Starring: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Tom Hardy
Directed by: Stuart Baird

The Star Trek legacy continues with its new tenth installment, Star Trek: Nemesis. It stars all the cast from the Next Generation franchise and Tom Hardy as the evil Shinzon.

You know what's sad about being a Star Trek fan? Even after the dreadful ninth film, Insurrection, after four long years, fans will still shell out their money to see the latest adventures of the crew. The franchise has developed such a loyal following that producers are guaranteed to make money on whatever script they decide to produce be it good or bad. Us poor trekkies have little to do except hope that the producers don't take advantage of our loyalty by giving us bad writing, mediocre action and plot holes big enough to fly a Romulan Warbird through.

What the viewers get is something in between a passable action movie and an episode of the highly successful and often moving television series. This movie, whose plot ressembles Star Trek VI and whose villain ressembles the legendary Kahn from Star Trek II, is full of potential. The Romulan Empire, some of the Federation's most notorious enemies, are proposing a peace treaty with the Federation.

Or are they? Something's fishy and the crew of the Enterprise intends to find out what!

Right away, there is a rift between true fans and the casual movie goer. A peace treaty between the Romulans and the Federation is a big deal because it is a revisiting of Gene Roddenberry's most important theme: "Yesterday's enemies can be tomorrow's friends." The poignant statement is testament to the fact that Star Trek, now over 35 years old is still influenced by Gene Roddenberry's views on the cold war, racism and other things counterproductive to a peaceful world. The world of Star Trek is a potentially utopian world where all races and all genders (ladies, gentleman and androgynous organisms) can find some peace in each other's company. A typical Star Trek story will have a villain who threatens this peace.

So when captain Picard says, "Set a course for Romulus!" a planet that has been talked about since the days of Captain Kirk back in the 1960's but never visited, Trekkies got really anxious while others simply reached for more popcorn. It was a treat to finally see Romulus after all of these years. The beautiful scenery and wardrobe was an interesting imitation of Ancient Rome.

But the first big flaw of the movie is not taking advantage of this interesting new world. We only get to see one room from the Romulan Senate. I would have liked to have seen a shoot out or something there. Aside from one other scene on a desert planet, the viewer is immersed in the somber hulls of the spaceships.

The movie did however have another strength. In my opinion it had some of the most dramatic scenes of any other Star Trek movie. Pulled along by strong acting by Patrick Stewart and Tom Hardy, the movie is about the bizarre relationship between these two characters. You see, Shinzon is Picard's clone, but having grown up in the Romulan hood, a mining planet that is shadowed from the sun, Shinzon is not a goody two shoes like Picard. He is in fact an evil mirror to Picard, a fact that he brings up just about every chance he gets.

I thought it was an interesting theme. Finally someone can deflate the self-righteous Picard by showing him he's not inherently good, just a product of good upbringing. Whenever the captain has to grapple with some internal conflict, you can be sure the movie will be really good. There are many scenes where a desperate Shinzon tries to make Picard realize that good and evil is nothing more the result of lifestyle and circumstance. Again, the movie shows potential to be exceptional, but again, the writers hold back on us. Where there was so much potential for drama, the movie only touches the surface of this bizarre relationship between clone and clonee and Picard remains basically unchanged after seeing the dark side of himself. Still, the conflict gives us some of the most intense drama in the movie. They are like father and son on one level, symbols of good and evil on another. I believe Shinzon is a great villain, right up there with Khan and General Chang. But why is it that a character who has spent all of his life being tormented by the Romulans wants revenge on Earth? How is attacking Earth going to free his people? It didn't make any sense. And it occurs to me that had they paid attention to this detail the plot would have been much better. Picard and his crew would be fighting to help the Romulans. This works in the peace treaty aspect, and more of the action would have taken place on Romulus instead of the unimpressive halls of Shinzon's ship.

We get to see glimpses of our favourite characters, but as always we can't expect much from them. At least when Jonathan Frakes was directing the Star Trek movies he would indulge his friends by giving them a few moments in the spotlight. Stuart Baird however has no compunctions about ruthelessly chopping out entire scenes that developed the characters we have grown to love over the last decade and a half. In fact, over 50 minutes of footage dedicated to character growth were omitted from this movie! It seems that Baird wanted an action movie.

Or did he??

There are in fact several action scenes that are very exciting and have the most spectacular special effects of any Star Trek movie. There are new ships to see, including the Romulan ship called the Scimitar which, of course... moan... has the power to wipe out an entire planet... There's a great scene with an all-terrain vehicle shooting at some hapless aliens. That was fun. But the scenes were short, and interspersed with a lot dialogue. Only the biggest fans would appreciate some of the dialogue. I think others would find it terribly boring and long.

In short, this movie is a little bit of action, with a little bit of humour, with a little bit of drama, and a little bit of the characters that some of us were very eager to see after a four year hiatus. It's a movie that can't decide if it wants to be loyal to true fans by delivering a solid story with strong character development or an action movie with an oh so played doomsday device subplot.

They try to please everyone and attain a respectable amount of success. They throw Trekkies a bone by mentioning some obscure detail from the series and then they try to cater to the masses by giving them some action. But in the end, the problem with Star Trek movies is they can never live up to the series. In a television series, the characters can all take turns being developed. Before the franchise had such an established fan base, the writers could afford to take risks, write a daring story which was sometimes controversial. They could take a whole hour to develop a character. A movie is only two hours and very little can be done to expand the fascinating world of Star Trek.

As a trekkie I would have liked to have seen most of the action of this movie take place on the Romulan Homeworld. I would have liked to have seen Picard grapple with the fact that he could have been just as evil as Shinzon. But mostly I would like to have seen the supporting cast play a much, much bigger role. Obviously anyone who likes Star Trek has probably already seen the movie and has received some mild entertainment. I don't think others will be too pleased to see this however as it offers less action than many other sci-fi movies. The big debate over this movie is whether or not it is the best trek to date. In my opinion it is only the third best, Right after Star Trek 6 and Star Trek 8, but definitely worth seeing if you're a trekkie.

MastaCSG
10

DroopyMcC		I agree that it could have been better and the script tighter, but still, Nemesis was really fun. I disagree with da Masta on screen time, though. I thought everyone had their fair share to do (although I seriously want to see the DVD for deleted scenes). I appreciated the parallel story lines of both Picard and Data having twins. Also, the whole bit about Romulans and peace treaties and stuff is monumental in Star Trek lore. Excellent for the hard core Trek-types, average-to-boring for others.
Jack

ASY		Strictly for Trekkies. Otherwise, stay away.
Ten