SFDebris: Insurrection

[Mikey]

I am almost certain the Admiral mentions "lives being saved." Not to mention that we see the effects and they go beyond simply extending life. Geordi got his sight back.

He sure did, and Picard got the equivalent of five doses of horny goatweed. Nobody was saved by the radiation, though.

[Atekimogus]

Well it doesn't really bother me that there where only 600 Baku to save. The stakes don't need to be always entire planets or civilisations with billions of people. (The objective stakes in wrath of khan for example where not THAT high compared to all the other movies, which isn't a bad thing. Noones cries over x billion veridians or x billion vulcans. Make it more personal).

I think the main problem of the whole story was just that it was the absolutely wrong kind of story for an action movie. I see what Piller was trying to pull off here and if they'd had made that a slow, thoughtfull and deep movie it would have succeded on that level. (But probably not as blockbuster)

But even after what - 3-4 rewrites trying to add more action - the studio execs basically said to add even more explosions and stuff. (Oh they put it very diplomatic with very vague language but basically - add more fireworks.)

It's basically taking a script like "Measure of a Man" or "Inner Light" and tell them to add more action and explosions and since they explicatly stated that for the IX movie they wanted a departure from the action movie that was First Contact they sure did everything to end up exactly with another action flick, altough with an unfitting story.

[Lighthawk]

I find myself wondering just why the Sona never returned to the planet until they were ready to strip the youth rads from it. I mean ooc obviously they needed to have the bit about some of them dying too quickly for the normal exposure to save. But ic, why? Pride and hate I suppose, but once you reach the point that you're literally having to graft new flesh onto your body just to keep on going, that's really pushing it. Especially since the Baku are all settled in one small village without transportation more advanced than feet. The Sona could have easily set up a settlement on the other side of the planet that they could have visited to juice back up and the Baku would not have even known of it, nor could they have reached it without months of travel even if they somehow used their space elf powers to learn of it. Sure would have reduced the time crunch the Sona found themselves in.

[stitch626]

I'm sorry but there was no proof that the Sona's thing would even work.

Heck, Ruafu was exited (almost sounded surprised, but I'm not good at judging such things) that it showed as the "simulations" did when he was tricked on the holoship.

At best, we get what happened, they didn't harvest the radiation and no one is worse off. At worst, they try it, harvest it and find out that it kills the people its used on.

[Atekimogus]

I find myself wondering just why the Sona never returned to the planet until they were ready to strip the youth rads from it. I mean ooc obviously they needed to have the bit about some of them dying too quickly for the normal exposure to save. But ic, why? Pride and hate I suppose, but once you reach the point that you're literally having to graft new flesh onto your body just to keep on going, that's really pushing it. Especially since the Baku are all settled in one small village without transportation more advanced than feet. The Sona could have easily set up a settlement on the other side of the planet that they could have visited to juice back up and the Baku would not have even known of it, nor could they have reached it without months of travel even if they somehow used their space elf powers to learn of it. Sure would have reduced the time crunch the Sona found themselves in.

Well not only that it makes you wonder why they needed to go offplanet in the first place. Sure sure, the young hotheads wanted to be left alone from their backwards parents but moving to the far end of the planet wasn't enough distance to put between them? Drama much?

Or if they where exiled, wouldn't another continent would have sufficed? Overkill much?

[Tyyr]

He sure did, and Picard got the equivalent of five doses of horny goatweed. Nobody was saved by the radiation, though.

No one was deathly ill either. However even exposure to the unrefined radiation cured Geordi's blindness.

[Mikey]

He sure did, and Picard got the equivalent of five doses of horny goatweed. Nobody was saved by the radiation, though.

No one was deathly ill either. However even exposure to the unrefined radiation cured Geordi's blindness.

There was no indication that the radiation miracle drug would help anyone with a fatal condition. The most dramatic effect we'd seen was the regrowth of Geordi's optical tissue - not nervous tissue, because it restored the irises which were absent during TNG - and all of Dougherty's pontification centered on extending the span of otherwise-healthy old people. From Geordi's case, we can deduce that the radiation treatment may have helped in the case of necrosis, but they could already deal with that handily - heart attacks seemed to be relatively minor, routine procedures and we've never heard of anyone dying from spider bites in TNG.

Like I said earlier, I'm just playing devil's advocate about this point. There were myriad ways in which the UFP could have gone about the whole thing better, but those - along with LH's valid point about the Son'a - couldn't have fit as easily into a film with a required amount of shoot-em-up. However, a single offhand line about concrete effects on true medicine, rather than convenient juvenat treatments, would have helped this point immensely.

[Coalition]

They might not have been so pathetic if we'd been shown a sustainable, significant culture. Instead we see a village with a garden barely big enough to handle one lunch rush at Olive Garden, and only 600 people. Now I'll admit that since they're aliens their sustainable population COULD be much lower than humans but 600 total individuals would be pushing it for a complex sapient life form.

Would the healing radiation cause the garden to grow faster/heal 'damage' from harvesting faster than normal? Imagine fruit trees that can give a full crop every month instead of every year for example.


Still, there might have been another reason for dealing with the Son'a, even if the radiation was junk. The Son'a are allies of the Dominion, and produced Ketracel White for them. Wasn't the Dominion war still going on at this time? If so, that would have made a nice undercurrent of 'we have to work with them, the survival of the Federation is at stake'. Maybe a speech from the admiral along the lines of:

"Why are we dealing with the Son'A? In case you forgot Captain, the Federation is at war and losing. The Dominion is using local materials to fight us, and the Son'A are providing critical military supplies. We get this group on our side, that gives us access to the rest to split them away from the Dominion and hopefully give us a fighting chance. Betazed has fallen, Earth is being threatened, and the Dominion is still ramping up production.

"Your little ceremony earlier with the Evora? Your job was to get them to join the Federation, so we could redeploy the ships to the front lines, and get them producing anything to help us out.

"Each night when I question working with the Son'A I call up the current casualty lists. When you got here, my three week old list had another fifty million names added to it.

"Either we work with the Son'A and get them on our side, or the Federation dies."

That should give enough background information to let the viewers know that the Federation needs to work with the Son'A, even if they don't like it. The admiral doesn't like it, but he is seeing a couple million people die each day, in the war, and knows that his actions will save other lives.

[McAvoy]

I don't know.

My general feeling about the whole movie was it cobbled together quickly trying to be different than FC but at the same time being the same.

I didn't like the jokes at all. They could have dropped the obvious jokes, none of them were funny anyway.

[Tsukiyumi]

...none of them were funny anyway.

I liked the joke with Data about Riker's beard.

"Smooth as an android's bottom, eh, Data?"