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Written by Jeffrey Ricker Sunday, 22 December 2002 18:00

Picard faces the biggest challenge to his future by coming up against his own past, in a way

Star Trek: Nemesis is a film that has a lot riding on it and a lot to live up to—and it almost succeeds.

As part of a media phenomenon that started showing its age some time ago, this tenth installment in the film series (and the fourth featuring the cast from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV series) has a threefold mission: to satisfy its loyal core of fans and present a compelling reason for non-fans to part with eight bucks and two hours of their time, all while providing justification for the future of the franchise created by Gene Roddenberry almost 40 years ago.

It’s appropriate, then, that age, transition, and change are central themes in writer (and admitted Trekkie) John Logan’s screenplay. Change is afoot on many fronts for the crew of the starship Enterprise: First Officer William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Deanna Troi’s (Marina Sirtis) star-crossed love finally comes to fruition, as their wedding is one of the opening scenes of the film. Riker’s also finally being promoted to captain and taking command of his own ship, which will take him and his new wife away from the Enterprise, where they’ve served for 15 years at the side of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).

Picard faces the biggest challenge to his future by coming up against his own past, in a way. That conflict is set against the larger background of intrigue playing out within the paranoid, secretive Romulan Empire, where the governing Senate (in particularly gruesome fashion) is overthrown by Shinzon, an outcast from Romulus’s sister planet, Remus. But Shinzon is not what he appears—or rather, he is what he appears, and that’s a clone of Picard, created by the Romulans to be substituted for the captain and used as a weapon against the Federation (the good guys, for those who aren’t familiar with Trek lore). But the Romulans abandoned that scheme and sent Shinzon into exile on Remus, an inhospitable world where half the planet always faces the sun and the inhabitants live in perpetual night on the dark side of the world. These hardships add up to a man with a major grudge against both the Romulans and Picard, one that he plans to settle by (of course) destroying the Earth, which it turns out he could do very easily.

As Shinzon, Tom Hardy is more than convincing as a younger version of Picard, twisted by circumstance into a vengeance-seeking despot with the help of a Reman known only as the Viceroy, played with wonderful menace (and beneath a lot of vampiric-looking makeup) by Ron Perlman (the Beast from TV’s “Beauty and the Beast”). Perhaps Shinzon’s youth, though, makes him seem a bit too much like Picard Lite. In addition, one subplot meant to enhance the main conflict of Picard vs. Picard will have fans of the series experiencing some déja vu, when Data (Brent Spiner), the android crewmember of the Enterprise, finds his twin abandoned in pieces on a desert planet. Something similar was already done on the TV series, and done more effectively. But the sequence in the film provides some cool action with Picard, Data, and Worf (Michael Dorn) racing across the desert in the 24th-century equivalent of an SUV. Picard’s clearly relishing the moment, as is Stewart, who portrays the captain with all the grace, charm, and talent that one expects from a Shakespearean actor. But their discovery of the android double feels a little too convenient, so it comes as no surprise when all is later revealed to be not what it seems. While the dual roles give the talented Spiner a chance to show his range, the subplot feels tacked on.

Likewise, some plot points leave you wondering. We see Picard, Data, and Worf running around a desert planet, riling up the natives and getting shot at; how do they reconcile that behavior with the Prime Directive, their society’s policy of non-interference in the affairs of less advanced species? And how come Worf (who was more recently supposed to be the Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire) is back serving on the Enterprise? Whatever happened to Data’s emotion chip? Why do we see a glimpse of Wesley Crusher, a regular character from the television series, but receive no explanation as to why he’s back and where he’s been? These might be concerns more for the longtime fan of the series, but along with some other plot holes (which, if revealed, would give away the story, such as it is), it just comes off sloppy.

Fortunately, director Stuart Baird keeps the film moving at a lively pace from almost the second scene, so there’s little time to think about such nuances. Still, it would have been nice to give Logan’s otherwise excellent screenplay another half hour to explore them more fully. (No doubt the special edition DVD will make good use of deleted footage to do so.)

On the other hand, fans will be entertained by cameo appearances from Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway (from the “Star Trek: Voyager” series) and brief glimpses of Wil Wheaton as the aforementioned Wesley Crusher and Whoopi Goldberg in an uncredited appearance as Guinan. Such touches give the movie a feeling of a family reunion, and in many ways a last chance to say goodbye to some familiar faces, which is something the crew of the Enterprise must do when one of their own makes the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the film.

Although Nemesis is billed as “a generation’s final journey,” some poignant moments at the end of the film leave the door open for yet another sequel. Is Nemesis the last Star Trek movie with this cast? Maybe, maybe not. If the film performs well enough at the box office, Paramount could decide it’s worth the effort to boldly go where they’ve gone many times before.