• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Insurrection at The Agony Booth

TremblingBluStar

Vice Admiral
Admiral
Sorry if this has been posted before, but there is a new recap over on The Agony Booth (they don't update nearly enough!) for Insurrection!

Suck it Frakes! :lol:

I'm just starting the review, so I can't say whether it's a favorite or not. :)

I do disagree with the reviewer here:
The third of these, and the ninth Star Trek movie overall, was Star Trek: Insurrection. It's certainly not the worst Trek film ever—that dubious honor is shared by the dull and flat The Motion Picture and the misfire that is The Final Frontier. Insurrection is, however, the worst one to feature the Next Generation cast. A little cheesy acting from William Shatner is really the only thing that raises Star Trek: Generations above this one. And even then, only by inches.
TMP is far from being the worse Trek film. Even though it wasn't a critical hit, it certainly didn't receive the same level of backlash as TFF, Insurrection, or Nemesis.

I do agree that Insurrection is the worst TNG film - however there are plenty of things to like about Generations other than Shatner. I get the impression just from the first page that the reviewer doesn't care too much for TNG in general.
 
I think NEM is the worst Trek film, followed by TFF, then INS. The two fifth films were the worst of the lot; NEM was a franchise-killer.
 
Vulcanian said:
Hilarious stuff, TBS :bolian:
Have you read their review of the DS9 episode Profit and Lace?

This section is priceless!
Zek suggests they "make" a female. Quark thinks he's talking about a hologram, but Zek has something "better" in mind. "Better" in the same sense that getting your genitals squeezed in a vise is "better" then introducing them to a buzzsaw. In other words, not better. So, so, so very not better. You could almost say it's the opposite of better. What is that word again?

Oh yeah, worse. Much, much worse.

His idea, as it turns out, is to have Quark pose as a female.

Are you laughing yet? No? Then you never will. This is perhaps the single worst idea in all of Star Trek. Those guys who said, "Hey, let's have Spock's brain get stolen!" Those guys who said, "Hey! Let's have a thirteen year old fly the ship!" Those guys who said, "Hey! Kirk dies when he falls under a bridge!" Those guys who said, "Hey! Let's have a whole episode about the captain's dog being sick!" All those guys? Bona fide geniuses compared to whoever first said, "Hey, let's put Quark in drag!" I'd put this statement somewhere on the level of "Hey! Let's change the formula for Coke!" or "Hey! Let's invade Poland!"
 
The only crit I have of the Insurrection review is when he mentions the Enterprise following a black trail that disappears behind the ship as it enters the Briar Patch, and thinking it was shoddy filmmaking since it wasn't mentioned anywhere. Since that wasn't a trail, but actually the ship's shadow streaming through the "fog" of the patch, not so much of a glitch.
 
David cgc said:
The only crit I have of the Insurrection review is when he mentions the Enterprise following a black trail that disappears behind the ship as it enters the Briar Patch, and thinking it was shoddy filmmaking since it wasn't mentioned anywhere. Since that wasn't a trail, but actually the ship's shadow streaming through the "fog" of the patch, not so much of a glitch.
Yeah. I thought maybe he was referring to the fact that there is a hole for the Enterprise to travel through.
 
Only moderately humorous. I'm not sure what crawled up their butts, but at some point The Agony Booth ought to stop acting like it/they're better than all of us.
 
Well, I think the review does make some good criticisms and is fairly humorous. Granted, the attack on the dubious morality of the Prime Directive, the emasculation of the titular 'Insurrection', the weakness of the Son'a-Ba'ku connection, and the allegation that the movie plays like a TV two-parter are nothing new, but they are true. Some criticisms of plot structure, exposition, and camera work are also dead on. And to his credit he singles out the film's one great scene, which is when Geordi sees a sunset.

I don't think the effects are that bad. They're not great, they were a step down from FC, but we're not talking the awkward shoddiness of TFF. They're servicable but they get the job done well enough. And I think he reads too much phallic subtext into the Son'a machine... with all the pop Freudian pseudoanalysis cluttering the web, people are going to complain that the X and Y axis are phallic sooner or later.

I don't agree with his allusions to other films, either. Like when he says INS is the worst of the Next Generation films. INS at least makes a stab at being be coherent, intelligent, and interesting; which is far more than I can say for Nemesis. I'm also consider Star Trek: The Motion Picture as the best film in the franchise rather than one of the worst.
 
TMP is hardly the worst of the franchise, I agree, but it (for me) is the least rewatchable. I can only watch it once in a great while. The movie just movies so damn slow and is greatly pretentious.
 
Heh. It's the easiest to rewatch for me, I just love the blend of fascinating set, costume and effects design, Jerry Goldsmith's glorious score, and Robert Wise's taut direction. It's pretentious, true, but then, so am I: I like being in company. ;)

Probably the least rewatchable for me is The Voyage Home, or Nemesis. I can't decide which, but I'm not eager to sit down and view them, while I watched TMP again last night.
 
So many Trek films suck, it's long been tough for me to say which is the worst. TFF is laughable but it isn't boring, like GEN, etc, etc. But I know this much: TMP ain't among their number. Indeed, with all its flaws, TMP is my favorite, followed closely by TWOK.
 
Does it make me a certified uber-geek that I thought this was absolutely, rolling on the floor hilarious?

Picard, Data, Anij, Haystack Boy's Dad, and some random villagers come up to the two kids, and Haystack Boy's Dad graces us with this gem of a line.

Haystack Boy's Dad: [Haystack Boy], do you remember where you were on the day of lightning when the artificial life form appeared to us?

Yeah, Dad, I was with Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
 
You were certified as such when you started posting here. ;)

But yeah, it's a funny line, and Harris' stab about it is dead-on - that it's a bizarrely anachronistic line the likes of which the Ba'ku never utter before and never utter again. One of the best parts of the review.

Mirab, with sails unfurled!
 
It was funny how he pointed out that practically everyone on the Enterprise seems to be a commander. (Even though I know, three of them were Lieutenant Commanders.)
 
I got to some of the nitpicks with the script (I read really slow!). He is incorrect about two of the plot holes, and misses a few huge ones:
1 So, if I'm understanding this right, the Head-Staplers wanted to be off the planet, but once they got what they wanted, they decided to get revenge. Just read that again and realize how stupid this plot truly is. This film didn't need a rewrite; it needed a bullet between the eyes.

2 So, just because some of the younger Villagers dared to be curious about the outside world, they were forever exiled from the planet? Given that living on the planet means eternal youth, this seems pretty harsh. Couldn't they have just split into a separate colony elsewhere on the same planet? This doesn't make the "good guys" look particularly sympathetic.

3 If they're all the same race, it makes even less sense that it takes "ten years" for the Head-Staplers to experience the effects of the planet. Especially since the effect on humans (and Klingons) is almost instantaneous. (I guess you could argue that the planet has an instant effect on androids, too, but I'm inclined to think that's just Data being an idiot.) The "can't share the planet" argument, which basically drives the whole story, has now become so hopelessly convoluted that there's no possible way for this movie to come to a satisfying resolution.
For 1 & 2, the Son'a were curious about the outside world, but were exiled for trying to take over the colony. They wanted revenge because their goal was to break the villager's isolationism - not leave the planet. While I agree that this plot point is poorly developed, and not very well spelled out, he misses the whole point.

Second, the biggest plot flaw I found was the idea that the Prime Directive should apply to worlds within Federation space occupied by races that have knowledge of the greater universe. In the series, we've seen that the Federation has absolutely no trouble forcibly relocating colonists when treaties change political realties - like with the Cardassians and the Maquis. This situation, while not entirely similar, wasn't a whole hell of a lot different either. The Federation we know and love would have absolutely no problems with moving in, saying "this is our space. Get the fuck out!".

Second, the idea that within 100 years the exiles from a colony of only 300 or so people could grow into a "race" powerful enough to subjugate two other races is rather implausible. Even allowing for reproduction, there would have been only a few dozen adult Son'a, tops. Not enough to operate a fleet of starships.

Both these plot holes could have easily been avoided by having the planet be outside Federation space, not a subject of Federation laws, and with a much, much higher population. Granted, it wouldn't be a tiny village, and there would have had to of been more than one holo-ship, and the special effects budget would have been higher - but the story would have been better!

Another issue - The Son'a could have easily gone in and wiped out the Bak'u at any point. The whole idea that they needed the Federation because the planet is in Federation space is laughable, considering the Federation had never heard of the Son'a or the Bak'u previous to this incident. The Briar Patch was obviously of little interest to the Feds, so the Son'a could easily have gone in and wiped out the colony, did their thing to the planet's rings, or simply settled on the planet, without a soul noticing.
 
It's a pretty good review, though the reviewer made a few blunders & misinterpeted some scenes completely.

Many of the AB reviews are great, but some are very...embellished. For instance, the new Fantastic 4 movie wasn't the pinnacle of film-making, but it's review totally mis-represented the movie. Most of the scene descriptions were heavily edited so that it seemed they made no sense, whereas in the movie they did make sense. It was a pretty funny review, but gee, guys! :lol:
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top