And I was always all for a TNG Q movie – the last one would have been fitting.
So IX should have been about the Dominion and X about Q. :)

As for Insurrection:
I was a little dissapointed after watching it in the theaters cause it couldn’t satisfy my expectations after “First Contact”.

Later on VHS and DVD I really liked IX almost as much af VIII and I was glad that they did a less action and less dark Trek film again but that changed in recent years.

Now I don’t like the huge majority of TNG anymore and I even more like dark an ambigious movies but I would still apreciate a non action and very lite Trek movie if it’s actually GOOD.

But this one isn’t. The whole conflict isn’t believable NOR is the selfrightiousness of the Baku or Picard and Co. ever adressed in this movie – I mean who the heck knows who are the baddies. This isn’t clear anymore halfwy in the movie.

Next thing is the embarrassing humor and it ends with a boring second half (the beginning is really OK) .

That’s for the content but what I never will understand is that they have Californian Arians as “aliens”! This should never have happened not in a movie and not in 1998.

Strictly speaking that kind of “aliens” shouldn’t be in the TV-Show since TNG in the 1980ties.

* The Prime Directive — consistently overridden when the motives were good. In this case, the fountain of youth was a little shaky as a motive. Hard to believe the Federation Council and Star Fleet Command would go along with this forced relocation plot.
* The Gilbert & Sullivan sequence was bad.
* The “living in the moment” philosophy. I guess if you don’t age, then you don’t really have to worry about the future. The rest of us do.
* The conversation between the Zerbe and Stewart. This 2 minute conversation tried to quickly fill in the plot holes — can’t duplicate the technology, the So’Na need to have concentrated metaphasic radiation therefore they can’t just move there, etc. Not a good story device.
* The joystick scene — pretty stupid. Why don’t they have a joystick as part of the regular helm console?
* Overall, the story came off as contrived. A harbinger for the need of a franchise reboot. (Admittedly, where you do you after 700 stories?)

Ehh as a movie.

I really like your stance on Insurrection and the approach ST should go or should’ve gone. Really good and exciting Sci-fi story first, and then character and everything else. I had the same feeling with Insurrection ten years ago (since I watched it only once and was annoyed with it). Some seem to like it though. Damn, I wish I wasn’t broke … otherwise, I might be more inclined to check it out again.

As to the rest of the movie, it played mostly like a 2 part TV episode, and a pretty weak one at that. The plot, the scale, the action, the danger, were more suited to the small screen than a major motion picture. There were many episodes of the series that would have fit the bill better than this pedestrian glop.

I always thought that Insurrection was by far the best of the TNG films, mostly because of its adherence to the true purpose of Star Trek: character and social commentary.
It’s probably the only film where the TNG characters are really themselves. Nemesis had the potential, as the dialogue was masterfully scripted, but the story was somewhat lame and the film was very poorly directed.

227: I *did* go see Nemesis, twice in the same weekend. I don’t think it’s the fault of the fans, but of the hack job Stuart Baird did with John Logan’s script. I think the way that film’s promotion and production were mismanaged were the true death knells of Trek- otherwise it could possibly have continued the even-numbered trend, re-established the TNG cast as the viable movie heroes they became in First Contact, and maybe spawned the trilogy you’re talking about…