The Berman Era · 1987 – 2005
Star Trek: Insurrection
A smaller, gentler entry that plays like an extended episode.
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Star Trek: Insurrection?
Yes, on a first watch. It is self-contained, and nothing in the main Star Trek story depends on it. Come back to it later if you want more. Show only the Star Trek essentials.
Skippable, and the complaint everyone makes is the right one: it is a two-part television episode at film length and film prices. The scale is small, the stakes concern six hundred people, and the whole thing would sit comfortably in the middle of a season without anybody noticing.
Taken as that, it is pleasant. A Federation admiral has agreed to relocate a small population from a planet whose radiation halts ageing, in order to harvest the effect for the wider Federation, and Picard refuses on the grounds that this is exactly what the Prime Directive exists to prevent. The argument is a real one and the film states both sides.
The problems are tonal. After the horror of First Contact the register swings to comedy and romance, Worf gets a puberty joke, there is a musical number used as a distraction, and the villain has had his face surgically stretched so often that it has become his characterisation. Gentleness was a deliberate choice after a dark film and it came out slight.
The ensemble get more to do than in either other TNG film, which is the one argument for it. Nothing in Nemesis or Picard requires it.
Star Trek guides
Where it sits in the Star Trek order
- Release order
- #14 of 26
- Chronological order
- #18 of 26
- Released
- 11 December 1998
- In-universe era
- The 24th Century
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order