The more I think about it, the more I like it. I’ll have to test an intercut WYLB/Insurrection rewatch to really commit to it.
I'm sure they had an idea of the release date well in advance, and had an idea for how long DS9 would keep the war ongoing. Naturally they had to keep things vague for the benefit of moviegoers who didn't watch DS9, but that's not the same thing as being unsure of the timeframe. I think the story makes more sense if the Federation is motivated by the urgency of the war, if that's why Dougherty is so desperate for a magic healing planet that he'd compromise his ethics to that degree. It fits thematically into DS9's arc about the compromises the UFP made during wartime, and it allows us to have at least one canonical story answering the question of what the Enterprise crew was doing during the Dominion War. Those are desirable things. And I reject the premise that "Dominion negotiations" are so impossible as to preclude it, because it's entirely possible for an aggressor in a war to engage in the pretense of negotiations, as seen with the on-and-off Russia/Ukraine talks that Csalem mentioned. If that's the only reason for changing the date, then there is no reason for changing the date.
Looking back at the dialog, I'm leaning more towards the post-Battle-of-Cardassia interpretation. During the argument with Picard, Dougherty only mentions the long-term benefits to Federation citizens on an individual level (the radiation will help billions, life spans will be doubled). He does not at all mention that it could be used to heal soldiers, to send them back into battle against the imminent existential threat to all of the Alpha Quadrant, which seems like an argument he really should have made during war time. He even could have spun it into a "If we don't use this planet to win the war, we'll lose and the Ba'ku will be just be massacred by the Dominion, so they're basically dead either way".
FWIW, I asked Michael Okuda about this very issue back when Insurrection came out (because it doesn't have a stardate), and he replied that one should assume it to be contemporaneous with the DS9 episodes airing around its release.
Exactly. It was intended to be during the war, even though they had to keep it implicit for the benefit of those who didn't watch DS9. It's there if you read between the lines. The arguments I'm hearing for moving it are all about superficial things, what this line said or what that line didn't say. What ties it to the war narrative is the deeper theme, the shared idea of the Federation's willingness to make moral compromises in the name of what it believes is the greater good. When the movie came out, I could see its thematic resonance to what was happening on DS9 at the same time. That's the context it was meant to occupy, even if it couldn't come out and say it overtly.
I am not sure why you are characterizing me as saying it's "so impossible"; I agree you can interpret the story as taking place during the war. But for me, the preponderance of evidence seems to support a post-war timeframe. I agree with @Jinn, for example, that if it took place during the war you would expect Dougherty to mention that more directly when discussing medical benefits. For me, a big issue is characterization: if Picard takes 318 shore leave during a war, he's a jerk! (Assuming Starfleet would even let him do such a thing.) I don't think taking place immediately after the war undermines the thematic stuff you're discussing.
The vacation thing has to be something he doesn’t follow through on regardless of when the film is set, at least in the Litverse continuity, as there are a slew of TNG adventures set either throughout the rest of 2375, or immediately following the war. And our Timeliners’ document just reminded me of the short story Four Lights which is set after Insurrection but before “Field of Fire.”
I'm being won over, too. I'd been partial to INS taking place in the middle of the three Worf-free episodes of season seven, "It's Only a Paper Moon," "Prodigal Daughter," and "The Emperor's New Cloak" (which, coincidentally, is when it was originally released). I felt that fit better with the later reference to the Son'a (presumably, they were dealing in White under-the-table during INS, so Riker and Troi were surprised to see it when they were in the library, while the DS9 reference has the Dominion concerned the Allies are going to attack a Son'a colony producing White, so it'd probably be a pretty well-known fact by that point), and that the movie was expected to take place earlier rather than later (they had to trim out Picard congratulating Worf on his marriage, since Jadzia wasn't dead yet when they were writing/filming), but it's a compelling point that there's a general lack of urgency in INS that's much easier to explain if there's an armistice on, and Picard's complaining at the beginning is eagerness to get back to normality.
I still say that's taking it too literally, looking only at the superficial level of what happens and what is said, rather than understanding the thematic resonance with what DS9 was doing at the same time. As I've said, they couldn't have Dougherty talk about the war openly because the story had to be relatable to casual viewers unfamiliar with DS9. But for those of us who are familiar with it, the subtextual connection is there, and I think it's doing the story an injustice to ignore it just because they didn't spell it out in overt dialogue. Whatever gave you the idea that he was saying anything about taking leave during the war? "I wish I could stay. But these are perilous times for the Federation. I can't abandon it to people who would threaten everything that I've spent my lifetime defending. I have to go back, if only to... slow things down at the Federation Council. But I have three hundred and eighteen days of shore leave coming, and I intend to use them." He's obviously not saying he intends to take his leave right away; he's explicitly saying that he has to go back to Earth first and deal with the problems facing the Federation, however long that might take. The expression "to have something coming" doesn't mean it's imminent; it means that you deserve it. Picard is saying that he's entitled to take that many days of leave, presumably because he hardly ever uses his leave time (cf. "Captain's Holiday") and thus has let a lot of it build up over the years. The phrase doesn't say a thing about when he would take that leave, just that it's owed to him. He's just promising that once he's able, once he's discharged his responsibilities, he'll cash in those accumulated leave days that he's entitled to and come back to spend more time with Anij. And "These are perilous times" is another of those implicit references to the war, the ones that were subtle enough not to confuse casual viewers while clear for DS9 fans who were paying attention. If Dougherty had been acting in isolation, Picard would have no reason to say that the times in general were perilous.
A lot of the timelines I’ve seen place Insurrection somewhere around It’s Only A Paper Moon, citing specifically that episode’s internal length and how Worf only appears briefly at the start, is absent entirely from the next episode, and only Regent Worf appears in the episode after that, and, while he’s back in Field of Fire, he’s only there briefly late in the episode. That gives him plenty of time for the mission he’s assigned prior to joining with the Enterprise crew and the Ba’ku mission itself.
Just checking something on this "peace negotiations" from the film. About the only thing the Fed Alliance is doing is leading counter-offensives in the Kalandra sector around the start of the season. Perhaps the Dominion losses in Kalandra were so great they were forced to the table again. They then changed their mind and began their strikes that led to the Breen joining. "Field of Fire" doesn't establish when Ricktor Prime took place and Chu'lak was assigned to DS9.
Just to be clear, the line is "Dominion negotiations," not "peace negotiations." They could be negotiations for prisoner-of-war exchanges or something.
Yes, I read it the first time you said it. I am aware of the meaning of "to have something coming," but thank you for explaining it to me. Yes, Picard says he is going to do some other stuff first, but the scene still gives the sense that Picard intends to do it as soon as he can, not at some indeterminate point in the future when the war ends. I don't disagree that you can interpret it as taking place during the war. I'm not sure why you think this ambiguous puzzle has only one concrete solution. But for me, the details point in a different direction; I don't think being thematically relevant to the war requires it to be set during the war. During my last DS9 rewatch, I watched all the TNG films where they go chronologically, and watching Insurrection immediately after "It's Only a Paper Moon" is what persuaded me it didn't go there. Tonally jarring.
I don't. I just feel it works better thematically during the war, and the arguments I'm hearing for putting it later are superficial and based on mere word choices rather than the meaning of the story, so I don't think they outweigh the reasons for keeping it where it was meant to go. I explained that in my first paragraph which you say you already read, so you should know better than to misrepresent my position like this.
That’s still a multi-episode time frame, going from Paper Moon, Prodigal Daughter, and Emperor’s New Cloak. As long as you put it after Paper Moon and before Field of Fire, all of which, as episodes, have varying tones, I don’t see why you couldn’t slot in a viewing of Insurrection at any point in there, even if one doesn’t quite feel right over the others. I don’t see why “tone” particularly matters, either, considering that Insurrection features a different cast of characters - of course the Enterprise crew are going through things that are very different from the DS9 crew. Meanwhile the idea that Insurrection is happening in the middle of What You Leave Behind feels needlessly over complicated to me.
Your position is that I am someone who cannot interpret "meaning" and can only comprehend the "superficial" "mere word choices,"* so yes, I think you are acting as though "this ambiguous puzzle has only one concrete solution." Your position is not that "[t]here are multiple possible solutions to this puzzle" because your position that one of those solutions is believed only by people who cannot interpret text correctly. I am not misrepresenting your position because in the post I just quoted you literally explained that people who interpret it differently than you are wrong. * Where exactly does meaning emerge from if not "word choices," anyway?
You really have to ask that? It's called subtext. A lot of the meaning in a story is in what isn't said, what's implied between the lines. The same words can mean a wide range of different things depending on their context or on the speaker. The words "I'll see you soon" mean something very different from a beloved spouse than they do from a stalker. When Remmick in "Conspiracy" said "We seek peaceful coexistence," Picard and Riker still blew him away, because they recognized that the real meaning was in the subtext, not the words.
This made me laugh out loud, so thanks. "Subtext" still emerges from "word choices," you know. But anyway, thanks for explaining to me how to discover meaning, certainly not a thing I have ever before learned.
Wow. I go away for vacation and when I come back, I see we're talking about Insurrection and it's place in continuity. I deliberately did not bring this up because there's no completely satisfactory place during DS9 for it to fit. I've always leaned more toward it being during a gap sometime toward the end of "What You Leave Behind" but there's no intended gap by the writer's of the episode for it to go. Also KRAD's story "Four Lights" does put it somewhere before "Field of Fire." Honestly though, I've never cared that much because (SHOCKING CONTROVERSIAL OPINION AHEAD) I think Insurrection is really really bad. I much prefer pretty much every Enterprise-E Litverse story I've read that takes place during this time frame instead of ANYTHING that's in Insurrection... except for perhaps the "Does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?" line. That line is too good for the film it's in. Just my 2 cents.