The main problem is that the writers couldn’t come up with a story worthy of the big screen. Here’s the plot: The Federation has found a planet colonized by the Ba’ku, a people who, 300 years ago, rejected technology and switched to a simple, peaceful, agrarian lifestyle. Thanks to unusual radiation around the planet, they haven’t aged. But now the Federation wants to harvest this fountain of youth, which could be worth a fortune. And a senescent race called the Son’a also wants it, to reverse their own decline. But this will mean removing the Ba’ku – 600 of them. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) argues that it will be repeating a mistake made throughout human history: the displacement of indigenous people to serve the needs of those in power. (Think of Native Americans marching along the Trail of Tears – or, for that matter, Midtowners being forced out of the I-40 corridor.) Believing Starfleet is violating its own Prime Directive of noninterference, Picard defies his superiors and fights to save the Ba’ku.

This is hardly new territory. There have been any number of Trek episodes involving idyllic societies where no one ages, gets sick, or dies. And there have been countless occasions on which both Picard and Captain James Kirk have disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet. Kirk was court-martialed at least twice, and Picard seems to expend more energy battling his own bosses than fighting enemies like the Borg.

So there’s no compelling reason to see this movie, other than to be reunited with the familiar, likable cast (it does feel good to hear Picard say “Make it so” once again). There are individual scenes that are quite funny, though a lot of the jokes seem to involve body parts or functions. Director Jonathan Frakes, who directed the previous film Star Trek: First Contact and who plays Commander Riker, again does a competent job, but like most actor-directors, he is unable to monitor his own performance, and he turns in one of his worst.

Compounding the script’s deficiencies is the film’s lack of star power; the only guest of note is F. Murray Abraham, unquestionably a fine actor. But since he plays one of the decrepit Son’a, his face is buried in sagging-skin, mummy-like makeup, rendering him unrecognizable and muffling his performance.

It’s up to Stewart to carry the movie, and he does the best he can. In fact, the 58-year-old Stewart may be the most amazing thing you’ll see, because he seems to have tapped into the fountain of youth in real life. While other Trek actors grow paunchier and more wrinkled with each film, the lean-muscled Stewart looks like a cerebral version of an action hero.

Viewers who find the plot less than engaging can occupy their brains picking out all its inconsistencies. For example, on the Ba’ku planet, newcomers begin to notice their bodies are regenerating. The blind Geordi (LeVar Burton) is able to see normally for the first time, and the Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn) finds his hair growing several inches a day. So why doesn’t hair sprout like a Chia Pet on Picard’s bald head? And timeworn story devices are all too obvious. Worf is now stationed at Deep Space Nine and is no longer a member of the Enterprise crew, yet the writers contrive a way to get him on board temporarily, just as they did at the beginning of the last movie.

Visually, the film’s not bad. For the first time in a Trek movie, all the special effects are computer-generated, with no models used. They’re adequate, but nothing more exciting than what we see every week on TV’s Star Trek: Voyager. Some of the Ba’ku planet scenes were filmed 10,000 feet up in the subalpine Sierra Nevada, where the cast and crew had to be helicoptered in. This is lovely footage – familiar terrain to those who hike the backcountry, but perhaps startling to the majority of the audience.

Unfortunately, viewers have to spend far too much time staring at the hideous faces of the Son’a, and it’s time wasted because we don’t give a damn about them, or about much of anything else in this movie.

About midway through, there’s a lot of thoughtful, intelligent dialogue about respecting the rights of sentient beings and standing up for one’s beliefs, and you’re thinking, “Hey, this is good stuff.” But ultimately the story doesn’t fulfill its promise. And that’s a shame, because it’s not as if Trek hasn’t addressed such topics before in an entertaining manner. One of the very best Next Generation episodes was “The Measure of a Man,” which also dealt with issues of justice and human rights, but did so in the context of a riveting drama. With Insurrection, the writers wimp out and opt for the standard explosion-in-space conclusion.