Patrick Stewart, Johnothan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy, Ron Perlman, directed by Stuart Baird
I think our relationship with Star Trek is becoming like that of an uneasy couple who spend too much time together and desperately need some space. Nowadays, Star Trek spinoffs are appearing on TV out of habit more than anything else, and between Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and all-too-frequent TV marathons of The Next Generation, we really could use some space away from the franchise in order to appreciate it.
The good news is that on the big screen, at least, is that this is the last Star Trek film we�ll be seeing for an indefinite period of time. This means, that it�ll be at least a while before we see a film and at most, forever, but either way, it�s great because we do kind of want it to go away for now.
With that in mind, the film really does �go away� in a spectacular blaze of glory. After filling up nine previous movies and countless episodes worth of villains, and at the point when you might have doubted that they could come up with any exciting new ones, the writing team manages to surprise us. For the tenth installment, they come up with Shinzon, an alien who apparently was cloned from Captain Picard due to some mysterious circumstances, making him a worthy adversary by any standard. Because of Shinzon�s cloning, the underlying philosophical theme is the �nature vs nurture� argument, which is kind of interesting if not a little forced into some of the dialogue. The movie has spectacular action scenes that, fortunately, aren�t as cluttered up in technobabble as usual.
Also featured in the movie are a couple really big events in the characters� lives, one of which I won�t disclose, and the other of which is the wedding of Commander Riker and Deanna Troi. These two have spent the last fifteen years alternating between flirting with each other and finding more romance than anyone else on the ship, due to their good looks and/or revealing uniforms, so it�s nice to see them settle down. I think the term for something like this in TV is called �jumping the shark� but since it�s been at least 3 or 4 years since Star Trek held my interest, who really cares?
I think it�s also annoying how, by now, the writing team has decided to focus all their energy on the marketable characters (Data, Picard, Worf) and ignored everyone else. As a result, Geordi La Forge, who�s best-known for being blind, and Beverly Crusher, best known for being a single mother, never have anything to do in these movies other than report on the condition of the warp quadramatic facilitators or something like that. I can�t imagine there being no animosity on the set.
Nevertheless, Star Trek: Nemesis allows us to breathe a sigh of release that these guys are finally going away, and despite overstaying their welcome, they do say goodbye with a classy last installment.