Let's Talk About Insurrection:
- Thread starter Praxius
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Since we're talking about this movie here, does anyone know why Ru'afo and his crew are not aware that they are being beamed to the holo-ship? I always thought it established that when you are being beamed, you know it. You don't just vanish and then reappear somewhere else. If there's no explanation for that, then it's a pretty serious gaffe. In the movie, Data knocks out the shields, then there is a brief flash, then I think someone says, "What was that?" and Ru'afo says something like, "Who knows, just launch the Collector" or something.
When "Ardra" did all those tricks that seemed to call for transporter in "Devil's Due", our heroes ultimately dismissed them as cheap parlor tricks that did no call for superior technology. It doesn't look as if being transported really is that much of a "feeling" in the 24th century any more, then.
Supposedly, "Ardra" had lots of commercial holotech available. Visual illusions might be enough to mask the telltale sparkling, and this sparkling might be all that there is to the "feel" of transport (imagine Gillian going "Ooh, sparkles - and I'm disappearing from my own view!"), unless the process takes particularly long. And the holoship to which the villains were being transported would supposedly nicely cater for such subterfuge...
Timo Saloniemi
Supposedly, "Ardra" had lots of commercial holotech available. Visual illusions might be enough to mask the telltale sparkling, and this sparkling might be all that there is to the "feel" of transport (imagine Gillian going "Ooh, sparkles - and I'm disappearing from my own view!"), unless the process takes particularly long. And the holoship to which the villains were being transported would supposedly nicely cater for such subterfuge...
Timo Saloniemi
Isn't there a Barclay episode that shows people are aware of going through the transport process?
Yeah, "Realm of Fear." There's also the blue shimmery effect that you always see.
I'm not real into the tech stuff or how this or that works, but the scene in INS legitimately confused me a little. I always felt like something had been edited out that should have been in there.
Ah well, the concept is a good one, so it works.
Ah well, the concept is a good one, so it works.
"I'd rather get a prostate exam from a proctologist named Dr. Hook"* than watch Star Trek: Insurrection again.
*From Married: with Children
I have no idea why they couldn't tell they were being transported. But, when they do notice that something "weird" happened, it was enough acknowledgement for me, where I didn't need any more in-depth evaluation and investigation into it. Although, once Ru'afo was aware the bridge he was on was acting squirrelly, he should've made the connection, alot sooner. But we need that dramatic build-up to where he screams "NOOOOOOOoooooOO000ooo ...!!!" like Darth Vader, and there's just no way we were going to get out of it ...
When you have no perception of aging and you have remained in the same physical condition as you have for many many years, it is easy to observe time's passing in a much different manner.
A house fly lives for a very short time, yet is also fast and has quicker reflexes than us humans (or most other mammals).... you attempting to swat at the fly with your hand may seem quick to you, however to the fly, you slower than frozen sap running down a tree and they easily fly off long before your hand comes even close to them. To you, your hand swatting at the fly could have only taken a second.... to the fly, it could have appeared to be about 10 seconds..... or a minute of their time (like Dog years?)
Not only with the perception of time being changed due to never aging (thus time no longer tapping you on the shoulder every time you gain a grey hair or a wrinkle on your face) but if you live to be a couple of hundred years old, those "Years" as we understand them soon become meaningless and could be mere seconds or minutes for all the good it does..... yet after a couple of hundred years, the brain could easily develop a different way of processing the information we current understand and take for granted as being static...... and one of the things Star Trek likes to dabble in is Time, which often is quite flexible.
So what's the purpose of all of this to the overall story?
It's one of the ways for the viewer to understand who the Baku are as a species.... a bit of a background understanding of their culture and why they are the way they are..... that they are not just mere Human Beings simply based on their looks. It was a means to help the viewer see that there was something unique about the Baku beyond just not aging due to where they lived.
Yes, however in that episode, the crew all had to transport to the other ship (and back) in a very slow process for safety reasons (radiation or something) while O'Brien calculated all the ins and outs of getting to and from the ship.
By the time Insurrection took place (a few years later) and with the Enterprise E's newer technology, that flash could have been all that was seen, especially when you are being transported into an area that looks exactly the same as where you came from.
Though as a fault, how would the Enterprise crew know every console's display & buttons exactly in order for Ru'afo's crew to not notice any change from their ship to the holodeck?
Trek's technology works exactly the way the story dictates, even if it's never happened that way before. So it was in the beginning, so it is today.
There is proof of this. I once saw a film clip (I don't remember what or where) in which a fly was inside of a running movie projector, hopping and jumping around on all its moving parts as easily as you or I would jump on stones to cross a stream. If that projector were scaled up to human proportions, a person would've been smashed to pieces.
It was so amazing and thought-provoking, I haven't been the same since I saw that!
Why would this be difficult? Photography isn't particularly amazing for its ability to perfectly reproduce even a complex view - simple is no different from complex in terms of a recording challenge. And our heroes would have multiple means of obtaining good photography of the Son'a bridge; such things would be routinely collected when Starfleet people walked on that bridge, or visually communicated with people on that bridge.
Which is why I don't think the feat of replicating NCC-1701 in TOS "Mark of Gideon" was that amazing, either. Our ability to record and replicate is currently evolving at a high rate; it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if only fifty years from now, anybody could simply send a cheap camera to fly through a manor and then have an absolutely perfect replica of that manor recreated for their personal use. (What shape this recreation would take, virtual or physical, would depend on that somebody's wealth...)
The amazing and unrealistic thing will soon be the ability to keep the detailed looks of anything secret.
Timo Saloniemi
I wasn't too keen on having TNG go to the big screen. If anything, I wish they had made First Contact instead of season 8 and then returned the following season to TV. Generations is a mess with a few great scenes, First Contact is nearly flawless, and Nemesis is poorly written (clones of two main characters!?!) and terribly directed with some of the few great scenes left on the cutting room floor (deleted scenes). Insurrection was the most episode like and that's why I enjoy it so much. The humor was a bit over the top and I've often wondered what it would be like if those lines were edited out (baby's behind, it is a gorch, I've never kissed you with a beard before, have you noticed that your boobs..., etc.). It certainly would've had a more serious and sober tone, perhaps more in keeping with a story about insurrection. I thoroughly enjoyed the battle scene with Riker in command, although the joystick might be worth editing out. Still, the part in which he tells Geordi to eject the core and Geordi says, "I just did," showed how well they worked together due to their years of service and respect. I thought it might've been an insight into the next film in which Riker gets his own ship and he takes Geordi with as his trusted XO. Riker is truly in character when he does the unexpected and risky by collecting the explosive gases and releasing and igniting them to defend the Big E from the attacking Sona'. Riker has always been a risk taker. Data's relationship with the Baku' boy was written very well as was that of Picard and Anij. In having heard the audiobook on this film, I learned that the hideous looking Sona' dressed and furnished their ships flashy and elaborately in contrast to their pleasant looking Baku' relatives, who dressed simply and in earth tones.
Clearly, I enjoy this one more than many here and for the reason they don't: it's very much like a very good TV two-part episode.
Clearly, I enjoy this one more than many here and for the reason they don't: it's very much like a very good TV two-part episode.
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Having read Fade In, Insurrection is far more interesting as an example of writing fluctuations in a studio production than it is a as movie. Its probably the easiest bad TNG film for me to sit through as unlike the deep structural issues of Generations or Nemesis, its problems are so basic it eventually turns into me doing a checklist of things that don't work.
-Uninteresting supporting characters in the Ba'ku
-Weak villain in Ru'afo
-Failure of trying to do "big ethical dilemma!" while still keeping a light/funny tone
-Very little deep character work with the main cast
The forced relocation debate had potential and honestly probably deserved to be in a better, more complex film/episode than this one. As time's gone on its probably the biggest dropped ball for me that (even getting beyond my own disagreement with the crew's decision) with a franchise that's supposed to be about getting people to think, the debate is made black and white relatively quickly so we can move on to the action stuff which itself feels a bit pedestrian.
Though, heck I wouldn't even mind the film having the scope of the TNG show (I love Search for Spock to death and it feels a lot like TOS two parter), if not for the fact that it amounts to a not particularly good episode. Ultimately its a forgettable mish-mash of action movie cliches, hit and miss Trek humor, and Piller's not so subtle tribute to the supposed simple life.
-Uninteresting supporting characters in the Ba'ku
-Weak villain in Ru'afo
-Failure of trying to do "big ethical dilemma!" while still keeping a light/funny tone
-Very little deep character work with the main cast
The forced relocation debate had potential and honestly probably deserved to be in a better, more complex film/episode than this one. As time's gone on its probably the biggest dropped ball for me that (even getting beyond my own disagreement with the crew's decision) with a franchise that's supposed to be about getting people to think, the debate is made black and white relatively quickly so we can move on to the action stuff which itself feels a bit pedestrian.
Though, heck I wouldn't even mind the film having the scope of the TNG show (I love Search for Spock to death and it feels a lot like TOS two parter), if not for the fact that it amounts to a not particularly good episode. Ultimately its a forgettable mish-mash of action movie cliches, hit and miss Trek humor, and Piller's not so subtle tribute to the supposed simple life.
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