Patrick Stewart's Star Trek Romance With Donna Murphy Was Butchered In The Editing Room
Throughout "Star Trek," Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) has engaged in precious few romances. Early in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," he reunited with an old flame (Michelle Phillips) in the episode "We'll Always Have Paris," and it was implied that he had a fling years earlier with a lawyer (Amanda McBroom) in "The Measure of a Man," but those relationships concluded before "Next Generation" began. Of course, Picard had a wild dalliance with Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) in "Captain's Holiday," lived out a life with his imagined wife (Margot Rose) in "The Inner Light," had a time-travel fling with a classmate (J.C. Brandy) in "Tapestry," and had a very palpable romance with Lieutenant Commander Nella Darren (Wendy Hughes) in "Lessons."
Oh yes, and Picard was very clearly attracted to Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett), and throughout "Next Generation," Picard and Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) shared a professional regard through a definite romantic undercurrent. "Star Trek: Picard" also saw romantic implications from Picard's Romulan housekeeper Laris (Orla Bardy).
Okay, it seems that Picard actually had quite an active romantic life throughout "Star Trek." He was presented as stoic and spartan when it came to romance, but in practice, he fell in love frequently.
This was a tradition that continued into the 1998 film "Star Trek: Insurrection," wherein Picard developed a crush on a Ba'ku farmer named Anij (Donna Murphy). In the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, the makers of "Insurrection" noted that the romance was intended to play a much larger part of the movie. It was, sadly, eventually cut for time.
The immortal Donna Murphy
"Star Trek: Insurrection" saw the U.S.S. Enterprise-E traveling to the very remote Ba'ku homeworld, a planet surrounded by radioactive rings that, through a quirk of science, regenerated the cells of living beings. The rings cure them of diseases and keep them young for centuries. Anij looks like a 39-year-old human woman but was in fact over 300. Picard and his crew have to defy orders to stop a shady, plastic surgery-addicted species called the Son'a (led by F. Murray Abraham) from stealing the Ba'ku radiation from themselves. The Son'a plan would involve the forced relocation of the Ba'ku citizens, who live a gentle, tech-free, agrarian lifestyle.
Picard, naturally, feels that a forced relocation is too barbaric a trade-off, and stages an insurrection. He sides with the Ba'ku after spending a romantic night with Anij who explains the attractiveness of a slow, uneventful, meditative life. She reveals tantalizingly that she never gets to see bald men on a planet of unaging immortals, while Picard admits he's attracted to older women.
Story writer and producer Rick Berman recalled that in early drafts of "Insurrection," there were actual on-screen kisses. He said:
"There was a little romance cut out of the final film: a couple of kisses. And there were some heated debates as to whether the kisses were in the right place. Those who were against the kisses were against them primarily because the first one was during an altered reality sequence where the water slows down and the hummingbird slows down. There were those among us who believed that we were right in the middle of this exodus, there was a lot of action going on, and for those two characters to start making out seemed to not necessarily be appropriate at that moment."
The slowed-down moment
Rick Berman refers to a sequence where Anij explains that the Ba'ku not only meditate but that they can seemingly slow time, allowing them to see a hummingbird flap its wings slowly, and for water to stop flowing temporarily. The sequence, however, did come when Ba'ku citizens were being evacuated from their village, and when Picard and Anij merely took a little side trek together. While a kiss could certainly have happened at that moment, it seems many fought against it.
Sadly, that first kiss was intended to be a setup kiss for a second kiss at the end of the movie. When Picard and Anij part ways at the end of the film, Picard mentions that he has some vacation days he can cash in at work, and he'll happily come back and make out with Anij to their hearts' content. With the first kiss missing, sadly, the second became mawkish. Berman said:
"The second kiss took place at the very end of the movie right when Picard says, 'I've got 318 days of shore leave coming,' but without the first kiss, the second kiss seemed very odd and out of place. There were a lot of discussions with the studio people and the final decision ended up being to take them out. It would not have made all that much of a difference one way or the other, and I don't think that the kisses would have done any damage to the story. Nor do I think their absence was all that missed."
I suppose if their absence wasn't missed, then cutting the kisses wasn't a terrible loss. The actors, however, wished they had been left in.
What's wrong with a kiss, my boy?
Murphy noted that the "slowed time" sequence was about a new kind of sense input for Picard, including a definite sensual element. For her, kissing Stewart in the scene was logical, and the two actors filmed it. Murphy was shocked to learn that both the slowed-time kiss and the end-of-the-movie kiss had been edited out. She remembered:
"I initially had a negative response to that, because you shape performance thinking that there are certain pieces of the puzzle that are a given, and if you take those pieces out you might have chosen to shape the performance differently if you knew that those pieces were not going to be there. Patrick and I played that relationship as if there was an intimacy that had taken place at a certain point. I was told it was a studio decision that the kisses were not necessary."
It does indeed feel like something is missing from "Insurrection."
Stewart, meanwhile, was annoyed that his kisses with Murphy were cut because it wasn't the first time it had happened. In the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact," Stewart kissed his co-star Alfre Woodard on the cheek, and that too was cut. Stewart began to suspect he was the weak link in both cases. He said:
"There must be something they don't like about my kissing. It's the oddest thing. With the kiss with Alfre, it was on the cheek, but they took it out. So when it came to Donna and something a little more intense ... it's gone and it's very irritating."
One can find more pictures online of Stewart kissing Sir Ian McKellan than any of his female co-stars.