'Star Trek: Nemesis'

Star Trek: Nemesis

(viewed Tuesday, May 27th)

• The events depicted in this film take place in 2379, four years after the events of Insurrection.
• One of this films few bright spots is its stunning visual of the Romulan capital (first seen in TNG, but not in this much detail) and the Romulan Senate chambers.  I've always been a fan of the Romulans, so anything that adds detail to that species is always welcome.
  
  
  
  
  In fact, that's probably my biggest peeve about this entire movie.  I'd wanted a Romulan-centric film for a long time, and the trailers for Nemesis made me think I was going to get it.  Instead, I get a poorly-executed remake of The Wrath Of Khan with a little Romulan flavor thrown in.
• Wipe out the Romulan Senate?  That's one way to do it, I suppose.
• I guess they really did know that this was going to be the last film with the TNG cast, because they made Riker finally get off his butt and to two things:  Marry Troi, and accept command if his own starship.
  
  That starship is the USS Titan. While there's no on-screen information presented about it, non-canon sources describe it as a Luna-class starship.  There was even a fan contest to design the thing prior to some of the Pocket Books novels about Riker's adventures as her captain.
  
  
  
  
  What I didn't realize until this re-watch, and reading the Memory-Alpha article on the Titan, is that the ship's name appears as part of the fictional history of Riker in the episode "Future Imperfect".
• Although the scenes were deleted (as were most of them), Wesley Crusher--before he was cruelly reduced to a background cameo--is said to have been assigned to the Titan under Riker's command.  I guess he got everything he could get out of the Traveler and went back to Starfleet Academy ;)
• With Riker's promotion, Lt. Cmdr. Data is to be promoted to the first officer of the Enterprise-E.  I guess Starfleet decided that it was time to only slightly under-utilize their hyper-intelligent, hyper-strong, hyper-capable, nigh-indestructible, nigh-immortal android after all :P
• "Mr. Data?  Shut up."
• Worf is suffering an apparent hangover from drinking too much Romulan ale (I'm presuming this was at a bachelor party the night before, as none of the beverages being served at the wedding have the ale's characteristic blue appearance).
  
  "Romulan ale should be illegal."
  
  "It is."
  
  This suggests that sometime in between the legalization of the beverage during the Romulans' participation in the Federation Alliance and the events of this film, it's be outlawed once again.
  
  Or, you know, the writers of this movie didn't check with the DS9 writers.  Either way.
•  "And now we need dancing.  And get Brent to sing something!"
• There were some very minor tweaks made to the filming model of the Enterprise-E in between Insurrection and Nemesis.  None of them are drastic enough to qualify the newer iteration of the ship as a "refit" or denote any serious functional changes, however.
  
  
  
  (image courtesy of Ex Astris Scientia)
• We have to assume that Shinzon did something to boost the positronic signature coming from B-4's dissembled body on Kolarus III.  Otherwise it's a little ridiculous to think that even the mighty Enterprise-E's sensors would just automatically pick up a positronic signature from a planet that's at least several light years away (we don't know how much distance the Enterprise-E had covered between Earth and Betazed, but we know that Kolarus III is fairly close to the Romulan Neutral Zone...so it's not exactly in the neighborhood).
• And now we need some more toys:  Let's give them a silly new shuttlecraft (Why? What role does this shuttlecraft fill that a standard Type 11 shuttlecraft or the Cousteau could not?) and a friggin' dune buggy!
• "You have the bridge, Mr. Troi."
  
  :trollface:
• This film introduces an entirely new Starfleet tricorder, much slimmer and with a large touchscreen.  It still has a little flip-top, though.  I guess you can only change things so much :)
  
  
  
  Nope, that's not an early iPhone prototype.
• So, we drop our dune buggy onto this planet.  The indigenous, pre-warp society sends some of their own dune buggies to check you out.  They start shooting, and you start shooting back.  Apparently the big phaser cannon on your dune buggy doesn't have a stun setting, either.
  
  Prime Directive, Shrime Shirective.
• "I am...B-4."
  
  
  
• Admiral Janeway?  This movie just loves piling insult on top of injury :P
• "The Son'a, the Borg...now the Romulans.  You seem to get all the easy assignments."
  
  "Just lucky, Admiral."
• Remus had been established as a planet associated with the Romulan Star Empire as early as the TOS episode "Balance Of Terror" (one of my favorites).
  
  However, Nemesis gives us much more information about the planet and its inhabitants.  A tidally locked planet, Remus always presents one face to its star and the other is eternally dark.  It's a major source of dilithium for the Empire, and its native population of Remans (either a totally separate species, or a related-but-divergent species from the Romulans/Vulcans) was conquered and enslaved by the Romulans some time prior to the emergence of the Romulan Empire as a major galactic power.
  
  Remans, known for their toughness, were used as expendable ground forces by the Empire during the Dominion War.  Remus, in addition to being a major mining center, is also one of the major weapons foundries for the Romulans--housing manufacturing facilities and shipyards.
  
  This is exactly the kind of "flavor text" (to use a gaming term) that I love, and I wish they'd explored more of this in the movie instead of using it as a backdrop for the soup-thin plot that they filmed instead.
• An experimental procedure on an android of unknown provenance when you're on the verge of a potentially dangerous and certainly historic mission involving one of your government's greatest rivals?
  
  Yeah, seems like nothing could go wrong with that.
• The Scimitar is a good example of everything that I came to dislike in ship design during VOY and the latter TNG films.  There's a lot of emphasis on making the ship look menacing, without caring if its design makes much sense.
  
  
  
  (image from Star Trek Fact Files, by way of Ex Astris Scientia)
  
  Gone are the sleek lines of the Trek ships we've come to know and love--both Starfleet and alien.  It's all protrusions and points without clear function.  The overall effect is to make the ship look silly, and not like it belongs in the Trek universe.  I realize that the ship is supposed to stand out from existing Romulan designs...but it needn't do so by looking like a bad Hot Wheels car with some greeblies and wings glued onto it.
  
  Much of the Reman aesthetic--including their make-up, uniforms and weapons--comes across this way to me.  Maybe some people liked it and thought it made them especially menacing, but I thought it made them look like off-the-shelf, movie-of-the-week alien bad guys instead of a distinctive race and culture.
  
  The Narada in 2009's Star Trek was an even more extreme example of this trend, and one of my major aesthetic problems with that film.
• "Tactical analysis, Mr. Worf!"
  
  "52 disruptor banks, 27 photo torpedo bays, primary and secondary shields."
  
  That does seem like a lot.
• Hey kids, it's Ron Perlman!
• After he was PFC Janovec on Band Of Brothers, but before he played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy did a Star Trek flick.  The more you know.
  
  
  
• "May I touch your hair?"
  
  Easy, fella.
• Romulan Commander Donatra is played by Dina Meyer, who I better remember as playing Dizzy Flores in the film adaptation of Starship Troopers.  If I may express my baser opinions for a moment, I think she's remarkably attractive in this movie.
  
  
  
• The story that Shinzon tells is fairly compelling, and his conversation with Picard is one of the highlights of the movie.  Like the core story of Insurrection, the story of a Romulan plot to put a clone of Picard at the highest levels of power in Starfleet isn't a bad story.  It's just stretched and manipulated into a thin film with a bad case of Star Trek II envy.
• They love to put weapons of mass destruction into Trek movies, and Nemesis' "thalaron radiation" is this movie's Big Scary™.
• Ugh.  That word.  They used that word again.
• And yeah, let's make Shinzon a psychic rapist too.  Gotta dial up the creep factor as high as we can.
• "Tea, hot."
  
  Romulus has no bergamot groves, apparently.
• And then when Counselor Troi--very clearly traumatized by Shinzon's assault--asks to be relieved of duty, Picard flat-out refuses her request.  Okay, I get it.  You're in hostile territory and an empath (even an annoying one) is almost as valuable a resource as a Klingon or an android.  But the woman was just raped.  You're not even going to give her a "Of course you may take all the time that you need...but I could really use your help"?  It's just "Nope, permission denied.  I need you."
  
  It's a little callous, and downplays what could've been one of the more dramatic (and horrifying) aspects of the antagonist in this film.
  
  At least Deanna gets some revenge in the end :)
• "I'm afraid you won't survive to witness the victory of the echo over the voice."
  
  Well, the wrote one good line for this piece of garbage.
• Apparently Data mastered the Vulcan nerve pinch at some point.  And had a secret compartment built into his forearm.
• The Scimitar's little Scorpion-class "attack flyer" is actually pretty decent design--definitely not-Romulan, but not completely random.  This would have been a good basis for a distinct Reman aesthetic.
  
  
  
• Oh, now we have a force field around the warp core? ; )
• At a serious material disadvantage, fleeing a wounded enemy with an insatiable thirst for vengeance against their captain, the Enterprise engages in a desperate struggle within a particle cloud in deep space where her communications and sensors are severely limited.
  
  What?  No, I'm not talking about Khan, the original Enterprise or the Mutara Nebula.  How dare you suggest a comparison!
• Once you set aside your contempt for the blatant TWoK rip-off, the Battle in the Bassen Rift is a fairly exciting sequence in its own right.  It's one of the highlights of the movie, if you can turn of your brain and just enjoy the starships shooting at each other.
• The single best part of this entire movie for me was the introduction of another capital ship class for the TNG-era Romulans:  The "Valdore"-type warbird.
  
  
  
• "Into the chute, flyboy Viceroy!"
• The Enterprise-E has handrails, but still no seatbelts.
• I know they didn't have time to warn everyone, but you have to feel a little bad for the crew who were in the forward sections of the primary hull when they went head-first into the Scimitar.
  
  "Ho hum, just manning my post.  We don't see much action down here in {Whatever the Enterprise-E's equivalent is of Ten Forward}."
  
  And then...BLAMMO.
• Frakes:  "So this is our last movie?"
  Berman:  "Probably."
  Frakes:  "Can I fight a guy?"
  Berman:  "Maybe.  Will you whine if I hire a Trek-ignorant hack to direct this instead of letting you do it?"
  Frakes:  "Probably not."
  Berman:  "Okay then, you can fight a guy."
• "Deploy the weapon" is never, ever a good phrase.
• As the dying madman prepares to detonate his doomsday weapon, the senior non-human member of the crew prepares to sacrifice himself to save his shipmates.
  
  What?  No, I'm not talking about the Genesis Device or Spock.  How dare you suggest a comparison!
• Shinzon like, really loves knives.
• Star Trek:  Nemesis -- the only Trek movie where the bad guy dies the same way as both a bad guy from Commando and a bad guy from The Fellowship Of The Ring.
• Well, at least Spock got bagpipes.  Data gets a glass of wine in the ready room.  And then Riker tells that story about Data trying to whistle.
• At the end of the film, the Enterprise-E is shown in drydock around Earth being repaired.
• We also see now-Captain Riker depart for his first mission as commander of the Titan, heading up negotiations with the Romulans.
• Sadly, your non-human friend who helped you understand what it meant to be human is dead.  Fortunately, he transferred the essence of himself into another being.  So there's a glimmer of hope that he can be revived at some point down the line.
  
  Huh?  No, of course I mean Data's memory engrams imprinted on B-4.  What did you think I meant?