Star Trek: Nemesis... Tell me why...?

Don't get me wrong: Tasha's death wasn't devoid of impact, I think the event of it was handled well, I thought they did a good job of that given the time they had to work with. Its more like I felt the exact moment was kind of... ehhh... what's the word? Abrupt? Which, in hindsight, suited her, she wasn't the kind to die slowly and if anything tried to kill her slow I'd feel damned sorry for it.

I can also see how that could be considered the final last humanising act, the will to sacrifice himself for the good of everyone with no hope of survival demonstrating a level of humanity that most humans are lacking. The thing was I think that even that revelation was blunted by the presence of B4. B4's presence is only understandable if they intend to do another movie and didn't feel confident that they could create as strong a story without Data, which to be fair they may be right given how all the TNG movies at some point or another have hinged on Data's presence and the particulars of his character.

Which is exactly why they had B4. They did not want to totally alienate all the Data fans out there by making it a "final" death.

That said, seeing how well Brent Spiner has aged in the last few years, Data's death is probably a good thing for that.

I was far more disappointed in the movie for the fact that once again, when the Romulans are brought out to be the major adversary their leader is not an actual pure-blood Romulan.

Since TOS, it is almost as if B&B fear to give the Romulans their time in the light as competent foes.

Regards,
CKV.

Tasha's death was a little abrupt, but then it was, as you say, the nature of the death.. it was meant for impact, and then after the end of the main plotline they had time to resolve it.. it was also in the short episodic format, not a feature, so you expect them to have less time.. they also slowly dealt with it throughout the show with plotlines about her sister and alternate timeline double and her daughter :) So they still had to come with the repurcussions...

While I agree with Captain Vaughn about the siliness of the non Romulan Romulans - Why can't they use Romulans in a film! (Simple answer, they wanted an 'alien bad guy'.. and Romulans look like Vulcans.. the demographic they were appealing too was 10 year olds :)) - Using Sela would have been far more circular, and Denise crosby was actually quite good hamming it up as Sela, and I would have loved to see her reprise the part.. Oh well..

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Originally Posted by Capt. K. Vaughn

I was far more disappointed in the movie for the fact that once again, when the Romulans are brought out to be the major adversary their leader is not an actual pure-blood Romulan.

Since TOS, it is almost as if B&B fear to give the Romulans their time in the light as competent foes.

Regards,
CKV.

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Which for a Romulan fanboi like me sucked, but I didn't mind the presentation of them as allies in the end. The Romulan's have never portrayed true adversaries to the Federation because, in many ways, they were always being shown as being closer to the Federation than anyone else.

I do agree they've yet to truly let the Romulans shine as much as they should on either side of the fence, but that's what RPGs are for ;)

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Originally Posted by Tobian

Tasha's death was a little abrupt, but then it was, as you say, the nature of the death.. it was meant for impact, and then after the end of the main plotline they had time to resolve it.. it was also in the short episodic format, not a feature, so you expect them to have less time.. they also slowly dealt with it throughout the show with plotlines about her sister and alternate timeline double and her daughter So they still had to come with the repurcussions...

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I agree with you on that one. In a way being a series rather than a movie helped by giving them more time to deal with the aftermath of her death. Interesting way to think about it, really, as one usually thinks, as you noted, that they'd have less time. Neat ^_^

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While I agree with Captain Vaughn about the siliness of the non Romulan Romulans - Why can't they use Romulans in a film! (Simple answer, they wanted an 'alien bad guy'.. and Romulans look like Vulcans.. the demographic they were appealing too was 10 year olds ) - Using Sela would have been far more circular, and Denise crosby was actually quite good hamming it up as Sela, and I would have loved to see her reprise the part.. Oh well..

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Sela would've made a better villain both character-wise and in the fact that she'd at least have been half-Romulan. Not only that but it would've likely brought about a better finale as her control over the Empire would, I think, have been more absolute so the endgame would've... well, probably just set up another movie and a possible Fed/Romulan war... but it still would've been better ^_^;

The Romulans could quite easily find appeal in a new generation if that generation were to be allowed exposure. You cannot create a new fan base when you refuse to even give it a chance.

That said, I have serious doubts about ever seeing another Trek movie being made.

Regards,
CKV.

I'm not sure if she could have pulled it off as, no offence, but Denise Crosby is not a great actor (she's not bad though! :D) but what this film should have been is Captain Picards answer to Ricardo montaban.. Ok she's no Khan, but she was slowly introduced as an adversary, and she had many many reasons to personally hate Picard, and to set something up to either kill him or frame him.. she could have been a thinking man's Khan.. cold calculating and... with depth... rather than Picards err clone.. who had a very confused motivation... He hated the Federation why ?? :)

On the flip side of this, as others on these forums have intoned, she could well be brought back in as someone who then took the reigns and founded herself a new empire.. even with her career in tatters after the last incident (reunification Pt 1&2) this could well be her moment.. much like Dukat got back in by actually backing the peaceful detapa council (and sticking his neck out!).. it could well have / maybe yet play out as an interesting story line.

Denise Crosby may not be as great as Ricardo Montalban (his many acting credits include playing a Japanese in a Hawaii Five-O episode) -- she's probably on par with Kim Cattrall, aka Valeris -- but she would have made a great villain for the NEMESIS film as half-Romulan Major Sela, assuming we delete the entire Reman race plot device. Like Khan, she is spawned from the TV series storyline, a familiar well-established character.

We could also have Andrea Katsulas reprise his role as Commander Tomalak.

The clone remains but as an operative assassin (not a leader of the Reman resistance cell) for Sela.

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The Romulans could quite easily find appeal in a new generation if that generation were to be allowed exposure. You cannot create a new fan base when you refuse to even give it a chance.

That said, I have serious doubts about ever seeing another Trek movie being made.

Regards,
CKV.

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New generation? Sounds like a lot of us old fans love them quite a lot ^_^

You're right, though, I think as far as movies go Trek has run out of steam. Which is sad, really, but that's the way things go.

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I'm not sure if she could have pulled it off as, no offence, but Denise Crosby is not a great actor (she's not bad though! ) but what this film should have been is Captain Picards answer to Ricardo montaban.. Ok she's no Khan, but she was slowly introduced as an adversary, and she had many many reasons to personally hate Picard, and to set something up to either kill him or frame him.. she could have been a thinking man's Khan.. cold calculating and... with depth... rather than Picards err clone.. who had a very confused motivation... He hated the Federation why ??

On the flip side of this, as others on these forums have intoned, she could well be brought back in as someone who then took the reigns and founded herself a new empire.. even with her career in tatters after the last incident (reunification Pt 1&2) this could well be her moment.. much like Dukat got back in by actually backing the peaceful detapa council (and sticking his neck out!).. it could well have / maybe yet play out as an interesting story line.

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Denise Crosby may not be as great as Ricardo Montalban (his many acting credits include playing a Japanese in a Hawaii Five-O episode) -- she's probably on par with Kim Cattrall, aka Valeris -- but she would have made a great villain for the NEMESIS film as half-Romulan Major Sela, assuming we delete the entire Reman race plot device. Like Khan, she is spawned from the TV series storyline, a familiar well-established character.

We could also have Andrea Katsulas reprise his role as Commander Tomalak.

The clone remains but as an operative assassin (not a leader of the Reman resistance cell) for Sela.

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You two read my mind :)

Let me first say . . . Wow! I didn't realize that this board still existed . . . but know now that it has . . . I'll make time to visit like I did before, even if I would be ghosting.

. . . But back to the subject at hand.

Who else here would be more then willing to throw this into the Non-Canon, Movie Canon junk heep like how so many of us do with ST:V? Raise of hands please.

-Raises Hand-

Although, way back when, or so it seems, I went to watch the movie with a religious devotion . . . I left the theater that night with a bitter taste in my mouth. Like I was being told that this was a wonderful, tender, aged piece of meat . . . only to find it to be dry, overcooked and overspiced . . . thus hiding whatever potential it may have had before the preperation. I was amazed how it seemed like fandom was so easily abandoned in their attempt to glame the franchise to a new target audiance who cared less about the previous Star Trek ventures . . . and more for the visual effects of big explosions, cheap easily predictable plots, and huge fight scenes.

One thing, thinking as if I was a writer, of which I am not, have to do is explain to the audiance enough about the background of the characters and the setting to make it and so people who have not seen a single Star Trek Movie can get a feel of the setting . . . what is going on, and the why to the plot that they is unfolded before their eyes, even if it comes in the end. I think First Contact did that very well . . . through out the movie . . . even non-fans would have enough background before them to understand what the Federation is, what the background between Picard and the Borg was, and the why of the plot . . . while still getting their glitzy special effects, large space combat scenes, and several personnal combat scenes that allowed one to size up the situation without making it feel tacked on. I feel that Nemisis did none of that.

Furthermore, I will have to agree with everyone's comments here regarding the Death of Data . . . it seemed all to obvious, and the discovery of the quazi Data, a blatant foreshadowing of the events to unfold.

Also, the villain seemed to be a walking shell, his reasoning, his character lacked depth. In order to create a Nemesis for Picard, rather then going back into the History of Picard, whom this new target fanbase would know nothing of, they created a lookalike whoes hate of him is driven by an almost programmed reasoning . . . rather then a personnal vandetta due to a past relationship with the individual in question, whether that be directly or be some close individual.

I could go on . . . but I think I should stop here.

Well, they tried a new enemy in both GENERATION and INSURRECTION. Like Star Trek II, FIRST CONTACT utilized an old familiar enemy that delighted not just the old fans of the TV series but the new ones as well.

(That is, until Braga screwed the Borg up in the VOYAGER storyline.)

Not to mention this trend to constantly need to have the current villian's starships vastly larger and superior to the Enterprise. Go back to the days when the ships themselves were roughly on par and it was the capabilities of the Commander and crew that made the difference.

You can still create excitement and tension that way without the need to have yet another uber-ship that makes the Enterprise look like a lifeboat by comparison.

Maybe I am showing my bias here, one of my all time favorite TOS episodes is "Balance of Terror" after all. :D

Regards,
CKV.

Hey, JALU3! Virtually the same story with me on forgetting the board... very glad to see its still around though ^_^

I can't really comment on how canon I consider it as I usually stop tracking Canon around the end of the Dominion War... mainly cus all my RPs are set before or during it, and thus everything after is kinda' up in the air. I rarely think about the stuff after, but if I had to I'd probably just tend to ignore or rewrite Nemesis... at least a few of the details.

As for the tendancy of the writers to have to make threats bigger and badder than the Enterprise is they do seem to go that way... only to have later writers turn around and make the same enemies (Borg, Dominion) individually weak but so numerous they make up for it (at least in the series, obviously movies can't have this problem). That's a whole other bag o' beans, though, that aren't related to Nemesis, so I'll drop that whole line of argument here... unless somebody wants to bring it up, of course ;)

EDIT: Removed Romulans from the list o' nerfed enemies. The Romulans started out looking stronger but were later revealed to be pretty well even to the Federation, possibly making them the most interesting potential threat I might add.

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Originally Posted by Capt. K. Vaughn

Not to mention this trend to constantly need to have the current villian's starships vastly larger and superior to the Enterprise. Go back to the days when the ships themselves were roughly on par and it was the capabilities of the Commander and crew that made the difference.

You can still create excitement and tension that way without the need to have yet another uber-ship that makes the Enterprise look like a lifeboat by comparison.

Maybe I am showing my bias here, one of my all time favorite TOS episodes is "Balance of Terror" after all. :D

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I agree with you. Instead of making bigger and badder enemy ship, why not choreagraph an intelligent ship-to-ship combat between equally powerful starships? Are they afraid someone will cry "rehash!" of Star Trek II? Anyone who cry out that should not be carrying any gray matter in his cranial cavity.

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Originally Posted by Thanatos

Of course, I don't know what I was expecting from the movie as a friend had told me before I saw it that in an interview the director basically said he was completely unfamiliar with Trek.

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Well, you can't completely place the blame on the director Stuart Baird. Aside from the obvious -- Brannon & Braga -- there is the screenwriter John Logan, credited for the Russell Crowe's Gladiator film and happens to be familiar with Star Trek. He is simply not on the same wavelength as I am when it comes to the iconic Romulans. He was the guy that created the Remans.

I personally believe the Remans will be fighting for their lives after the events of Nemesis. I could see the Romulans almost committing genocide against the race afterward for a number of reasons.

Though I have some time before my own campaign becomes concurrent with the events of Nemesis to figure out the repercussions of it.

Regards,
CKV.