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What makes you think Paramount was going to make such a 'Heart of Darkness' vehicle? I'm a Trekker since 66, and no such thing emerged in pre-production talks.
It's better, but the Dominion was Starfleets' most dangerous enemy other than the Borg. This was TNGs chance to join the conflict. I know Berman was not a fan of the Dominion arc, but for the Enterprise to stay out of one of the Federations' biggest conflicts made no sense.
And yet Disco went on to do the exact same thing. “Hey where was the Enterprise during a horrific war where the Klingons were literally on Earth’s doorstep and the only thing that stopped them was blackmailing Qonos with a planet-cracking nuke?” “Busy! It was BUSY!”
The Dominion could totally worked, say they suggest a ceasefire and claim the planet as part of a new DMZ, just like they did on DS9 trying to negotiate for a specific planet because it had resources to make Ketracel-White. And given Picard's history, have the main villain be a Cardassian Gul maybe even Madred himself.
I think the big problem is that DS9 simply did not have the ratings and casual viewers might have not quite understood what was going on. That would have been their reasoning any way for not pursuing completely ignoring that they successfully pulled that same thing off with the Borg. A Dominion War movie would have been awesome.
The Amish who somehow managed to exile an entire ruthless space armada with the power of their single village and farming tools. … Dear god in heaven this backstory is the prototype for Rebel Moon.
I'm in the minority in that I liked Insurrection even if, like some, I felt like it was a two part episode of TNG (which is why I liked it honestly), but I do think doing something like Star Trek Heart of Darkness would've been far, far better than any movie that came after Insurrection. I mean I'm still of the opinion that Star Trek Nemesis killed the franchise.
So what I've learned from this video about Insurrection, Star Trek V, and Star Trek: Picard is that main lead Captain's actors should not have creative pull.
I agree! I'm a fan of Stewart, however giving him 'Right of Refusal' of the script in his contract meant he could demand a love interest, decide his own wardrobe(hence the leather jacket) and more action scenes involving him. Rather than an ensemble movie, tackling difficult thought provoking topics.
And while he didn’t request it, fanboy script writers eager to please him were the reason we got that stupid Mad Max at home car scene in Nemesis. Rather than have any care for a proper script or integrity of the world, Stewart just went with it.
After hearing that alternate version, I still prefer the version we got. Insurrection was the closest in spirit to the television series, and after First Contact I don’t think another dark action movie was necessary. It’s true Insurrection was more like a rehashed two-part episode than a movie, but for me that is actually part of its charm.
The TNG films suffered from not having a overarching theme to them, unlike the TOS films which often dealt with aging characters in a universe that was rapidly leaving them behind and culuminated in Star Trek 6 literally putting Kirk on trial. The TNG films should have focused on Picard and crew trying to uphold their idealistic belief in the Prime Directive in spite of the Dominion War which had severly tested the DS9 crew. It would have been intersting setting up the TNG crew as a sort of relic of the idealistic past having to confront the darker, more troubling realities of the the Apha quadrent during the Dominion War.
This sounds like it could of been one of the best Star Trek movies, it had everything: action, moral conundrums, space politics, a fun villain, and Picard speeches
Picard dressing down the Federation council would have been epic. Could have even thrown Spock in there as a surprise guest star at a climactic moment.
@@BulletsandblockbustersIt would have had to be a 3 hour movie but I would have been great with that. Heart Of Darkness could have been the best and there could have been a little comedy in parts thrown in, enough for a little chuckle. It literally could have been "the best of both worlds"
@@vintvarner16 But Paramount probably wouldn't have wanted to pony up the required cash to get the good version made. I'd be willing to bet that was the main reason Berman rejected the original concept, not "worries that Patrick Stewart might feel old."
They should have done a balls-out 18 certificate sci-fi horror where they go back to the episode with the alien bug creatures that took over Starfleet Command. Duffy would ultimately get infected and Picard would be forced to phaser him in the head. Get Paul Verhoeven to direct.
I’ve always wanted a cinematic return of that species. They’re so powerful at infiltration, even the Borg and the Dominion wouldn’t stand a chance. I nominate John Carpenter to direct!
@@commandercaptain4664 ooh yeah even better, turn it into a Star Trek / The Thing horror. Someone’s head could melt off and sprout spider legs and scuttle off into a Jeffries tube.
I’m still waiting for a Trek movie that continues the alien worm infiltration episode from Next Gen. Remember, a signal was sent to the stars at the end of it…
Michael Piller wrote a really fantastic book called "Fade In" that describes a lot of this. He describes the process of writing the script, getting notes from Rick Berman, Patrick Stewart, and Brent Spiner and said it was a little heartwrenching to get such critical and negative notes from Stewart and Spiner, individuals he idolized. It's a really fascinating book about how these big studio movies are made. This video is a great cliff notes version. Great work!
Honestly, we home Star Trek to to much of a high standard. 70% of the show is shit to be honest. The rest is top tear. The actors typically are what makes this stuff crap.
The trouble is they did the ‘heart of darkness’ type story already as an episode with cardassians in ‘the wounded’ with capt maxwell going rogue and O’Brien bringing him in.
That story sounds very familiar to one of the TNG stories where Picard had to go after a Starfleet captain who went after the Cardassians. Bob Gunton from the Shawshank Redemption was the captain he went after.
@Mazvec It would’ve worked if the Dominion was behind the treaty, meant to divide faction relations to that point, while slowly acclimating audiences to who they were, then revealing the big surprise at the cliffhanger.
Actors should act and leave writing to others (of course there are exceptions to the rule, but not too many). Last month I visited Fedcon in Bonn, which had next to Star Trek guests also some Orville guests. During a panel the four Orville actors were asked if they had a story idea. The first three present their ideas, which were not so good. And then the fourth, Penny Johnson Jerald (who also played in DS9), says: "...and that's why we leave the writing to the writers".
That exception has a name, and it's Leonard Nimoy. Maybe the difference is Nimoy pursued artistic ambitions outside of acting, such as photography and directing non Star Trek movies. So he wasn't thinking of everything from the point of view of what will make Spock look good. And when it came to writing "Voyage Home" he had the good sense to work with Nicholas Meyer.
As much as Insurrection ignores the Dominion War this script even makes less sense the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans were in an Alliance fighting the Dominion when these events would have taken place. Also, Picard graduated Starfleet Academy in 2327 and Insurrection takes place in 2375 meaning he'd been out of the Academy a lot longer than 28 years.
That’s because this draft was written in 1997, well before the DS9 writers eventually decided to have the Romulans join the Federation and Klingon Empire.
There was also a script proposed that had the E and its crew assigned to the Battle for Betazed in the Dominion War that would have been awesome. Mostly because Deana and her MOTHER OF DEATH would come out of it as mushroom cloud laying badasses with major PTSD. There was a novelisation of this concept that has a foreword from Marina Satiris basically saying "I wanted to do this shit not shaving Commander Riker"
The movies did Troi extremely dirty. Generations - Riker has her take the helm right when the ship is going to crash. First Contact - Gets drunk. Insurrection - Shaves Riker’s beard. Nemesis - Gets mind-raped by Tom Hardy before he was cool
Focusing the ninth movie on anything other than the Dominion War was dropping the ball. That was a no-brainer, yet somehow they missed it up, leading to the demise of classic Trek.
@@jaytalks8091 Assigning the flagship to diplomatic duty makes some strategic sense. Chuchill did something similar in the early years of WWII and Archer and the NX01 crew followed his example during the Romulan War which led to victory at the battle of Cheron. Personally I'd have gone with the diplomacy mission but had them confront a neutral or semi-beligerant faction like the Gorn or the Tholians as the object of the exercise.
Agreed. And a 1000 times better than what was the working title Star Trek: Stardust. I mean, seriously??? At that point just call it Star Trek: Pixie Dust for God’s sake.
Insurrection gets a bad rap. It's the only one of the TNG movies that feels like an episode of the show and where Picard really stays true to the character we came to love over the 7 seasons.
True. It is the only one to stay true to the TV series. But maybe it feels too much like a TNG two parter. Michael Piller was the showrunner for TNG SEASON 3-7. He set the tone for the success of TNG and subsequent series together with Rick Berman. While I liked First Contact in the cinema, the logic of the story irks me. Why does the Borg need to travel to earth before travelling through time?
In the series, Picard decided multiple times that removing colonists from a planet for the good of the Federation is a good idea. And no, the Baku are colonists. They say so. They’re just really obnoxious and smug on top of that. It’s entirely out of character for Picard to help those selfish luddites hoard a resource that could help billions. Especially after it’s revealed that they (somehow, inexplicably) exiled the Sona in the first place.
The revelation of an unaged Duffy hallway thru the story is TOTALLY a classic Trek-type of reveal, tho. It has an "Omega Glory" vibe to it, where Kirk and Co. beam down and find Captain Tracy alive on the planet, immune to the disease that killed the Exeter crew, leading a war btw the Yangs and the Kohms. It's a travesty that this version didn't happen. Seems to be the norm rather than the exception with Paramount.
Insurrection should have been a Dominion War film, where the Enterprise-E joins the fight. A few throwaway lines regarding how the war was raging across both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and then finally a mission for the -E to enter the Gamma Quadrant, engage, and destroy a Dominion threat there (new superweapon) that would have otherwise resulted in the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons losing the war. Tie-ins to DS9 would have also increased viewership of that series, instead of waiting for streaming to do that 20 years later.
An excellent alternative suggestion! Your last sentence reminds me of a friend that finally understood why I liked DS9 so much back when it was new/current after he started watching it... in 2020!
I think the Stardust plot could’ve worked at introducing audiences to the Dominion, rather than relying on throwaway exposition, and then Stardust 2 would serve as the big showdown. And yes, DS9 being in it would’ve done that show and the movie a whole lot of favors!
X-Files: Fight the Future came out the same year, so there wasn’t a template for how to really do that with an active TV show. And this would be a lot harder than that, since they aren’t the same show. I mean, it might have been beneficial for DS9 to have the TNG crew explore their topics, but you’d have to explain a lot from DS9 in that movie, and then DS9 would have to explain what happened in the movie. Also, you’d need something better than sending one ship to stop a super weapon. That’s way too Star Wars, and we’d already seen the Dominion muster huge fleets, almost right from the start. Can’t really throw one ship at that.
It's kind of amazing that in almost every single Star Trek movie starting with Search for Spock, the Romulans were always intended to be the villains and they end up getting sidelined for something else. Even in Nemesis when you think they are finally going to be the villains in a Star Trek movie it ends up not being them. They are literally the earliest recurring villains in Star Trek and never were antagonists in a film until the whole series was rebooted.
It kind of makes sense, because the Romulans are very "Cold War" in how they do things. They never try to directly do anything themselves, they always manipulate the other factions against each other and make sure they themselves have plausible deniability when their plans inevitably fail. It is interesting to me, though, that First Contact wasn't a movie about the Romulans. In Generations, we saw the Romulans on the observatory who were allegedly competing with the villains of that movie (making us think they're up to something), and then in First Contact the bad guys are a race who can't defeat the Federation 1 on 1, led by a Queen (or an "Empress"), who go back in time so they can stop the humans and Vulcans from meeting and working together. It really sounds like a Romulan plot. If Nemesis was going to culminate in a giant boss ship fighting with a fleet of smaller good guy ships (with a Picard clone and a corrupted brother of Data who should've been Lore), that one should've been the return of the Borg and the grand finale all in one.
@@HyraxusPrimus I agree and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that the Romulans never ended up being film antagonists, I just find it very funny that they were constantly being planned to be villains in almost every single movie but were always being sidelined in favor of other villains. Even in Undiscovered Country the Romulan ambassador was supposed to the be main antagonist and he ended up not even getting a name in the movie. Personally I always felt Nemesis should have been a Mirror Universe story, with the Remans being mirror universe Romulans. Even all the marketing for that movie made it seem like it was Mirror Universe.
@@UndyingNephalim I was thinking of the Undiscovered Country, too. They also didn't have any consequences for when they did openly attack and kill Starfleet personnel when trying to steal the Prometheus, and hilariously when they were set up to be the next main villains of Enterprise, the show got cancelled. I kind of see the Mirror Universe angle. It would've saved having to cast a younger Picard and could've been a better case study of nurture vs. nature if they were the same age, and we had never seen the Mirror TNG crew before. I guess it would be a Terran plot to use the Remans to retake the empire from the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance, and they need something from the Prime Universe? Cool. Alternatively, there's a problem since the Mirror versions are almost always cartoony evil versions of the Prime counterparts. As fun as that would be to see, it might lose the gravitas of the story.
@@gups4963 true in this case! Though he also was not shown original versions of the story, so it’s possible he would’ve gone for it. He wanted more serious stories for the paramount+ show
@@benreed9952 Generations he splits with Berman, Nemesis he killed (though I liked it, just not the dune buggy bit). the first 2 seasons of Picard were eh pretty bad IMO. , First Contact his changes might have helped, Same with the last seasons of TNG. Berman has one heck of bipolar history with Trek. He is a classic certain type of hole (yt loves censoring), but is also the guy who ran ST through its most successful period. I can see why people have a personal issue with the guy, for example Terry Farrell's firing. But on the success and failure of the movies, that appears to be more on the crew as they were given a lot of power over them and Stewart never appearing to care the more cerebral aspects of his character and wanting to be shown as a man of action or he was having a midlife crisis. Just my opinion, have a good one
Ss@@Bulletsandblockbustersspling of stsr trek into darknes you shou dinvideo about jj abrhana plane had h drected star trek bryond b his lldnf star trek beyond wrd dfrent fromwehtvwevgit
Whereas DS9's Homefront and Paradise Lost storyline succeeds, Insurrection fails. In DS9, there's an blatant urgency to discover and foil the plot of a power-hungry dictator of an Admiral, with a proverbial clock ticking down to settle the fate of the freedom of BILLIONS. And man, these two DS9 episodes would have made for a BLOCKBUSTER standalone film, as written AND as casted. With Insurrection, we're down to one tiny village of 600 we've never seen before ... and suddenly, only ~5 years after "Journey's End", Picard decides (hypocritically) THIS village is worth fighting the Federation for. "You have made an already TENSE situation WORSE!!!" becomes "lock and load". Uhh why? Meh who cares - let's blow stuff up!!! ... NTM, the displacement of defenseless people is ALWAYS a grim matter. ... But let's make it a lighthearted comedy?! What?! 🤨☹
Nothing about this film works. I would add the uniforms should have ditched the grey, and gone back to the red, blue and yellow as primary colors, particularly if the intent was to make a light-hearted film. The greys worked to set the dark tone of First Contact. They matched up tonally with the Dominion War. But they have otherwise felt just too brooding and lifeless for Starfleet.
I always thought a good idea for a Star Trek show would be about a Romulan who immigrated to Earth as a child and entered Stargleet and rise up to be the captain of his very own crew with his first mission to be to apprehend a Romulan criminal whose the leader of his own crime syndicate and a childhood best friend of the Captain’s who had a harder time adjusting to life on Earth and decided to walk a different much darker path. The Captain’s crew would be composed of officers from other races of the federation and one Ferengi as a nod to Nog with only one human officer just as a change of pace. The show would be called Star Trek Odyssey with the ship named The Ulysses.
I have a problem with Riker vs Picard hunt. For Me Insurrection has become more watchable over the years. It suffered from being a much smaller story after First Contact. This original story would have needed some rewrites.
Wow.. i wish stewert still felt that he didnt want picard to go through emotional agony on screen. He seems to have done a complete 180 for the picard show..
I like this movie. Why mission must be something larger than life? Why it must be saving galaxy or even universe? I think mission is suitable for crew of one ship, even it is the Enterprise. And Picard gives the best speech - And how many takes Admiral, to become wrong? A 1000, a 50.000, a MILION. HOW MANY ADMIRAL!
Yeah, this Heart of Darkness concept sounds alot better. Then again, anything sounds better then what we ended up getting. Funnily enough, I am re-reading "The Ashes of Eden" by William Shatner (and the Reeves-Stevenses as co-writers) - which is basically the same plot. Fountain of Youth story line, captain Kirk gets younger, gets a love interest and has his old crew coming after him. It came out in 1995.
Starfleet getting Jellico to do some black ops style thing during the war makes sense. Him going straight to high end war crimes and having to send Picard and crew to stop him would have worked.
Star Trek Insurrection is one of my favorite Star Trek movies. Together with First Contact, it forms a perfect duo to watch. I don't understand why everyone thinks everything should be dark and serious. It seems that everything gets that treatment nowadays, from James Bond to Batman. For me, Star Trek has never had that in its DNA and I am so happy that Insurrection exists just the way it is. Too bad Star Trek Nemesis came and destroyed everything.
Insurrection should have been an all-out war action movie, given it took place during the Dominion War. It was the perfect excuse to make the action movie Hollywood loves.
Paramount was still stuck in cheap mode regarding Trek, which would be admirable if they always knew how to spend their budget, instead of sporadically knowing.
Would have been awkward starting a war with the Romulans weeks before Sisko was going to get them to break their non-aggression pact with the Dominion.
As great Patrick Stewart is as an actor, he's terrible when given any power over the story: witness Insurrection, Nemesis, and Picard Season 1. And it's Jonathan FRAKES, not "Franks".
I remember taking a friend to see this movie, who knew next to nothing of Star Trek, let alone TNG. He was a visual arts majoring in Visual Arts and both liked the story and loved the visuals
There’s an entire draft for a book about this that was released after Michael Piller‘s death that was never officially published. It goes into great detail about all the different iterations of the movie script, starting with the Heart of Darkness idea and how it evolved into Insurrection. About the only part of the actual film that remotely resembles the original idea, is Data going berserk at the beginning. Either way, a total missed opportunity
Im not even very familiar with Star Trek but that sounds like a great film. I'll never understand why films go into production with unfinished scripts or ones that people arent happy with - it rarely ends well!
See The Justice League. Everyone knows in real time what they have is a disaster. But failing to release any film at all will cause too many people to lose too much money to be acceptable.
The storyline of what you described was infinitely more intriguing than what we got in Insurrection. That was flat and the plot was trite, like we'd seen this play out before. And we had. Insurrection could've been so much better with this original plot. Rick Berman outsmarted himself yet again.
First Contact is still my favourite Trek film. They’ve nailed every aspect of what a Star Trek movie should be. It’s like what Goldeneye is to Bond. Perfection.
Another brilliant video - thank you 🙏🏻! I’ve always wondered how successful a TNG film tying into the (then) ongoing Dominion War would’ve been? In terms of Star Trek ‘what could have been’ videos, how about one on the original idea for Star Trek 11 (before it was made a soft reboot) - Star Trek: The Beginning, set after Enterprise, and focussing on a new crew and the Earth/Romulan war?
They tried to do Wrath of Picard and ended up with a crapload of plot stalling followed by a bunch of potshots, a problematic mindrape, and a lifeless sacrifice.
The Voyage Home worked for the TOS cast, but the First Contact was where the TNG movies were at home, the darker appeal fit perfectly with the cast. Insurrection was a bit weird because the same tactic doesn’t work for two very different casts of characters. Insurrection’s plot was also panned for being morally questionable, even illogical by Spock standards.
It sounded okay. The Briar Patch should have been a dimensional rift that transfers life energy from people into Duffy, making him like a cosmic vampire. This would also explain why he wanted to get the Romulan empire to where he was... for more bodies he could drain. The fountain of youth aspect doesn't work since the entire galaxy would be after it and also our main actors would have no excuse to keep looking older every movie!
I think Insurrection is good and unfairly gets shat on. But of all the criticisms out there, I do agree that it did feel like a 2 hour long tv episode. In fact, the story IS an episode of TNG lol.
I don't agree that would have been better. I think it would have just felt like a rehash of the Episode, "The Wound" The only way I see it working is if they found a character as impactful as Khan was to the Original Movies from TNG. Good luck with that
Star Trek Heart of Darkness would have ruled at the box office; instead we got quite the let down. Unfortunately that was the last chance for the Star Trek: The Next Generation films, and the nail in the coffin was Nemesis. Although sometimes I look back at Tom Hardy's body of work so far and it's really amazing that Nemesis was his debut role! Nemesis might have been the worst Star Trek film arguably, and definitely performed the worst at the box office, but damn they discovered Tom Hardy though!!! Star Trek: Insurrection seemed to me a film that didn't know what it wanted to be, and the worst Star Trek films have great premises that never commit or execute. It's almost like the executives said, "Hey make Star Trek 4", and Frakes and company said, "We'll try!" The tone goes from the villian wanting to kill his sworn blood brothers to boob jokes; it's really tonally inappropriate and all over the place. It goes from a musical to an insurrection against Starfleet and the Son'A? It might be ok if you want to smoke a doobie and turn your brain off, but as a Star Trek and a Star Trek: TNG fan it's a massive letdown! Especially after the Magnum Opus swan song of Star Trek: First Contact; a massive Trek smash hit!
My biggest problem with nemesis is I keep forgetting that Shinzon is supposed to be a young Picard. They look, act and sound nothing alike. I think they should’ve tried some sort of deaging approach but the vfx for that really weren’t there yet.
@@Bulletsandblockbusters That's true. The writers were beyond ambitious and the budget and effects weren't ready for the Fountain of Youth of Insurrection(so we got pimple instead of youth), and the De-aging of Shinzon.
@@BulletsandblockbustersI always thought Nemesis would have been far better if Stewart had played both roles. Imagine a scenery chewing Pat Stew as an evil clone of Picard. That would have at least been entertaining. My biggest issue with Nemesis is how dreary and lifeless it was. At least Insurrection had some energy to it.
There are three things that I think could have been kept from the film that was shot: 1. Donna Murphy (doesn’t matter what role she plays) 2. The Enterprise-E (the heavy hitter of all vessels to carry the name) 3. Jerry Goldsmith (he was the default composer for the “Star Trek” movies and his themes are absolutely brilliant)
I'm not a fan of Insurrection, but I don't really think this would've been that much better. It makes no real connection to what the rest of the franchise was doing, treating the Romulans as generic villains (sorry but Nemesis did them so much better than this idea) and completely ignoring the Dominion War and why Worf is even there. If I had been in charge, IX would've been a film about the NextGen crew in the Dominion War and would've been a conclusion to a NextGen trilogy; and then X would've been the TNG/DS9/VOY crossover that XI was gonna be.
Actually I never liked Siskel and Ebert. They were never Star Trek fans. Anytime a new Star Trek movie was being released. They would always would give a thumbs down. Any movie they didn't like must have been good!
At least that's a story worth watching, and a much better follow-up to Frist Contact. There is a little bit a of a congruency problem, as Insurrection takes place during the Dominion War. Whether it was supposed to take place before 'In the Pale Moonlight,' in which case the Romulan's would be tentative allies of the Federation at that time, is another question.
Initially, I didn’t like Insurrection, but from rewatches, I’ve grown to like it, warts and all. That said, Stardust seems to have the potential of a perennial Trek story, especially going the Trek 2-3 route of continuation, thereby averting Nemesis, one of the worst films of Trek pantheon (albeit with the inclusion of Romulans in Stardust, the horrible possibility of a Romulan Death Star could’ve remained to ruin Stardust 2). But regardless of the choices, as long as Goldsmith got to score it, that always remains a bonus.
It would serve Marvel to revert Banner back to madness as a return of the tragic figure that signifies the Hulk. Otherwise, it looks like they’ve given up on him even as a side character.
The entire "Enterprise" TV show is a sequel to "First Contact". Frequent references to Zefram Cochrane, an episode that dealt with the consequences of Borg tech left in the past, and the ever-present theme of humans and vulcans learning how to be together. James Cromwell reprises his role, and a mirror universe episode even explores the events of First Contact in the Mirror Universe. Enterprise is the one true sequel to First Contact.
Not enough of a similarity for me to have made that connection. Also, it is missing a Act 3 space battle scene. I think that would be needed somehow for cinema.
Insurrection is definitely not the best of the TNG cast movies but it's not the worst either . It sounds like a few bad choices lead the movie down the wrong path.
I think this shows when there are way too many hands in the pot with different ideas. Also, actors are not writers. Lastly, I wish Hollywood would realize and be okay with the fact that not every franchise is a billion per film franchise. The silliness did well with the OG series because it has and always will be a little campy, but TNG is a little darker and more serious.
This would have been awesome 🙌🏼 i wrote insurrection after it release to be more linked to the Dominion war with a mineral on the plant to combat cetracel white or something. With a DS9 crossover seeing the Enterprise return to DS9 after a battle recruiting Worf for the mission. Pitching Siskos survival against Picards holding to your morals/ beliefs. Instead of the villains we got would have been the Dominion trying to stop the federation from getting to the plant. Or finding out the Son’a was playing both sides or something.
Dave Cullen did a great video along these lines... yes doing something Dominion War related seems like a no brainer in hindsight but sadly Berman was not a fan of DS9 and specifically that story arc. He wanted Star Trek to remain more episodic and credit where credit is due, he wanted to try to preserve Roddenberrys idealistic outlook and have fewer war stories.
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What makes you think Paramount was going to make such a 'Heart of Darkness' vehicle? I'm a Trekker since 66, and no such thing emerged in pre-production talks.
It's better, but the Dominion was Starfleets' most dangerous enemy other than the Borg. This was TNGs chance to join the conflict. I know Berman was not a fan of the Dominion arc, but for the Enterprise to stay out of one of the Federations' biggest conflicts made no sense.
time has proven berman was wrong about that
And yet Disco went on to do the exact same thing.
“Hey where was the Enterprise during a horrific war where the Klingons were literally on Earth’s doorstep and the only thing that stopped them was blackmailing Qonos with a planet-cracking nuke?”
“Busy! It was BUSY!”
The Dominion could totally worked, say they suggest a ceasefire and claim the planet as part of a new DMZ, just like they did on DS9 trying to negotiate for a specific planet because it had resources to make Ketracel-White. And given Picard's history, have the main villain be a Cardassian Gul maybe even Madred himself.
Not to mention they invaded Betazed and Troi never once even mentioned it
I think the big problem is that DS9 simply did not have the ratings and casual viewers might have not quite understood what was going on. That would have been their reasoning any way for not pursuing completely ignoring that they successfully pulled that same thing off with the Borg. A Dominion War movie would have been awesome.
If Star Trek IV is "The One With The Whales" this one is "The One With The Amish"
LMAO
The Amish who somehow managed to exile an entire ruthless space armada with the power of their single village and farming tools.
…
Dear god in heaven this backstory is the prototype for Rebel Moon.
😂 love it 👌🏻
Lost Horizon / Shangri La in Space.
I liked it and it’s one of my most rewatched TNG movies behind First Contact
This would have been so much better than what we got.
💯
I would have said its pretty hard to do something worse…. If wouldn’t know STD.
I'm in the minority in that I liked Insurrection even if, like some, I felt like it was a two part episode of TNG (which is why I liked it honestly), but I do think doing something like Star Trek Heart of Darkness would've been far, far better than any movie that came after Insurrection. I mean I'm still of the opinion that Star Trek Nemesis killed the franchise.
@@canisblackSame here. I personally love it because it feels just like a big episode; I think it creates an interesting vibe for the film that works.
I wish this would have been the Star Trek movie we got
So what I've learned from this video about Insurrection, Star Trek V, and Star Trek: Picard is that main lead Captain's actors should not have creative pull.
did we forget that Spock was also a Captain by STWOK and Nimoy had creative control over many of the TOS films?
@@lovipoekimo176 Fiiiine, I'll edit the comment to be more pedantically accurate. 🙃
Trek 5 is just fine compared to the others.
I agree! I'm a fan of Stewart, however giving him 'Right of Refusal' of the script in his contract meant he could demand a love interest, decide his own wardrobe(hence the leather jacket) and more action scenes involving him. Rather than an ensemble movie, tackling difficult thought provoking topics.
And while he didn’t request it, fanboy script writers eager to please him were the reason we got that stupid Mad Max at home car scene in Nemesis.
Rather than have any care for a proper script or integrity of the world, Stewart just went with it.
After hearing that alternate version, I still prefer the version we got. Insurrection was the closest in spirit to the television series, and after First Contact I don’t think another dark action movie was necessary. It’s true Insurrection was more like a rehashed two-part episode than a movie, but for me that is actually part of its charm.
The TNG films suffered from not having a overarching theme to them, unlike the TOS films which often dealt with aging characters in a universe that was rapidly leaving them behind and culuminated in Star Trek 6 literally putting Kirk on trial. The TNG films should have focused on Picard and crew trying to uphold their idealistic belief in the Prime Directive in spite of the Dominion War which had severly tested the DS9 crew. It would have been intersting setting up the TNG crew as a sort of relic of the idealistic past having to confront the darker, more troubling realities of the the Apha quadrent during the Dominion War.
This sounds like it could of been one of the best Star Trek movies, it had everything: action, moral conundrums, space politics, a fun
villain, and Picard speeches
Agreed! Def had potential
Picard dressing down the Federation council would have been epic. Could have even thrown Spock in there as a surprise guest star at a climactic moment.
Could have not could of
@@BulletsandblockbustersIt would have had to be a 3 hour movie but I would have been great with that. Heart Of Darkness could have been the best and there could have been a little comedy in parts thrown in, enough for a little chuckle. It literally could have been "the best of both worlds"
@@vintvarner16 But Paramount probably wouldn't have wanted to pony up the required cash to get the good version made. I'd be willing to bet that was the main reason Berman rejected the original concept, not "worries that Patrick Stewart might feel old."
They should have done a balls-out 18 certificate sci-fi horror where they go back to the episode with the alien bug creatures that took over Starfleet Command. Duffy would ultimately get infected and Picard would be forced to phaser him in the head. Get Paul Verhoeven to direct.
Haha I love that idea
I’ve always wanted a cinematic return of that species. They’re so powerful at infiltration, even the Borg and the Dominion wouldn’t stand a chance.
I nominate John Carpenter to direct!
@@commandercaptain4664 ooh yeah even better, turn it into a Star Trek / The Thing horror. Someone’s head could melt off and sprout spider legs and scuttle off into a Jeffries tube.
VERY interesting idea, but knowing Picard, he'd probably order poor Data to attempt to communicate with the Thing rather than try to destroy it. 🙄
Star Trek Heart of Darkness sounds awesome
👍🏻👍🏻 for the profile picture. Love _The Wild Geese_
with Ian McKellen as the Colonel Kurtz
The Heart of Darkness plot was already done in Star Trek cinema. It was called _Star Trek V: The Final Frontier._
@BogeyTheBear _Final Frontier_ was just a somehow worse rehash of _The Way to Eden_ episode.
I’m still waiting for a Trek movie that continues the alien worm infiltration episode from Next Gen. Remember, a signal was sent to the stars at the end of it…
Michael Piller wrote a really fantastic book called "Fade In" that describes a lot of this. He describes the process of writing the script, getting notes from Rick Berman, Patrick Stewart, and Brent Spiner and said it was a little heartwrenching to get such critical and negative notes from Stewart and Spiner, individuals he idolized. It's a really fascinating book about how these big studio movies are made. This video is a great cliff notes version. Great work!
Thnx and yeah, I definitely recommend that book it’s fascinating
Honestly, we home Star Trek to to much of a high standard. 70% of the show is shit to be honest. The rest is top tear. The actors typically are what makes this stuff crap.
By this point, I'm sure Stewart's and Spiner's egos were huge.
I've read it too! If you can find it...read it! Great video!
The trouble is they did the ‘heart of darkness’ type story already as an episode with cardassians in ‘the wounded’ with capt maxwell going rogue and O’Brien bringing him in.
Also, all the Maqui episodes. Every bit of this plot has been done, either on TNG or DS9.
That story sounds very familiar to one of the TNG stories where Picard had to go after a Starfleet captain who went after the Cardassians. Bob Gunton from the Shawshank Redemption was the captain he went after.
💯
Ha! I just commented that. It's called "The Wounded"
Indeed, and that was an epic episode. Making a whole movie based on the same premise would have been great.
Plus they could have incorporated the Dominion war and had some rogue captain using “unsound methods” as the villain.
@Mazvec It would’ve worked if the Dominion was behind the treaty, meant to divide faction relations to that point, while slowly acclimating audiences to who they were, then revealing the big surprise at the cliffhanger.
I'm a hard core Trekkie, but you gave me a lot of new information I hadn't heard before. Thanks for this.
My pleasure. Glad you enjoyed it!
X2
Actors should act and leave writing to others (of course there are exceptions to the rule, but not too many).
Last month I visited Fedcon in Bonn, which had next to Star Trek guests also some Orville guests. During a panel the four Orville actors were asked if they had a story idea. The first three present their ideas, which were not so good. And then the fourth, Penny Johnson Jerald (who also played in DS9), says: "...and that's why we leave the writing to the writers".
That exception has a name, and it's Leonard Nimoy. Maybe the difference is Nimoy pursued artistic ambitions outside of acting, such as photography and directing non Star Trek movies. So he wasn't thinking of everything from the point of view of what will make Spock look good. And when it came to writing "Voyage Home" he had the good sense to work with Nicholas Meyer.
As much as Insurrection ignores the Dominion War this script even makes less sense the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans were in an Alliance fighting the Dominion when these events would have taken place. Also, Picard graduated Starfleet Academy in 2327 and Insurrection takes place in 2375 meaning he'd been out of the Academy a lot longer than 28 years.
All they'd have to do is expose the event from in a pale moonlight. It would certainly get the Romulans going
That’s because this draft was written in 1997, well before the DS9 writers eventually decided to have the Romulans join the Federation and Klingon Empire.
well you could get around it by making it the tal'shiar acting independently.
There was also a script proposed that had the E and its crew assigned to the Battle for Betazed in the Dominion War that would have been awesome. Mostly because Deana and her MOTHER OF DEATH would come out of it as mushroom cloud laying badasses with major PTSD. There was a novelisation of this concept that has a foreword from Marina Satiris basically saying "I wanted to do this shit not shaving Commander Riker"
The movies did Troi extremely dirty.
Generations - Riker has her take the helm right when the ship is going to crash.
First Contact - Gets drunk.
Insurrection - Shaves Riker’s beard.
Nemesis - Gets mind-raped by Tom Hardy before he was cool
Um where did you read that was ever proposed?
@@thewinner7382 In the foreword to the novel.
Focusing the ninth movie on anything other than the Dominion War was dropping the ball. That was a no-brainer, yet somehow they missed it up, leading to the demise of classic Trek.
@@jaytalks8091 Assigning the flagship to diplomatic duty makes some strategic sense. Chuchill did something similar in the early years of WWII and Archer and the NX01 crew followed his example during the Romulan War which led to victory at the battle of Cheron. Personally I'd have gone with the diplomacy mission but had them confront a neutral or semi-beligerant faction like the Gorn or the Tholians as the object of the exercise.
STAR TREK: HEART OF DARKNESS would have been am awesome title.
Agreed. And a 1000 times better than what was the working title Star Trek: Stardust. I mean, seriously??? At that point just call it Star Trek: Pixie Dust for God’s sake.
Or maybe that’s what _Star Trek Into Darkness_ should’ve been.
Insurrection gets a bad rap. It's the only one of the TNG movies that feels like an episode of the show and where Picard really stays true to the character we came to love over the 7 seasons.
All true.
True. It is the only one to stay true to the TV series. But maybe it feels too much like a TNG two parter. Michael Piller was the showrunner for TNG SEASON 3-7. He set the tone for the success of TNG and subsequent series together with Rick Berman. While I liked First Contact in the cinema, the logic of the story irks me. Why does the Borg need to travel to earth before travelling through time?
And that's why it's my favourite movie
In the series, Picard decided multiple times that removing colonists from a planet for the good of the Federation is a good idea.
And no, the Baku are colonists. They say so. They’re just really obnoxious and smug on top of that. It’s entirely out of character for Picard to help those selfish luddites hoard a resource that could help billions.
Especially after it’s revealed that they (somehow, inexplicably) exiled the Sona in the first place.
The revelation of an unaged Duffy hallway thru the story is TOTALLY a classic Trek-type of reveal, tho. It has an "Omega Glory" vibe to it, where Kirk and Co. beam down and find Captain Tracy alive on the planet, immune to the disease that killed the Exeter crew, leading a war btw the Yangs and the Kohms. It's a travesty that this version didn't happen. Seems to be the norm rather than the exception with Paramount.
Insurrection should have been a Dominion War film, where the Enterprise-E joins the fight. A few throwaway lines regarding how the war was raging across both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and then finally a mission for the -E to enter the Gamma Quadrant, engage, and destroy a Dominion threat there (new superweapon) that would have otherwise resulted in the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons losing the war. Tie-ins to DS9 would have also increased viewership of that series, instead of waiting for streaming to do that 20 years later.
An excellent alternative suggestion! Your last sentence reminds me of a friend that finally understood why I liked DS9 so much back when it was new/current after he started watching it... in 2020!
I think the Stardust plot could’ve worked at introducing audiences to the Dominion, rather than relying on throwaway exposition, and then Stardust 2 would serve as the big showdown.
And yes, DS9 being in it would’ve done that show and the movie a whole lot of favors!
We were already getting a lot of Dominion War storylines on Deep Space Nine, Star Trek IX with the TNG crew had to be something different.
X-Files: Fight the Future came out the same year, so there wasn’t a template for how to really do that with an active TV show. And this would be a lot harder than that, since they aren’t the same show. I mean, it might have been beneficial for DS9 to have the TNG crew explore their topics, but you’d have to explain a lot from DS9 in that movie, and then DS9 would have to explain what happened in the movie. Also, you’d need something better than sending one ship to stop a super weapon. That’s way too Star Wars, and we’d already seen the Dominion muster huge fleets, almost right from the start. Can’t really throw one ship at that.
@@archelonprimebut who would have written such an action-packed script like that?
The star of Beyond Belief: Jonathan FRAKES
Absolutely, lets be Frank about it!
The point where you realise the person speaking doesn't have a clue.
Not a chance.
Was this tale of a Klingon who actually took a bath believable? Not this time, we fooled you.
@@MasterSanders no, not this time.
It's kind of amazing that in almost every single Star Trek movie starting with Search for Spock, the Romulans were always intended to be the villains and they end up getting sidelined for something else. Even in Nemesis when you think they are finally going to be the villains in a Star Trek movie it ends up not being them. They are literally the earliest recurring villains in Star Trek and never were antagonists in a film until the whole series was rebooted.
And even then we don’t get actual Romulans being Romulan, we get Nero being a deranged, whiny man-baby with a silly goth spike ship and magic red goo.
It kind of makes sense, because the Romulans are very "Cold War" in how they do things. They never try to directly do anything themselves, they always manipulate the other factions against each other and make sure they themselves have plausible deniability when their plans inevitably fail.
It is interesting to me, though, that First Contact wasn't a movie about the Romulans. In Generations, we saw the Romulans on the observatory who were allegedly competing with the villains of that movie (making us think they're up to something), and then in First Contact the bad guys are a race who can't defeat the Federation 1 on 1, led by a Queen (or an "Empress"), who go back in time so they can stop the humans and Vulcans from meeting and working together. It really sounds like a Romulan plot.
If Nemesis was going to culminate in a giant boss ship fighting with a fleet of smaller good guy ships (with a Picard clone and a corrupted brother of Data who should've been Lore), that one should've been the return of the Borg and the grand finale all in one.
@@HyraxusPrimus I agree and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that the Romulans never ended up being film antagonists, I just find it very funny that they were constantly being planned to be villains in almost every single movie but were always being sidelined in favor of other villains. Even in Undiscovered Country the Romulan ambassador was supposed to the be main antagonist and he ended up not even getting a name in the movie.
Personally I always felt Nemesis should have been a Mirror Universe story, with the Remans being mirror universe Romulans. Even all the marketing for that movie made it seem like it was Mirror Universe.
@@UndyingNephalim I was thinking of the Undiscovered Country, too. They also didn't have any consequences for when they did openly attack and kill Starfleet personnel when trying to steal the Prometheus, and hilariously when they were set up to be the next main villains of Enterprise, the show got cancelled.
I kind of see the Mirror Universe angle. It would've saved having to cast a younger Picard and could've been a better case study of nurture vs. nature if they were the same age, and we had never seen the Mirror TNG crew before. I guess it would be a Terran plot to use the Remans to retake the empire from the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance, and they need something from the Prime Universe? Cool. Alternatively, there's a problem since the Mirror versions are almost always cartoony evil versions of the Prime counterparts. As fun as that would be to see, it might lose the gravitas of the story.
@UndyingNephalim “Captain Kirk, I will… CONSIDER IT.”
Worf gets punked-out to make the bad guy look tough? Yep. It's a TNG script.
Serves Worf right being a dead beat dad and all
“What went wrong? Rick Berman”
Yeah that sums up a lot of things that went wrong with Trek 😂
Sounds more like Stewart, with Berman being a close 2nd.
@@gups4963 true in this case! Though he also was not shown original versions of the story, so it’s possible he would’ve gone for it. He wanted more serious stories for the paramount+ show
@@benreed9952 Generations he splits with Berman, Nemesis he killed (though I liked it, just not the dune buggy bit). the first 2 seasons of Picard were eh pretty bad IMO. , First Contact his changes might have helped, Same with the last seasons of TNG.
Berman has one heck of bipolar history with Trek. He is a classic certain type of hole (yt loves censoring), but is also the guy who ran ST through its most successful period. I can see why people have a personal issue with the guy, for example Terry Farrell's firing. But on the success and failure of the movies, that appears to be more on the crew as they were given a lot of power over them and Stewart never appearing to care the more cerebral aspects of his character and wanting to be shown as a man of action or he was having a midlife crisis. Just my opinion, have a good one
Stewart is a very, very good actor, but he's also a 'classic certain type of a hole' in real life...😒
i'd kill to have berman back at this point
10:59; 'Frakes', not 'Franks'.
Frakely, my dear, I don’t give a damn!
Franks a lot...
Yep… this was another Patric Stewart intervention. Some of us tracked it in real time on the old Interwebs.
They could have called it ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness’
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Ss@@Bulletsandblockbustersspling of stsr trek into darknes you shou dinvideo about jj abrhana plane had h drected star trek bryond b his lldnf star trek beyond wrd dfrent fromwehtvwevgit
😆
Into Darkness would've worked so much better if it followed the Heart of Darkness structure, instead of throwing ANOTHER evil admiral at us
Marina Sirtis (Troi) admitted that she fell asleep at the premiere of Insurrection!
Haha
@@Bulletsandblockbusterswow imgin bring th stsrvifvth mov snd wafthing it mdke you fell asleep wow what bad drink or whst
well that's a bad sign if i've ever heard of one
I wonder if Frakes saw her do that and went full Jigglypuff.
Whereas DS9's Homefront and Paradise Lost storyline succeeds, Insurrection fails. In DS9, there's an blatant urgency to discover and foil the plot of a power-hungry dictator of an Admiral, with a proverbial clock ticking down to settle the fate of the freedom of BILLIONS. And man, these two DS9 episodes would have made for a BLOCKBUSTER standalone film, as written AND as casted.
With Insurrection, we're down to one tiny village of 600 we've never seen before ... and suddenly, only ~5 years after "Journey's End", Picard decides (hypocritically) THIS village is worth fighting the Federation for. "You have made an already TENSE situation WORSE!!!" becomes "lock and load". Uhh why? Meh who cares - let's blow stuff up!!! ...
NTM, the displacement of defenseless people is ALWAYS a grim matter. ... But let's make it a lighthearted comedy?! What?! 🤨☹
Nothing about this film works. I would add the uniforms should have ditched the grey, and gone back to the red, blue and yellow as primary colors, particularly if the intent was to make a light-hearted film.
The greys worked to set the dark tone of First Contact. They matched up tonally with the Dominion War. But they have otherwise felt just too brooding and lifeless for Starfleet.
I always thought a good idea for a Star Trek show would be about a Romulan who immigrated to Earth as a child and entered Stargleet and rise up to be the captain of his very own crew with his first mission to be to apprehend a Romulan criminal whose the leader of his own crime syndicate and a childhood best friend of the Captain’s who had a harder time adjusting to life on Earth and decided to walk a different much darker path. The Captain’s crew would be composed of officers from other races of the federation and one Ferengi as a nod to Nog with only one human officer just as a change of pace. The show would be called Star Trek Odyssey with the ship named The Ulysses.
@ahmad55 th eoug godcidecforvstar trekbshonthink star trek mixed with firefly bit
@@zacharyjochumsen9677 Dude did you just have a stroke or something?
And I would’ve seen it. Sounds interesting
I'm all for Romulans entering Stargleet...😏
@@SansoHumaror, to use Spock’s word, fascinating.
"What went wrong?" "Simply put, Rick Berman..." You could've ended the sentence there.
I have a problem with Riker vs Picard hunt. For Me Insurrection has become more watchable over the years. It suffered from being a much smaller story after First Contact. This original story would have needed some rewrites.
Wow.. i wish stewert still felt that he didnt want picard to go through emotional agony on screen. He seems to have done a complete 180 for the picard show..
I like this movie. Why mission must be something larger than life? Why it must be saving galaxy or even universe? I think mission is suitable for crew of one ship, even it is the Enterprise. And Picard gives the best speech - And how many takes Admiral, to become wrong? A 1000, a 50.000, a MILION. HOW MANY ADMIRAL!
Yeah, this Heart of Darkness concept sounds alot better. Then again, anything sounds better then what we ended up getting. Funnily enough, I am re-reading "The Ashes of Eden" by William Shatner (and the Reeves-Stevenses as co-writers) - which is basically the same plot. Fountain of Youth story line, captain Kirk gets younger, gets a love interest and has his old crew coming after him. It came out in 1995.
Technically, Shatner could have sued them for essentially stealing his story.
Star Trek Heart of Darkness: Picard has to go to Dominion Space to confront Edward Jellico. Sitting on that one!
Starfleet getting Jellico to do some black ops style thing during the war makes sense. Him going straight to high end war crimes and having to send Picard and crew to stop him would have worked.
This makes me sad. What a wayyyyyy better movie
Star Trek Insurrection is one of my favorite Star Trek movies. Together with First Contact, it forms a perfect duo to watch. I don't understand why everyone thinks everything should be dark and serious. It seems that everything gets that treatment nowadays, from James Bond to Batman. For me, Star Trek has never had that in its DNA and I am so happy that Insurrection exists just the way it is. Too bad Star Trek Nemesis came and destroyed everything.
The movie is awesome as it is.
Insurrection should have been an all-out war action movie, given it took place during the Dominion War. It was the perfect excuse to make the action movie Hollywood loves.
Paramount was still stuck in cheap mode regarding Trek, which would be admirable if they always knew how to spend their budget, instead of sporadically knowing.
We were already getting enough of the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine, Star Trek IX had to be something different.
But who would have had the courage to write something that action-packed?
Did you really call him Jonathan FRANKS?
Nope
@@Bulletsandblockbusters Yeah, yeah yu did. Twice in quick succession. 😅 10:55, 11:05❣️
Just how I pronounce it I guess but I was saying “frakes”
@@Bulletsandblockbusters lolwut you clearly say fraNks
I always felt like Insurrection was a mishmash of diffferent stories so this makes a TON of sense.
At one point Quark was to be vacationing on the planet, and other DS9 and VOY guest stars were planned.
Would have been awkward starting a war with the Romulans weeks before Sisko was going to get them to break their non-aggression pact with the Dominion.
I don’t even watch Star Trek and this movie sounds like it would’ve been incredible.
As great Patrick Stewart is as an actor, he's terrible when given any power over the story: witness Insurrection, Nemesis, and Picard Season 1. And it's Jonathan FRAKES, not "Franks".
Agreed! And I say Frakes. Guess it just doesn’t come through clearly
I remember taking a friend to see this movie, who knew next to nothing of Star Trek, let alone TNG. He was a visual arts majoring in Visual Arts and both liked the story and loved the visuals
Can you do the original plans for Richard Stanley's ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU?
There’s an entire draft for a book about this that was released after Michael Piller‘s death that was never officially published. It goes into great detail about all the different iterations of the movie script, starting with the Heart of Darkness idea and how it evolved into Insurrection. About the only part of the actual film that remotely resembles the original idea, is Data going berserk at the beginning. Either way, a total missed opportunity
Patrick Stewart seems really bad at choosing these story arcs. Like consistently.
💯
Im not even very familiar with Star Trek but that sounds like a great film. I'll never understand why films go into production with unfinished scripts or ones that people arent happy with - it rarely ends well!
See The Justice League.
Everyone knows in real time what they have is a disaster. But failing to release any film at all will cause too many people to lose too much money to be acceptable.
The storyline of what you described was infinitely more intriguing than what we got in Insurrection.
That was flat and the plot was trite, like we'd seen this play out before. And we had.
Insurrection could've been so much better with this original plot. Rick Berman outsmarted himself yet again.
First Contact is still my favourite Trek film. They’ve nailed every aspect of what a Star Trek movie should be. It’s like what Goldeneye is to Bond. Perfection.
I still want to see the deleted Quark scene.
Don’t we all.
I like the first act, its classic Trek, everything up to Romulans coming to dinner. Feels like it goes off the rails after that.
I like how most of that story sounds, but yeah, the dinner and the hybrid commander character sound really bad.
Wow I had no idea. Amazing video as always. I love how much work and effort you put into these, and finding all that rare footage is fantastic.
Now that would have been a ST for Tarantino to direct.
Personally I kinda liked Data walking across the bottom of the lake ;-)
This was a just masterful use of clips to tell the story. Just brilliant editing work and scene selection. This could not have been easy.
Wow, thank you!
Another brilliant video - thank you 🙏🏻! I’ve always wondered how successful a TNG film tying into the (then) ongoing Dominion War would’ve been?
In terms of Star Trek ‘what could have been’ videos, how about one on the original idea for Star Trek 11 (before it was made a soft reboot) - Star Trek: The Beginning, set after Enterprise, and focussing on a new crew and the Earth/Romulan war?
First Contact worked because everyone knew about the Borg. They tried the much darker tone in Nemesis. It didn't do so well.
They tried to do Wrath of Picard and ended up with a crapload of plot stalling followed by a bunch of potshots, a problematic mindrape, and a lifeless sacrifice.
This plot seems very close to the TNG episdode “The Wounded”
Similar, but not identical.
Sounds WAY better than what "we got"....
Thanks Rick and Patrick 😑
Insurrection was the first Trek movie I followed online during its development.
I saw it twice in theatres and bought it on the iTunes Store.
The Voyage Home worked for the TOS cast, but the First Contact was where the TNG movies were at home, the darker appeal fit perfectly with the cast. Insurrection was a bit weird because the same tactic doesn’t work for two very different casts of characters. Insurrection’s plot was also panned for being morally questionable, even illogical by Spock standards.
Loved this film so much
*mention of Rick Berman Me: *grabs pitchfork
i'd die to have him back at the helm at this point
Into Darkness would have actually been a great subtitle for the proposed version of this film.
as long as there was a :
And it made zero sense for JJ's Wrath of Khan.
"What happened was Rick Berman..." is all that needs to be said.
I wish we could have had more TNG movies, including one for DS9 and Voyager. I miss the golden age of Trek.
It sounded okay. The Briar Patch should have been a dimensional rift that transfers life energy from people into Duffy, making him like a cosmic vampire. This would also explain why he wanted to get the Romulan empire to where he was... for more bodies he could drain. The fountain of youth aspect doesn't work since the entire galaxy would be after it and also our main actors would have no excuse to keep looking older every movie!
I’ve had a crush on Donna Murphy (Anij) for several decades, ever since seeing her on the short lived series “Murder One” (1995)❣️
This would have made a whole lot better than what we got. And when it comes to the film after. I think that that film was better than this.
I think Insurrection is good and unfairly gets shat on. But of all the criticisms out there, I do agree that it did feel like a 2 hour long tv episode. In fact, the story IS an episode of TNG lol.
And that makes it the best TNG movie, QED
Stewart is a great actor.
He’s pretty terrible and coming up with stories.
Wouldn't this have made more sense if it had been The Dominion instead of the Romulans
The video through the description is well done here
I don't agree that would have been better. I think it would have just felt like a rehash of the Episode, "The Wound" The only way I see it working is if they found a character as impactful as Khan was to the Original Movies from TNG. Good luck with that
Thanks for the amazing video ❤
Not doing a Dominion war movie is nothing short of silly.
Star Trek Heart of Darkness would have ruled at the box office; instead we got quite the let down. Unfortunately that was the last chance for the Star Trek: The Next Generation films, and the nail in the coffin was Nemesis.
Although sometimes I look back at Tom Hardy's body of work so far and it's really amazing that Nemesis was his debut role!
Nemesis might have been the worst Star Trek film arguably, and definitely performed the worst at the box office, but damn they discovered Tom Hardy though!!!
Star Trek: Insurrection seemed to me a film that didn't know what it wanted to be, and the worst Star Trek films have great premises that never commit or execute.
It's almost like the executives said, "Hey make Star Trek 4", and Frakes and company said, "We'll try!"
The tone goes from the villian wanting to kill his sworn blood brothers to boob jokes; it's really tonally inappropriate and all over the place.
It goes from a musical to an insurrection against Starfleet and the Son'A?
It might be ok if you want to smoke a doobie and turn your brain off, but as a Star Trek and a Star Trek: TNG fan it's a massive letdown!
Especially after the Magnum Opus swan song of Star Trek: First Contact; a massive Trek smash hit!
My biggest problem with nemesis is I keep forgetting that Shinzon is supposed to be a young Picard. They look, act and sound nothing alike. I think they should’ve tried some sort of deaging approach but the vfx for that really weren’t there yet.
@@Bulletsandblockbusters That's true. The writers were beyond ambitious and the budget and effects weren't ready for the Fountain of Youth of Insurrection(so we got pimple instead of youth), and the De-aging of Shinzon.
@@BulletsandblockbustersI always thought Nemesis would have been far better if Stewart had played both roles. Imagine a scenery chewing Pat Stew as an evil clone of Picard. That would have at least been entertaining. My biggest issue with Nemesis is how dreary and lifeless it was. At least Insurrection had some energy to it.
Agreed!
This has vibes of TNG episode "The Wounded"
It is similar, but not identical to that episode.
There are three things that I think could have been kept from the film that was shot:
1. Donna Murphy (doesn’t matter what role she plays)
2. The Enterprise-E (the heavy hitter of all vessels to carry the name)
3. Jerry Goldsmith (he was the default composer for the “Star Trek” movies and his themes are absolutely brilliant)
I'm not a fan of Insurrection, but I don't really think this would've been that much better. It makes no real connection to what the rest of the franchise was doing, treating the Romulans as generic villains (sorry but Nemesis did them so much better than this idea) and completely ignoring the Dominion War and why Worf is even there.
If I had been in charge, IX would've been a film about the NextGen crew in the Dominion War and would've been a conclusion to a NextGen trilogy; and then X would've been the TNG/DS9/VOY crossover that XI was gonna be.
Actually I never liked Siskel and Ebert. They were never Star Trek fans. Anytime a new Star Trek movie was being released. They would always would give a thumbs down. Any movie they didn't like must have been good!
At least that's a story worth watching, and a much better follow-up to Frist Contact. There is a little bit a of a congruency problem, as Insurrection takes place during the Dominion War. Whether it was supposed to take place before 'In the Pale Moonlight,' in which case the Romulan's would be tentative allies of the Federation at that time, is another question.
Initially, I didn’t like Insurrection, but from rewatches, I’ve grown to like it, warts and all. That said, Stardust seems to have the potential of a perennial Trek story, especially going the Trek 2-3 route of continuation, thereby averting Nemesis, one of the worst films of Trek pantheon (albeit with the inclusion of Romulans in Stardust, the horrible possibility of a Romulan Death Star could’ve remained to ruin Stardust 2).
But regardless of the choices, as long as Goldsmith got to score it, that always remains a bonus.
The Original Plans of the incredible hulk (2008) would be perfect if you could release on the anniversary of its release
I thought Edward Norton was a good Bruce Banner better than Mark Ruffalo who just came off cringey and whiney
It would serve Marvel to revert Banner back to madness as a return of the tragic figure that signifies the Hulk. Otherwise, it looks like they’ve given up on him even as a side character.
The entire "Enterprise" TV show is a sequel to "First Contact". Frequent references to Zefram Cochrane, an episode that dealt with the consequences of Borg tech left in the past, and the ever-present theme of humans and vulcans learning how to be together. James Cromwell reprises his role, and a mirror universe episode even explores the events of First Contact in the Mirror Universe. Enterprise is the one true sequel to First Contact.
What would have been if Jonathan Hensleigh's Cancelled "Hulk" Movie from 1998 was made.
Not enough of a similarity for me to have made that connection. Also, it is missing a Act 3 space battle scene. I think that would be needed somehow for cinema.
Well that explains a lot.
Insurrection is definitely not the best of the TNG cast movies but it's not the worst either . It sounds like a few bad choices lead the movie down the wrong path.
I can understand why they didn't go with this plot. It sounds too much like the whole Maqui situation.
I'm curious if there's anything on Gareth Edwards original ideas for the Godzilla trilogy he had planned before leaving the project
Imagine if Ambassador Spock was called back to active duty for this mission.
Star Trek heart of darkness
Picard teams up with Simon Belmont
Only problem with this storyline is this would’ve taken place after the Romulans were brought into the Dominion War
Focusing so heavily on a quest character (Picard’s Academy friend) could also have been a detriment in terms of giving the whole cast something to do.
I think this shows when there are way too many hands in the pot with different ideas. Also, actors are not writers. Lastly, I wish Hollywood would realize and be okay with the fact that not every franchise is a billion per film franchise. The silliness did well with the OG series because it has and always will be a little campy, but TNG is a little darker and more serious.
Agreed and well said
certainly some interesting ideas in that first take on the movie, however it would have draw comparisons to Undiscovered Country
This would have been awesome 🙌🏼 i wrote insurrection after it release to be more linked to the Dominion war with a mineral on the plant to combat cetracel white or something. With a DS9 crossover seeing the Enterprise return to DS9 after a battle recruiting Worf for the mission. Pitching Siskos survival against Picards holding to your morals/ beliefs. Instead of the villains we got would have been the Dominion trying to stop the federation from getting to the plant. Or finding out the Son’a was playing both sides or something.
Dave Cullen did a great video along these lines... yes doing something Dominion War related seems like a no brainer in hindsight but sadly Berman was not a fan of DS9 and specifically that story arc. He wanted Star Trek to remain more episodic and credit where credit is due, he wanted to try to preserve Roddenberrys idealistic outlook and have fewer war stories.