A Federation starship captain going up against himself ... now there's a match-up for the ages.
That's the setup for Star Trek: Nemesis, the 10th entry in filmdom's longest running sci-fi franchise, the fourth featuring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. While the concept is winning, the execution leaves something to be desired; it's as if director Stuart Baird (U.S. Marshals) and his screenwriters either didn't have enough faith in their own ideas, or were so busy trying to differentiate this Trek chapter from its predecessors that they forgot about the franchise's most enduring strengths.
At its best, Star Trek has never been about the battles, or about the constant tug-of-war between good and evil (unlike, say, Star Wars, where the mythology is everything). The best Treks have been more cerebral, more mano-a-mano, as starship captains who embody just about everything that makes for a good leader are pitted against enemy leaders just as exemplary, save for their evil predispositions. True, the result has been some battles royale, but they've always been battles that boiled down to one man against another: think of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, or Star Trek: First Contact.
Better yet, think back to the original TV series and the episode titled "Balance of Terror," wherein the Federation encounters its Romulan enemies for the first time in generations, and emerges victorious only after the estimable James T. Kirk proves just a tad better tactician than his battle-weary Romulan counterpart.
Nemesis should have been cut from the same mold, but with an enticing twist: This time, it's Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) going up against a clone of himself, cultivated by the Romulans as part of a long-abandoned strategy to infiltrate the Federation and bring about its destruction. Exiled from Romulus to the dilithium mines of its sister planet, a dark, cold rock called Remus, the man who came to be known as Shinzon (English actor Tom Hardy) barely survived, kept going only by his thirst for what some might call revenge, others vindication.
Striking up an alliance with a powerful Reman viceroy (Ron Perlman), Shinzon executes a coup on Romulus and comes to power. Ostensibly, he wants peace with the Federation. But Picard (not to mention you, me and anyone else who's ever seen a Star Trek episode or movie) knows better.
Nice setup. But Nemesis spends way too much time on such ludicrousness as a gun-toting Picard laying waste to scores of Romulan guards (who does Jean-Luc think he is, Steven Seagal?) or Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) hurtling down a chute on the Enterprise to grapple with the Reman viceroy.
Even more egregious is a sequence where Picard, Worf (Michael Dorn) and Data (Brent Spiner, who also gets a script credit) shuttle down to a mysterious planet to track down the source of some unusual energy readings. Once the shuttle lands, the trio goes tooling around on a glorified dune buggy, with Picard as the thrill-seeking driver, roaring around the landscape like someone trying out for the X Games. Starship captains are supposedly trained to take risks commensurate with the situation, not hot-dog it like some teen out on a bender. Watching the sequence actually hurts, especially since Baird seeks to optimize the coolness factor by overexposing the film and draining all the color out of it.
So what is there to recommend Nemesis? Well, there's the comfort factor of seeing the old gang back together again, wearing their roles like a comfortable pair of shoes. Data, as always, can be counted on for some nice moments (except when he makes like a humanoid photon torpedo during the climactic battle, silly stuff), and Marina Sirtis' Counselor Deanna Troi gets to enact a nice bit of psychic revenge.
And then there's Shinzon, a memorable character who could have been even more so. Hardy makes the guy a perversely wicked reflection of Picard, Jean-Luc as a snot-nosed kid who never grew up. Nemesis could have used more of these two leaders, literally cut from the same mold, trying to outthink, rather than outbrawl, each other.
Conventional wisdom has it that the best Star Trek movies are the even-numbered ones. Nemesis may keep that streak alive, but barely.
Sun Score **
Star Trek: Nemesis
Starring Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy
Directed by Stuart Baird
Released by Paramount
Rated PG-13 (sci-fi violence, brief sexuality)
Time 117 mins.