Brent Spiner: Star Trek's Failure Is Fans' Fault

[stule]

Ok.

I think I understand what Spiner is trying to say. But Nemesis just plain sucked.

I mean really, a clone of Picard. It was a weak idea. Troi getting violated? Riker and Troi getting married? Stewart getting to actually be himself in the first 10 minutes of the movie then going back to depressing boy. Another Data? The Enterprise being the only ship to go to Romulus? Where was the Titan (woulda been nice to see her)?

So I don't really think it was entirely the fans fault. And if that movie was written for us, then the writers live on some other planet.

I am no director or screen writer but here is what I would have done.


My Movie
1) Picard retires from Starfleet and settles on earth.
2) Beverly Crusher takes a job at Starfleet Medical. She and Picard begin a relationship (And it's about damn time!).
3) Riker become the Captain of the Enterprise.
4) Data becomes First Officer.
5) The new crew goes off and has a merry old time with the Romulans, son of Vger, whateva.
6) Wrap up everything by the end and say good bye to the cast (They are really getting old and If I have to bear another scene where Counsilor Troi flies the ship......)

My movie woulda actually made a profit.

Nemesis was a terrible movie anyway you cut it. Special Effects were awesome. But the movie and its contents were really bad. Not saying it was the Actors fault but it definitely wasn't our fault.

Just my 2 cents.

Stule

[Commander Sonek]

Another major factor:

Nemesis opened the week before Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the most eagerly awaited sequel on the planet at the time.

There were alot of little things about the movie that irked me. It wasn't completely bad, but still . . .

[stule]

Good point.

And I'm not trying to say that it totally stunk (I guess I layed into it pretty thick), I just feel that it made little sense and I would of liked a little more closure.

[tonyg]

I think another thing the movie had against it was repetitiveness. The last few Trek films, not to mention a good chunck of DS9 have revovled around "big" stories, with teh fate of the Federation on the line. Some new plot element is introduced that if not stopped will destroy the Federation as we know it.

Yeah, sure, it is a good idea for a story, but it is not a good idea for every story. Ds9 had the benfit of several years to spread the story over, and could switch off to other stories and story arcs. But the films don't have that option. Putting the UFP online for the last three movies in a row, while the whole dominion war story arc was going on in DS9 made Trek very dull and it felt like the writers were not working on any new stories.

Even the tings that were intended to add depth to the stories and make them more personal ddidn't work. New characters who get introduced for the story and never appear again don't have the same sort of impact as characters we have seen in the past. If Shinzon had appeared earlier, he could have been an interesting villain. But the way he was introduced and wiped out in the story gave him no real connection to PIcard, and so that whole subplot had no meaning.

I think that to make the personal subplots work, they either have to tap into previous Trek episodes, or work to develop the plots through the story.

Nemesis didn't do that. Things like Remans, Shinzon, and the new big bad ship all get tossed out and used up with no real impact. The Remans were newly created for the film, but could just as easly been a romulan faction as far as the story went. Shinzon doesn't make any sense. Why would the Romulans want to clone Picard for? It would have made sense if he were going to be used to infiltrate Starfleet or get poast some some of biotech secrutiy measure, but as far as the story goes, there was no good reason to make a Picard clone. THe new big bad ship? Boring. IT seems that everyone now waits for Starfleet to build a new flagship and then designs something to completely outclass it. I for one an getting tired of watching the ship's shields drop BEFORE people return fire. Everyone has Janeway's disease.

[JALU3]

Here's an evil idea . . . what if during her travels . . . Janeway, in the present timeline . . . was somehow infected with a being . . . making her the true enemy . . . dormant within her, without even her knowing . . . with only a ice cube chance in hell . . . to remove it from her . . . and the beginning of the movie . . . the romulans/remens, or who ever you choose . . . are a big diversion for her to gain power of some powerful element of Starfleet.

Oh . . . it's the beloved Janeway . . . she can't be out to do anything wrong . . . she brought the Voyager back home . . . she must be a great leader!

[BouncyCaitian]

I think this pretty much encapsilates why Nemesis failed

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Nemesis/Pictorial-1.html

[whoman69]

I think the utopian angle that people who don't like Trek is overplayed. The original was seriously no utopia. There were Klingons, Romulans and all sorts of greedy evil types abound. In TNG we started with Gene's idea of the utopia taken to the extreme. Gene had fallen in love with his vision of humans being perfect in the future and it showed in what he did. FASA lost its liscense in part because it was seen as too militaristic by Gene. He played havoc with the rank structure eliminating warrent officers. There was even an episode where it was stated that in the future humans were all vegetarians. How wimpy can the future get? TNG did not really take off until Gene was no longer associated with the day to day decisions. Gene had a great idea in that it was one of the few science fiction attempts to say that mankind isn't simply going to degenerate into a post nuclear apocalypse. I think he simply got too big for his britches by the time TNG came along and thought he could write humans with no foibles. Have you ever tried writing a character that was perfect? They are boring Pat Boone clones. With the introduction of the Borg and DS9 we saw a future that wasn't so perfect. We find that there are still humans with greed for money and power. We find that just because science has overcome the issue of disease and starvation, there are still things out there to strive for.
Enterprise showed that all the CGI effects in the world aren't going to make up for a poor storyline. Nemesis had some great things in there, but other things which left you scratching your head.

[stule]

I think this pretty much encapsilates why Nemesis failed

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Nemesis/Pictorial-1.html

LMFAO!!!

Hell yea Bouncy!!

Tell it like it is!!!!

Chew on this web site Brent Spiner!!!