Desk from the Past VII: Insurrection and Nemesis
At last, the final two looks into the past in anticipation of Star Trek, from director J.J. Abrams. I bet some of you thought I wasn’t going to make it. Well, ha! I laugh at you and your meek predictions :p!
But honestly, it’s good to get this done. Tonight, I present Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis, the final two TNG films.
Tomorrow, it’s off to the new film. At some point, in my normally more regular Nivenus at the Desk, feature I will review it and its prequel, Star Trek: Countdown, which connects Nemesis to the new film. Maybe you’ll see the review tomorrow, though I wouldn’t count on it. I’ll try and make it swift and useful, however.
Thank you all for reading. Now, on to the finale.
What the Score Means
10.0: Excellent. Terrific. Might not be perfect, but it's damn close. Best in the field.
9.0: Pretty damn good. I've seen better stuff, but not much. Most people should enjoy it.
8.0: Pretty good, if you really like this sort of stuff, but it might be more underwhelming if you're not. Even if you are one of the latter, though, I'd expect you to find it passingly amusing, if nothing else.
7.0: Good or average, but take note that your mileage may vary. In other words, if you're already a fan or predisposed to works like this you may really like it or think it's good. But if you're not, steer clear or at least approach with a cautiously open mind.
6.0: Meh. You might enjoy it, but I wouldn't guarantee it. If you do like it, it'll probably be a passing thing and I wouldn't count on it having any revisitable value. Semi-average, semi-poor. What I like to call "thoroughly mediocre."
5.0: This steps beyond thoroughly mediocre into the realm of true bad. I'd be surprised if anyone thought this was high quality and would be highly suspect of their opinions from the on on matters of criticism. It might not be horrible, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
4.0: Okay, we've definitely passed into bad here. This stuff actually will make you walk out of a movie theater it's so lame. It's not even stylistically bad. It's just boring bad and you likely won't have the patience to go through with it.
3.0: This is a weird little category few get to but a few deliberately reach for. So bad it's good. That is to say, if you take this at face value it's going to be horrific. But, if you just hang along for the ride and turn off your brain or, conversely, decide to get ridiculously symbolic about it, it can actually be very entertaining, if only for its comically bad quality.
2.0: Could be so bad it's good, but more likely this has verged into so bad it's horrible quality. There's nothing funny about it, except perhaps that the human mind could be so warped that it would actually produce the shit. Not fun.
0-1.0: Burn! Burrrrrrn! Burn the evil! It hurts!
Table of Contents
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek Nemesis
Star Trek: Insurrection
Overview
NOTE: Since this is a retrospective review and I fully anticipate the reader to have already seen the film expect some spoilers, though I will try my best to refrain from them. Look at it this way, I may one day get around to doing a retrospective of ESB. I will not refrain from saying Luke's father is Vader.
Many reviewers imagined that Star Trek: First Contact was a sign that Trek was going to suddenly be awesome again. It hit all the right notes, was on par with the legendary The Wrath of Khan and TOS film finale The Undiscovered Country while successfully making the TNG cast just as badass as the TOS one had been. In fact, of all the Trek films ever made First Contact received the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating (although it looks like the new Star Trek might beat it). So, surely, the next film would be just pure awesomeness?
No such luck unfortunately.
Star Trek: Insurrection is a conundrum. One has to wonder precisely what they were smoking when they made this film since it is not only of lower quality than the film that preceded it but, indeed, of lower quality than most of the rest of the Trek films, while making Sci-Fi Original Movies look good. It’s more anvilicious than The Voyage Home was (which is an accomplishment I suppose), more poorly paced than The Motion Picture (though not as slow), and filled with villains that make Sybok seem outright malevolent. It never quite reaches TFF quality but, depending on your view on that particular film that might not be such a good thing.
It’s a shame, though, because First Contact really was good so it’s disappointing to see Insurrection follow it.
Plot
Insurrection’s plot should’ve been the first warning to the producers. Indeed, it actually was. Although Michael Piller, who wrote this instead of RDM and Brannon Braga since they were busy working on Mission Impossible II, was a veteran Trek writer even he was unsettled when his friend and fellow writer Ira Steven Behr, creator of DS9 confronted him about the script, recommending revisions. Such revisions were made, but ultimately it wasn’t enough.
As in the case of Generations the main problem with Insurrection is that it feels like a really, really drawn out and overly long episode of TNG stretched to its limits. And not one of those really cool season finales either. No, this is one of your average, mundane, ultimately preachy TNG episodes. The ones where Picard gives a long speech about something everybody knows (to quote the Picard Song). Somehow, Piller thought this was a good idea and Insurrection was his conscious attempt to bring back the “feel” of TNG and Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future.
The weird thing is that, in actuality, Insurrection doesn’t have a very utopian setting at all. Or at least, not the way that Piller ends up writing about it. After all, this is the only Star Trek film where the Federation themselves (rather than a rogue faction like in TUC) are the bad guys (hence the title). Or at least designated as such.
The film opens with Data, assigned away from the Enterprise for some unexplained reason, disobeying orders, appearing to go psycho, and breaking the Prime Directive by revealing to the communal, Space Amish society that there’s a big giant Federation science team watching them. One thing I’m a bit confused about is the fact that Data is wearing what appears to be a cloaking suit in spite of the fact that the Federation doesn’t even have a reactor-sized cloaking device all of their own, having only received the designs for one from the Romulans for building the Defiant a few years earlier. Quick learners those Federation folks. Though, if that’s the case, why doesn’t the entire Federation use those things when fighting the Dominion or the Borg, hm?
Never mind. Guess we’re not supposed to think about that.
Meanwhile, Picard’s off welcoming a new race into the Federation, something he appears wholly uncomfortable about in spite of his long career as a diplomat. Worf from Deep Space 9 is assigned to the Enterprise for some oddball reason while on shore leave - an ultimately disappointing and far more transparent way of placing him into the story than in First Contact, where he had a legitimate reason for being where the Enterprise was. Guess they didn’t care this time round, especially since Worf is suddenly treated like he’s on duty for the rest of the film.
Picard receives a message from Admiral Matthew Dougherty, who smiles a bit too much to be trustworthy, telling him that Data has gone haywire and is holding the Federation science team hostage on the planet Ba'ku within a weird little unexplainable astronomical phenomenon known as the Briar Patch. Dougherty asks Picard not to intervene as they have it “all under control.” Picard, for some oddball reason (perhaps, again, because Admiral Dougherty smiles too much) decides to disobey the Admiral’s orders, going on a “detour” in the opposite direction of their ordered destination during a time of war (with the Dominion).
If this were the real world Picard would get, at the very least, a very harsh slap on the wrist for this. Imagine if a colonel in the United States Army decided that, rather than going to Iraq as he was ordered, he’d like to head over to Peru where one of his old friends was currently committing mutiny? The odd thing is that it isn’t even portrayed as a serious breach of orders but rather just a harmless bit of eccentricity from Picard. Again, apparently we aren’t supposed to think too hard about this.
Once they get there they find that, indeed, Data is acting pretty weird. And… apparently the only way to subdue him is to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. What? Honestly, what were they smoking? Can I have some of it… please?
But no, quite literally, they get Data to sing Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, which distracts him enough (since he’s apparently not just crazy but outright stupid) for them to dock the shuttlecraft with Data’s ship and send Worf aboard the shuttlecraft. I still can’t think of way to make this sound smart.
After this Data is brought aboard and the crew begins to examine him while he is deactivated. They also send an away team down to the village, of course composed of the captain and his crew, to investigate the events that occurred there and recover the hostages. They discover, to their surprise that everyone is perfectly absolutely happy and that the Ba'ku are actually Space Amish rather than simple primitives. Of course, they also happen to be Space Amish with none of the problems associated with a rural, pre-industrial civilization. Stuff like, oh, I don’t know, central heating, public water, artificial lighting, etc, etc.
They also quickly discover that the Ba'ku, who number only 500 (seriously, it’s a planet the size of my hometown), a number far too small to support a species’ continuation (the lowest we ever got was a few thousand, which nearly caused us to die out) and who are insanely human like in appearance (they don’t even have foreridges!), are immortal and capable of healing from most wounds due to some weird magical radiation that surrounds the planet.
That’s right. Radiation, which normally causes genetic decay by shooting atoms out of your DNA, is actually making the Ba'ku immortal, while also apparently giving them, in one throwaway scene never mentioned again, the capacity to control time. While this at least handwaves away the problem of lacking industrial-scale medicine, it still doesn’t explain why their population is so small after 300 years, especially since they seem to still have children who grow at a regular pace. Actually, that last part gets an inferred reason later on but it’s not a very pleasant one and it still doesn’t make much sense. The whole thing really is a wall banger.
It soon becomes apparent that this magical radiation stuff can work its magic on anyone, including humans. However, it takes years for it to work effectively, at least according to Admiral Dougherty, in spite of the fact that Geordi (a character born blind) receives eyesight within hours of arriving at Ba'ku. Go figure. Also, apparently it’s implied his eyesight will revert back to its original state when he leaves. Apparently there’s no ontological inertia in this film.
The film then quickly reveals that the Federation intends to kidnap the entire population of the planet and move them offworld so they won’t be killed when they begin mining the planet’s rings for an immortality serum, which will make the planet uninhabitable for about a decade. One wonders why they don’t simply ask but maybe that’s because the Ba'ku are a bunch of pretentious assholes who think they’re better than anyone who isn’t immortal and doesn’t live on a planet with magical radiation and no industrial technology. Yay for self-righteous, superiority complex Space Amish.
It’s also later revealed that the group who developed the technology for this process are the same species as the Space Amish and were exiled some time back for daring to use technology. The process somehow made them very ill and they’re now dying out and will go extinct. They also happen to have conquered a large swathe of the galaxy in the meantime, in spite of their home planet’s population of only 500. Seriously? Are they really just that epic or were there several billion rebels who were somehow defeated by the 500 and exiled?
I’ll just say it here and now. The plot doesn’t make sense. It really, really doesn’t. The planet Ba'ku and its utopian culture doesn’t make sense. The Federation’s completely inane decision process in the film doesn’t make sense. The Son'a (the exiled Ba'ku) don’t make sense as villains. Data’s off the wall antics in the beginning don’t make sense. It all. Just. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.
This plot is close to TFF in awfulness but it actually has a few good moments spread throughout and is suitably dramatic to be mildly entertaining, as long as you pretend you’re not watching a supposedly intellectual Star Trek film and are instead watching something like Pearl Harbor, complete with lame and forced romantic subplots (two of them in fact).
A vast disappointment.
Score: 4.2 (out of 10)
Characters
The characters of Insurrection are no more interesting really than the plot. Again, this is hard to fathom, since Michael Piller was the one who wrote Best of Both Worlds and Yesterday’s Enterprise, two of TNG’s best episodes, as well as being responsible for the Maquis, one of the many interesting villains from DS9. So why he fails so utterly here is beyond me.
Picard goes from badass, sometime pontificating, but still likeable captain figure man who knows where to draw the “lin-ya!” to schoolboy with a crush and lame mouthpiece for political correctiveness. Oh, yes, I know that he’s operated in these fields before, but these are aspects of his character best ignored. Apparently, this is partially Patrick Stewart who decided he wanted the captain to get some nookie in Insurrection and insisted the film be lighter, probably killing the chance of ever making the Son'a seem like credible villains.
So we’re stuck with a different Picard. A Picard who’s apparently bored with diplomacy (note his unease when welcoming a new race into the Federation) but disparaging of violence (“remember when we used to be explorers?”), which makes you wonder why he’s even in Starfleet since he seems to hate any job they give to him. He also has a very out-of-nowhere romantic attachment to one of the Ba'ku, Anij, who, I might add, is 300 years older than him. At least (they say that the planet’s radiation actually reversed their aging so she might be far older than she appears given Star Trek age expectancies).
Anij herself is the dreaded return of Dr. Taylor from The Voyage Home - a forced romantic interest who spends most of her time looking her nose down at the audience. She never stops talking about how “outsiders” (i.e., people not from a magical planet) are always so caught up in their lives that they never notice anything, how they’re stupid and prejudiced (ignoring the hypocrisy in her own statements), how they’re addicted to their insidious technology, and how really they’d all be better if they lived on Ba'ku. Except then she and the other Ba'ku don’t feel like sharing, so that’s kind of that.
I’m obviously supposed to like Anij but I can’t help but secretly pine for her death when she gets gravely injured in a cave-in later in the story. Of course, given the magical healing wonders of Ba'ku she recovers to as good as new. Ugh.
How about the Riker and Troi romance? I’m not opposed really to their pairing and it least this finally settles the Will They or Won’t They dynamic that’s been going on since the pilot, which aired some eleven years prior. But it comes off really, really cheesy. Riker literally leaps into Troi’s lap, starting it off, to be followed with a quick kiss, which results in Troi claiming she’s never kissed Riker with a beard (which gives him an excuse to shave it). Forget the fact that she has - several times. That’s not really the annoying part. It’s just that suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, they’re bathing together and smooching.
Riker at least gets a moment to be the captain, which he does far better really than Picard does in this movie. It’s ruined, however, by him using a joystick to pilot the Enterprise as well as him ejecting the ship’s warp core to destroy a pursuing vessel. Shouldn’t that leave them, I don’t know, dead in the water? But no, apparently it doesn’t impede their time sensitive mission at all.
And the less said about Worf’s lapse into “puberty” the better.
I think I’ll go bury my head in the sand.
Data also gets shoehorned into a really, really bad subplot in which he “learns” to be a kid. Seriously. Didn’t he get past that a few seasons ago? Or more recently, in Generations wherein he has an equally embarrassing journey of self-discovery into the joys (or lack thereof) of emotions. Oh, boy. In the film’s ending scene he’s actually playing in a haystack with a six year-old boy.
And the villains, as Ira Steven Behr put it, are paper tigers. First off, it’s hard not to feel bad for them. They’re basically characters who were banished to a life of slow decay for the crime of blasphemy on a planet full of Luddites. They’re really just trying to survive. Sure, there methods are extreme but these seem to be evil for the point of being evil. Cause, you know, there’s no point in trying to peacefully extract the Ba'ku. Only force will show them. I mean, we have a motivation for their ultimate goal but not their methods. Why are they assholes?
The only mildly interesting character is actually Admiral Dougherty, who at least has a semblance of complexity in his character. He’s not a shoehorned, Obviously Evil® villain like the Son'a though, once again, he smiles too much to be nice, and he’s not a sickeningly self-righteous prick like Picard sometimes seems like in the movie. No, he actually explains himself relatively well. I’m not a fan of Utilitarian ethics so, really, I should side with Picard. But the fact that there’s no reason at all explained on screen that the Ba'ku couldn’t be temporarily move off world and then returned later makes Dougherty seem like he’s in the right while Picard’s just being pretentious. Dougherty even tries to moderate the methodology of his Son'a allies, tempering their apparently bloodthirsty nature.
How could these characters be so badly written? I really have no idea.
Score: 1.0 (out of 10)
Production
One of the few things that saves this film from being the same nightmare that TFF was is that the production values are actually up to par. I imagine this is partially because Paramount had actually grown a brain and realized that actually funding a film that you’re producing is probably a good idea. In spite of the horrible script and poor characterization, Insurrection is slightly redeemed through special effects.
After all, the Enterprise-E still looks pretty fantastic. Not quite as good as it did in First Contact, which is a disappointment, but this may be partially because that we only see it from a distance, whereas in the previous film we got to get up close and personal with it. The captain’s yacht the Cousteau is also a nice touch, with good design even if it’s actual purpose is a bit muddled (why not just use a shuttlecraft)? And, weird and unexplained as it is the Briar Patch looks pretty awesome, as does the planet Ba'ku.
However, the visuals are not wholly up to par. For instance, though the Federation ships look nice enough the Son'a ships are laughable. It’s as if the special effects supervisors realized that the Ba'ku weren’t nasty enough to be taken seriously so they overcompensated in the visuals department by littering the Ba'ku ships with big, pointless spikes, trying to tell the audience through visual subtext that, “yes, these people are really evil badasses.”
Speaking of which, the Son'a themselves look ridiculous, what with their plastic surgery gone mad. Maybe that’s why the makeup team didn’t even try on the Ba'ku, who look exactly like humans, making Geordi look like an alien by comparison with his cybernetically modified eyes.
Acting wise, the actors do at least try. Patrick Stewart seems to have genuinely thought this was a great movie, enjoying himself thoroughly in his role. He almost makes Picard likeable in spite of the wonkiness of the character in this film. He ultimately fails, however, mostly due to the script, but he still manages to project with his usual charisma and theatrical feel for drama.
Similarly, Jonathan Frakes, tries similarly to do his best, in spite of the ridiculous lines given him. He’s actually publicly disowned the film several times, in spite of the fact he directed it. Why he chose to direct if he thought the script was so bad is beyond me (though money probably was a factor) but his commentary for the film was evidently so rabid that they decided not to include it on the DVD release.
I have to wonder about F. Murray Abraham though. How on earth did they get him for the role, which he supposedly loved? His is easily the lamest Star Trek villain and yet here is an actor who played, of all things, Salieri from Amadeus and won an Oscar for his performance. And it’s not just that his character is badly written. He plays the role badly as well, the worst parts for me being the many, many times that the character has a Big No moment done in a really, really, gratingly cheesy manner that sounds pathetic rather than dramatic.
Ugh.
Donna Murphy as Anij is also wholly terrible, not even bringing charm to a role that is horrible to begin with. She’s instead the stereotypical worldly wise middle-aged woman who teaches middle-aged man about the secrets of life. Anthony Zerbe as Admiral Dougherty is, at least, decent, with a sufficient level of stage presence to hold his own against Patrick Stewart.
Once again, Jerry Goldsmith scores and his soundtrack is actually pretty good, like most of his work. This redeems, in some small manner, the other parts of the film. However, it’s still not as good as his work for TMP or First Contact.
Ultimately, the production values of Insurrection, while not outright bad, are somewhat average and far from enough to save the film from its other, less notable qualities.
Score: 7.5 (out of 10)
Summary
Plot: 4.2
Characters: 1.0
Production: 7.5
Overall: 4.2
Star Trek Nemesis
Overview
NOTE: Since this is a retrospective review and I fully anticipate the reader to have already seen the film expect some spoilers, though I will try my best to refrain from them. Look at it this way, I may one day get around to doing a retrospective of ESB. I will not refrain from saying Luke's father is Vader.
Star Trek Nemesis is a film with a reputation nearly as venomous as that surrounding The Final Frontier. I say not quite as venomous because it at least is still talked about, while TFF has been relegated to a Voldemort-like status in that it is the “film of which we do not speak.” Comparatively, Nemesis is brought up all the time, as an abomination of filmmaking and Star Trek.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen the movie. The last time was when it was in theaters, back in my home town of Point Arena, California when I was 14. So I’d kind of forgotten whether or not it deserved its reputation. I remembered the plot well enough but the details eluded my memory. However, I wasn’t particularly impressed at the time and, given my recent experiences with TFF and Generations, both of which I expected to be better than I remembered them, I was willing to believe that, yes, it a bane unto the franchise.
Lo and behold, I was wrong. While far from a great film or even a pretty good one, Nemesis is by no means the abomination many make it out to be. At least, not insofar as I could tell. Sure, it’s by no means up to par with most of the TOS films and it’s a disappointment considering First Contact. However, I would argue very strongly that it is actually a better film than Insurrection, which seems to be forgotten.
I’m not exactly sure why it gets such a venomous reputation. Maybe it’s because the actors themselves were more than happy to say bad things about it while it was in production. Maybe it’s because the director, Stuart Baird is an average director who’s far better at editing. Maybe it’s because the film makes not attempt at hiding the fact that it is taking inspiration from The Wrath of Khan. Maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone was getting bored with Star Trek and its low box office and critical ratings seemed to justify the criticism.
More likely, I think, it’s because it’s the last TNG film, something that was very much known though not officially declared even before production for the film had wrapped up. It had been determined that TNG had run its run and that it was time for Star Trek to open up for some breathing room, hence the plans for the Enterprise film that never came to fruition (DS9 and Voyager wouldn’t really have worked, however). And as a swan song for the cast Nemesis is less effective. It’s not bad, really, but it doesn’t have the same satisfying result that, say, The Undiscovered Country did.
However, as a film in of itself, it’s not that bad. It’s fairly decent, actually, though far from without problems.
Plot
Before we rave about the plot it’s probably important to remember one thing. This is the only Star Trek film written by an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter besides Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and The Undiscovered Country, the three of which were written partially by Nicholas Meyer. This film was written by John Logan, best known for his screenplay for the film Gladiator as well as The Aviator and, more recently, the film version of Sweeney Todd. He might not be the kind of writer who generally writes for Star Trek, but he’s clearly earned his way into fame.
Not that this necessarily means the story is good. Michael Piller and RDM were and are (respectively, given Piller’s unfortunate passing) both greater writers, as is Harve Bennett, all of whom wrote disappointing Trek films. However, it’s worth remembering that Nemesis wasn’t put together by a bunch of talentless hacks who hated the franchise, as is quite often assumed by some of the more rabid elements of the fanbase.
The plot is itself, not among the best in Star Trek and it suffers from more than a few lapses in logic. The film starts with an opening on Romulus, where the Senate rejects the idea of negotiating with the Remans (worst new canon in this film, actually). Actually, it’s almost as if Logan’s experience with Gladiator was a bit too strong for this film, since the Romulans come off far too much (though, granted, this is something that dates back to their original appearance in Balance of Terror and is hard to help with their meaningful name) like Romans. More specifically, the Romans in Gladiator.
In fact, I would say that Gladiator was as much an influence on this film as was Wrath of Khan, given that, actually, except for a few plot points, the story really isn’t all that similar. It isn’t, after all, about a wrathful old enemy of Picard’s come back from the dead who intends to get revenge on him by turning a peaceful MacGuffin into a world-eating machine. Oh, sure, there’s a world-eating machine and Shinzon could be described as wrathful. But the film’s more about a coup d’état, its fallout, and the rivalry between two men than a path of mad vengeance. Honestly.
Anyhow, the Romulans turning down the Remans’ offer turns out to be a bad idea since a traitor within their fold unleashes a deadly radiation weapon that basically annihilates the Romulan government, creating a new one that Shinzon and the Remans can run. Surprise, surprise.
Meanwhile, Picard serves as the best man in Riker and Troi’s wedding. IGN recently described this as a “fan fiction”-like wedding. Ignoring the fact that there is a more than slightly implied insult to all fan fiction present in that statement (which I strongly disagreed with) I’m not sure I understand what they mean. I mean, yes, one could describe it as fan fiction-esque since it includes virtually every major TNG character as a guest, including Guinan and the dreaded Wesley Crusher.
Yes, Picard is serving as the best man instead of some random chum of Riker’s. And yes, Data breaks out and sings. But somehow, to me, this seems appropriate rather than forced. After all, Picard has worked non-stop beside Riker for more than a decade. Surely they’ve formed a close bond by that point (which is shown several times in the series)? Not to mention that Guinan was a friend to everyone or that Wesley, while annoying for us, was beloved by the crew. Or that Worf is a family friend, at least for Troi. And let’s not forget that Data breaks into song on several occasions, with it at least making sense here, unlike in Insurrections. So, no, I don’t think the wedding scene is all that bad.
I will say this, however, the wedding serves, just like the diplomatic mission in Insurrection, as a transparent method to introduce Worf into the story, in spite of the fact he no longer serves on the Enterprise. In fact, if I recall correctly, he’s now an ambassador to the Klingon Empire, so why he’s serving on the Enterprise during his free time as a tactical officer is beyond me.
Anyhow, the wedding is very short and bears little relevance to the plot other than allowing Troi and Riker to finally end that decade-long ship-teasing once and for all (hopefully). What follows, however, is the crew preparing for the second ceremony on Betazed when they receive an unusually strong positronic signature. Since positrons seem to have become associated with Star Trek androids thanks to Roddenberry’s association with scifi giant Isaac Asimov they suspect it has something to do with Data. Sure enough they investigate.
Now, there is a plot hole here. Why on earth can they detect the positronic signature? Surely Data isn’t broadcasting one that powerful on a regular basis, otherwise he’d surely interfere with comm. chatter between the Enterprise and other ships. So why is this signature so big, given that it is coming from a similarly size android? A possible answer is given later in the film (namely that it’s, in Admiral Akbar’s immortal words, a trap) but this never seems to occur to the characters who simply head to the planet, send down an away team composed solely of Picard and Data, and attempt to retrieve the android. And they never stop to think, “hm, isn’t this all just a bit convenient? We pick up an absurdly strong signal coming from a robot scattered in pieces across a desert, are immediately thereafter attacked by a group of space orcs, and, oh, by the way, this robot looks a mighty lot like Data - in fact identical - not to mention his evil twin brother Lore.”
So this is a bit of Plot Induced Stupidity. It is not, however, a plot wrecker. What is increasingly annoying, however, is that this does not occur to them until far, far later in the script, with Data being so foolish as to actually download his entire memory banks (which contain an ungodly amount of security sensitive information about the Federation, as the film’s villain later even points out) into the android, apparently named B-4. So, yeah, the fans have a right to complain about this.
After this little adventure, during which Picard decides he is apparently Han Solo, deciding he doesn’t like to be told the odds, Picard is contacted, in a neat little continuity-enhancing moment, Admiral Janeway. Voyager had come to its conclusion roughly two years earlier so this little reference was appropriate given that the ship did, indeed, return to the Federation. I’m not really a fan of Voyager but I can appreciate the fan service the cameo was meant to serve as, which is followed also by a reference to each of the previous TNG films (“the Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans, and even that pesky Dr. Soran”). This is, by the way, immediately after Janeway gives Picard his new assignment - a diplomatic mission to Romulus to form a treaty with the new government, run by the Reman praetor Shinzon.
Fair enough mission, though there are a few issues, such as, exactly what Janeway means by “peace.” After all, the Romulans have been relatively friendly with the Federation for the past several years, allying with them during the Dominion War and providing the schematics for a cloaking device for the Defiant. My guess is that it was intended that said relations have lapsed slightly and that the Federation is seeking a more permanent peace and an end to Romulus’ imposed isolationism, in a manner similar to Kirk’s peace mission to the Klingon Empire in TUC. However, none of this is explained on screen.
Regardless, it’s a fair premise and, as in TUC, the first meeting between Federation and Romulan is appropriately edgy. One thing that doesn’t make sense, however, is how fricking powerful the Scimitar, Praetor Shinzon’s flagship, is. It makes the Enterprise look pathetic by comparison and yet was supposedly built in secret by the Remans, while they were still at what was essentially slave status within the Romulan Star Empire. I mean, I could believe it if they stole the ship, since 24th Romulan ships have been consistently shown to be more powerful and impressive than their Federation equivalents. But saying it’s a Reman ship is a bit much.
By the way, let me go on a tangent here. The Remans are a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. Not only does it reinforce the pointless Romans in Space(!) vibe that the Romulans have going for them but it doesn’t make sense. Their homeworld is a twin of Romulus? Which orbits the sun at a different rate? And is tidally locked in spite of being further from Romulus’ star than Romulus itself? That doesn’t make any sense. Nor does the idea that the Romulans somehow have a need for Reman slaves when, well, organic labor is more cheaply replaced with mechanical labor given sufficient technology. To be fair, maybe the use of the word “slave” is an inappropriate anachronism and perhaps the Remans aren’t so much physically mining as they are operating the drills and such the way the prisoners of Rura Penthe do. Still.
And that’s not even going into the design of the Remans, which I will get into later under production.
Anyhow, back to the plot. The crew of the Enterprise thereafter meet with Shinzon who turns out to be Picard’s clone. What? Actually, this is made surprisingly interesting and dealt with in a semi-quasi-realistic manner. But it is still pretty out there and from out of nowhere. It also threatens to take over the film’s story quite a lot actually, as you might imagine given the title (for those who don’t know, nemesis means something more specific than enemy - it means basically an evil counterpart, the evil version of the rival).
Shinzon at first seems quite reasonable. After all, why should the Remans want to continue the policies of the Romulans before them? However, it is, after all, a ruse. This part doesn’t make very much sense, at least from how it’s explained. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense that Shinzon wants to lure Picard to Romulan space - that’s adequately explained since it turns out Shinzon, having been created to replace Picard at some unspecified date, is deteriorating due to genetic instability (he was, in short, grown too fast). Rather, it’s never adequately explained as to why Shinzon wants to wipe out the human race. And since the rest of the plot rests on this goal of his, it’s sort of a wall banger.
However, although the crew of the Enterprise was stupid enough to download Data’s memory files into B-4 they’re not stupid enough to fall for Shinzon’s gambit. They see through his ruse and his sympathetic speeches, realizing that he, is, in fact, trying to play them. They act accordingly.
The plot is strong in several respects, in spite of its flaws. First of all, it has really good pacing and it never seems like the film slows to a crawl. There’s also a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution and there are enough surprises and twists hidden in the film to keep the film suspenseful. For example, “B-4” turning out to be Data in disguise (there are hidden advantages to having a retarded twin evidently). Overall, it’s not a bad story and it really doesn’t copy TWoK as much as a lot of people claim that it does. It really doesn’t - not substantially more than say, First Contact does (which doesn’t).
There are problems however. Besides the aforementioned plot holes there are some later ones that also don’t make much sense. Like, for instance, a lot of the final battle. While a nice spectacle it doesn’t make sense. Why does the crew of the Enterprise spend a nice montage arming themselves with personnel weapons when they’re not likely to be used (though they are in a rather blatant case of Chekhov’s Gun)? Why is the Enterprise even able to hit the Scimitar while it’s cloaked? Why doesn’t Picard, when he decides that he needs to destroy the Scimitar’s ultimate weapon, send over a team of marines instead of, you know, going on his lonesome? This would have avoided Data’s later sacrifice, which would have been wholly unnecessary.
Ultimately, it’s not a bad story. But it’s not really a good one either.
Score: 6.4
Characters
The characters of Nemesis are a mixed bag. From time to time, they seem really strong and taken straight from the best of TNG. At other hand, they sometimes seem out of character entirely. And then there’s the original characters, with the mildly interesting Shinzon and the outright lame Remans. It’s therefore hard to come to a conclusion that fits the entire film.
Again, as you might expect (particularly since the villain is his clone) the film is about Picard, through and through. The character presented here is actually a nice improvement over that in Insurrection, while still consistent with the previous film as well as the version of the character in Generations, First Contact, and the show. For the most part. Picard is an idealistic, noble, and ultimately badass captain just as he is in the show but there are a few lapses that stick out.
For instance, Picard’s sudden transformation into a cocky ace pilot. When did that happen? All of a sudden Picard is a insert-your-favorite-sci-fi-pilot like character who leaps jeeps (you know, with wheels) over improbable (and indeed, perhaps impossible) leaps on overexposed landscapes or who drives a starfighter (yes, there are now starfighters in Star Trek apparently) through the interior hallways of the Scimitar. What? And that’s not even mentioning his apparent obsession with “unsafe velocities.”
But otherwise, Picard’s character is well-rounded and consistent with what’s been established. He is idealistic, sometimes to the point of being presumptuous and arrogant, which is complemented by his noble heart and powerful command of those around him. He’s a likeable character once again, one you can take seriously. At least when he’s not driving dune buggies.
Riker doesn’t actually get to do as much in this film as he did in previous ones but in an odd turn-around, his wife does. Usually left with little else to do but look pretty and use the lamest-ass Jedi empathy skills I’ve ever seen (“I sense great anger coming from the Klingon throwing furniture across the room”) Deanna Troi actually gets to do something in this movie. And you know, it’s actually useful. Namely, she proves to be the only thing that lets them see through the impenetrable cloak ripped straight out of TUC (see, see, Nemesis steals stuff from all the Star Trek movies). This actually is just the break the Enterprise needs.
However, it is Data and Data alone that really stands out (aside from Picard of course) in this film as a main character protagonist. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise when we consider that Brent Spiner was partially responsible for the film’s writing. Data’s character is a natural evolution from the one in First Contact, with tempered emotions and a cunning mind, even if he temporarily turns it off for the sake of plot convenience. He also is noble and selfless, as he was portrayed consistently in earlier mediums. And his heroic sacrifice, while unmerited within the constraints of the plot as I mentioned earlier, makes sense from a character point of view. Of course Data would sacrifice himself for the captain. It’s his nature.
Speaking of the sacrifice, here’s a very important thing to remember. Data wasn’t killed in an attempt to imitate Spock’s death in TWoK. Rather, Data was killed because Brent Spiner, while not tired of the role (he actually enjoyed it quite a bit from what I understand), felt (rightly) he was getting too old to play an ageless android. So, in order to prevent Data from returning even if another TNG film was made (which was considered unlikely) he had the character killed off. Not necessarily in a good way, but that’s that. Oddly, Spiner’s intent seems to have been subverted since, as in TWoK, it is very strongly hinted that Data’s not really did (and can be resurrected through B-4). That almost certainly was an intentional nod (or steal, depending on your opinion) to TWoK and its sequel, The Search for Spock.
As for B-4, he’s not really a character. He’s a plot device.
Now, as for the villains, it’s a bit more varied. On the one hand, Shinzon makes a surprisingly interesting villain, letting the film explore the seemingly endless nurture vs. nature debate to good effect. Is Shinzon really a copy of Picard? Or is he something different? The film seems to suggest both points of view, which makes the character an interesting focus for debate and consideration. He also has an appropriate backstory that meshes well with both the new film’s canon and that of the rest of the franchise (particularly the insidious politics of the Romulan Empire).
However, while his thing with Picard (which borders almost and pseudo-autosexuality of all things - and yes, I did just make the word “autosexuality” up) is reasonably explained and seems to have a strong motivation his thing against Earth and humanity in general isn’t. I mean, sure, he needs to make Picard’s cells into a soylent green machine to keep him from falling apart due to his genetic instability. I don’t know if that would actually work, of course, but it at least seems plausible. But why on Earth does he see the need to destroy the entire human race? Whenever Picard brings up this question Shinzon evades and changes the subject, as if the writers would rather not have the audience think about that. Ultimately, this weakens the character. But I shouldn’t be surprised. I thought that Commodus from Gladiator, who shares many more similarities with Shinzon than Khan does, was overrated.
Also, his intentionally stalker-rapist-whatever obsession with Deanna Troi doesn’t make much sense to me. I mean, she’s not that hot. Maybe back in the 80s when Marina Sirtis was closer to his age but now… squick. Granted, she’s the only human woman he’s ever seen (which means he must have either been brought to term in a Romulan surrogate womb or grown in a tank) but, he’s like, trying to eliminate the entire human race so that kind of (just a little) eliminates opportunities for dating with human women. Again, this seems to be a weird carry-over from Commodus who had some kind of oddball obsession with his sister (which the real Roman emperor did not, in fact have - that’s Caligula).
However, Shinzon’s flaws as a villain are nowhere near as bad as those for the entire Reman race as a whole. Rather than an interesting sub-culture of the Romulans who have gone from oppressed to oppressors in a bit of historical (and all too true) irony they’re presented as Always Chaotic Evil Orcs in Space. Where the Son'a of Insurrection seemed too lame and justified to be badass villains these guys try way too hard. The Reman Viceroy - who isn’t even given a name - screams evil second-in-command. It’s like the facet of his entire personality. He’s nothing beyond being a really loyal and somewhat competent mook with psychic powers.
Oh, well. At least the Romulan commander chick, while kind of shallow motivated (it seems her sole motivation is either lust or wrath for being scorned by Shinzon) is at least kind of cool. Kind of.
Ultimately, as I said, Nemesis has a rather mixed bag characters-wise. Some, like Picard and Data, stand out. Shinzon is also a fair try, though he’s weighed down by a few nagging weaknesses. Then there’s the entire Reman race, who are best forgotten, and B-4, who is forgotten.
Score: 6.9
Production
Unsurprisingly, a lot of money and effort was poured into Nemesis and it shows in what is probably the single strongest part of the film. Whatever else you say about the film you can’t say that everyone tried their hardest. They really did.
Nemesis exhibits some really cool special effects. The Enterprise-E, now definitively my favorite Enterprise design (though we’ll see how I like the new one once it’s in action tomorrow), looks as spectacular as ever - in fact, it looks better than before. And the Scimitar, while looking nothing like any previous Romulan ships (although, to be fair, neither does the Narada in the new film) other than with a vaguely bird-like design, looks pretty deadly and awesome. The design team scored big with that one.
Also, the planetary vistas, with the exception of Random Planet #27 that the crew finds B-4 on, are well-drawn as well. Romulus, for the brief moments we spot it, speaks of ancient and wondrous grandeur. Remus, while a lame shoe-in, looks appropriately sinister and desolate.
However, when it comes to the makeup department, I’m afraid that the film fails. This is no more obvious than in the case of the Remans who look as though they have been lifted straight out of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy as orcs in space. Honestly. Compare the two. There’s an uncanny similarity. It’s not exact, but it’s really, really close. And unimaginative.
Nor does it make sense, except, I suppose, because LotR orcs are corrupted elves and Romulans/Vulcans have always been somewhat like elves in space, although not really since the concept of fantasy elves was not ingrained in our culture when either race was created (Spock was actually modeled deliberately after Satan). But even if that were true, it wouldn’t justify the Remans’ appearance, which seems to be monstrous solely so the audience can immediately assume they are evil. And since the audience’s perception turns out to be right nothing is gained.
Have I mentioned I really, really dislike the Remans?
Acting wise, this film does alright. It’s hard to be taken seriously by praising Patrick Stewart again but once again, he’s pretty damn awesome, although he still doesn’t manage to convince me that Picard is Han Solo. No, that he doesn’t. And I won’t bother repeating myself by saying that Brent Spiner also does a great job. Most notable of the original TNG cast is actually Marina Sirtis, who, as I stated earlier, actually gets material to work with here rather than simply languishing in the background. And she does a good job.
So I’ll focus instead on Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy actually looks a good deal like Patrick Stewart, which is appropriate since he is playing the latter actor’s characer’s clone. It’s not a perfect resemblance (which is lampshaded) but it’s surprisingly close. He also has the chops to play the role and brings a surprising range of emotion to Shinzon, from manipulative to seemingly sympathetic, from wrathful to nostalgic, and from really creepy to almost kind of likeable. I was impressed.
Ron Perlman, who’s done better work in stuff like Hellboy, doesn’t exactly have a lot to work with here so I can forgive his really comatose and wooden acting. It still doesn’t mean it isn’t bad, though. Unfortunately.
Musically, this film is once again composed by Jerry Goldsmith. You have to feel kind of sorry for the composer, actually. Out of all the Trek films he’s composed for (and he’s done more than any other composer) only one was a hit (First Contact). It’s actually a small wonder that they keep getting him to come back. But they do and we love that he do, since his soundtracks are among the best parts of the Trek films. This is also the second to last film in which his music was used, since he died two years later and his very last soundtrack was rejected. In a way, it’s as much Goldsmith’s swan song as it is TNG’s.
And it’s brilliant, perhaps surpassing in some ways even his work on First Contact. I don’t think it quite does, but it’s quite suitably dramatic as well as majestic, showing how Goldsmith has evolved as a composer over the years, with hints of the kind of music he composed for period films like The Thirteenth Warrior, which is appropriate given the comparisons I’ve been making between this film and Gladiator (whose soundtrack Goldsmith did not work on, although he did submit a score for it that was rejected).
This is probably the single sweetest thing about the film. The score.
For the most part, Nemesis is another Star Trek film with great production values. While some bit, like the poor (although not unconvincing) makeup work for the Remans stand out, overall, this film really hits all the marks in visuals, sound, and acting.
Score: 9.5
Summary
Plot: 6.4
Characters: 6.8
Production: 9.5
Overall: 7.6
But honestly, it’s good to get this done. Tonight, I present Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis, the final two TNG films.
Tomorrow, it’s off to the new film. At some point, in my normally more regular Nivenus at the Desk, feature I will review it and its prequel, Star Trek: Countdown, which connects Nemesis to the new film. Maybe you’ll see the review tomorrow, though I wouldn’t count on it. I’ll try and make it swift and useful, however.
Thank you all for reading. Now, on to the finale.
What the Score Means
10.0: Excellent. Terrific. Might not be perfect, but it's damn close. Best in the field.
9.0: Pretty damn good. I've seen better stuff, but not much. Most people should enjoy it.
8.0: Pretty good, if you really like this sort of stuff, but it might be more underwhelming if you're not. Even if you are one of the latter, though, I'd expect you to find it passingly amusing, if nothing else.
7.0: Good or average, but take note that your mileage may vary. In other words, if you're already a fan or predisposed to works like this you may really like it or think it's good. But if you're not, steer clear or at least approach with a cautiously open mind.
6.0: Meh. You might enjoy it, but I wouldn't guarantee it. If you do like it, it'll probably be a passing thing and I wouldn't count on it having any revisitable value. Semi-average, semi-poor. What I like to call "thoroughly mediocre."
5.0: This steps beyond thoroughly mediocre into the realm of true bad. I'd be surprised if anyone thought this was high quality and would be highly suspect of their opinions from the on on matters of criticism. It might not be horrible, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
4.0: Okay, we've definitely passed into bad here. This stuff actually will make you walk out of a movie theater it's so lame. It's not even stylistically bad. It's just boring bad and you likely won't have the patience to go through with it.
3.0: This is a weird little category few get to but a few deliberately reach for. So bad it's good. That is to say, if you take this at face value it's going to be horrific. But, if you just hang along for the ride and turn off your brain or, conversely, decide to get ridiculously symbolic about it, it can actually be very entertaining, if only for its comically bad quality.
2.0: Could be so bad it's good, but more likely this has verged into so bad it's horrible quality. There's nothing funny about it, except perhaps that the human mind could be so warped that it would actually produce the shit. Not fun.
0-1.0: Burn! Burrrrrrn! Burn the evil! It hurts!
Table of Contents
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek Nemesis
Star Trek: Insurrection
Overview
NOTE: Since this is a retrospective review and I fully anticipate the reader to have already seen the film expect some spoilers, though I will try my best to refrain from them. Look at it this way, I may one day get around to doing a retrospective of ESB. I will not refrain from saying Luke's father is Vader.
Many reviewers imagined that Star Trek: First Contact was a sign that Trek was going to suddenly be awesome again. It hit all the right notes, was on par with the legendary The Wrath of Khan and TOS film finale The Undiscovered Country while successfully making the TNG cast just as badass as the TOS one had been. In fact, of all the Trek films ever made First Contact received the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating (although it looks like the new Star Trek might beat it). So, surely, the next film would be just pure awesomeness?
No such luck unfortunately.
Star Trek: Insurrection is a conundrum. One has to wonder precisely what they were smoking when they made this film since it is not only of lower quality than the film that preceded it but, indeed, of lower quality than most of the rest of the Trek films, while making Sci-Fi Original Movies look good. It’s more anvilicious than The Voyage Home was (which is an accomplishment I suppose), more poorly paced than The Motion Picture (though not as slow), and filled with villains that make Sybok seem outright malevolent. It never quite reaches TFF quality but, depending on your view on that particular film that might not be such a good thing.
It’s a shame, though, because First Contact really was good so it’s disappointing to see Insurrection follow it.
Plot
Insurrection’s plot should’ve been the first warning to the producers. Indeed, it actually was. Although Michael Piller, who wrote this instead of RDM and Brannon Braga since they were busy working on Mission Impossible II, was a veteran Trek writer even he was unsettled when his friend and fellow writer Ira Steven Behr, creator of DS9 confronted him about the script, recommending revisions. Such revisions were made, but ultimately it wasn’t enough.
As in the case of Generations the main problem with Insurrection is that it feels like a really, really drawn out and overly long episode of TNG stretched to its limits. And not one of those really cool season finales either. No, this is one of your average, mundane, ultimately preachy TNG episodes. The ones where Picard gives a long speech about something everybody knows (to quote the Picard Song). Somehow, Piller thought this was a good idea and Insurrection was his conscious attempt to bring back the “feel” of TNG and Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future.
The weird thing is that, in actuality, Insurrection doesn’t have a very utopian setting at all. Or at least, not the way that Piller ends up writing about it. After all, this is the only Star Trek film where the Federation themselves (rather than a rogue faction like in TUC) are the bad guys (hence the title). Or at least designated as such.
The film opens with Data, assigned away from the Enterprise for some unexplained reason, disobeying orders, appearing to go psycho, and breaking the Prime Directive by revealing to the communal, Space Amish society that there’s a big giant Federation science team watching them. One thing I’m a bit confused about is the fact that Data is wearing what appears to be a cloaking suit in spite of the fact that the Federation doesn’t even have a reactor-sized cloaking device all of their own, having only received the designs for one from the Romulans for building the Defiant a few years earlier. Quick learners those Federation folks. Though, if that’s the case, why doesn’t the entire Federation use those things when fighting the Dominion or the Borg, hm?
Never mind. Guess we’re not supposed to think about that.
Meanwhile, Picard’s off welcoming a new race into the Federation, something he appears wholly uncomfortable about in spite of his long career as a diplomat. Worf from Deep Space 9 is assigned to the Enterprise for some oddball reason while on shore leave - an ultimately disappointing and far more transparent way of placing him into the story than in First Contact, where he had a legitimate reason for being where the Enterprise was. Guess they didn’t care this time round, especially since Worf is suddenly treated like he’s on duty for the rest of the film.
Picard receives a message from Admiral Matthew Dougherty, who smiles a bit too much to be trustworthy, telling him that Data has gone haywire and is holding the Federation science team hostage on the planet Ba'ku within a weird little unexplainable astronomical phenomenon known as the Briar Patch. Dougherty asks Picard not to intervene as they have it “all under control.” Picard, for some oddball reason (perhaps, again, because Admiral Dougherty smiles too much) decides to disobey the Admiral’s orders, going on a “detour” in the opposite direction of their ordered destination during a time of war (with the Dominion).
If this were the real world Picard would get, at the very least, a very harsh slap on the wrist for this. Imagine if a colonel in the United States Army decided that, rather than going to Iraq as he was ordered, he’d like to head over to Peru where one of his old friends was currently committing mutiny? The odd thing is that it isn’t even portrayed as a serious breach of orders but rather just a harmless bit of eccentricity from Picard. Again, apparently we aren’t supposed to think too hard about this.
Once they get there they find that, indeed, Data is acting pretty weird. And… apparently the only way to subdue him is to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. What? Honestly, what were they smoking? Can I have some of it… please?
But no, quite literally, they get Data to sing Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, which distracts him enough (since he’s apparently not just crazy but outright stupid) for them to dock the shuttlecraft with Data’s ship and send Worf aboard the shuttlecraft. I still can’t think of way to make this sound smart.
After this Data is brought aboard and the crew begins to examine him while he is deactivated. They also send an away team down to the village, of course composed of the captain and his crew, to investigate the events that occurred there and recover the hostages. They discover, to their surprise that everyone is perfectly absolutely happy and that the Ba'ku are actually Space Amish rather than simple primitives. Of course, they also happen to be Space Amish with none of the problems associated with a rural, pre-industrial civilization. Stuff like, oh, I don’t know, central heating, public water, artificial lighting, etc, etc.
They also quickly discover that the Ba'ku, who number only 500 (seriously, it’s a planet the size of my hometown), a number far too small to support a species’ continuation (the lowest we ever got was a few thousand, which nearly caused us to die out) and who are insanely human like in appearance (they don’t even have foreridges!), are immortal and capable of healing from most wounds due to some weird magical radiation that surrounds the planet.
That’s right. Radiation, which normally causes genetic decay by shooting atoms out of your DNA, is actually making the Ba'ku immortal, while also apparently giving them, in one throwaway scene never mentioned again, the capacity to control time. While this at least handwaves away the problem of lacking industrial-scale medicine, it still doesn’t explain why their population is so small after 300 years, especially since they seem to still have children who grow at a regular pace. Actually, that last part gets an inferred reason later on but it’s not a very pleasant one and it still doesn’t make much sense. The whole thing really is a wall banger.
It soon becomes apparent that this magical radiation stuff can work its magic on anyone, including humans. However, it takes years for it to work effectively, at least according to Admiral Dougherty, in spite of the fact that Geordi (a character born blind) receives eyesight within hours of arriving at Ba'ku. Go figure. Also, apparently it’s implied his eyesight will revert back to its original state when he leaves. Apparently there’s no ontological inertia in this film.
The film then quickly reveals that the Federation intends to kidnap the entire population of the planet and move them offworld so they won’t be killed when they begin mining the planet’s rings for an immortality serum, which will make the planet uninhabitable for about a decade. One wonders why they don’t simply ask but maybe that’s because the Ba'ku are a bunch of pretentious assholes who think they’re better than anyone who isn’t immortal and doesn’t live on a planet with magical radiation and no industrial technology. Yay for self-righteous, superiority complex Space Amish.
It’s also later revealed that the group who developed the technology for this process are the same species as the Space Amish and were exiled some time back for daring to use technology. The process somehow made them very ill and they’re now dying out and will go extinct. They also happen to have conquered a large swathe of the galaxy in the meantime, in spite of their home planet’s population of only 500. Seriously? Are they really just that epic or were there several billion rebels who were somehow defeated by the 500 and exiled?
I’ll just say it here and now. The plot doesn’t make sense. It really, really doesn’t. The planet Ba'ku and its utopian culture doesn’t make sense. The Federation’s completely inane decision process in the film doesn’t make sense. The Son'a (the exiled Ba'ku) don’t make sense as villains. Data’s off the wall antics in the beginning don’t make sense. It all. Just. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.
This plot is close to TFF in awfulness but it actually has a few good moments spread throughout and is suitably dramatic to be mildly entertaining, as long as you pretend you’re not watching a supposedly intellectual Star Trek film and are instead watching something like Pearl Harbor, complete with lame and forced romantic subplots (two of them in fact).
A vast disappointment.
Score: 4.2 (out of 10)
Characters
The characters of Insurrection are no more interesting really than the plot. Again, this is hard to fathom, since Michael Piller was the one who wrote Best of Both Worlds and Yesterday’s Enterprise, two of TNG’s best episodes, as well as being responsible for the Maquis, one of the many interesting villains from DS9. So why he fails so utterly here is beyond me.
Picard goes from badass, sometime pontificating, but still likeable captain figure man who knows where to draw the “lin-ya!” to schoolboy with a crush and lame mouthpiece for political correctiveness. Oh, yes, I know that he’s operated in these fields before, but these are aspects of his character best ignored. Apparently, this is partially Patrick Stewart who decided he wanted the captain to get some nookie in Insurrection and insisted the film be lighter, probably killing the chance of ever making the Son'a seem like credible villains.
So we’re stuck with a different Picard. A Picard who’s apparently bored with diplomacy (note his unease when welcoming a new race into the Federation) but disparaging of violence (“remember when we used to be explorers?”), which makes you wonder why he’s even in Starfleet since he seems to hate any job they give to him. He also has a very out-of-nowhere romantic attachment to one of the Ba'ku, Anij, who, I might add, is 300 years older than him. At least (they say that the planet’s radiation actually reversed their aging so she might be far older than she appears given Star Trek age expectancies).
Anij herself is the dreaded return of Dr. Taylor from The Voyage Home - a forced romantic interest who spends most of her time looking her nose down at the audience. She never stops talking about how “outsiders” (i.e., people not from a magical planet) are always so caught up in their lives that they never notice anything, how they’re stupid and prejudiced (ignoring the hypocrisy in her own statements), how they’re addicted to their insidious technology, and how really they’d all be better if they lived on Ba'ku. Except then she and the other Ba'ku don’t feel like sharing, so that’s kind of that.
I’m obviously supposed to like Anij but I can’t help but secretly pine for her death when she gets gravely injured in a cave-in later in the story. Of course, given the magical healing wonders of Ba'ku she recovers to as good as new. Ugh.
How about the Riker and Troi romance? I’m not opposed really to their pairing and it least this finally settles the Will They or Won’t They dynamic that’s been going on since the pilot, which aired some eleven years prior. But it comes off really, really cheesy. Riker literally leaps into Troi’s lap, starting it off, to be followed with a quick kiss, which results in Troi claiming she’s never kissed Riker with a beard (which gives him an excuse to shave it). Forget the fact that she has - several times. That’s not really the annoying part. It’s just that suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, they’re bathing together and smooching.
Riker at least gets a moment to be the captain, which he does far better really than Picard does in this movie. It’s ruined, however, by him using a joystick to pilot the Enterprise as well as him ejecting the ship’s warp core to destroy a pursuing vessel. Shouldn’t that leave them, I don’t know, dead in the water? But no, apparently it doesn’t impede their time sensitive mission at all.
And the less said about Worf’s lapse into “puberty” the better.
I think I’ll go bury my head in the sand.
Data also gets shoehorned into a really, really bad subplot in which he “learns” to be a kid. Seriously. Didn’t he get past that a few seasons ago? Or more recently, in Generations wherein he has an equally embarrassing journey of self-discovery into the joys (or lack thereof) of emotions. Oh, boy. In the film’s ending scene he’s actually playing in a haystack with a six year-old boy.
And the villains, as Ira Steven Behr put it, are paper tigers. First off, it’s hard not to feel bad for them. They’re basically characters who were banished to a life of slow decay for the crime of blasphemy on a planet full of Luddites. They’re really just trying to survive. Sure, there methods are extreme but these seem to be evil for the point of being evil. Cause, you know, there’s no point in trying to peacefully extract the Ba'ku. Only force will show them. I mean, we have a motivation for their ultimate goal but not their methods. Why are they assholes?
The only mildly interesting character is actually Admiral Dougherty, who at least has a semblance of complexity in his character. He’s not a shoehorned, Obviously Evil® villain like the Son'a though, once again, he smiles too much to be nice, and he’s not a sickeningly self-righteous prick like Picard sometimes seems like in the movie. No, he actually explains himself relatively well. I’m not a fan of Utilitarian ethics so, really, I should side with Picard. But the fact that there’s no reason at all explained on screen that the Ba'ku couldn’t be temporarily move off world and then returned later makes Dougherty seem like he’s in the right while Picard’s just being pretentious. Dougherty even tries to moderate the methodology of his Son'a allies, tempering their apparently bloodthirsty nature.
How could these characters be so badly written? I really have no idea.
Score: 1.0 (out of 10)
Production
One of the few things that saves this film from being the same nightmare that TFF was is that the production values are actually up to par. I imagine this is partially because Paramount had actually grown a brain and realized that actually funding a film that you’re producing is probably a good idea. In spite of the horrible script and poor characterization, Insurrection is slightly redeemed through special effects.
After all, the Enterprise-E still looks pretty fantastic. Not quite as good as it did in First Contact, which is a disappointment, but this may be partially because that we only see it from a distance, whereas in the previous film we got to get up close and personal with it. The captain’s yacht the Cousteau is also a nice touch, with good design even if it’s actual purpose is a bit muddled (why not just use a shuttlecraft)? And, weird and unexplained as it is the Briar Patch looks pretty awesome, as does the planet Ba'ku.
However, the visuals are not wholly up to par. For instance, though the Federation ships look nice enough the Son'a ships are laughable. It’s as if the special effects supervisors realized that the Ba'ku weren’t nasty enough to be taken seriously so they overcompensated in the visuals department by littering the Ba'ku ships with big, pointless spikes, trying to tell the audience through visual subtext that, “yes, these people are really evil badasses.”
Speaking of which, the Son'a themselves look ridiculous, what with their plastic surgery gone mad. Maybe that’s why the makeup team didn’t even try on the Ba'ku, who look exactly like humans, making Geordi look like an alien by comparison with his cybernetically modified eyes.
Acting wise, the actors do at least try. Patrick Stewart seems to have genuinely thought this was a great movie, enjoying himself thoroughly in his role. He almost makes Picard likeable in spite of the wonkiness of the character in this film. He ultimately fails, however, mostly due to the script, but he still manages to project with his usual charisma and theatrical feel for drama.
Similarly, Jonathan Frakes, tries similarly to do his best, in spite of the ridiculous lines given him. He’s actually publicly disowned the film several times, in spite of the fact he directed it. Why he chose to direct if he thought the script was so bad is beyond me (though money probably was a factor) but his commentary for the film was evidently so rabid that they decided not to include it on the DVD release.
I have to wonder about F. Murray Abraham though. How on earth did they get him for the role, which he supposedly loved? His is easily the lamest Star Trek villain and yet here is an actor who played, of all things, Salieri from Amadeus and won an Oscar for his performance. And it’s not just that his character is badly written. He plays the role badly as well, the worst parts for me being the many, many times that the character has a Big No moment done in a really, really, gratingly cheesy manner that sounds pathetic rather than dramatic.
Ugh.
Donna Murphy as Anij is also wholly terrible, not even bringing charm to a role that is horrible to begin with. She’s instead the stereotypical worldly wise middle-aged woman who teaches middle-aged man about the secrets of life. Anthony Zerbe as Admiral Dougherty is, at least, decent, with a sufficient level of stage presence to hold his own against Patrick Stewart.
Once again, Jerry Goldsmith scores and his soundtrack is actually pretty good, like most of his work. This redeems, in some small manner, the other parts of the film. However, it’s still not as good as his work for TMP or First Contact.
Ultimately, the production values of Insurrection, while not outright bad, are somewhat average and far from enough to save the film from its other, less notable qualities.
Score: 7.5 (out of 10)
Summary
Plot: 4.2
Characters: 1.0
Production: 7.5
Overall: 4.2
Star Trek Nemesis
Overview
NOTE: Since this is a retrospective review and I fully anticipate the reader to have already seen the film expect some spoilers, though I will try my best to refrain from them. Look at it this way, I may one day get around to doing a retrospective of ESB. I will not refrain from saying Luke's father is Vader.
Star Trek Nemesis is a film with a reputation nearly as venomous as that surrounding The Final Frontier. I say not quite as venomous because it at least is still talked about, while TFF has been relegated to a Voldemort-like status in that it is the “film of which we do not speak.” Comparatively, Nemesis is brought up all the time, as an abomination of filmmaking and Star Trek.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen the movie. The last time was when it was in theaters, back in my home town of Point Arena, California when I was 14. So I’d kind of forgotten whether or not it deserved its reputation. I remembered the plot well enough but the details eluded my memory. However, I wasn’t particularly impressed at the time and, given my recent experiences with TFF and Generations, both of which I expected to be better than I remembered them, I was willing to believe that, yes, it a bane unto the franchise.
Lo and behold, I was wrong. While far from a great film or even a pretty good one, Nemesis is by no means the abomination many make it out to be. At least, not insofar as I could tell. Sure, it’s by no means up to par with most of the TOS films and it’s a disappointment considering First Contact. However, I would argue very strongly that it is actually a better film than Insurrection, which seems to be forgotten.
I’m not exactly sure why it gets such a venomous reputation. Maybe it’s because the actors themselves were more than happy to say bad things about it while it was in production. Maybe it’s because the director, Stuart Baird is an average director who’s far better at editing. Maybe it’s because the film makes not attempt at hiding the fact that it is taking inspiration from The Wrath of Khan. Maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone was getting bored with Star Trek and its low box office and critical ratings seemed to justify the criticism.
More likely, I think, it’s because it’s the last TNG film, something that was very much known though not officially declared even before production for the film had wrapped up. It had been determined that TNG had run its run and that it was time for Star Trek to open up for some breathing room, hence the plans for the Enterprise film that never came to fruition (DS9 and Voyager wouldn’t really have worked, however). And as a swan song for the cast Nemesis is less effective. It’s not bad, really, but it doesn’t have the same satisfying result that, say, The Undiscovered Country did.
However, as a film in of itself, it’s not that bad. It’s fairly decent, actually, though far from without problems.
Plot
Before we rave about the plot it’s probably important to remember one thing. This is the only Star Trek film written by an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter besides Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and The Undiscovered Country, the three of which were written partially by Nicholas Meyer. This film was written by John Logan, best known for his screenplay for the film Gladiator as well as The Aviator and, more recently, the film version of Sweeney Todd. He might not be the kind of writer who generally writes for Star Trek, but he’s clearly earned his way into fame.
Not that this necessarily means the story is good. Michael Piller and RDM were and are (respectively, given Piller’s unfortunate passing) both greater writers, as is Harve Bennett, all of whom wrote disappointing Trek films. However, it’s worth remembering that Nemesis wasn’t put together by a bunch of talentless hacks who hated the franchise, as is quite often assumed by some of the more rabid elements of the fanbase.
The plot is itself, not among the best in Star Trek and it suffers from more than a few lapses in logic. The film starts with an opening on Romulus, where the Senate rejects the idea of negotiating with the Remans (worst new canon in this film, actually). Actually, it’s almost as if Logan’s experience with Gladiator was a bit too strong for this film, since the Romulans come off far too much (though, granted, this is something that dates back to their original appearance in Balance of Terror and is hard to help with their meaningful name) like Romans. More specifically, the Romans in Gladiator.
In fact, I would say that Gladiator was as much an influence on this film as was Wrath of Khan, given that, actually, except for a few plot points, the story really isn’t all that similar. It isn’t, after all, about a wrathful old enemy of Picard’s come back from the dead who intends to get revenge on him by turning a peaceful MacGuffin into a world-eating machine. Oh, sure, there’s a world-eating machine and Shinzon could be described as wrathful. But the film’s more about a coup d’état, its fallout, and the rivalry between two men than a path of mad vengeance. Honestly.
Anyhow, the Romulans turning down the Remans’ offer turns out to be a bad idea since a traitor within their fold unleashes a deadly radiation weapon that basically annihilates the Romulan government, creating a new one that Shinzon and the Remans can run. Surprise, surprise.
Meanwhile, Picard serves as the best man in Riker and Troi’s wedding. IGN recently described this as a “fan fiction”-like wedding. Ignoring the fact that there is a more than slightly implied insult to all fan fiction present in that statement (which I strongly disagreed with) I’m not sure I understand what they mean. I mean, yes, one could describe it as fan fiction-esque since it includes virtually every major TNG character as a guest, including Guinan and the dreaded Wesley Crusher.
Yes, Picard is serving as the best man instead of some random chum of Riker’s. And yes, Data breaks out and sings. But somehow, to me, this seems appropriate rather than forced. After all, Picard has worked non-stop beside Riker for more than a decade. Surely they’ve formed a close bond by that point (which is shown several times in the series)? Not to mention that Guinan was a friend to everyone or that Wesley, while annoying for us, was beloved by the crew. Or that Worf is a family friend, at least for Troi. And let’s not forget that Data breaks into song on several occasions, with it at least making sense here, unlike in Insurrections. So, no, I don’t think the wedding scene is all that bad.
I will say this, however, the wedding serves, just like the diplomatic mission in Insurrection, as a transparent method to introduce Worf into the story, in spite of the fact he no longer serves on the Enterprise. In fact, if I recall correctly, he’s now an ambassador to the Klingon Empire, so why he’s serving on the Enterprise during his free time as a tactical officer is beyond me.
Anyhow, the wedding is very short and bears little relevance to the plot other than allowing Troi and Riker to finally end that decade-long ship-teasing once and for all (hopefully). What follows, however, is the crew preparing for the second ceremony on Betazed when they receive an unusually strong positronic signature. Since positrons seem to have become associated with Star Trek androids thanks to Roddenberry’s association with scifi giant Isaac Asimov they suspect it has something to do with Data. Sure enough they investigate.
Now, there is a plot hole here. Why on earth can they detect the positronic signature? Surely Data isn’t broadcasting one that powerful on a regular basis, otherwise he’d surely interfere with comm. chatter between the Enterprise and other ships. So why is this signature so big, given that it is coming from a similarly size android? A possible answer is given later in the film (namely that it’s, in Admiral Akbar’s immortal words, a trap) but this never seems to occur to the characters who simply head to the planet, send down an away team composed solely of Picard and Data, and attempt to retrieve the android. And they never stop to think, “hm, isn’t this all just a bit convenient? We pick up an absurdly strong signal coming from a robot scattered in pieces across a desert, are immediately thereafter attacked by a group of space orcs, and, oh, by the way, this robot looks a mighty lot like Data - in fact identical - not to mention his evil twin brother Lore.”
So this is a bit of Plot Induced Stupidity. It is not, however, a plot wrecker. What is increasingly annoying, however, is that this does not occur to them until far, far later in the script, with Data being so foolish as to actually download his entire memory banks (which contain an ungodly amount of security sensitive information about the Federation, as the film’s villain later even points out) into the android, apparently named B-4. So, yeah, the fans have a right to complain about this.
After this little adventure, during which Picard decides he is apparently Han Solo, deciding he doesn’t like to be told the odds, Picard is contacted, in a neat little continuity-enhancing moment, Admiral Janeway. Voyager had come to its conclusion roughly two years earlier so this little reference was appropriate given that the ship did, indeed, return to the Federation. I’m not really a fan of Voyager but I can appreciate the fan service the cameo was meant to serve as, which is followed also by a reference to each of the previous TNG films (“the Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans, and even that pesky Dr. Soran”). This is, by the way, immediately after Janeway gives Picard his new assignment - a diplomatic mission to Romulus to form a treaty with the new government, run by the Reman praetor Shinzon.
Fair enough mission, though there are a few issues, such as, exactly what Janeway means by “peace.” After all, the Romulans have been relatively friendly with the Federation for the past several years, allying with them during the Dominion War and providing the schematics for a cloaking device for the Defiant. My guess is that it was intended that said relations have lapsed slightly and that the Federation is seeking a more permanent peace and an end to Romulus’ imposed isolationism, in a manner similar to Kirk’s peace mission to the Klingon Empire in TUC. However, none of this is explained on screen.
Regardless, it’s a fair premise and, as in TUC, the first meeting between Federation and Romulan is appropriately edgy. One thing that doesn’t make sense, however, is how fricking powerful the Scimitar, Praetor Shinzon’s flagship, is. It makes the Enterprise look pathetic by comparison and yet was supposedly built in secret by the Remans, while they were still at what was essentially slave status within the Romulan Star Empire. I mean, I could believe it if they stole the ship, since 24th Romulan ships have been consistently shown to be more powerful and impressive than their Federation equivalents. But saying it’s a Reman ship is a bit much.
By the way, let me go on a tangent here. The Remans are a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. Not only does it reinforce the pointless Romans in Space(!) vibe that the Romulans have going for them but it doesn’t make sense. Their homeworld is a twin of Romulus? Which orbits the sun at a different rate? And is tidally locked in spite of being further from Romulus’ star than Romulus itself? That doesn’t make any sense. Nor does the idea that the Romulans somehow have a need for Reman slaves when, well, organic labor is more cheaply replaced with mechanical labor given sufficient technology. To be fair, maybe the use of the word “slave” is an inappropriate anachronism and perhaps the Remans aren’t so much physically mining as they are operating the drills and such the way the prisoners of Rura Penthe do. Still.
And that’s not even going into the design of the Remans, which I will get into later under production.
Anyhow, back to the plot. The crew of the Enterprise thereafter meet with Shinzon who turns out to be Picard’s clone. What? Actually, this is made surprisingly interesting and dealt with in a semi-quasi-realistic manner. But it is still pretty out there and from out of nowhere. It also threatens to take over the film’s story quite a lot actually, as you might imagine given the title (for those who don’t know, nemesis means something more specific than enemy - it means basically an evil counterpart, the evil version of the rival).
Shinzon at first seems quite reasonable. After all, why should the Remans want to continue the policies of the Romulans before them? However, it is, after all, a ruse. This part doesn’t make very much sense, at least from how it’s explained. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense that Shinzon wants to lure Picard to Romulan space - that’s adequately explained since it turns out Shinzon, having been created to replace Picard at some unspecified date, is deteriorating due to genetic instability (he was, in short, grown too fast). Rather, it’s never adequately explained as to why Shinzon wants to wipe out the human race. And since the rest of the plot rests on this goal of his, it’s sort of a wall banger.
However, although the crew of the Enterprise was stupid enough to download Data’s memory files into B-4 they’re not stupid enough to fall for Shinzon’s gambit. They see through his ruse and his sympathetic speeches, realizing that he, is, in fact, trying to play them. They act accordingly.
The plot is strong in several respects, in spite of its flaws. First of all, it has really good pacing and it never seems like the film slows to a crawl. There’s also a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution and there are enough surprises and twists hidden in the film to keep the film suspenseful. For example, “B-4” turning out to be Data in disguise (there are hidden advantages to having a retarded twin evidently). Overall, it’s not a bad story and it really doesn’t copy TWoK as much as a lot of people claim that it does. It really doesn’t - not substantially more than say, First Contact does (which doesn’t).
There are problems however. Besides the aforementioned plot holes there are some later ones that also don’t make much sense. Like, for instance, a lot of the final battle. While a nice spectacle it doesn’t make sense. Why does the crew of the Enterprise spend a nice montage arming themselves with personnel weapons when they’re not likely to be used (though they are in a rather blatant case of Chekhov’s Gun)? Why is the Enterprise even able to hit the Scimitar while it’s cloaked? Why doesn’t Picard, when he decides that he needs to destroy the Scimitar’s ultimate weapon, send over a team of marines instead of, you know, going on his lonesome? This would have avoided Data’s later sacrifice, which would have been wholly unnecessary.
Ultimately, it’s not a bad story. But it’s not really a good one either.
Score: 6.4
Characters
The characters of Nemesis are a mixed bag. From time to time, they seem really strong and taken straight from the best of TNG. At other hand, they sometimes seem out of character entirely. And then there’s the original characters, with the mildly interesting Shinzon and the outright lame Remans. It’s therefore hard to come to a conclusion that fits the entire film.
Again, as you might expect (particularly since the villain is his clone) the film is about Picard, through and through. The character presented here is actually a nice improvement over that in Insurrection, while still consistent with the previous film as well as the version of the character in Generations, First Contact, and the show. For the most part. Picard is an idealistic, noble, and ultimately badass captain just as he is in the show but there are a few lapses that stick out.
For instance, Picard’s sudden transformation into a cocky ace pilot. When did that happen? All of a sudden Picard is a insert-your-favorite-sci-fi-pilot like character who leaps jeeps (you know, with wheels) over improbable (and indeed, perhaps impossible) leaps on overexposed landscapes or who drives a starfighter (yes, there are now starfighters in Star Trek apparently) through the interior hallways of the Scimitar. What? And that’s not even mentioning his apparent obsession with “unsafe velocities.”
But otherwise, Picard’s character is well-rounded and consistent with what’s been established. He is idealistic, sometimes to the point of being presumptuous and arrogant, which is complemented by his noble heart and powerful command of those around him. He’s a likeable character once again, one you can take seriously. At least when he’s not driving dune buggies.
Riker doesn’t actually get to do as much in this film as he did in previous ones but in an odd turn-around, his wife does. Usually left with little else to do but look pretty and use the lamest-ass Jedi empathy skills I’ve ever seen (“I sense great anger coming from the Klingon throwing furniture across the room”) Deanna Troi actually gets to do something in this movie. And you know, it’s actually useful. Namely, she proves to be the only thing that lets them see through the impenetrable cloak ripped straight out of TUC (see, see, Nemesis steals stuff from all the Star Trek movies). This actually is just the break the Enterprise needs.
However, it is Data and Data alone that really stands out (aside from Picard of course) in this film as a main character protagonist. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise when we consider that Brent Spiner was partially responsible for the film’s writing. Data’s character is a natural evolution from the one in First Contact, with tempered emotions and a cunning mind, even if he temporarily turns it off for the sake of plot convenience. He also is noble and selfless, as he was portrayed consistently in earlier mediums. And his heroic sacrifice, while unmerited within the constraints of the plot as I mentioned earlier, makes sense from a character point of view. Of course Data would sacrifice himself for the captain. It’s his nature.
Speaking of the sacrifice, here’s a very important thing to remember. Data wasn’t killed in an attempt to imitate Spock’s death in TWoK. Rather, Data was killed because Brent Spiner, while not tired of the role (he actually enjoyed it quite a bit from what I understand), felt (rightly) he was getting too old to play an ageless android. So, in order to prevent Data from returning even if another TNG film was made (which was considered unlikely) he had the character killed off. Not necessarily in a good way, but that’s that. Oddly, Spiner’s intent seems to have been subverted since, as in TWoK, it is very strongly hinted that Data’s not really did (and can be resurrected through B-4). That almost certainly was an intentional nod (or steal, depending on your opinion) to TWoK and its sequel, The Search for Spock.
As for B-4, he’s not really a character. He’s a plot device.
Now, as for the villains, it’s a bit more varied. On the one hand, Shinzon makes a surprisingly interesting villain, letting the film explore the seemingly endless nurture vs. nature debate to good effect. Is Shinzon really a copy of Picard? Or is he something different? The film seems to suggest both points of view, which makes the character an interesting focus for debate and consideration. He also has an appropriate backstory that meshes well with both the new film’s canon and that of the rest of the franchise (particularly the insidious politics of the Romulan Empire).
However, while his thing with Picard (which borders almost and pseudo-autosexuality of all things - and yes, I did just make the word “autosexuality” up) is reasonably explained and seems to have a strong motivation his thing against Earth and humanity in general isn’t. I mean, sure, he needs to make Picard’s cells into a soylent green machine to keep him from falling apart due to his genetic instability. I don’t know if that would actually work, of course, but it at least seems plausible. But why on Earth does he see the need to destroy the entire human race? Whenever Picard brings up this question Shinzon evades and changes the subject, as if the writers would rather not have the audience think about that. Ultimately, this weakens the character. But I shouldn’t be surprised. I thought that Commodus from Gladiator, who shares many more similarities with Shinzon than Khan does, was overrated.
Also, his intentionally stalker-rapist-whatever obsession with Deanna Troi doesn’t make much sense to me. I mean, she’s not that hot. Maybe back in the 80s when Marina Sirtis was closer to his age but now… squick. Granted, she’s the only human woman he’s ever seen (which means he must have either been brought to term in a Romulan surrogate womb or grown in a tank) but, he’s like, trying to eliminate the entire human race so that kind of (just a little) eliminates opportunities for dating with human women. Again, this seems to be a weird carry-over from Commodus who had some kind of oddball obsession with his sister (which the real Roman emperor did not, in fact have - that’s Caligula).
However, Shinzon’s flaws as a villain are nowhere near as bad as those for the entire Reman race as a whole. Rather than an interesting sub-culture of the Romulans who have gone from oppressed to oppressors in a bit of historical (and all too true) irony they’re presented as Always Chaotic Evil Orcs in Space. Where the Son'a of Insurrection seemed too lame and justified to be badass villains these guys try way too hard. The Reman Viceroy - who isn’t even given a name - screams evil second-in-command. It’s like the facet of his entire personality. He’s nothing beyond being a really loyal and somewhat competent mook with psychic powers.
Oh, well. At least the Romulan commander chick, while kind of shallow motivated (it seems her sole motivation is either lust or wrath for being scorned by Shinzon) is at least kind of cool. Kind of.
Ultimately, as I said, Nemesis has a rather mixed bag characters-wise. Some, like Picard and Data, stand out. Shinzon is also a fair try, though he’s weighed down by a few nagging weaknesses. Then there’s the entire Reman race, who are best forgotten, and B-4, who is forgotten.
Score: 6.9
Production
Unsurprisingly, a lot of money and effort was poured into Nemesis and it shows in what is probably the single strongest part of the film. Whatever else you say about the film you can’t say that everyone tried their hardest. They really did.
Nemesis exhibits some really cool special effects. The Enterprise-E, now definitively my favorite Enterprise design (though we’ll see how I like the new one once it’s in action tomorrow), looks as spectacular as ever - in fact, it looks better than before. And the Scimitar, while looking nothing like any previous Romulan ships (although, to be fair, neither does the Narada in the new film) other than with a vaguely bird-like design, looks pretty deadly and awesome. The design team scored big with that one.
Also, the planetary vistas, with the exception of Random Planet #27 that the crew finds B-4 on, are well-drawn as well. Romulus, for the brief moments we spot it, speaks of ancient and wondrous grandeur. Remus, while a lame shoe-in, looks appropriately sinister and desolate.
However, when it comes to the makeup department, I’m afraid that the film fails. This is no more obvious than in the case of the Remans who look as though they have been lifted straight out of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy as orcs in space. Honestly. Compare the two. There’s an uncanny similarity. It’s not exact, but it’s really, really close. And unimaginative.
Nor does it make sense, except, I suppose, because LotR orcs are corrupted elves and Romulans/Vulcans have always been somewhat like elves in space, although not really since the concept of fantasy elves was not ingrained in our culture when either race was created (Spock was actually modeled deliberately after Satan). But even if that were true, it wouldn’t justify the Remans’ appearance, which seems to be monstrous solely so the audience can immediately assume they are evil. And since the audience’s perception turns out to be right nothing is gained.
Have I mentioned I really, really dislike the Remans?
Acting wise, this film does alright. It’s hard to be taken seriously by praising Patrick Stewart again but once again, he’s pretty damn awesome, although he still doesn’t manage to convince me that Picard is Han Solo. No, that he doesn’t. And I won’t bother repeating myself by saying that Brent Spiner also does a great job. Most notable of the original TNG cast is actually Marina Sirtis, who, as I stated earlier, actually gets material to work with here rather than simply languishing in the background. And she does a good job.
So I’ll focus instead on Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy actually looks a good deal like Patrick Stewart, which is appropriate since he is playing the latter actor’s characer’s clone. It’s not a perfect resemblance (which is lampshaded) but it’s surprisingly close. He also has the chops to play the role and brings a surprising range of emotion to Shinzon, from manipulative to seemingly sympathetic, from wrathful to nostalgic, and from really creepy to almost kind of likeable. I was impressed.
Ron Perlman, who’s done better work in stuff like Hellboy, doesn’t exactly have a lot to work with here so I can forgive his really comatose and wooden acting. It still doesn’t mean it isn’t bad, though. Unfortunately.
Musically, this film is once again composed by Jerry Goldsmith. You have to feel kind of sorry for the composer, actually. Out of all the Trek films he’s composed for (and he’s done more than any other composer) only one was a hit (First Contact). It’s actually a small wonder that they keep getting him to come back. But they do and we love that he do, since his soundtracks are among the best parts of the Trek films. This is also the second to last film in which his music was used, since he died two years later and his very last soundtrack was rejected. In a way, it’s as much Goldsmith’s swan song as it is TNG’s.
And it’s brilliant, perhaps surpassing in some ways even his work on First Contact. I don’t think it quite does, but it’s quite suitably dramatic as well as majestic, showing how Goldsmith has evolved as a composer over the years, with hints of the kind of music he composed for period films like The Thirteenth Warrior, which is appropriate given the comparisons I’ve been making between this film and Gladiator (whose soundtrack Goldsmith did not work on, although he did submit a score for it that was rejected).
This is probably the single sweetest thing about the film. The score.
For the most part, Nemesis is another Star Trek film with great production values. While some bit, like the poor (although not unconvincing) makeup work for the Remans stand out, overall, this film really hits all the marks in visuals, sound, and acting.
Score: 9.5
Summary
Plot: 6.4
Characters: 6.8
Production: 9.5
Overall: 7.6