Star Trek Insurrection DS9 Cut Scene Would Have Fixed A TNG Problem
At one point, Quark (Armin Shimerman) from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had a cameo in Star Trek: Insurrection and the deleted scene would have helped address the U.S.S. Enterprise-E's glaring absence from the Dominion War. When Star Trek: Insurrection was released in December 1998, DS9 was already in the middle of its 7th and final season that resolved the Dominion War. However, the third Star Trek: The Next Generation movie didn't involve Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and its crew confronting the Dominion in any way; instead, the film told a lighthearted, standalone tale that was jarringly out of place while the rest of the United Federation of Planets was in the midst of a devastating war where millions died.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowIn Star Trek: Insurrection, Captain Picard went against the orders of Starfleet Admiral Dougherty (Anthony Zerbe) when he sided with the Ba'ku, a race of 600 people living on a planet in the Briar Patch. This region of space had regenerative properties that kept the Ba'ku from aging — essentially, it was a "Fountain of Youth" that the Federation sought to harvest with the help of the Son'a. Meanwhile, the Dominion War was ravaging the rest of the Alpha Quadrant, which was on the verge of collapsing as the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans sought to defeat the powerful Dominion/Cardassian/Breen alliance. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Deep Space Nine fought in the front lines and the series dealt with the personal and galactic cost of the war. In fact, Quark's own nephew, Nog (Aron Eisenberg), lost his leg at the Siege of AR-588 but he heroically battled back from his injury and despair.
Granted, the deleted scene starring Quark was comedic; at the end of Star Trek: Insurrection, the entrepreneurial Ferengi arrived in the Ba'ku planet accompanied by two Dabo Girls and he had grand plans to build a luxury resort. Captain Picard and Worf (Michael Dorn) shot down Quark's moneymaking scheme and sent him packing. Quark's hilarious cameo would have suited the overall tone of Star Trek: Insurrection, which was lighter by design because the producers didn't want another "dark" TNG movie after Picard fought the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact. But a front-and-center appearance by a major DS9 character like Quark would have been a nice visual reminder that the Dominion War was still going on, even if Quark was humorously trying to find new avenues of profit far from his bar on Deep Space Nine.
After all, if a fan only watched the TNG movies, they'd hardly even know the Dominion War was happening in the mainline Star Trek universe. As the Dominion War crescendoing on DS9, the fact that the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, which was the Federation's flagship, was not on the front lines didn't seem appropriate. Star Trek: Insurrection paid some minor lip service to the Dominion War but even Worf (Michael Dorn) behaved as if the war where he lost his wife Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) wasn't happening.
Watching Star Trek: Insurrection, it seemed as if Picard and his ship didn't fight in the war at all since the crew and the starship were immaculate. While there have been Star Trek novels detailing the Enterprise-E's activities during the Dominion War, those are apocryphal. In terms of canon, Picard and the Enterprise-E's lone appearance during the Dominion War had them chasing the Fountain of Youth as the rest of the galaxy was suffering.
The Quark scene deleted from Star Trek: Insurrection would have also set upStar Trek: Picard episode 5, "Stardust City Rag," where it turns out that the Ferengi did achieve his dream of franchising his bar decades later: There's a Quark's Bar on the planet Freecloud and "Mr. Quark of Ferenginar" got a shoutout. But if Quark's cameo had remained in Star Trek: Insurrection, it would have given a DS9 character a cameo even more fun than Star Trek: Voyager's Doctor appearing in Star Trek: First Contact (and far better than DS9's U.S.S. Defiant nearly being destroyed in that movie), and it would have also forged a stronger link between Captain Picard's latest mission and the Dominion War that engulfed the rest of the galaxy.
About The AuthorSource: screenrant.com