Star Trek 9: Insurrection (4 Stars)

One of the first questions Star Trek fans ask when they meet is "Who's your favourite captain?" I can't give a simple answer to that question. My reply is, "I like Jim Kirk most as a character, but Jean-Luc Picard is the most realistic captain". What I mean is, Jim Kirk was a swashbuckling rogue, more like a pirate than a traditional captain, with a girlfriend in every port. Jean-Luc Picard is a quietly efficient captain who does his job by the rules. He doesn't beam down to every planet he passes, he delegates the responsibility to his first officer. And he definitely doesn't kiss a different girl every week.

That's where "Star Trek: Insurrection" stands out. It's a Kirk story. This isn't the Jean-Luc Picard that we know, it's Jim Kirk in disguise. He defies Star Fleet orders when he thinks they're wrong. He beams down to the planet to do everything himself. He even falls in love with a woman and kisses her, though the kiss itself was cut from the film against Patrick Stewart's protests. After watching the kiss in the deleted scenes I think it's beautiful, even if it's out of character for Picard. Decide for yourself.

Maybe it's not quite a Kirk kiss. Captain Kirk always kissed actively and aggressively. In this scene Captain Picard isn't doing the kissing, he's letting himself be kissed. This makes the scene all the more beautiful. It should have been left in the film.

So who's the woman that Jean-Luc Picard is kissing? It's a colonist on the planet Baku. But who is the actress? That was bugging me all the time I was watching the film today. I'm sure my readers all know the feeling. You see an actor in a film, and you're sure you know him from somewhere, but you can't say where. Luckily we live in the age of the Internet. IMDB (Internet Movie Database) knows everything. It's Donna Murphy, and I recognised her hauntingly beautiful face from "Spider-Man 2", in which she plays the wife of Doctor Octavius.

It's not just about her beauty. Look at her face when she bids farewell to Captain Picard. Without saying a word, she can express fathomless depths of sadness and longing. That's magnificent acting. I need to see what she's like in other films.

Now let me say a few words about the plot. Data has been assigned to the planet Baku to observe a primitive society. He malfunctions and exposes himself to the population, in violation of the Prime Directive. When Captain Picard travels to the planet to retrieve Data, he finds out that the population is extremely advanced. They settled on the planet 300 years ago and have turned their back on technology. In this case the Prime Directive doesn't apply, because the population of Baku isn't indigenous, they're alien settlers on a previously unoccupied planet.

Captain Picard discovers that the Federation has authorised that the settlers, who only number 600, are to be relocated to another planet against their will. The planet's atmosphere has healing properties that they want to research. Really? There are only 600 people on the whole planet, and they have to be moved? Isn't there enough room for everybody? Picard immediately objects. He lodges a complaint with the Federation, but Admiral Dougherty says that the relocation will be complete before the Federation has time to discuss the matter. In a typical Kirk manoeuvre, Picard takes off his uniform and beams down to the surface with a bag full of weapons.

This was the least successful of the Star Trek films so far, but I like it a lot. As a franchise, Star Trek is better suited to television series than to films. What makes this film so good is that it has the feeling of a television episode. That's what gives it its strength.

Success Rate:  - 0.3

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