Literally everything about the Ba’ku-Son’a conflict falls apart at the slightest scrutiny.
I know some of the other Trek movies have this problem, but this goes especially for Insurrection: it felt like a mediocre TNG TV episode stretched out way too long. Much like a Son’a skin treatment. Also, there was just something about it that felt like a re-hash of an actual TNG episode, but I can’t pin down which one.
I will contend that Generations takes the cake as the worst TNG movie. Obviously, the goal of this film was to get Kirk and Picard on the screen at the same time. Everything else in this film is a contrivance to make this happen, and it’s not even good science fiction to get us there. To add grevious insult to injury, we get tragically little screen time between Malcom McDowell and Patrick Stewart and their poorly crafted motivations in the film’s “climax”. This casting choice should have surpassed Wrath of Kahn by a light year for scenery chewing awesomeness, but is instead overshadowed by Capt. Kirk barely accomplishing anything instead.
Also, in a moment of “let’s double-down on fan-service”, Picard Season 3 has a nod to Generations. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when the gang is on the Daystrom Institute space station. A sealed room is marked as containing the remains of Capt. Kirk, probably of interest since he went MIA only to turn up decades later in Picard’s logs as having returned from the Nexus.
Also, there was just something about it that felt like a re-hash of an actual TNG episode, but I can’t pin down which one.
“Homeward,” the episode where Worf’s adoptive brother evacuates a pre-warp species to a new planet because theirs is dying using the Enterprise’s transporters and holodeck to make them think they’re just traveling over land to a new place. It’s almost exactly the plan for moving the Ba’ku.
Oh man, that’s really close. And no callback to that episode either. Picard or Worf remarking that “they must have gotten the idea from our own logs” would have been way better foreshadowing for the (b)admiral’s involvement. It would have also changed the tone to be more Trek thematic, as it would say something deeper about unintended consequences through so much cultural contact.