The Next Generation’s final journey? What’s up with that? These are the Star Trek characters I grew up watching and liking, not Kirk and Spock whose adventures looked really lame since CGI and good special effects were still a decade away. Granted some of Picard & company’s special effects now seem dated, but at least every planet they visited wasn’t just a different hued Earth with female aliens for Kirk to have sex with. But I must now digress and get on with this review of Star Trek: Nemesis (movie number ten).

The film begins with the whole crew attending the wedding between Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis, Heist) that has been in the works for years. After the Earth wedding the old Enterprise-E and her crew head to Troi’s planet Betazoid for a naked wedding there, only the crew discovers a unique energy signature (positronic) on a planet inhabitant by a civilization about advanced as ours is now. This energy signature is the same as what the android Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner, The Master of Disguise) has, so curiosity gets the best of them and they decide to check it out. Once on the planet Data, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart, Jimmy Neutron), and Worf (Michael Dorn, The Santa Clause 2) find an android almost exactly like Data, but disassembled and scattered. The gang gathers up the parts, and then are chased off the planet in a nice action sequence. Once back on board the Enterprise, Geordi (LeVar Burton, Ali) helps Data put this android together (its name is B4, Data is model B9). Soon they discover that this android must be an earlier prototype of Data that is not as advanced as Data. After this the Enterprise is sent to Romulus to meet with the new Romulan leader, Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy, Black Hawk Down) that took over control with troops from Remus (apparently a small harsh planet near Romulus that had been enslaved by the Romulans). Here we discover that the Romulans had cloned Capt. Picard, with that clone being Shinzon. They had planned on switching the two years earlier, only peace came and they abandoned the plan, and then sent the young clone to work in the dilithium mines on Remus. Overtime, he grew up and then led the Remuns to victories and eventually took over the Romulan Senate to control the Romulan Empire. Only now he has some personal issues to deal with, mainly he needs Picard to do some sort of DNA transplant so he can live, and he wants to destroy the Federation (but mainly just Earth). The rest of the film is the struggle of the Enterprise in its attempt to stop Shinzon and his big, nasty, evil ship.

Stuart Baird (U.S. Marshals) directs the film for his initiation to the Star Trek family. John Logan wrote the screenplay based on a story from himself, Rick Berman, and Brent Spiner. A few others in the film are Ron Perlman, Gates McFadden, Dina Meyer, Steven Culp, Alan Dale, Bryan Singer, Diana Muldaur, Nicholas Lanier, and cameos by Trekies Kate Mulgrew (Capt. Janeway on Voyager) and Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan from the TNG TV series and the first TNG movie).

As a film, this Star Trek is not as good as Insurrection or First Contact. First of all, there is not nearly as much humor. In fact, it seems as though this Star Trek is more about tying up loose ends (i.e. the wedding) and preparing all the Trekies for a time when TNG is left to nothing more than re-runs. I personally think there will be one more movie from this crew, but it will probably be a crossover type ala Generations. I find this sad as characters that you grow-up with disappear from reality and slip into memory. Final analysis of Nemesis: good film, but not as good as recent Trek films, so only seven couches.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:47:51 AM

Click Here to get back into frames.