Director: Stuart Baird
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy
Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, yes. Funny story: In early December 2002, I had my wisdom teeth removed. I tried to get clear-headed enough from all of the pain medication so I could make it to a screening of this film during its opening weekend. As the film, sort of happened in front of me it felt all wrong, so much so that as the end credits limped into existence, I shouted in the middle of the theater, “What the hell was that?” Apparently I still had some cotton in my mouth, and more than a little painkillers in my system, and a little cotton in my motuh, so it sounded more like, “Wha tha hee iyat?” But the point remains.
Did I like it?: See the previous statement.
I love Star Trek, and 2000s/1990s when it seemed like there would never be a shortage of Trek material, it felt like there was plenty of room to thoroughly dislike the entries that didn’t hold up.
The film is not a celebration of a beloved TV franchise, but more the final strained compromise of years’ worth of studio politics. Stuart Baird only got the director seat because he did Paramount a solid by doing a last-minute editing jobs on Mission: Impossible II (2000) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). One might say that the great film editors shouldn’t direct Star Trek films after the muddled affair that was Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), but Robert Wise edited films like Citizen Kane (1941) and had previously directed The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and West Side Story (1961). Stuart Baird got the movie Supernova (2000) into some form that could be released in theaters, after directing the distinctly unmemorable Executive Decision (1996) and U.S. Marshals (1998) and hasn’t been allowed to direct a film since.
There’s a temptation to make the review a list of complaints. They artificially lowered the dialogue for Worf (Michael Dorn) to where he is inexplicably the actor with the most screen time in all of Trek, and somehow unrecognizable. The films based on The Next Generation never successfully utilized Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and things are certainly no better here. The film desperately wants to be The Next Generation’s answer to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and the desperation shows.
And yet, since it ushered in an era of a Trek desert, I don’t want to think of the film as a total loss. It’s the last film to feature a score by Jerry Goldsmith, so one wants to revel in what we have left. The ending originally felt like a sour note to end the time with The Next Generation crew with a whimper, but thankfully Star Trek: Picard is here to continue the adventures of the man from La Barre, and it solidifies the sacrifice of Data as genuine far more than the deaths of other characters in the Trek series over the years.