Warning: 20-year-old spoilers ahead.
It had been four years since the theatrical release of Star Trek: Insurrection, the last time Star Trek audiences had seen the Next Generation crew together on screen. It was, at least at the time, the longest stretch fans had gone between Picard fixes.
Yet in that period, both the Voyager and Deep Space Nine TV series had finished their respective seven-year runs, moving the franchise well beyond its traditional roots. Star Trek: Enterprise was starting to find its feet after a season and a half, but was yet to hit its stride. Indeed, in the same week of the NEMESIS theatrical release, the episode “Precious Cargo” — a retread of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that even the producers have effectively disowned — was screened.
So, it’s safe to say that Trek fans were looking for something familiar when Picard took the helm once again. I remember going to see this with my girlfriend at the time and a mutual Trek-loving colleague. At the end, the latter turned to my girlfriend and apologetically said “It’s usually better than this.” Suffice it to say, Trekdom did not get a new fan that day.
Having binged all of modern Trek in order between lockdowns, watching NEMESIS again represented an opportunity to revisit and maybe reassess a film that had become associated with “bad Trek” in my head. After all, my revisit with Insurrection, effectively a feature-length episode of TNG, was unexpectedly delightful.
Which is where NEMESIS starts, with a genuinely heartfelt wedding sequence that’s like visiting old friends. Even with Data singing — one of many examples of the character being off-model outside of the TV show — it’s a sweet moment that feels the more like Trek than anything else in the film.
After that, it takes some odd turns. While en route to Betazed for Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Riker’s (Jonathan Frakes) honeymoon/second ceremony, they get word that new Romulan political leader, Shinzon (Tom Hardy in a very early role) wants peace with the Federation. However, on arrival they find that not only is Shinzon half-human, he has a secret heritage. Yes, it turns out he is a clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Thus, shenanigans commence.
Veteran editor Stuart Baird knew how a film was put together, although his two previous directorial efforts — Executive Decision (1996) and U.S. Marshals (1998) — are about as far removed from TNG‘s vibe as you can get. Case in point, an over-exposed set-piece sequence built around desert dune buggies feels like it was already set up for another film, then populated with Picard, Worf (Michael Dorn) and Data (Brent Spiner) at the last minute.
Yet the core of the film is meant to be the confrontation between Shinzon and the Captain. What could have been TNG‘s Wrath of Khan (or The Undiscovered Country) instead becomes mixed up with a myriad of plot points in John Logan’s (Gladiator) screenplay. There’s a deadly McGuffin that has something to do with thalaron radiation, a whole lot of woes stemming from Shinzon’s cloning process, the discovery of new double for Data (mockingly named B4), and occasionally someone mentions Romulan peace talks.
Tying them altogether are a group of hitherto unseen Remans, a Romulan slave caste who have psychic powers and are the orcs of the 24th century. Deanna gets mind-raped during sex for what seems like the dozenth time in the series, an uncomfortable plot device wedged in to help them find a cloaked ship later on. Just when it couldn’t get weirder, Bryan Singer turns up as an uncredited cadet. Yes, even a man who’s Wikipedia entry has a ‘See also: Me Too movement‘ section didn’t want to be associated with the film at that point.
NEMESIS ends on a bittersweet note, with Data heroically sacrificing himself to save the crew. However, the script gave actor Spiner a ‘get out of jail free’ card by transferring his memories to B4. This sews the seeds for Picard almost two decades later, a series that at least tried to redeem much of the B4 subplot and this ‘have its cake and eat it too’ ending. Still, it’s a sad send-off for a beloved crew — especially when Voyager fans got more of a coda with a brief cameo from Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew).
Frakes, who directed the previous two Star Trek films, regrets not continuing behind the camera. “I would have loved to have done Nemesis, but it seemed like, ‘Really? That’s all you’re going to do, is Star Trek movies?'” he told Vulture in 2019. “It’s glib to say now. I wish I had done Nemesis.” Stewart, speaking with Variety, wasn’t positive on the film. “Hugh [Jackman] and I were so thrilled when the last thing we did for X-Men was Logan…Next Generation didn’t end like that. In fact, our last movie, NEMESIS, was pretty weak.”
Spiner, in an interview with Trek Movie, is more pragmatic: “It wasn’t about good or bad – nobody came and that was significant. It was not the quality of the film. People go to bad films all the time…The first weekend was dismal and that wasn’t word of mouth or Data dying, that was that the fans were not interested.”
Baird, who has been largely slammed by the cast in retrospect, went back to editing on films like Casino Royale and Skyfall. He has not directed a film since. It’s also the last time to date that this crew was together as a unit — although that is set to change in Star Trek: Picard – Season 3 in 2023. Whether that is the final emotional catharsis fans craved two decades ago is yet to be seen at the time of writing.
Cinematic Trek would never be the same after this. A fifth and final outing that would have tied up the franchise was abandoned. It would take another seven years for the franchise to return to the big screen, and by then the entire universe took a hard left turn in favour of an alternate timeline — albeit one that has its Romulan origins in NEMESIS.
Yet here we are 20 years later still watching and discussing the merits of this bastard stepchild of the universe. Love it or hate it, the influence of STAR TREK: NEMESIS is (for better or for worse) still present in the warp coils of contemporary Star Trek.
STAR TREK: NEMESIS had its world premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on 9 December 2002. The film was released widely in North America on 13 December 2002 by Paramount Pictures. It took a little longer to reach Australia, where it got a cinema release on 6 February 2014.
