The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Insurrection

3. Ru'afo And Co. Get “Brazil”-ians

Admiral Dougherty's Death Star Trek: Insurrection
Paramount Pictures

Trek’s never been a franchise for understatement. Why be subtle when you can GO ALL CAPS, right? So of course the morally decayed Son’a were portrayed as literally rotting, so much so that they’re constantly undergoing plastic surgery to give themselves a... lift.

And watching Ru’afo go all rubber-faced is unintentionally hilarious because it’s a woefully unoriginal bald-faced swipe from Terry Gilliam’s dystopian farce Brazil (1985), wherein status-hungry socialite Ida Lowry’s (Katherine Helmond) addiction to face lifts puts the plastic in plastic surgery, as her face is pulled and stretched as if composed of Silly Putty.

When Admiral Dougherty gets his terminal face-lift — via some truly crap CGI, even for the time — all I could think of was bandage-wrapped Mrs. Lowry. “My complication had a little complication.”

 
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Contributor

Maurice is one of the founders of FACT TREK (www.facttrek.com), a project dedicated to untangling 50+ years of mythology about the original Star Trek and its place in TV history. He's also a screenwriter, writer, and videogame industry vet with scars to show for it. In that latter capacity he game designer/writer on the Sega Genesis/SNES "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Crossroads of Time" game, as well as Dreamcast "Ecco the Dolphin, Defender of the Future" where Tom Baker performed words he wrote.