The Star Trek icon, Scott Bakula, once starred in a Tom Clancy movie that was destined to fail. But here's where it gets controversial... While Bakula's career has been a string of successes, from his iconic roles in 'Quantum Leap' and 'Star Trek: Enterprise' to his seven-season run as Dwayne Pride on 'NCIS: New Orleans', not all his endeavors have been equally well-received. In 1999, he starred in the ABC television movie 'NetForce', based on a Tom Clancy novel series of the same name. Directed by Robert Lieberman, the movie featured a stellar cast including Joanna Going, Xander Berkeley, Brian Dennehy, CCH Pounder, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kris Kristofferson, and Judge Reinhold. However, the movie's premise of a near-future FBI computer crime division trying to capture the internet as part of the story made it seem outdated and nonsensical before the end credits even rolled. NetForce added explosions and high-stakes terror plots to its cybercrime premise, but the movie's portrayal of both police work and technology was...inspired. Watching 'NetForce' today means that the suspension of disbelief required from the viewer is on par with reading an old Jules Verne novel and being cool with the concept of shooting people to the Moon with a giant cannon. If you're a Bakula completionist, there's fun to be had here, but on the other hand, if accurate hacking scenes in movies are your thing, 'Star Trek: Enterprise' is probably a better Scott Bakula bet. At least the Federation's wild technology has the decency to exist in a project set hundreds of years in the future.
