Category: Star Trek

Star Trek: Insurrection is a 1998 film and the ninth Star Trek feature film.  It is the second film to use only the Next Generation cast, and it is directed by Jonathon Frakes.  Does it live up to the standard set buy First Contact?  It sadly does not.

The films starts out with Commander Data going crazy and attacking his fellow Star Fleet members while monitoring an apparently less developed race the Ba’Ku, and then holds the Star Fleet members captive.  Admiral Matthew Dougherty then calls Captain Picard for the Data’s schematics, so they can find a way to turn him off.  Picard thinks something sounds a little off and then goes to the Ba’Ku home world to investigate, and of course he finds that all is not as it seems.

The main problem with this movie is the plot.  It sounds kind of original when I condense it like that, but it is not.  This movie is like several episodes that Star Trek: The Next Generation has done before, and what is so depressing is that in the movie they discuss needing every new race available to join the Federation so they can defend against the Borg and the Dominion, and either of those bad guys would have made a better movie than this, but instead we get a recycled and forgettable script from the TV show. I suppose we should be thankful it is a better then average episode.

The cast continues to do their jobs well, and they know how to play their characters. One of the nice things about this story is that planet rejuvenates people, so they all get to act young and a little silly. Jonathan Frakes continues to be a steady hand behind the camera and proves that he is a good director.

I liked Star Trek: Insurrection more this time I watched it, but I think it is because I hadn’t watched the show in so long that watching a longer then average episode of Star Trek: TNG wasn’t as disappointing, but still it is a shame that they hit a home run with all the same people in their previous outing, and they go and follow it up with a bunt.

Star Trek: First Contact is the first movie in the franchise to only feature the Next Generation crew.  It is also the first feature film directed by Jonathan Frakes more commonly known as Commander William T. Riker.  How does the new crew do on their first solo voyage? Splendidly.

The movie starts off with Captain Picard dreaming about his time as a Borg which happened six years earlier.  He is then woken up by an Admiral explaining the new Borg threat.  He will not be assigned to deal with the threat because the Federation is worried his past will affect his actions.  Things do not go well for the Federation, so Picard takes the ship to deal with Borg anyway, and when they stop the Borg Cube a Borg Ball ship shoots out from the Borg Cube and travels in to the past.  The Enterprise must follow it to save our future.

It sounds like a confusing plot, but it is actually pretty easy to follow, and works quite well.  The Borg are my favorite Star Trek enemy, so to have a movie where they are the bad guys is excellent, and it allows Picard to deal with his feelings about the Borg captivity from the show.  Their leader the Borg Queen is played excellently by Alice Krige.  She gives the Borg a little life and attitude.  The rest of the cast all know their characters, and play them well.

The special effects and sets for the most part work very well.  My only critique is that the human camp they have to help in the past looks like a good Sci-Fi TV set not an A-List movie set, but it is a minor flaw in an otherwise great movie, but it seems like something they could have worked on a little bit.

This was always my favorite Star Trek movie.  It had the Next Generation cast, and it featured a good story with a lot of action and a great villain, and while she may not quote Shakespeare like other villains, she is still quite memorable.  Star Trek: First Contact is on the sadly very short list of truly good Star Trek movies.

Star Trek Generations is the seventh film in the Star Trek franchise, and it serves as the hand off between the original Star Trek cast, and the Next Generation cast.  Some say it is the best odd numbered Star Trek movie, and that is probably true, but it is a bit of faint praise.

The film starts out with Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov taking a tour of the new U.S.S. Enterprise B.  They are on board as a publicity stunt to send off the new ship and take it on its maiden voyage around Pluto and back home, but as soon as they are underway they get a distress call from a couple of ships that are stuck in an energy ribbon.  Kirk saves the people on one of the ships and the Enterprise, but gets zapped by the ribbon in the process.  Two of the people they save are our villain Soran (Malcolm McDowell), and Guinan.  It turns out the energy ribbon is a place of pure joy, and Soran was not happy to leave.  Zoom ahead to the Next Generation, and we find that out Soran (he like Guinan lives for hundreds of years) will do anything to get back in to the ribbon even kill two-hundred million people.  This story proves to be the weakest part of the movie.

With this movie I could see that they thought they needed a movie that would bridge the two series together, but they didn’t if it means we have to have a story like this.  It is one of those stories that seems okay when you watch it, but it gets worse when you think about it.  For instance they say you cannot just fly a ship in to the ribbon, but that is how Kirk gets there, and they say you never want to leave the ribbon and all you will ever do is think about how you want to stay there, but Kirk and Picard do just leave when they decide it is not real enough, so it turns out this movie could have been skipped if Soran had decided just to take a ship to the ribbon and teleport himself in to it, but killing two-hundred million people by collapsing stars is more fun.

Everything else about the movie is fine.  The special effects are good and the actors all know their roles backwards and forwards by now, so they all do a great job.  It is just a shame they weren’t given something good to do.

I was surprised by this movie because I remember it being awful, but instead it is just mediocre, and brought down by a bad plot, but it does pave the way for one of my favorite movies (not just Star Trek movies): Star Trek First Contact.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country came out in 1991, and is that last film featuring the complete original crew.  The sixth film was going to be a reboot of the franchise, but fans and the original cast wouldn’t let them.  Though as we know they would reboot the series with the 11th film.

The movie starts off with the crew of the USS Excelsior led by Captain Sulu being caught in an energy wave caused by the Klingon moon Praxis exploding.  This moon was the Klingon’s number one energy source.  With this information the crew of the soon to be decommissioned USS Enterprise are called into a top secret meeting and are told by Spock that the Klingons can no longer afford the cold war they have been having with the Federation, and need to create a lasting peace, so the Enterprise is sent out to guide a Klingon ship to Earth for peace hearings, and as you can guess things don’t go as planned.

After the disaster that was Star Trek V, this movie was an excellent way to send off the original cast.  It has a very Star Trek story about the galaxy becoming a better place through peace, and they get to show the audience something new: like the Klingon Home World, and a prison mining camp, and Kirk gets to be Kirk by fighting aliens and making out with alien ladies, so kudos to Leonard Nimoy for coming up with this story.

They had all sorts of fun with the casting by working Worf (Michael Dorn) and Christian Slater in to the movie, and one of the greatest Star Trek villains of all time Christopher Plumber as General Chang.  He like Khan loves to quote Shakespeare and blow stuff up.  It is wonderful.  I can only hope that they have Benedict Cumberbatch quoting Shakespeare in the new movie because that is what good Star Trek villains do.

For some reason I thought William Shatner directed this movie, but he did not.  Thankfully the director was Nicholas Meyer who also directed Wrath of Khan, and helped write The Voyage Home, so if you are thinking he was involved in all the good early Star Trek movies, you would be right, and it is a shame they didn’t just get him to do them all.

This is one of the few truly good Star Trek movies that is also just a good movie period.  If you want to watch a good movie with the original cast, watch this movie or Wrath of Khan, and I am sure you will have a good time.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was made in 1989, 20 years after the end of the TV show.  It was so bad that it almost ended the Star Trek franchise.  This movie was directed by Captain Kirk himself William Shatner.  Shatner got a chance to redeem himself by directing the next movie.

The movie starts off on Nimbus III (think Tatooine).  A giant dirt hole that is supposed to be the planet of peace where The Klingons, The Federation, and The Romulans are supposed to work together to build the world, but of course they don’t and everyone just fights a lot.  A man named Sybok kidnaps the ambassadors from the three governments, and unless a ship is sent he will kill them.  Of course they send the Enterprise to help them.  Then Sybok steals the Enterprise and is off to the great barrier at the center of the galaxy to find God.

This movie has all sorts of problems: The plot is bad, the special effects are bad, the acting is bad, and the directing isn’t great.  They really just should have scrapped this one and called it a day

I am glad that in this movie they decided to go out and explore something, but it is so anticlimactic when they get there.  They build up the great barrier as some sort of impenetrable wall that nothing can get through, and then they just fly through it without any problem, and it is not just because the Enterprise is awesome because a Klingon Bird of Pray does the same thing like two minutes later.  Oh yeah there are Klingons in this movie for some reason, don’t worry they are pointless so you can forget about them.

This movie was the low point for the series for awhile, but sadly it gets worse in a few films.  If you haven’t guessed it by now, you should skip this movie.  Luckily the next movie isn’t that bad, so there is hope.