| Star Trek Nemesis | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Stuart Baird |
| Produced by | Rick Berman |
| Screenplay by | John Logan |
| Story by | John Logan Rick Berman Brent Spiner |
| Based on | Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry |
| Starring | See Cast |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Jeffrey L. Kimball |
| Editing by | Dallas Puett |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 13, 2002 |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60 million |
| Box office | $67,312,826 |
Star Trek Nemesis is a 2002 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the tenth feature film in the Star Trek franchise and is the last of the Star Trek films to include the entire main cast of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. It was directed by Stuart Baird and written by John Logan (from a story developed by Logan, Brent Spiner, and producer Rick Berman). The crew of the USS Enterprise-E are forced to deal with a threat to the United Federation of Planets from a Reman clone of Captain Picard named Shinzon who has taken control of the Romulan Star Empire in a coup d'état.
Principal photography took place from November 2001 to March 2002. Jerry Goldsmith composed the film's score. The film was released in North America on December 13, 2002. The film received generally negative reviews, with publications criticizing the film for being the least successful in the Star Trek franchise. The film went on to earn $67,312,826 worldwide.
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The Romulan military offers the Imperial Senate plans to join forces with the Reman Military and invade the Federation, but the Praetor refuses to cooperate. A green Thalaron mist is released into the room, and everyone in the room is killed. Meanwhile, the crew of the USS Enterprise prepares to bid farewell to longtime first officer William Riker and Ship's Counselor Deanna Troi, who are soon to be married on Betazed, they discover a positronic energy reading on a planet in the Kolaran system near the Romulan Neutral Zone. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Worf, and Lieutenant Commander Data land on Kolarus III and discover the remnants of an android resembling Data. When the android is reassembled it reveals its name is B-4, and the crew deduce it to be a less-advanced earlier version of Data.
Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway orders the crew to conduct a diplomatic mission to Romulus. Janeway informs Picard that the Romulan government has undergone a military coup and is now controlled by a Reman named Shinzon, saying he wants peace with the Federation and bring freedom to Remus. This is a surprising development as the Romulans had regarded Remans as an undesirable caste used principally as slave labor, due to their long history of prejudice.
Upon their arrival on Romulus the crew learns that Shinzon is actually a clone of Picard, a remnant of a secret experiment conducted by the Romulans to take Picard's place in starfleet as a spy; however, he and the project were abandoned after a political change in the Romulan Imperial government that left him cast away to Remus as a slave. It is there that he meets his Reman brethren and effects his rise to power. It was also on Remus where Shinzon constructed his flagship, a heavily armed warship named Scimitar, with completely undetectable cloaking devices, an arsenal of weapons, and virtually impregnable shields.
Though the diplomatic mission seems to go smoothly, the crew discovers that the Scimitar is emitting low levels of extremely dangerous thalaron radiation (the same substance used to assassinate the Romulan senate as seen in the film's beginning), several unauthorized computer accesses take place aboard the Enterprise, and Counselor Troi is psychically attacked by Shinzon while she is making love to First Officer Riker. Picard is captured by Shinzon and is informed that he is slowly dying from the accelerated aging from his cloning process, and thus needs Picard's blood to live. Shinzon also transports B-4 aboard the Scimitar, revealing that Shinzon was behind the placing of B-4 on Kolarus III in order to lure Picard to Romulus. However, B-4 exposes himself as Data - he rescues Picard and they make their escape back to their ship. Realizing that the Scimitar is a weaponized thalaron emitter with enough power to destroy all life forms in a fleet of ships as well as an entire planet, Data deduces that Shinzon is using the warship to conquer the Federation and destroy Earth.
The Enterprise heads back to Federation space, but is soon ambushed by the Scimitar, disabling the Enterprise's warp drive in the process. In the ensuing assault, the Enterprise is outmatched. Two Romulan Warbirds arrive and assist in the assault, but Shinzon destroys one Warbird and disables the other. Refocusing his attention on Picard, Shinzon damages the Enterprise to a significant degree.
Refusing to surrender, Picard uses his heavily damaged ship to ram the Scimitar, but only succeeds in slightly damaging it. Picard even tries to initiate the Enterprise's self-destruct sequence, but finds it disabled from the attack. Meanwhile, Shinzon initializes the Scimitar's thalaron weapon in a desperate attempt to take the Enterprise down with him. Picard boards the vessel alone and faces Shinzon. Unable to stop the weapon from activating, Picard kills Shinzon by impaling him through the abdomen with part of a metallic support strut. Data arrives with a single-use personal transporter, using it to quickly beam the Captain back to the Enterprise before sacrificing himself to destroy the ship, shutting down the weapon in the process.
While the severely damaged Enterprise is under repair in a space dock in near-Earth orbit, Picard bids farewell to newly promoted Captain Riker who is off to command the USS Titan, to begin a true peace negotiation mission with Romulus. Picard then meets with android B-4, whereupon he learns that Data had succeeded in copying the engrams of his neural net into B-4's positronic matrix not long before his death.
The film, as with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, was cut by about a third from a much longer running time. Many of the deleted scenes in the movie were "character moments", which served to further the characters' relationships with one another and the reason why they were cut was to put more emphasis on the battle between the Enterprise-E and the Scimitar. Rick Berman has stated that about 50 minutes worth of scenes were filmed, but cut (though not necessarily all of them were usable in a final form, some might be redundant with other scenes, etc.). Around 17 minutes of deleted scenes were included on the DVD, including:
Nemesis was to have been the first Star Trek film to feature the character of Wesley Crusher (played by Wil Wheaton). His scenes were almost entirely cut from the film, leaving only a brief, silent cameo during the wedding (which itself is only visible in widescreen presentations, as he sits at the far end of the table). A deleted scene on the collector's-edition DVD features a brief conversation between Wesley and Picard: Wesley, now a lieutenant in operations-division gold, has returned to Starfleet and is a member of Captain Riker's engineering crew on the USS Titan.
Three "extended ending" clips were included on the two-disc edition. The first was Picard talking to Dr. Crusher about her return to Starfleet Medical and Crusher remarking how she works with a bunch of young doctors who are ready to cure the entire quadrant. The second was Geordi and Worf packing Data's possessions in his quarters. As they are cleaning up Data's cat Spot jumps into Worf's hands and Worf states he is not a cat person. Geordi sees how Spot has taken to Worf and replies, "You are now." Immediately following this scene is the introduction of the new first officer, Commander Madden, which is included in the deleted scenes of the DVD. The third, titled "The Captain's Chair" features the goodbye scene between Riker and Picard, as well as the introduction of the new Enterprise first officer (Madden). The Captain's chair is newly installed with the special feature of automatic restraint straps that trigger when the ship goes to alert, to which Picard responds with a smile "It's about time!"
In promotional interviews for the film, Patrick Stewart stated that room for a sequel was left as B-4 begins singing, "Blue Skies."[1]
Star Trek: First Contact and Insurrection director Jonathan Frakes was not offered to direct the film; he has said that if he had, he would have accepted it again.[2]
The music to Star Trek Nemesis was one of the last works by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith, who composed such previous entrees to the franchise as the Academy Award nominated score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection as well as the themes to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (arranged by Dennis McCarthy) and Star Trek: Voyager.
The score opens with airy synthesizers under a trumpet performing an augmented triad before preceding into Alexander Courage's Star Trek: The Original Series fanfare. The score then quickly transitions into a much darker theme to accompany the conflict between the Reman and Romulan empires. Goldsmith also composed a new 5-note theme to accompany the character Shinzon and the Scimitar, which is manipulated throughout the score to reflect the multiple dimensions of the character. The score is book-ended with Goldsmith's theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, following a brief excerpt from the song "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin and the original Star Trek fanfare.[3]
The soundtrack was released 26 September 2002 through Varèse Sarabande and features fourteen tracks of score at a running time just over forty-eight minutes, though bootleg versions containing the entire score have since been released.[3][4]
The movie received mainly negative reviews. Out of 148 professional reviews compiled by the Rotten Tomatoes film review database, 53 (37%) are positive, giving the film a "rotten" rating.[5]The film has earned a Metacritic score of 50 out of 100 (mixed or average) from 29 reviews.[6]
Some reviewers felt the response to Nemesis indicated that the Star Trek franchise had become worn. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated in his review, "I'm smiling like a good sport and trying to get with the dialogue … and gradually it occurs to me that "Star Trek" is over for me. I've been looking at these stories for half a lifetime, and, let's face it, they're out of gas."[7] Rotten Tomatoes ratings consensus as of March 16, 2009 indicates "Nemesis has an interesting premise and some good action scenes, but the whole affair feels a bit tired."[8]
Actors LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) were openly critical of director Stuart Baird, and criticized him for not watching any of the episodes of The Next Generation (Burton, in particular, remarked that the movie "sucked").[9]
Nemesis was released on December 13, 2002, in direct competition with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (released November 15, 2002), the 20th James Bond film Die Another Day (released November 22, 2002), and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (released December 18, 2002). Rick Berman (executive producer of the film) has suggested that Nemesis's performance may have been negatively affected by "the competition of other films".[10]
The film's gross domestic income was the lowest of the franchise at $43,254,409 as of September 2008. It opened at #2 in the US box office (just $200,000 behind Maid in Manhattan)[11] and was the first Trek film not to debut at #1. It earned $67,312,826 worldwide on a budget of $60,000,000.[12]
On May 20, 2003, Nemesis was released on DVD in both anamorphic widescreen and full screen editions in Region 1 (it was also released on full screen VHS). This initial release contained an audio commentary by director Stuart Baird, four featurettes on the film's production, seven deleted scenes, a photo gallery, and a preview for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on DVD at Amazon.com. Also on October 4, 2005, Star Trek Nemesis was released on UMD in widescreen for Region 1 only; it's the only Star Trek ever released on UMD.
The initial release was followed up with a "Special Collector's Edition" in Region 1 on October 4, 2005. Although this two-disc set contained several additional features, it also duplicated some of the features found in the initial release.[13]
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