Oh dear. As a Star Trek fan of long-standing, I was hoping for more from the final movie of the Next Gen saga. It's not bad, but it's just full of everything we've seen before, neatly repackaged and with shiny new names to make them seem different.
There's the standard plot....Enterprise and crew must save the Earth. Just like in First Contact. There's the evil baddie, this time a supposed clone of Picard - you know he's related to Picard because he's bald as well (I actually snickered when I saw him the first time - it's such a terribly predictable thing to do). Come to think of it, the Borg Queen was bald too. I'm sure there's no connection. Then you have the obligatory "Data's the main character" plot-device, just like First Contact again. And Worf is once more relegated to a comedy sidekick role (whatever happened to the mean, glowering Worf that killed the Klingon who murdered his mate in the series?).
On the plus side, both Riker and Troi have lost weight and look like they fit into their uniforms without assistance from a shoehorn anymore.
But holes abound in this movie, for instance (spoilers ahead):
Just how did the Remans build the universe's most powerful warship (in secret, no less) when they have been slaves for...well...ever? How did they get the parts/skills/crew knowledge etc?
When they scan the Scimitar (Reman warship) Worf reports untold numbers of disruptors and photon launchers, yet in battle apparently only a couple of the disruptors fire at a time and there's nary a sign of a photon.
And just how many Data androids did Dr Soong build for Chrissake!? And why do they all look the same? And just how did the all-singing, all-dancing Remans find one? Let alone learn how to reprogram it. And why, when the whole Trek-loving audience was murmuring "Lore" did the characters in the movie never mention him once?
How does the (supposedly) flagship crew of the Federation not realise that by going through the nebula they will be out of communications and therefore liable to immediate attack until its too late? Doh!
How come the Enterprise runs out of photons? I didn't count how many they fired, but it didn't seem like that many. You'd think the Federation would make sure they had plenty, seeing as how it's always the Enterprise that saves the day.
And how come shields apparently don't stop kinetic energy impacts (like another ship ramming you)? If that was the case surely all vessels would be armed with good old fashioned projectile weapons? None of this namby-pamby phasers-and-photons-that-don't-go-through-shields nonsense.
Ah well, at least there were two actors I was pleased to see in the film. Dina Meyer, playing a Romulan commander and Ron Perlman (mostly wasted here beneath heaps of make-up) as the Reman viceroy. C'mon, you remember them! Dina was Dizzy from Starship Troopers and Ron was the big grunt from Alien Resurrection and err...many other films where he also plays bit-part bad-guys.
Overall though, a disappointing film to end the franchise with. The starship battle looked a bit tired. Not the exciting stuff from Wrath of Khan. But then again, the bad guy wasn't the amazingly overacting Ricardo Montalban either, so maybe that's why. Maybe Geordie could invent a new gizmo for the next movie. He could call it the "anti-plot device" device and it would instantly nullify all the cliched nonsense that has ruined Star Trek over the last few years. Speaking of Geordie, I note in this film that he gets to plug things into Data's head again....all good stuff.
Well, enough ranting. Though if enough of us pester Paramount, do you think they'd ever make a "Star Trek - The Musical" movie? That'd be cool. Tim Curry as the singing and dancing villain...Yay! And you'd just have to have Leonard Nimoy guesting as Spock (if you've ever heard "The Hobbit Song" he did, you know it'd be a winner!)
Ack! I'm ranting again. Time to go. ST: Nemesis is OK, but nothing new.
There's the standard plot....Enterprise and crew must save the Earth. Just like in First Contact. There's the evil baddie, this time a supposed clone of Picard - you know he's related to Picard because he's bald as well (I actually snickered when I saw him the first time - it's such a terribly predictable thing to do). Come to think of it, the Borg Queen was bald too. I'm sure there's no connection. Then you have the obligatory "Data's the main character" plot-device, just like First Contact again. And Worf is once more relegated to a comedy sidekick role (whatever happened to the mean, glowering Worf that killed the Klingon who murdered his mate in the series?).
On the plus side, both Riker and Troi have lost weight and look like they fit into their uniforms without assistance from a shoehorn anymore.
But holes abound in this movie, for instance (spoilers ahead):
Just how did the Remans build the universe's most powerful warship (in secret, no less) when they have been slaves for...well...ever? How did they get the parts/skills/crew knowledge etc?
When they scan the Scimitar (Reman warship) Worf reports untold numbers of disruptors and photon launchers, yet in battle apparently only a couple of the disruptors fire at a time and there's nary a sign of a photon.
And just how many Data androids did Dr Soong build for Chrissake!? And why do they all look the same? And just how did the all-singing, all-dancing Remans find one? Let alone learn how to reprogram it. And why, when the whole Trek-loving audience was murmuring "Lore" did the characters in the movie never mention him once?
How does the (supposedly) flagship crew of the Federation not realise that by going through the nebula they will be out of communications and therefore liable to immediate attack until its too late? Doh!
How come the Enterprise runs out of photons? I didn't count how many they fired, but it didn't seem like that many. You'd think the Federation would make sure they had plenty, seeing as how it's always the Enterprise that saves the day.
And how come shields apparently don't stop kinetic energy impacts (like another ship ramming you)? If that was the case surely all vessels would be armed with good old fashioned projectile weapons? None of this namby-pamby phasers-and-photons-that-don't-go-through-shields nonsense.
Ah well, at least there were two actors I was pleased to see in the film. Dina Meyer, playing a Romulan commander and Ron Perlman (mostly wasted here beneath heaps of make-up) as the Reman viceroy. C'mon, you remember them! Dina was Dizzy from Starship Troopers and Ron was the big grunt from Alien Resurrection and err...many other films where he also plays bit-part bad-guys.
Overall though, a disappointing film to end the franchise with. The starship battle looked a bit tired. Not the exciting stuff from Wrath of Khan. But then again, the bad guy wasn't the amazingly overacting Ricardo Montalban either, so maybe that's why. Maybe Geordie could invent a new gizmo for the next movie. He could call it the "anti-plot device" device and it would instantly nullify all the cliched nonsense that has ruined Star Trek over the last few years. Speaking of Geordie, I note in this film that he gets to plug things into Data's head again....all good stuff.
Well, enough ranting. Though if enough of us pester Paramount, do you think they'd ever make a "Star Trek - The Musical" movie? That'd be cool. Tim Curry as the singing and dancing villain...Yay! And you'd just have to have Leonard Nimoy guesting as Spock (if you've ever heard "The Hobbit Song" he did, you know it'd be a winner!)
Ack! I'm ranting again. Time to go. ST: Nemesis is OK, but nothing new.