Star Trek: Nemesis

Star Trek: Nemesis
Release Date: December 13, 2002
Introduction
 

 

A mysterious interloper assassinates the leadership of the Romulan government and takes over, demanding to speak with Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise upon doing so.

All right gentleman, two of us will get 90% of the screen time. Understood?.

 

 

 

Writing

Matthew: So. the screen writer of this movie, John Logan, has shown himself to be competent in other projects, such as Gladiator and The Aviator, good movies both. In the making of features, he has stated that he is a huge fan of Star Trek and cares first and foremost about characterization and character growth over time. So let's take him at his word and evaluate those aspects of the story. Let it be said that Troi and Riker get married, which is a nice advancement of their story. Riker also earns his promotion to captain the Titan. So these are positive instances of growth and change in the story. How much does Picard grow or change? He is faced with a clone. This... reminds him of his past, I guess? Challenges his sense of nature vs. nurture when it comes to morality? Logan said he wanted to pit Picard against someone with whom he had an intensely personal connection. I don't think Shinzon is that character. Picard has an intense personal connection with the following pre-existing antagonists: Q, Gul Madred, DaiMon Bok, Armus, I suppose The Borg Queen, and that's about it. What feature unifies all of these characters? They have all either tortured Picard or hurt someone close to him. He's never met Shinzon. They share DNA, but not because they are actually related, but because Shinzon was artificially created without his knowledge. Why should he care? He has already lost actual relatives. Does Shinzon present some real challenge or chance for Picard to explore questions of nature, nurture, and ethics? At age 60-plus, Picard does not strike me as someone who is particularly unstable with respect to the foundation of his personal code of ethics. He has long been a strict Kantian deontologist, motivated by his reason to treat all living beings with respect and care. This sort of moral system doesn't assign much weight to "nurture" when it comes to ethics - all beings possessing reason should be capable of arriving at the same ethical conclusions. And so the end result is, I just don't care about Shinzon or Picard's feelings about Shinzon. They don't feel real or vital or exciting.

Now, another thing said in the interview features by Tom Hardy, and briefly in dialogue, is that Shinzon wonders what it would be like to embrace his humanity. OK... so why not tell that story? I could imagine a very Star Trek story in which a biological human raised in another culture must wrestle with whether he feels loyalty to his birth culture or the culture that raised him (of course, this story was already told in the TNG episode "Suddenly Human," in which Picard tries to humanize a human war orphan raised by aliens). The audience could wonder - is it working? Does this "villain" actually have to potential to be good? Nah. He's just a psychopath who wants to destroy all life on Earth. Boring.

Kevin: To keep this from just being me repeating what Matt says, I will focus on something specific. The portrayal of Shinzon is at no point in any way like Picard. We get that ridiculous picture of a bald, college aged Picard, but what else about this characterization is like Picard, enough to make us care about their supposed dual nature? Even if I accept the premise that being genetically identical is more important than their upbringing in making them the same person, they never feel like similar, let alone the same, person. And there are credible ways to do that. He's supposed to be a gifted tactician, so maybe he has Picard's innate intelligence and skill, but never sanded off the brash impulsiveness that got him shivved over a pool game? Just anything to connect the two characters beyond being bald and having a totally real not made up ear disease or whatever would have helped this plot immensely. As it is, I just never buy that Picard feels anything at all, let alone responsible for Shinzon's nature or actions.

Matthew: In addition to having a bad villain that we don't care about, the villain's scheme makes very little sense. In the script, we are given three motivations for Shinzon - he needs to steal Picard's blood or something in order to reverse his illness, he wants to avenge the poor treatment of the Remans at the hands of the Romulans, and he wants to destroy all life on Earth because he's mad that he is a copy of Picard. Let's take these in turn. If he needs to kill Picard in order to save himself, and is on a very short timetable to do this, why not prioritize it? Instead of tying it to a takeover of Romulus, and destroying Earth, how about just kidnapping Picard from the outset, draining his blood, and then doing the other things? When it comes to avenging the Remans upon the Romulans, it seems like that is done. Achieved. Checked off the list. Shinzon has become the leader of the entire Romulan Star Empire with apparently little resistance. So then, why does he want to murder all humans? Is it to placate the Romulan military? They seem to want it (in the person of one military official) but then they balk at it (in the persons of two ship commanders). Is it because he hates humans? That seems belied by his horny desires for Counselor Troi (we'll get there) and his longing to know what being human is like. Is it because he is a psychopath? But he has so effectively taken over an empire, and was a stupendous general during the Dominion War... all of which seem like the activities of a rational, competent person. You know who would have been a better Romulan antagonist? Sela. There's someone who Picard has actually met, who would bring back a beloved actor, and who might have rational goals she wishes to achieve.

Kevin: While we are piling on, creating the Remans has always been a decision that befuddled me. Are they saying that the Remans were indigenous and displaced by the fleeing Vulcans who became the Romulans? An evolutionary offshoot? Star Trek has a...checkered...history with the nuts and bolts of evolution, so I wouldn't put it past them. The fact that we haven't heard of them before, despite several episodes involving the Romulans is something I could overlook if it were in service of a good story. But you don't really get a sense of the Remans as a people beyond essentially being the flying monkeys to Shinzon's Wicked Witch. They are a whole people who are just non-speaking flunkies. A story of an oppressed people taking extreme measures that appeals to a version of Picard's ethics could have been a fun story, but you would have to do the work to make the Remans and their struggle three dimensional.

Matthew: So Shinzon is a mess. But then, you also have the Remans' use of B-4. Why did they need B-4? The Enterprise was already ordered to head to Romulus by Admiral Janeway, simply because Shinzon asked to see them. How did the Remans (not the Romulans) happen across B-4, a heretofore unknown Soong android prototype, and know his importance, and decide to smash him up and spread him on a desert dune buggy planet, and ensure that the Enterprise could both detect his "positronic signature" (while deactivated) and successfully recover him without killing Picard or B-4 on the planet of Dune Buggy Machine Gun aliens? Suffice it to say, it seems like this rationale was reverse engineered by the script in order to get a replica android on the ship. A replica which should have been Lore.

Kevin: I'll only add, and I acknowledge this opinion is influenced by how often they go back to the "have Spiner play a Soong or Soong android" in the following twenty years, but they really need to stop doing this. It's getting ridiculous. And nothing B-4 said or did was interesting or funny. It was worse than season one Data.

Matthew: For literally no reason except horniness, Shinzon uses his Viceroy's mental powers to mind-rape Counselor Troi. This did not help him achieve any of his apparent goals, indeed it hindered them when Troi used her Betazoid abilities to sense their cloaked ship (I bet Picard wishes she had broken that one out previously). A Troi mind-rape is of course something already done in the middling TNG episode "Violations," which at least is motivated by showing how a person in a position of power could use that position to abuse others and even be shielded from repercussions by those around him. Here is feels tawdry and exploitative. 

Kevin: This probably takes the prize for the part of the script that aggravates me the most. It annoyed me at the time and it offends me even more now. It's lazy writing that the only thing the script can think to do to a female character is sexually assault her. Coupled with the fact that I have typed more words in this paragraph than Dr. Crusher has spoken in four TNG movies, and you get a run of movies that pretty much fails the Bechdel test and any other standard looking for good treatment of its female characters.

Matthew: And then Data sacrifices himself to save his dear friend... Jean-Luc Picard. Now, I think shamelessly imitating a more successful and better movie (Star Trek II, yet again, whose success is an albatross on the franchise) by killing a character is cheap, lazy and dumb. But for heaven's sake, if Data is going to sacrifice himself, a being he has specifically stated is unique and valuable to the sum total of consciousness in the universe, at least have it be to save his actual best friend, Geordie, who is utterly wasted by this script. The particulars of the sacrifice were very stupid, too. Yet another convenient transporter breakdown, combined with Picard acting like a dazed idiot for a good minute that could have been spent escaping, makes it all feel very dumb. TWOK clearly spelled out the timeline and difficulty of their escape from the Genesis explosion. This fails to do the same. Ultimately, the giant evil spaceship goes boom (yet again), and the galactic status quo is resumed.

Kevin: It was the punt on having a back up copy in B-4 that killed it. The quickie mind meld in WOK was of course a similar cheat, but it wasn't so obvious, and they at least go to the trouble of providing an in story reason in Search for Spock that wasn't "please resurrect me later." It's not as bad as tribble blood in Into Darkness, but it's not great. 

Matthew: This is the part of the review called "What Would You Have Done?" If, for whatever reason, the dictates are "use the Romulans" and "sacrifice a character," I would have Sela be the big bad, since that rewards the fans and Denise Crosby, and it would be Picard sacrificing himself to save his crew, since he is going to age out anyway. If we need a second android, it must be Lore. There's just no two ways about it. If there have to be clones (which I think it a dumb idea), it should be in the context of a much larger cloning program, a la the "America Towns" of Cold War Soviet Russia. It simply does not make sense to put all your eggs in one basket. What if Picard slips and falls in the shower before your clone is mature? Why not clone a dozen starship captains? Or the entire bridge crew - it would certainly give the supporting cast more to do - and you could have drama akin to the "hidden Cylon" aspect of BSG. Or all of Starfleet Command, as in TNG "Conspiracy." And such a clone program should address science fiction and ethics questions. Maybe the clones do have typical human moral responses, and balk at their assignments? Maybe our human characters have qualms about killing their doppelgangers because they are sentient beings?

If none of these are strictures on the plot/script, I would ditch that angle altogether and make Q the villain. Since this is post VOY "Death Wish" and "The Q and the Grey," maybe you could have it be about the destruction/dissolution of the Q continuum, and the consequences this would have in the regular universe. I could see this being a good opportunity to bring in the Travelers/Wesley to mediate or help humanity. Or, for that matter, finally just do the "Conspiracy" follow up with better effects.

Kevin: I don't have much to add here, except to say that most of your ideas are basically different movies, which is fine, because I didn't like this movie. So I agree. What I would have done differently is make a different movie.

Acting

Matthew: A very young Tom Hardy is giving it his all here. His character makes no sense, but based on the extra features, he has a fully developed mental map of Shinzon that he is working from. Notably, he is enunciating very well, something he moved away from in later roles. An unrecognizable Ron Perlman gets nothing to do as his sidekick, the Viceroy. Patrick Stewart plays against Tom Hardy and the results are... kind of a wet toilet plot if you ask me. Stewart had a sleepy, detached look to me. He was better in more familiar territory with the main cast, such as the wedding and the various tête-à-tête scenes with them, the best of which was probably his farewell to Riker.

Kevin: Hardy tried. He did. Even just freeing him from supposedly being a Picard clone would have given him a little more room to maneuver. I liked Picard well enough in his scenes with the crew, but apparently a lot of those were cut, so that's fun.

Matthew: I found Brent Spiner pretty enjoyable as Data, and pretty excruciating as B-4. There was a restraint as Data that sold the emotional undercurrent of scenes - that was completely absent in B-4, which was infantile, cretinous, and annoying. I also liked his interplay with a criminally underused LeVar Burton (who the director apparently referred to as "Laverne" through the whole production), during their scenes trying to rehab B-4. It's a shame the movie did not focus on their pairing more.

Kevin: He was fine as Data, though I found the rendition of Blue Skies to be only mildly less annoying than the Gilbert and Sullivan in Insurrection. B-4 being painfully unfunny drags down the movie. 

Matthew: Frakes and Sirtis finally get to pay off a decade of narrative blue balls, and it was pretty enjoyable.... up until the awful mind-rape scene. And I do not fault them for this, it was shot horribly, written horribly, and at least Frakes' upper body workout was apparent on screen. Good job, Frakesey. Like... I guess Sirtis was enjoyable in her revenge sequence with the bizarre pin light on her eyes. But the whole sequence was so cringe-inducing it's hard to appreciate her on her own merits.

Kevin: I agree the wedding was cute but it is undercut by what follows. But I'll never say no to watching their well honed chemistry just be on screen. 

Matthew: There's precious little screen time for anyone else. I suppose a nearly unrecognizable Dina Meyer does the best she can with a very strange role as the female Romulan commander. Gates McFadden had some nice scenes with Stewart, the sort of scenes she was deprived of in the previous two movies by female guest stars. She has even more in the deleted scenes. So, yeah.

Production Values

Matthew: The Remans look dumb. I suppose we are supposed to take them as being related genetically to the Romulans, but why do they look so different? The Romulan schism from the Vulcans cannot be more than about 2000 years ago, but the Remans look like they've had diverging evolution for hundreds of thousands if not more. How does such a downtrodden species have the resources to build this thing? Who knows. 

Kevin: As I said, Star Trek's relationship to evolution has always been a little hazy. For me the biggest problem is they look like LOTR orcs. 

Matthew: The Reman ship looks dumb, too. Why is it called the "Scimitar," named after a Middle Eastern Earth sword type? Why is it so comically large? Why are the hallways so wide that spaceships can be flown through them? The quality of CGI is generally very good. The Enterprise looks really nice, and generally speaking, space battles were choreographed well enough for me. It's certainly not the visual mush that we would get by the era of Discovery (or even the Abrams movies). 

Kevin: Generally speaking my complaint here is that that ships are dark and never shown well on camera. It's the beginning of a trend in science fiction generally. Not to lean to too heavily on WOK, but there are wide glamor shots of the bright ships against a dark background, not rapid cut close up of dark on dark. It just annoys me. It's not as bad as Abrams/Kurtzman Trek, but that's some faint praise.

Matthew: The Dune Buggy chase was stupid. Why would they not wear helmets? Why would there be no windshield? Why is there a Gatling Gun on the back of the Federation Dune Buggy? And who were they fighting, anyway? They looked exactly like the Remans, but I guess were not? Who are these people, how did they know that the Argo had landed, and why are they so cheesed off?

Kevin: The design choice that sticks in my craw to this day is the big random pit for the fight between Riker and the Viceroy. What is that pit for except to fall in? 

Conclusion

Matthew:  This is not a good movie. But is it "one" level bad? It has a wedding scene, and it has some fairly decent character farewells. The general character work on the main cast was at least mediocre. The mind rape is offensive. The overall plot is very stupid, but I don't think that it breaks the universe in some of the ways subsequent movies did. It's one of those situations where ten percent of the runtime is pretty decent, 40 percent is "meh" and 50 percent is crap. So I'm stuck at a very low 2 on this. 

Kevin: My developing thesis upon rewatching Enterprise and most of the TNG movies is that a lot of the problems we identify in Abrams/Kurtzman Trek have their seeds in the post Voyager era. They are not as extreme, but I still think that was as much then extant network standards rather than any principled storytelling choice. And I think this movie proves my point. It is as dumb and dumb in the same ways as the Abrams movies. It turns Star Trek in a dark action slog where the stakes are inflated but empty and character work goes out the window. And it does it to a series I care more about personally. At the time, this was the swan song for TNG, and both as a movie in itself and as the last act of a show I still love deeply, it is deeply flawed and disappointing to the point of being offensive. This is a 1 from me, for a total of 3.

Podcast link to come