Murray Abraham a lot. (Abraham would've made just as good a Romulan, Vorta, or Cardassian if Insurrection had used the Romulans or Dominion over the Son'a). I thought the Son'a weren't bad villains and I loved their starships. Though never seeing them again in live-action made them seem even more inconsequential and unnecessary. Dougherty was a good crooked admiral. Picard and crew making a stand, and tying it to some real world tragedies also was an attempt to give the film more weight, but it didn't quite work. I didn't really care about the Ba'ku to be honest, and looking back now, the idea to go with this story of the Federation flagship rebelling against Starfleet during a time of war was very ill advised and in a way diminished the importance of the Dominion War. If Insurrection had used the Dominion, they could've done a story that was tied up, but maybe they would've created new fans who went to DS9 to see how the contest would ultimately be decided. The desire to stay mostly separate in order to get new fans for the films perhaps undercut the whole franchise at the time. When I think about Star Wars Episode IV, fans were pretty satisfied with that one story, which could've ended just there without knowing the fate of the whole rebellion against the Empire. When it comes to the Dominion in Insurrection, fans eager to see more could've been encouraged to get their fix by looking at DS9. Around that time they had the TNG Dominion books by John Vorholt, if I recall. I wish they had adapted that storyline for Insurrection.
It may not have been hard to do...but I think they were very wise to stay away from it. I'm a heavier Trek fan than 99% of the movie going population, and a "Dominion War" movie would have done even less for me than what we got at that time, primarily because I didn't follow DS9 too much at the time, and it honestly wouldn't have appealed to me to have a film that had even a minor focus on a plot element that came from a show I wasn't following. So, if I felt that way at the time....I'm sure people who were even less-inclined to see a Trek movie would have been even more turned off. It's like I've said...the "Dominion War" movie may have been some fan's wet dreams...but the producers were wise to stay away from it. I think if Insurrection had been even 1/2 of a good movie (and DS9 had been far more popular in first run), as opposed to the tepid, uninspired, soggy muffin that we got, there wouldn't be as much debate about it.
It didn't have to be a or 'the' Dominion War movie so much as a movie/story set during the Dominion War. There's lot of war films that don't cover an entire war but might focus on one aspect of it. You might not like the idea, then and now, but I caution that you then assume that others, even less into Trek, or not into Trek, would've felt the same way. I'm also a Trek fan (loved TNG and also was into DS9) who did want to see it. Granted, it might have turned off people who weren't into the Dominion War or DS9 or who might have felt confused but some of that could be ameliorated by the story, writing, casting, action, and production values. I don't see why people would be as thrown off by using an existing enemy. I didn't see Space Seed before I saw TWOK and I got it; I doubt I even knew Space Seed existed before I saw Khan. How many people who saw Generations looked at the Lursa and Ba'tor episodes, or saw the Borg episodes before seeing First Contact? I think moviegoers were able to buy the Klingons or even the Romulans as villains in Trek movies without having to have seen some or all of their prior appearances. IMO, the Dominion would've raised the stakes of Insurrection much more, and generated buzz among some in Trek fandom due to them being on DS9. I'm sure you are aware of the long lament by some-and I'm in that number-that wondered why they weren't in the film, and it's been almost 20 years and people are still raising that question. I can accept the idea that if Insurrection had been better then there might not be even the clamoring for the Dominion's involvement that still exists now. But the reality is that for many, it wasn't, and that leads people to wonder why and speculate on what could've made the film better. Ergo, bringing in the Dominion to raise the stakes and make the film feel more consequential. The film already put a tie between the Son'a and Dominion in the film anyway. The mention of ketracel white didn't seem to throw any non-DS9 or causal Trek fan off to me.
I didn't even notice the mention of ketracel white the first run. That's how unimportant it was. So, while I can appreciate wanting the interconnectiveness, especially with such a large even happening in DS9, I don't know if throwing all in to the Dominion would have helped matter. Generations was frustrating for me (my least favorite Trek film for the longest time) because I knew jack about Lursa and them. It can be handled well, like in First Contact, and TWOK, but Generations is not a good example.
We'll have to respectfully disagree on this. Like I said, most people in that time frame (late 90's) were already starting to gravitate away from Star Trek for various reasons. INS was a pile of llama poop, but a Dominion War movie was FAR from the answer they needed. The comparisons you're making are not even close to apples-to-apples. When TWOK was made, the film franchise was still new and the demand for Star Trek productions was infinitely higher than it was in the winter of 1998. They could have made a sequel to "Requiem for Methusela" and it wouldn't have mattered. Generations didn't have the Duras sisters used in a way that was meaningful. It could have been any random villain, and it would have made no difference. They were no different in the context of that film than Klaa was in TFF. No backstory required. Comparing TNG and the Borg to DS9 and the Dominion War is totally apples to cheeseburgers. TNG was vastly more popular than DS9 was, particularly to the general public, and "The Borg" were probably the most widely recognized and mainstream concept to come out of that series (certainly based on the pop culture buzz of TBOBW cliffhanger). It's not even close to "The Dominion War" which a % of Star Trek fans who followed and liked DS9 would know and care about at that particular time. Again, I'm not saying that there wouldn't have been Trek fans from a certain limited demographic who would have squeeeeed endlessly about a DW based movie. I do know I wouldn't have been one of them. But, the bets at that time were NOT in favor of trying to play to a limited percentage of a dwindling fanbase. The bets were on creating a universally accessible sci-fi adventure movie that general audiences would not be scared off from seeing. That wasn't going to be a movie that relied heavily on a concept from the later seasons of an admittedly (and undeservedly) less popular series in the franchise. And, you seem to forget that "positive buzz around the fanbase" almost certainly has the opposite intended affect on general audiences: "Oh crap, if the Trek nerds all think this is going to be good...I probably need to spend 2 weeks reading Trek Encyclopedias to understand it." And, at the end of the day, I think they made the 100% correct decision there. That has nothing to do with my personal preferences or emotional reaction to what I personally would have wanted. But I firmly think that placing a bet on a DW movie would have been a shit decision for all those reasons, and more (not the least of which was they had just produced a "Borg War" movie 2 years earlier). Unfortunately, the debate only rages on because 1. INS was a completely unremarkable and soggy movie that would have struggled / failed even as a straight-to-Netflix release if there had been such a thing back then (straight to VHS perhaps?) 2. DS9 is considerably more popular and appreciated now than it was in the late 1990's....(although I'd argue that even that is not sufficient for a DS9-focused motion picture of any sort...still not viable enough) And, I'm saying this all as a person who actively dislikes INS as a film, loves DS9 and the DW arc, and is a "Trek Movie Franchise" fan above all else. So yeah...I think there's a good reason they went the other way. They just slipped up and made a dreadful movie anyway...so sure, we're all able to second guess the decision now. But, being as objective as possible and getting back into the time period the film was produced...I support the decision to not go the DW route 100%. Agreed. The paltry few lines in INS that acknowledged the continuity of the DW were just Easter eggs for fans, and had nothing to do with the primary story.
I'm sure that 400 years into the future, if there's a problem like this that needs to be solved, it wouldn't take them long to develop the technology...particularly if Data himself was working on the issue.
I'm glad the chip was able to be removed from Data. In the theater, I felt a sense of relief when I heard: Picard: "His emotion chip?" Geordi: "He didn't take it with him." That came across to me as, "We didn't feel like dealing with it this time." And I thought, "Great, because I don't want to see it either." And Data still not showing signs of having the Emotion Chip in Nemesis? Even better. It was dumb in GEN, okay in FC because they only used it in small doses for dramatic effect, and after that I was glad they forgot about it.
First off, wasn't a fan of how you described my comparisons in an attempt to delegitimize what I wrote. It sounded condescending to me, but it is what it is. And we will have to disagree to disagree. The interest for Trek was peeling off in the late 90s, no argument there, but on that agreed upon point about declining interest in Trek, what harm would it have been to put the Dominion in a film as opposed to making up a villainous species from whole cloth? If the general audience already was moving away (I would argue that Insurrection also played a role in draining said support, as it was the disappointing follow up to the widely praised, and profitable for its time, First Contact) then why would they have cared if the Dominion was the villain or not? As for buzz, I do think it's a good point that something that is marketed to the fandom can turn off the general audience-but based on the agreed upon point-that audience was declining already. TNG was more popular than DS9, but using a DS9 villain wouldn't make the TNG movie a DS9 film no more than having the Defiant in First Contact did. Buzz can be a double edged sword, it might have turned off the general audience and also TNG fans and DS9 haters, but conversely it might also have stoked anticipation in fandom more than pitting the Enterprise-E crew against some freshly made-up villains in a 'comedy-adventure' film. As for Lursa and Ba'tor, there wasn't much need to go into depth with their backstory fair enough, however, there was some explanation given within the film as to what they were all about. The same could've been done for the Dominion in Insurrection as well. The film as is mentioned the Dominion War and had to come up with a reason for why the Enterprise wasn't fighting, it mentioned ketracel white, and there was the DS9 reference (s) (?) when it came to Worf (just one comes to mind at the moment, but there might have been others), so why not go a few steps further and put the Dominion in the film? It could've even been the Cardassians, perhaps backed up by the Jem'Hadar and Vorta. I doubt TNG fans would balk too much with the Cardassians being that they originated on TNG. Regarding TWOK, the demand for Trek was not higher in 1982 than it was in 1998. Star Trek: The Motion Picture while profitable didn't seem to grab hold of pop culture like Star Wars. It did do well enough to warrant a sequel, however on a much lower budget than The Motion Picture, which is not a glowing sign of confidence. Comparatively, going into Insurrection, Trek was still riding high, with TNG still in the afterglow of very successful First Contact and two television series on the air. Trek as a franchise was much stronger, and much more in the pop culture consciousness in 1998 than before TWOK came out.