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Film: "Star Trek: Insurrection" (1998).
Who would have thought it? The ninth instalment of the movie cycle spun off from the original TV series is the best of the bunch and the most romantic film. For the first time, it allows Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) to boldly go where no starship commander has gone before - into the arms of a woman. No matter that she's many hundred years older than he is. She looks his age because the planet on which she lives holds the fountain of youth. Strictly speaking it's not a fountain, rather a benign radiation from the planet's rings, but it has the same effect. As a result, the apparently fortysomething Anji (Dona Murphy) so takes Picard's fancy that he looks forward at the end to what sounds like a very recreational period of accumulated leave. The eternal youth theme underpins a plot that's unusually complex by Star Trek standsrds. The Federation, to which Picard owes unquestioning loyalty, wants to remove the peaceful Ba'ku people from their utupian planet and repopulate it with the So'na, with whom they have struck a deal. The So'na are horrible in appearance and deed. Get them rattled and black blood seeps disgustingly through their wizened skins. In fact, they are themselves Ba'ku who, aeons ago, went their separate way and never found their cousins' earthly paradise. Now dying out, they want to oust the present population before it is too late. How can Picard remain loyal when his mission violates the Federation's prime directive - that nobody should interfere with the cultural development of individual races?  |
