Star Trek: Nemesis

Raise your hand if you're a ridiculous excuse for a villain.

Janeway: Jean-Luc, how would you like a trip to Romulus?
Picard: With or without the rest of the fleet?

The big-screen Grand Finale for the Next Generation crew. In fact, it nearly became a Franchise Killer for the Trek features (requiring a Continuity Reboot to survive).

After a coup, the new leader of the ever-secretive Romulan government makes an offer of peace to The Federation. Our heroes find out that this new leader, Shinzon, is a younger clone of Picard, the by-product of a botched Romulan plot. At first Shinzon's intentions seem honest, but they quickly turn malicious for convoluted medical reasons. There's also a subplot about a prototype of Data, B4, which serves as a counterpoint to Picard's identity struggles.

See here for a more detailed recap.

Director Stuart Baird is an editor by trade; reportedly he had never seen a single episode of Star Trek in his life, and his only other directing credits were Executive Decision and U.S. Marshals. This might explain why Nemesis places more emphasis on Stuff Blowing Up than Character Development, and even includes a Car Chase. The addition of some serious Fridge Logic and Series Continuity Errors turned off the fans, and the revelation that much material had been left on the cutting-room floor - including Cameos from former TNG regulars and True Companions-building moments for the survivors - didn't help. The result was a genuine flop, and the first Star Trek film not to turn a profit.

The failure of this film and Star Trek: Enterprise was a sign that the Star Trek franchise had hit a rut and needed some new blood and fresh ideas, which is what the following film went for.

Tropes used in Star Trek: Nemesis include:

Worf: ...Irving Berlin.

  • Apocalypse How: Class 5, threatened.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Thalaron Radiation
  • Author Appeal: Primary screenwriter John Logan admits in interviews to being a huge fan of Data and Picard, and Brent Spiner co-wrote, explaining why Data gets a Heroic Sacrifice and he and Picard both get Long Lost Relatives and so much Badassery they approach Canon Sue status.
  • Backported Development: Even though Picard was supposed to have lost his hair with age, his clone is also completely bald. Shinzon's baldness can perhaps be explained away as being a result of his screwed up DNA and the resultant premature aging, but a photograph showing Picard as a bald cadet, not so easily.
    • Patrick Stewart became bald at 19, so maybe they were just trying to Retcon that.
    • Or maybe when he was younger Picard tried the "shaved head" look for awhile, before growing his hair back.
  • Bald of Evil: See above trope.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Commander Donatra arrives with two Warbirds to assist the Enterprise and after realizing Shinzon was genocidal.
    • Subsequently subverted - they just don't build Warbirds like they used to. One Romulan vessel has a wing sheared off and the other is gutted, leaving the Enterprise no better off than before. The Worf Effect, to show how badass Shinzon is, but its so easy it just makes the Romulans look bad.
      • To be fair those were not proper Warbirds. They were faster lighter escort ships, presumably the only ones fast enough to arrive in time to actually be any help.
  • Blank Slate: Data's "brother" B4. Which is good, because otherwise implanting Data's memories and personality inside of him would be a fairly severe form of Mind Rape.
  • Board to Death: Romulan senate not cooperating? Kill 'em all with an experimental thalaron radiation bomb!
  • Body Horror: The effects of thalaron radiation: it turns you into powder from the inside-out. Quite painfully, it must be added.
  • Body Snatcher: Data imprints his neural net on his mentally handicapped brother's brain. He plays it off as "helping his brother grow" or somesuch, but the Star Trek tie-in comic confirms that in the future Data has completely taken over B-4's body.
    • Data actually did not want to take B-4's body, and wrote a program to delete himself from B-4. But B-4 realizing that without Data the Federation would be destroyed changed one line of code so the program deleted B-4 from the body instead of Data. Starfleet had made a backup of B-4 though so now B-4 Lives inside a holodeck, where according to the Star Trek Online novel tie in he's quite happy and working on a new body.
  • Bottomless Pit: Riker kicks the Viceroy into one of these; the Enterprise apparently has one starting at deck 29 (the bottom of the ship) and going down far enough to be fatal.
    • This also becomes a case of Did Not Do the Research as the ship has been repeatedly identified as only having 26 decks in previous movies.
  • The Cameo: Janeway appearing as a (recently promoted) Admiral is the only Canon description of what happened to the Voyager crew after their Grand Finale.
  • Captain Obvious: "It appears to be a robot arm."
    • Lampshaded, "Very astute."
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Shinzon. They try so hard to paint him as some kind of complex Well-Intentioned Extremist, basically by just telling us so. But actions speak louder than words and Shinzon's actions say nothing except "Hi, I'm the villain of this movie! Look how evil I am! Watch as I do random evil things which are in no way motivated by my supposed Freudian Excuse!"
  • Chekhov's Gun: The micro transporter Data attempts to use when rescuing Picard is used later on... to rescue Picard.
  • Cloning Blues: Shinzon is so insecure about being a "copy" of Captain Picard that he wants to kill not just him, but the entire Human race to prove his own uniqueness.
  • Constantly Curious: B-4 in the car-chase scene.
  • Continuity Nod: There is one for every Trek series and crew:
    • One of the ships waiting for the Enterprise is the USS Archer.
    • A maneuvering pattern during the battle is called Kirk Epsilon.
    • A mention of the Dominion War and an appearance by Admiral Janeway.
    • Troi taking the helm when the first helm officer is sucked into space and consequently being given the order by Picard to ram the Scimitar with the Enterprise is a humorous nod to her similar actions on the Enterprise-D and its status as a meme among the fanbase.
    • The most subtle nod happens with Worf. While moving to intercept the boarding party Worf mentions that "The Romulans fought with honor." In a prior Next Generation episode Worf went so far as to refuse to help save a dying Romulan's life while Dr. Crusher and Picard could not convince him otherwise (his family was killed in a Romulan surprise attack). The fact that the people he despised so much managed to impress him says a lot.
      • That scene is most likely a callback to a deleted scene where Worf derides the Romulans as being "without honor". Though it can also work as described above, as an evolution of Worf's views.
    • Another subtle reference is the planet Remus itself, which was first mentioned all the way back in "Balance of Terror" (and never mentioned again until now).
  • Cool Starship: The Scimitar is a decidedly evil-looking vessel, with forward-swept wings, dark gray hull, and an overall design that just oozes menace. It can also use its weapons and its shields while cloaked, something that, except for the Klingon Bird-of-Prey in The Undiscovered Country (the weapons at least, it still couldn't use its shields), is normally impossible.
  • Demoted to Extra: Pretty much everyone except Picard and Data, but particularly egregious for Geordi, Dr. Crusher and Worf.
  • The Dragon: The Viceroy.
  • Dream Spying
  • Driving Into a Truck: The Argo Jeep and a cargo shuttlecraft play this role. Picard even drives the Argo over a ledge in order to park it in the shuttle (they also drove out of the shuttle at the beginning of the scene).
  • Even Evil Has Standards: The Romulans start to side against Shinzon when they realized how genocidal he was. They want to conquer The Federation, but not like that.
  • Evilly Affable: Shinzon.
  • Evil Twin
  • Five Second Foreshadowing: The Enterprise is being stalked by Shinzon's cloaked ship, so it's hoping to rendezvous with the fleet for protection. On the way, they enter an area of space where long-range communications don't work. Data and Picard realize that this would be a perfect place for Shinzon to attack them. After that thought, they get attacked.
  • For the Evulz: Shinzon, in an unfortunate result of the amount of footage that was cut out. Initially he made his motives pretty clear near the start of the film, but at some point in editing the filmmakers decided it'd be better if the audience found out who Shinzon was at the same time as Picard. The end result of this was that Shinzon's backstory and motives were cut to the point where they were virtually nonexistent.
  • Grand Finale - For the Next Generation crew.
  • Heel Face Turn: the Romulans.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Data, homaging Wrath of Khan.
  • Idiot Ball: So to be clear: the series has established that quite a few members of the Enterprise are geniuses, and they know, by this point, that Shinzon is literally out for Captain Picard's blood. And yet, it doesn't occur to any of them that flying the ship into a gas cloud which prevents them from calling for help is a really, really bad idea.
    • The last time they found a disassembled Soong-designed android, he turned out to be Data's Evil Twin and went on to nearly kill the crew on two separate occasions. Why not ONE of the senior staff, all of whom were present for both events, brings up even the vaguest mention of this...
    • When the Remans were boarding the Enterprise, why didn't it occur to anyone to just turn on the lights? Why didn't occur to the Remans to bring protective eyeware, or did they just realize no one would think to do so ahead of time?
    • So, Shinzon and the Remans discover B-4 somewhere, add programming to turn him into their spy, and plant his remains in the desert for the Enterprise to find. The goal here is to acquire military information that will allow the Scimitar to travel through Federation space to Earth and avoid all defending ships and outposts... which wouldn't be able to see through his "perfect" cloaking device anyway, even at point-blank range when they know the ship is right there in front of them.
      • This not only doesn't work, but in fact allows for Data to masquerade as B-4 and free Picard, thus forcing Shinzon to attack the Enterprise to get him back rather than simply ignoring them entirely and going on to sterilize Earth.
      • Presumably this would have tied in to the deleted subplot where Shinzon intended to launch a full-scale assault on the Federation, and the information would have been for the benefit of the rest of the Romulan fleet, which probably have less perfect cloaking devices.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Reman side of this is lampshaded early on when it's pointed out that the Romulans used Remans for cannon fodder in the Dominion War.
  • Informed Ability: Shinzon is stated to be a tactical genius and a successful commander. However:
    • He waits for two days to talk to Picard personally.
    • He leaves the Enterprise in orbit of Romulus after kidnapping Picard.
    • He orders the Scimitar to move to port when he sees the Enterprise proceeding to ram it, rather than moving full reverse.
      • The Scimitar probably can not reverse anywhere as fast at the Enterprise can go forward, and if you factor in the fact that the Scimitar is much much larger then the Enterprise trying to move out of the way of the Enterprise is a much better choice.
      • Also Shinzon is visibly degrading from the effects of not having his rapid aging activated he could be making mistakes like putting the Scimitar anywhere it could possibly be rammed by the damaged Enterprise at all, because his mind is dissolving just like his body.
  • Informed Flaw: Picard tells Shinzon that the years of torment left him without the potential to improve himself...even though in the span of just under ten years, Shinzon went from weakest slave in the dilithium mines to successful commander in the Dominion War to leader of the Romulan Empire ready to deliver a mortal blow to their greatest enemy. Kinda makes Shinzon the self-made man of the decade.
  • Kicked Upstairs: This is a common Fanon rationale for why Janeway was promoted over Picard. They needed to get her as far away from the Captain's chair as possible.
  • Kick the Dog: Shinzon's Mind Rape of Troi, seemingly put in the film only to point out that he's a villain to the audience members who hadn't caught on to the fact yet.
  • King Arthur: Arthurian legend is referenced especially in the last scene between Picard and Shinzon. Shinzon pulling himself down the beam to make his final verbal attack all the more poignant is a parallel to Mordred hauling himself down the spear to aim a final attack at his father Arthur.
  • The Last Dance:

Shinzon: I'm glad we're together now - our destiny is complete.

  • Lock and Load Montage
  • Looks Like Orlok: The Remans.
  • Losing Your Head: B4.
  • Mind Rape: Troi, though she turns it back on them.
  • Misblamed: To an extent. The film is generally considered to be a (temporary) Franchise Killer for Star Trek, but the truth is that the franchise had been in decline for several years before hand; though not nearly as bad, Insurrection was also poorly received. Of course, this movie's unpopularity certainly didn't help things...
  • Misplaced Retribution: Shinzon directs his hatred of the Romulans towards Earth for reasons which only make sense to the screenwriter.
  • More Dakka: The Scimitar is more loaded for bear with disruptors and torpedoes than almost any other Trek ship, not to mention its Wave Motion Gun.
  • No Name Given: The Viceroy
  • No Seat Belts: A deleted bit from the ending would show that the Enterprise was finally being equipped with them, to which Picard even says "About time!"
  • Not So Different: Picard and Shinzon, explored at some length. Shinzon claims that he is what Picard would have been under different circumstances, then brushes off Picard's attempt to turn the "mirror" metaphor around on him. Data later points out a key difference by comparing him to B4: Neither makes any attempt to better themselves.
    • Subtly lampshaded when Shinzon tells his ship's replicator to give him a hot tea.
    • Shinzon went form the weakest slave in the mine to the uncontested ruler of a major galactic power; how this fails to count as "bettering himself" is anyone's guess.
      • Picard meant that Shinzon should better himself as a person, and that is one thing Shinzon obviously failed to do, despite his social success.
  • Oh Crap: When they realize that the region of space they have just entered would be the perfect place for an ambush. The actual attack comes...
  • Punny Name: B4, Data's prototype. The name was planned to be B9 but got changed.
  • Ramming Always Works: subverted. It accomplishes little and less, although presumably it would have slowed the Scimitar down and even damaged its ability to cloak meaning the rest of the fleet stood a better chance of detecting and engaging it.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot/Reality Subtext: Data's death came in large part because Brent Spiner, in his own words, is getting older and can't play an ageless Artificial Human so well anymore.
    • Patrick Stewart's love of off-road driving was the influence for the Argo dune buggy.
  • Remember the New Guy?: The entire Reman species which, given its back story, should have shown up at least once or twice on the various series. Everyone just acts like they've always existed.
  • Rule of Cool: An uncommon backfire. Between the Car Chase, the Nosferatu-like Remans, the Data prototype, the space battles, the Heroic Sacrifice and Captain Picard's sermonizing on the nature of morality, the writers tried to cram so much awesome stuff into one movie (at the expense of plot, continuity and character) that Willing Suspension of Disbelief collapsed under its own weight and the whole thing imploded into something surprisingly...less than awesome. Rick Berman actually discussed this rather frankly and admitted neither he nor anyone else realized anything was going wrong during filming.
  • Series Continuity Error: The Remans from the sister planet of Romulus as the thuggish foot soldiers of the Romulan Empire has never been mentioned before. B4 makes only some marginal sense (Dr. Soong mentioned he made plenty of prototypes before he created Data, although he didn't mention any that were still functional) but his appearance in the movie and how the Romulans got a hold of him is not explained.
    • Also, Picard, who has consistently been depicted as being willing to lay down his life before violating the Prime Directive, happily takes part in a car chase on a pre-industrial world. He's also violated it just about as much as Kirk did, but not never so whimsically and randomly.
    • Picard as a younger man has consistently been shown as having hair, or even thinning hair [dead link] . Nemesis presents a bald Picard in his cadet days [dead link] and correspondingly a bald Shinzon.
    • Picard tells Shinzon that the two of them have (among other things) the same heart, even though it's been established that Picard has an an artificial heart.
      • He could have meant it in the figurative sense, mind.
    • By far the most egregious problem is Data's lack of emotions. He's been upgraded to feel emotion for the past three movies, and it had become such a large part of his character that its nature as something he didn't start with wasn't even mentioned in Insurrection while he befriended the locals. Here, the script goes out of its way on multiple occasions to tell us Data absolutely does not have feelings, with one instance being Data reminding Geordi of it in a You Should Know This Already fashion.
      • In one of the deleted scenes from the end of the movie, there's a short clip where Geordi is going through the recently deceased Data's belongings, and finds his emotion chip. That means that when Data says "goodbye" to Picard at the end, he's acting emotionally... without his emotion chip.
      • The novelization briefly mentions that his emotion chip stopped functioning because it was overwhelmed by...emotion during his experience with the Borg Queen.
      • Confused Matthew had praised the movie for leaving out the emotion chip, feeling it better reflected Data's Character Development as attempting to grow beyond what he is, rather than simply adding on hardware.
    • The joke about Romulan Ale being illegal contradicts the trade sanctions being dropped during Deep Space Nine when the Romulans joined the war.
      • We never see on screen what happened between the Federation and the Romulans after the Dominion War. For all we know, their relations broke apart after they stopped having a common enemy.
  • Shoulders of Doom: Shinzon. Lampshaded on-set by his co-star Frakes, who described his outfit as "a reject from Rollerball."
  • Shout-Out: All five television series in the franchise are referenced at some point. Screenwriter John Logan, an avowed Trekkie, says he explicitly tried to combine all the best parts of the franchise as a whole into a movie.
  • Soul Fragment: B4 sings "Blue Skies" at the end.
  • Space Is an Ocean: Averted. The majority of the final battle takes place in mostly a flat plane but there is still plenty of swooping over and under each other. As well a major part of the combat involves the Enterprise rotating damaged sections away from the Scimitar's line of sight, which includes turning (relative to us) upside down.
  • Status Quo Is God: Despite leaving Starfleet in the finale of Deep Space Nine, Worf is back in his old position of tactical/security officer on the Enterprise without so much as a line of dialogue to explain it. This may actually have been an improvement on the excuse they offered for him being around in the previous film.
    • Made even more bizarre by the fact he isn't actually wearing a tactical/security officer's uniform, he's wearing his Deep Space Nine command officer uniform (it's possible he was simply on board for Riker and Troi's wedding, although a cut scene and the Expanded Universe claim otherwise).
  • Stupid Sacrifice: Several (attempted) times in fact. First Data tries to do this when saving Picard, but Picard tells him no. Then Picard attempts to do this when the Enterprise is disabled. Then Data comes to save Picard again, before following through on his initial plan to kill himself in a semi-heroic fashion. The latter two are because no member of the crew seems to realize that the Enterprise has functioning shuttles with functioning transporters.
  • This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself

Picard: Data, this is something I have to do myself.

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