Star Trek: Insurrection/YMMV

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: A lot of people consider the Ba'ku to be the true villains of the story.
  • We honestly don't know what the effects of the metaphasic radiation has long term. While its kept the Ba'ku alive for over 300 years, we also know that it increases metabolism, energy levels and youthful feelings from those affected. Hell, that was even a concern in the film, how much it was affecting the Enterprise crew's rationality! What exactly is there to say that the Son'a, once deprived of this, eventually suffered massive withdrawal symptoms? And while 80 years of normal aging clearly has affected them, they constantly have to undergo medical procedures and blood toxin filtering, despite not seeming to be either infirm nor decrepit beforehand. After 300 years of exposure, who's to say that the real reason they have such Body Horror is because the radiation simply destroyed their bodies natural ability to function and they are simply rapidly decaying without it?
  • Given how worn down and tired the entire crew occasionally seems in Nemesis, withdrawal actually might explain a lot. Of course, they are also all older than the original series' crew was when they retired.
• Anvilicious: Picard's monologues in which he speaks of forced relocation in human history, both with Anij and Admiral Dougherty.
  • Of course, he's carried them out himself a few times...
• Continuity Lock Out: This movie contains several references to Star Trek Deep Space Nine that are meaningless if you weren't watching it at the time.
  • It caused an additional problem for non-US viewers as well -- the UK, for instance, was only about halfway through the show's fifth season when the film came out, but the film made references to stuff that happened in the seventh season.
• Creator's Pet: The Bak'u.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The theme for the Son'a is just grand.
• Deader Than Disco: When it was first released, it had pretty positive reviews, with some reviewers even saying that it broke the "Trek movie curse" (even-numbered movies good, odd-numbered bad). But as time passed, with more viewers agreeing with the villains, and the whole Trek franchise grinding to a standstill, it's now regarded as one of the weakest Trek films.
• Designated Hero: The Bak'u.
• Designated Villain: The Son'a.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The movie ends with the Bak'u welcoming the Son'a , who are banished Bak'u, into their society and allowing them to keep their planet and its fountain-of-youth powers. Except that it was pointed out that it will take ten years for the planet's rejuvenating effects to really affect the Son'a, and many will not make it that long. Plus, the Bak'u will maintain their monopoly on rejuvenating powers which would certainly benefit billions across the galaxy.
  • Billions, mind you, that will almost certainly die without the medical technology, as the Federation is in the middle of a war with the Dominion and Cardassians, who outnumber and outgun the Federation, Romulans, and the Klingons combined. So, the thousands- if not millions- who die in the war who could have been saved after being shot by the Jem'Hadar by the medical techniques and technology developed by studying the healing energy? They can die easy, knowing that the thousand or so Ba'Ku/So'na are going to be all right.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop: The intended Aesop is "letting the desire for eternal youth consume you can turn you into a monster". But since the Son'a are so over the top and Unintentionally Sympathetic with their failure to artificially extend their lives, the Aesop seems more like "growing old is icky, and turns you into an evil, repulsive, toxin-oozing monster with a garbage-bag face".
  • And the more conventional Aesop about the planet's rejuvenating powers: "Finders keepers, losers weepers".
  • Hey, remember Spock's extremely sad, moving line about how "The needs of the Many, outweigh the needs of the few?" Turns out that "the many" are called "The Ba'ku," and "The Few," is anyone else who wants to use their planet's healing powers, which is... several hundred billion people.
• Growing the Beard: An extremely fitting inversion, as the very beard that inspired the phrase is shaved off right around the point that the entire franchise started to decline.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Brent Spiner wanted Data killed off, but was overruled. Reportedly, his script came with a note reading "Better luck next time." Well...
• Idiot Plot: There was no reason at all to relocate the Bak'u! With a paltry six hundred on then entire planet, you could ship billions of colonists and scientists to the planet without them ever encountering a single native. And even if the planet got overcrowded, the Federation could have just built orbital habitats.
  • Except that colonists, "Don't want to live in the Briar Patch," so Federation planners decided to tear the mountain down and bring it to Mohammed.
  • It was explicitly stated that it would take a decade of exposure to save the Son'a, and since it's a Federation-held world they can't just settle there in any case.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ru'afo.
• Mary Suetopia: The Bak'u society.
• Narm: Riker steering the Enterprise with an obviously off-the-shelf joystick.
  • Troi and Crusher's girly girl exclamations about how their boobs are no longer sagging.
• Rooting for the Federation: The Federation had very good reasons for trying to force the Bak'u off the planet to study the anomaly. They were also initially trying to get the Bak'u off peacefully, only to have their plans thwarted by the "heroes". Even when they resorted to more drastic measures, they still found nonlethal means to try and remove the Bak'u. See Straw Man Has a Point below.
• Special Effect Failure: ILM didn't come back for this film (in part due to being busy on The Phantom Menace, though Rick Berman said at the time that he wouldn't have hired them anyway, since he felt other FX houses could provide the same quality for cheaper) and the quality of visual effects suffered a major drop as a result. The effects aren't terrible for the most part, but they were considerably behind even what other film were doing with CGI in 1998.
  • The hummingbird seen during the slowed time scene looks really horrible.
  • The fight scene in the projector, where they just left the bluescreen in instead of chroma-keying whatever was supposed to be there.
• Squick: Dougherty's murder is one of the more graphic in the Star Trek mythos. Death by skin stretching.
• Straw Man Has a Point: Shouldn't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? While the Bak'u were supposed to come off as innocent victims of an under-the-table Federation plot to steal their planet's resources, they mostly came off as selfish pricks who won't share (or tolerate anyone of their own who wanted to share) their planet's amazing power of healing, leaving the rest of the galaxy to die of diseases they themselves easily overcame. Of course, the idea of a land grab from them greatly violates their rightful sovereignty (which they may or may not have depending on how the Federation handles squatter's rights), and is in itself wrong, even if it was meant for the greater good of the galaxy. But since the Bak'u are such Jerk Asses for not letting anyone even just study their planet to understand its powers, it's hard for some to feel sympathy for them.
  • Also, the Bak'u don't really have a legitimate claim to the planet. They were just refugees who just happened to crash land on the planet and decided to eliminate all their technology, fooling the Federation into thinking that they were a pre-Warp civilization.
  • Patrick Stewart himself admitted that if he, not Picard, were in that position, he would've made the Bak'u leave.
  • As mentioned in Jerkass Has a Point, Admiral Dougherty makes a very good point that Picard, as well as the writers, either hadn't noticed or ignored:

Dougherty: They are not indigenous to this world, they were never meant to be immortal!

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The original script had Data apparently going berserk, and Picard tracking him down and terminating him, only to find out afterward that Data was right; but Patrick Stewart wouldn't go for it.
  • There's also the basic fact that the movie took place during the Dominion War, and the Enterprise is one of the most advanced and powerful starships in the Federation fleet. And instead of showing the Enterprise out on the front line... This.
    • At least one extended universe novel handwaves the Enterprise going in the opposite direction of the war for plot purposes by stating that it and the crew are just as high-profile in-universe as they are to the viewers, if not moreso, and thus they can't be deployed to the front lines for fear of inspiring the Dominion to throw a completely disproportionate response at whatever force its assigned to (unfortunately, why no one thinks to use this to bait the Dominion into an ambush or at least an unwise engagement is not covered.) Or just move the crew to another ship for their diplomatic work and put the flagship back in the fight.
  • The Federation were currently operating in a time of war against the Dominion and they are losing. More than one reviewer has noted that it wouldn't have been too hard to have the crew become divided over whether removing 600 people to potentially save billions is the morally right option.
• Unfortunate Implications: Picard is quite willing to sacrifice his career and his life for the Bak'u, who are predominantly white and look like catalog models, but could care less about the Son'a, who are Ambiguously Brown and look like Michael Jackson after 20 too many facelifts.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The Son'a.
• Wangst: Ru'afo basically spends the whole movie doing nothing but whining and complaining.