Insurrection feels like a two part episode that got a theatrical budget and never noticed. The Enterprise crew rebels against Starfleet orders to protect the Ba’ku, six hundred people on a planet whose rings emit radiation that reverses aging, from a scheme between a Federation admiral and a displaced species, the Son’a, who want the fountain of youth for themselves. Picard chooses six hundred lives over the medical benefits that could help billions, and the film is curiously uninterested in examining whether that is wisdom or vanity.

What works is the crew: Data malfunctioning and exposing the conspiracy in the opening act is a strong hook, and the middle stretch where the senior staff effectively go rogue has a relaxed charm, Riker flying the ship manually, Troi and Riker in a bathtub, Worf getting a Klingon pimple joke. The rejuvenation effects give the older cast a spring in their step. F. Murray Abraham’s Ru’afo, a stretched face of resentment, is well acted and underwritten, a villain whose motivation is genuinely tragic and gets about two scenes of exploration.

The action is TV scale, the ethical debate is a strawman that Picard wins with a speech, and the romance between Anij and Picard has the chemistry of a diplomatic reception. The series’ core question, when does the good of the many stop mattering, deserved a real reckoning, and this film waves at it while zooming past toward a joystick sequence. Five out of ten, comfort food Trek that forgot the stakes.

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