This is the creative low point for the entire Trek film franchise. While some claim it was the Enterprise tv show that really put Trek on life-support, I think these films were a major contributor.
Gone were the epic storylines, great character arcs, and fun action pieces from First Contact. They were replaced with turning badass characters into jokes, a dunebuggy chase, an inexplicably terrible villains.
Insurrection
On a remote planet, Data suddenly begins malfunctioning on what is said to be a routine survey mission. When the Enterprise crew go to help rescue him, they discover that the Federation is up to no good. Conspiring with a group of aliens known as the Son’a, they are working to relocate an indigenous population known as the Ba’ku so they can harvest energy from the planet’s rings which hold the key to major medical breakthroughs. Oh, did we mention the Ba’ku homeworld is basically the fountain of youth? You never grow old there, and, in fact, Enterprise crew members start to feel and act more young.
Riker shaves his beard and starts taking naked bubble baths with Troi, Geordi’s eyes regenerate, Picard dances the mambo and finds a love interest. . . and it’s all terrible. Even worse is that they turn some of the best characters into punchlines.
Did you know the key to distracting Data and resetting his program is to sing the HMS Pinafore to him? And he’s never, ever sick at sea. Data informs us that in the case of a water landing he can serve as a flotation device. Yes, because that that dialogue comes naturally in the 24th century and is not at all an anachronistic wink to the audience. Gah.
And then there’s Worf. By this point, we’re in the last year of the Dominion War. Worf has already helped beat back the Dominion fleet, has regularly captained the Defiant in battle and his own Klingon Bird of Prey, and only a few month later will challenge Chancellor Gowron in combat, defeat him, giving him right to rule the entire Klingon Empire. Super badass. Yeah, but in this movie, the only thing he gets to do is have a really big zit. Oh, I’m sorry– a “gorch.”
And this movie has, of all the films, easily the weakest villain. Oh, you’re an old man who needs lots of plastic surgery to stay alive? You have parent issues? Boo hoo.
The question here is, “why?” Why make such a small film when there are epic storylines happening on TV? Why isn’t the Enterprise involved in the Dominion War? Couldn’t you do a film that advances both storylines? An early draft had the main antagonists as Romulans, not So’na. That would’ve been interesting. Or maybe it wouldn’t have, because next we have…
Nemesis
Star Trek’s biggest nemesis in this film is itself. It gets so tripped up in trying to be a big, epic Star Trek film that it just completely fails. And it’s maddening, because a lot of the pieces are there.
Tom Hardy (you know, Bane from Batman?) plays a clone of Picard named Shinzon, created by the Romulans to replace and impersonate him, but then inexplicably banished to the dilithium mines of Remus. While there, he plots his escape, eventually breaking out and becoming a valuable Romulan military leader. And then he murders the whole Senate and takes over. His first act is to offer “peace” to the Federation, but he wants to meet with Picard.
Along the way, the Enterprise manages to oh-so-conveniently find the remains of another Soong-type android named B-4. (Get it? B4? Before? Because he’s a prototype? Yeah, you’re right, it’s not funny.) And guess what, he’s the very embodiment of a Trojan horse, eventually leaving the Enterprise defenseless and giving the Romulans the chance to kidnap Picard. Oh yeah, and Shinzon’s viceroy? A telepathic Reman? He mindrapes Troi. (Always nice.) So you know Riker is going to take revenge on the guy. The movie ends with a big space battle, and Data sacrifices himself to save everyone.
The biggest problem with Nemesis was it was trying too hard. It tried to mimic the pathos of Spock’s sacrifice in Wrath of Khan. It tried to mimic the epic space battles. It tried to be clever with clones and prototype androids. It tried to let Riker be Captain Kirk, even down to his climactic battle with the Viceroy where he kicks him off a rickety bridge (that looks eerily familiar like the bridge Kirk died on in Generations?) And when he kicks him? You can almost hear Kirk battling Christopher Lloyd in Seartch for Spock (I.. have HAD… ENOUGH… of YOU!!!)
Instead of trying to be clever and mimic other things, it never found its own voice and place. So it ultimately rings hollow, bereft of the soul we want from a film like this. Oh, and when it’s not trying so hard to be clever, it’s incredibly boring.
It’s sad that the Enterprise crew had to go out like this. They deserved better. It’s not that these were terrible movies, they just weren’t really good movies . . at all.
No wonder they needed a reboot, right? See you tomorrow where we talk the 2009 reboot.