How to enjoy Nemesis

See it with someone who's not a total Star Trek fan, and try to see it through his/her eyes. If you do, you'll see it's actually pretty solid as a standalone movie. I did that yesterday, and enjoyed it more than ever before.

For those is us who have seen every episode and every film....they find a new data, and we say we've seen that with Lor. Data sacrifices himself and we compare it to Spock, they give us an enemy who hates Picard, we see Khan. And because we're making these comparisons, we miss the differences in the subtext, that B4 is an untrustworthy Android Data has to, with great regret, decide to turn off, and Shinzon is more like a son gone bad to Picard than an ancient enemy.

I am now more convinced than ever that it failed, as Patrick Stewart said, due to "franchise fatigue." Even Roger Ebert, who was never a huge Trek fan, but saw all 10 movies, said it was solid enough, but he just got bored as shields failed and they rerouted power, because he's seen it all before.

If it's too much like the TV show, we say "it's just an extended episode," as many have said about Insurrection and TFF. If it's too different, we say "it's not Star Trek," as many have said with TMP and Trek '09. With so much history, and fans ready to howl if it falls too far one way or the other, filmmakers have a pretty fine line to walk.

And this convinces me that Paramount was wise to reboot, recast the parts so we have to accept that its changed, and even and change the tone. They can't keep trying to stay between the gutters; the only hope for Trek to live again is "To boldly go..."





"After years of fighting with reality, I am pleased to say that I have finally won out over it."