Picard protects the fountain of youth.
A weak movie, suffering from a range of significant flaws, and rescued (slightly) only by the strength of the actors, and our connection to the characters. It’s generally pretty slow and dull, or it would be if there wasn’t apparently someone sitting around with a stopwatch triggering a pointless action sequence every ten minutes or so.
Many of the individual moments are terrible. Thrill, as Picard cancels the fish course. Tremble, as a rogue android is tamed through song. And laugh, as everyone acts like a teenager. I was particularly annoyed by the drones who somehow knew that had to wait until the camera had finished its dramatic pan before attacking, and the Enterprise being controlled via a two axis joystick.
The plot is stupid too. The main problem is that the villains are given very poor definition, and basically head off into moustache-twirling territory pretty early on. An interesting villain is one like Khan – mad, but you can understand why. These villains are purely spoiled toddlers. A bit too much is thrown in as well, such as the ‘Data learns to be like a child subplot’.
But despite all of that, it was still nice to see Picard and crew again. Shoe-horning Worf in was a mistake, but after a long patch of DS9 and Voyager, it was a fun to return to TNG.
551 down, 186 to go.