Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 08:20:12 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (oh god no)

Started by Lemming, May 11, 2021, 02:05:41 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

elliszeroed

I quite liked Insurrection originally, it felt like a longer TNG episode. My mind changed when I listened to Roawn J. Colemans take down of it on Youtube, it really is a confused film.


Wonderful Butternut

#2132
tbf, I didn't think about Insurrection from the angle of "what if someone just asked the Ba'ku would they be willing to give up their effective immortality to save billions of lives?". It's a valid point.

But Starfleet's information that the Son'a can't just live on the planet and will all die (presumably they're dying from a mix of old age and a cocktail of genetic modifications and medication to stave that off. Or more interestingly, maybe if you've lived on the Ba'ku planet for 100s of years your body becomes dependent on it and you'll start dying abnormally quickly if you leave. That actually would've made it stronger. If it was a case that the Ba'ku would die if relocated) if they don't harvest all the radiation from the rings is coming from the Son'a themselves. There's a good chance they're lying cos they want the Ba'ku to lose their immortality planet as punishment.

That being said, I like it more than most people do. It has issues, but the basics of it work, imo. I don't mind that it's 'just a stretched episode', I think it's better that we have something that'd be a Star Trek episode plot for once rather than Earth is going to be destroyed or some nutjob has a super weapon - OMG higher stakes, more action etc. etc. On the subject of which, I actually prefer the ending with Ru'afo (btw, none of these apostrophes seem to impact the pronounciations) being cunted into the rings and de-aged to nothing. It just feels a better fit for the movie's tone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-UxpMUvfJ4&t=26s&ab_channel=Vudu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHJ7opsQnQo&ab_channel=Vudu

Blowing him up so he dies a nice satisfying firey death, to the point of having the Enterprise fly within about 20m of the collector's hull to beam up Picard and Picard only, even though the transporter has a range of hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers, just feels like tacked on drama.

The undoing of two movies of character development for Data is the biggest problem the movie has. He's back to early TNG "I don't understand what a child is" mode. Why did they do this? Surely they can do a better character arc for Data? Do they even need to do a specific character arc for him here, he got more character time than anyone but Picard in both Generations & First Contact. And will do so again in Nemishits. Work more with Geordi regaining his eyes or something.

But beyond that most of the rest is nitpicking rather than fundamental flaws for me. If they'd done something different with Data, deleted a few lines of stupid dialogue (dO yOu NotICe hOW yoUr BreASts ArE FiRmiNG Up? Lol lOL LoL!) and left the original ending in place, I think it would've been a good movie.

Endicott

Data is one of the things I liked about Insurrection. Mainly because I abhorred all that emotion chip nonsense in Contact. Really hated it, so this is like a breath of fresh air, even with his stupid buoyancy shite.

I'm always a bit surprised at how much opprobrium Insurrection gets, because all the TNG movies are bloody awful, plot holes you could drive a bus through, ST with the action turned up to 11, unbelievable bollocks. But Nemesis is clearly the worst by a country mile.

Blumf

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on July 29, 2022, 06:21:13 PMIt has issues, but the basics of it work

Beyond the film playing on whatever device you're watching it on, what else works?

The plot's a mess, with vague, unfinished idea strewn about. The 'good guys' appear to be a repressive cult. The bad guys don't appear to know what or why they're doing stuff (Save the Ba'ku? Kill them all? Revenge?). The corrupt Fed angle is half baked (did then even sign off on this, or is it just Dougherty going off on his own. Why do the Son'a even need them?). It could have been made to work, in various ways, but they didn't.

I agree, that it's nice not to have an 'OMG the Earth is about to be bummed!' story, but instead, they stretched out a really crap episode. Like Journey's End, but you don't even get the pleasure of seeing the WARP NONCE collect Wesley. Oh, and all the character motivations made sense, even if the Native American LARP'er we arseholes.

Poobum

Buried and buried deep is that the Son'a are working with the Dominion as told in a single line in DS9, so it's all justified.

One thing I love about Nemesis is that Tom Brady Hardy did a Christian Bale in the Machinist type method approach for a role in an incredibly shit film.

Lemming

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on July 29, 2022, 06:21:13 PMBut Starfleet's information that the Son'a can't just live on the planet and will all die (presumably they're dying from a mix of old age and a cocktail of genetic modifications and medication to stave that off. Or more interestingly, maybe if you've lived on the Ba'ku planet for 100s of years your body becomes dependent on it and you'll start dying abnormally quickly if you leave. That actually would've made it stronger. If it was a case that the Ba'ku would die if relocated) if they don't harvest all the radiation from the rings is coming from the Son'a themselves. There's a good chance they're lying cos they want the Ba'ku to lose their immortality planet as punishment.

I was half expecting it to be revealed near the end that Ru'afo had lied about being ill in order to play on Dougherty's emotions to get him on-side (though why he needs Dougherty/the Fed on-side remains a mystery), but that revelation never came, so I came away with the assumption that the Sona are ill, but we're expected not to care about their plight because Ru'afo's a dick, and our hero Picard thinks the entire race are "thugs".

Connected to the question of their ambiguous illness is the question of how Ru'afo assembled his crew - Gal'na and I think another person earlier in the film express unease over the plan (even the cuddly version of the plan where they move all the Ba'ku away before harvesting the rings), so I can't imagine how they were persuaded to join the mission at all, if they weren't genuinely in need of the rings' radiation. Clearly they don't agree with Ru'afo's mass murder scheme, because they all sign up to the Federation's holodeck plan first, and when that fails, they all attempt to move the Ba'ku with transporters, and presumably many of them still had family members among the Ba'ku. But when Ru'afo goes mental for no reason near the end, only one person on the crew objects, and everyone else is just there to either die while chasing the Enterprise or get knocked about by Worf.

Quote from: Blumf on July 29, 2022, 07:39:08 PMThe plot's a mess, with vague, unfinished idea strewn about. The 'good guys' appear to be a repressive cult. The bad guys don't appear to know what or why they're doing stuff (Save the Ba'ku? Kill them all? Revenge?). The corrupt Fed angle is half baked (did then even sign off on this, or is it just Dougherty going off on his own. Why do the Son'a even need them?). It could have been made to work, in various ways, but they didn't.
I think the Federation Council had signed off on Dougherty's plan but in a way where they immediately disowned it when it became problematic. I wonder what Dougherty was even trying to do - was he just really jazzed by the medical potential of the rings, did he care for the Sona, maybe he was thinking big-picture about how the medical tech could shift the balance in the Dominion War?

elliszeroed

Quote from: Blumf on July 29, 2022, 07:39:08 PMBeyond the film playing on whatever device you're watching it on, what else works?

Good barb, gonna have to reuse it!

dontpaintyourteeth

I always think the people on the planet are smug dickheads


Poobum

Horrible fuckers. "You don't have a magic planet of no aging to farm on? Then I'm afraid you're just inferior to us." Also I hate concepts like this, de-aging radiation, it's just magic. Sci-Fi, use science, it's endlessly interesting.

Zero Gravitas

We see very few Son'a during the film, 8-9 assuming all of the warped faces we see are unique, perhaps their slaves are by practical necessity of manning a ship and that's all there is? Less than a full lacrosse team.

Also they're all jaffas:



Malcy

I like Insurrection. And I'm still hopeful after all this time that the Quark scene will end up being released at some point.

And surely Into Darkness is the worst Trek film by far? Insurrection is a masterpiece compared to that abomination.

daf

Think they were definitely aiming for comedy - going for a similar tone to that one where Kirk and Spock travel back to save a whale.

What was the Quark scene?

Malcy

QUARK'S VOICE
Worf!

They turn to see a Ferengi (QUARK) approaching in a
bathing suit with a beach umbrella and two barely dressed
Dabo girls...


WORF
What are you doing here, Quark?

QUARK
The same thing everyone else in
the quadrant is going to be doing
here... as soon as I build the
greatest spa in the galaxy...
(sotto)
... these people don't have any
religious thing about casinos do
they...?


PICARD
There aren't going to be any spas
on this planet.

QUARK
Do I know you?


PICARD
(ignoring the
question)
This world is about to become a
Federation protectorate, which
will end any and all attempts at
exploitation by people like you.

QUARK
Explain to me how five thousand
time-share units... right there
along the lake... would be
'exploiting' anyone.


PICARD
Mister Worf, have this
uninvited... offlander and his
quests beamed to the Enterprise.
We'll deposit them at Deep Space
Nine.

WORF
Must you, sir?




daf


Blumf

Quote from: Malcy on July 30, 2022, 06:08:19 PMAnd surely Into Darkness is the worst Trek film by far? Insurrection is a masterpiece compared to that abomination.

@elliszeroed posted a video that (amongst other things) points out, that Into Darkness at least carries it's themes competently enough. Even if it is an awful Trek film.

Personally, I don't class any of the JJ-verse films as Trek full stop (well, maybe Beyond is okay-ish), so I don't count them in the ratings. But I'd still stand by Insurrection being the worst against them; stupid and dull.

Lemming

#2146
Star Trek: Nemesis

A shadowy figure is about to start a revolution in the Romulan Empire. Picard is dispatched to investigate, but gets more than he bargained for when the revolutionary turns out to be a clone of him!

PART 1: PICARD IN STEREO
Spoiler alert
- In the Romulan senate, they're discussing the benefits of an alliance with SHINZON. With Shinzon on side, not even the Federation will be able to stand against them!!! The military endorse the plan but the senate tell them to fuck off. One of the senators, Tal'Aura, plants a weird device on the desk which displays a cool light show. This is cool for a second but then everyone disintegrates and turns to stone.

- Picard's officiating Riker and Troi's wedding (that was sudden). His standup routine goes down a treat, especially when he tells Data to shut up. He skilfully closes the speech with his catchphrase "make it so". Wedding is an absolute fucking smash hit.

- Riker's eager to get his knob out for the second ceremony they're having on Betazed. Worf feels that having his own cock and balls out will dishonour the House of Mogh all the way back to when they were single-celled lifeforms in the primordial soup, but Picard reassures him that he's smoking hot and everyone would love to see his bat'leth dangling out in the open. New problem though: there's weird android-y energy signatures coming from a planet near the Neutral Zone. While Picard races to the gym to try and get his ass perfectly toned for the big wedding, Riker takes command of the Enterprise to oversee the trip to check out the weird signature.

- We arrive at the planet, which is pre-warp. We can't use the transporter because of the ion storm lingering nearby that'll send us to the mirror universe. Picard realises this is a golden opportunity to try THE ARGO. There's a really weird line here where Riker tries to stop Picard from going on the away mission, and the latter jokingly responds "your wife would never forgive me if anything were to happen to you". You'd think that'd be a bit of a sore spot to joke about considering, like, Jack Crusher. 24th century I guess, we look back and laugh on stuff like that.

- Patrick Stewart wanted to ride a dune buggy at Paramount's expense and he's invited you to watch. After a bit of "wheeeee ha hahahaha" driving about, they get off to look around a bit of desert. Worf is jumpscared when an android arm pops out from the ground and grabs his nuts. A bit later on, they find a robotic leg and a robotic torso. Picard's analysis of finding body parts strewn about the place: "this doesn't feel right".

- They find the head, which is that of a Soong-type. It was a trap! ENEMY DUNE BUGGIES with MOUNTED MACHINE GUNS arrive. They fire like 50 shots but luckily can't seem to hit us. Also, no worries, the Argo has its own mounted grenade launcher, which Worf uses to blast several of the pursuers. Several desert raiders have surrounded the shuttle, but Data can remotely pilot it to catch up with the Argo.

- This action sequence isn't incompetently-made or anything but it's just hilarious. I think there's something about the TNG characters that makes them automatically funny when placed in any context whatsoever other than the TV series. Picard, Data and Worf ramp the buggy off a cliff and land it perfectly inside the shuttle's docking bay.

- The Soong-type head can speak, and has been annoying everyone. Geordi painstakingly sticks the bits of the body back together, including the fully functional knob, I assume. The decapitated head says that its name is B-4, another annoying Soong wordplay thing. While Data enthuses that he has a brother (a non-Lore one), Picard receives a message from ADMIRAL JANEWAY (YES YES YES YES YES). She briefs him on a mission to Romulus - Shinzon, a Reman praetor, is stirring stuff up. Janeway assigns Picard to investigate to assess the political situation.

- So, they made Janeway an admiral? She's my favourite Star Trek captain overall, so fuck yeah, but Voyager was her first command. Did they just promote her straight to admiral based on her logs and the logs of the Voyager crew? She did pull off some pretty monumental stuff, so maybe Starfleet command were just like "wow" and fast-tracked her to the top. Or maybe it's a PR sort of thing, since the crew of Voyager are presumably big celebrities post-return (until Star Trek: Picard tries to claim that Seven was banned from joining Starfleet, lol).

- The square-jawed white guy piloting the ship in First Contact, who was killed in the four-hour zero g battle on the deflector dish, has been replaced by another square-jawed white guy with a similar haircut. I've got a feeling this guy will also die, so I'll call him Deadguy 2.

- Data gives everyone a crash course on the Remans. They're a subjugated lower caste, but are FORMIDABLE WARRIORS (the briefing table tilts up slightly at Worf's end at this piece of information as his raging boner grows). Also, we're dicking around with B-4, who Data thinks is the same construction as himself. He decides to send his own memory engrams to B-4 to help him speedrun self-actualisation. It doesn't work, so Geordi suggests just leaving it for a bit.

- The Enterprise goes to Remus and hails them. No response, so everyone sits still for 17 hours. After that point, Picard finally asks Troi what's up, and she tells him that there are people on the planet, they're just ignoring us. A ship decloaks and everyone shits their pants except Picard, who insists that shields not be raised. Eventually the ship hails and a Reman sends over some transport coordinates which Picard and his away team use to teleport over to the Reman ship. There, they finally meet Shinzon, who turns out to be bald Tom Hardy in a dress.

- Weirdly, Tom Hardy knows who we all are. He wants to touch Troi's obvious wig, but gets back on track to talk about his plans for UNITY between Romulus and Remus. He brings on the lights and reveals a SHOCKING TRUTH to everyone - he's... well, he's meant to be Picard, but he looks nothing like him.

- Yes, Tom Hardy is a clone of Picard. He gives them a knife with his blood on it so Bev can have a look at it and confirm that he is indeed just Picard.

- Later, for some reason, one of the military commanders, Donatra, tries to seduce Tom Hardy while he tries to order her to assassinate Suran, a different commander. He threatens to kill her in response, then gets acid reflux and has to be seen to by one of these Reman guys, who look kind of like Nosferatu.

- At dinner later, Tom Hardy tells Picard that he was originally created to replace Picard, but the plan went tits up. He gives his whole backstory about how he was sent to the DILITHIUM MINES to die, but survived thanks to Nosferatu. This experienced made him sympathetic to Remans, and now his big plan is to liberate them. Tom Hardy wants to know about Picard's childhood, because he wants to know what it means to be human. Picard says he'll help Tom Hardy after he's earned his trust. By the way, does Picard know about Hardy's earlier assassination of the entire senate? He seems to bring it up but I'm not sure if it's directly what he's referring to.

- Back on the ship, Geordi's found THALARON RADIATION. Oh my GOD. Bev says it's the most dangeorus radiation EVER. Picard vaguely suggests that something should be done about this, and delegates everyone to hop to it.

- Picard looks at an old photograph of himself at the academy, which is, hilariously, just a picture of Tom Hardy. Why's it like a fucking polaroid? This is the 24th century! Meanwhile, Troi hovers around in a silk dress, trying to coax Riker into getting into bed with her. Fanservice galore now as we get to see Frake's flabby back in dim lighting during the least erotic love scene since Troi and that guy rubbed olive oil on each other in "The Price".

- Oh no!!! Riker's changed into Tom Hardy!! We have to watch Troi almost get raped for a minute until Hardy loses his telepathic bond. I hate this shit for a number of obvious reasons that I'm sure basically everyone here will agree with. It's not just offensive from a writing perspective (ie I assume that the writers think incredibly lazy and badly-handled rape metaphors will automatically infuse their scripts with additional gravity, and they go straight to it with Troi every time), but also from an in-universe perspective. She's meant to have substantial telepathic abilities, why can she never retaliate? "Violations", "The Survivors", this, etc, she always immediately loses any telepathic battle she enters. Why don't the writers ever have her send a psychic shockwave back towards someone or whatever? Why can't she respond to Hardy's attempted attack by twisting it around and, I dunno, trapping him in one of his own traumatising memories or something? I think the only time they ever had her actually succeed at a hostile telepathic battle was with Armus all the way back in the first season.

- Tom Hardy loses the connection but his acid reflux kicks in again. He tells Nosferatu to HAVE THE DOCTORS PREPARE. The Remans then beam B-4 over, who's taken lots of data from the Enterprise.

- Troi goes to sickbay to get looked at. She tells Picard what happened and explains that Nosferatu must have the ability to reach her thoughts. Picard comes up with this absolute shocker of a line:
QuoteTROI: It was a... It was a violation. ...Shinzon's Viceroy seems to have the ability to reach into my thoughts. I've become a liability. I request to be relieved of my duties.
PICARD: Permission denied. If you can endure more of these assaults, I need you at my side now, more than ever.
Permission denied, Troi! It may be mission-critical for you to experience further violence! Luckily, Picard gets suddenly beamed out before he can say any other staggeringly stupid shit. Alright, Riker in command!

- Picard's been beamed directly into a WANKING DEVICE. Reman doctors poke him with needles while Hardy explains that B-4 was his SECRET AGENT and, through him, he has now gained access to STARFLEET COMMS. The reason he's doing all this is because he's having an identity crisis over not being Reman, for he envies their cool vampiric looks. Picard needs to die for some reason or another. Hardy also believes that "we" (the Remans) are a RACE BRED FOR WAR AND CONQUEST. They have it out with each other with the typical "aaah well if you'd lived my life, you'd be in my place right now, and vice versa" shit.

- How will Picard escape the WANKING DEVICE? Can Riker figure out how different bits of the ship work? Will Troi be required to "endure more of these assaults" for the sake of the mission? Will the writers think of anything for Worf to do? Find out in PART 2!
[close]

PART 2: DIE HARDY
Spoiler alert
- BIG REVEAL: Geordi and Data replaced B-4 with Data ages ago, and Hardy and the vampires are none the wiser! Data returns to the cell and frees Picard from the WANKING DEVICE. He reveals what he's learned: the ship itself is a THALARON GENERATOR which will destroy all life in the multiverse if we don't stop it. Data also talks really big game about the all-new "emergency transport unit", which will let Picard teleport to the Enterprise. Didn't we already have these things as a plot point back in season two's "A Matter of Honor"?

- Picard refuses to use the transporter, as it can only take him, and insists on remaining so they can find a way to escape together. Data escorts Picard at gunpoint to a room where THE PROCEDURE will take place. Hardy finds the knocked-out guard next to the WANKING DEVICE, and orders Nosferatu to execute him for his failure. Is this how he inspires loyalty? Makes you wonder why anyone's following him.

- The alarm is raised on the ship! Picard and Data flee down a corridor while Star Wars blaster sound effects play. Picard dual-wields a pistol and a rifle (yes, he's one-handing the rifle) and manages to shoot several Remans while they miss every shot. They're actually not firing at Picard at all, they're firing at the wall like two meters away if you look at the effects. The fuck? Anyway, Data's got to hack a door while Picard covers him. Absolutely comical sequence where Picard walks out into the open to retreat through the door before it closes, and the laser fire just like goes around him magically. He's stood directly in the open now with over five guys firing at him and they all miss, with some shots blowing holes in the wall like ten centimeters away from his head. Picard kills one or two more before escaping into the shuttle bay.

- Inside a Reman shuttle, we get a first-person Wing Commander style view of the cockpit as Picard takes us on a wacky rollercoaster ride through the ship, doing cool 360 spins and such. He flies through the ship into Hardy's meeting chamber and smashes through the window to escape. The Enterprise crew watch from afar and teleport the shuttle on board, then flee.

- Suran's having another go at Hardy for his absolutely laughable incompetence. Hardy reassures him that the Enterprise is dead meat and won't escape the Neutral Zone, and the Federation itself will be crippled in two days. Suran and his team discuss the weird shit that's going on with Hardy's face, he's got like veins and shit now. Donatra approaches Suran after the zoom call with Hardy ends and implores him to do something to stop Hardy, for he's planning the total genocide of Earth, which future generations of Romulans will look back on and go "ooh god".

- On the Enterprise, Bev explains that Hardy was made with freaky RNA shit that would accelerate his aging process to make him age to Picard's level. It's gone tits up, which is why he's actually Tom Hardy instead, and he's also dying. Picard reasons that Hardy will be forced to pursue him, for he needs Picard's DNA to heal himself.

- Data reactivates the real B-4 to interrogate him. He knows nothing, so Data deactivates him again, but With Regret.

- The Enterprise has some kind of equivalent of Voyager's astrometrics lab now, and not the weird 360-screen one from Generations. Picard agonises over the similarities between himself and Hardy, while Data assures him that the similarities are superficial, as with himself and B-4. When the ship passes through a fuck-field that destroys comms, Hardy appears out of nowhere and attacks.

- It's that time again - consoles explode and people are ragdolled off catwalks!

- "Can you learn to see in the DAHK, captain?"

- All a bit of a damp squib really because the clash ends in seconds. Hardy hails and asks Picard to join him in the ready room. He's projected a hologram of himself there, who tells Picard to surrender. Picard tries to talk him down by telling him he can strive to be better than he is, because that's what it means to be human. :) Hardy rebuffs him and ends the call.

- Two warbirds appear and Donatra calls Picard to offer an alliance against Hardy. All three ships fly around blind-firing into the nebula to try and hit Hardy's ship. Result: one warbird destroyed, the other crippled, Enterprise beaten to fuck. Good job!

- Turns out Troi can actually do something with her psychic abilities after all - she reaches Nosferatu's mind and uses the link to find the location of Hardy's ship. The Enterprise begins a barrage, and Hardy barks orders to his vampire team to PREPARE A BOARDING PARTY! BRING ME PICARD!

- Vampire guys stalk the ship. Riker and Worf grab some rifles and go to find them. En route, Worf remarks that the Romulans fought with honour, his racism exorcised.

- I thought the stupid Star Wars blaster fire shit earlier was just Reman weapons, but no, Federation phaser rifles also go pew-pew-pew now. Why? It not only makes less sense than firing a beam, but it actually looks less impressive as well. These guns are basically less effective than actual firearms we have today, now. Are Riker and Worf even firing on stun? I can't tell. People just go "uurgh" when hit and get thrown backwards with great force.

- Riker pursues Nosferatu into the Jeffries Tubes. Literally Die Hard, except with Jonathan Frakes' panicked face moving through a dimly-lit air vent. Nosferatu gets the jump on him and uses his BLADED GLOVE to slash Riker up.

- The Enterprise receives a killer blow and, yeah, Deadguy 2 gets sucked into space. This sequence annoys me not just because that guy died, but also because it doesn't make any sense. A hole was blasted in the bit of the ship where the viewscreen was, and everyone like, very slowly moved into the air, and had to grab onto consoles and shit while going "aaaaah" to avoid being sucked out. Wouldn't the effect just be instant? Like, as soon as the hole appears, the entire bridge - people, consoles, chairs, everything - would be out in space within a second? I know Star Trek never really goes for realism, nor does it need to, but the effect shown on screen is ridiculous, it makes it look like the front wall of the bridge blowing up is a minor inconvenience.

- Riker and Nosferatu keep stalking each other through the vents. I can't stop laughing at this, just as a concept. While the big fight goes on between the ships, the two respective first officers prance about in the air vents trying to slap each other.

- Hardy drives right up to the Enterprise to scare them. Picard orders the Enterprise to engage in a ramming attack. Hardy can't move in time and the saucer section carves through his ship, though the Enterprise itself is torn to pieces in the process. This is the dumbest fucking thing Picard has ever done, and I'm not a big fan of many of his decisions to start with. Like seriously he's just killed half his own crew. The amount of damage is ambiguous, but the CGI shots show much of the hull at the front of the (populated) saucer being ripped away, and we get one or two shots of Starfleet people being thrown around.

- This is no big deal to Riker and Nosferatu, who are continuing their incredibly overlong fight in the vents. Riker attempts to use some glowing blue wires to electrocute Nosferatu, but is bodyslammed through a hatch and onto a shaky catwalk. Thanks to Picard's brainy ramming idea, the ship is shaking like crazy and the catwalk collapses.


- Nosferatu ultimately falls down a giant chasm (we've got lots of those scattered about the Enterprise).

- Picard's not satisfied with destroying half the Enterprise, he now wants to engage the auto-destruct. But it's been taken offline. On Hardy's ship, he orders that THE WEAPON be deployed against the Enterprise.

- It's that time again - Picard gets a phaser rifle and orders that he be personally beamed to a confrontation with the bad guy. EPIC battle against the Borg Queen in Engineering, EPIC battle against Ru'afo on THE INJECTOR, and now an EPIC battle against Hardy next to the THALARON INTERMIX CHAMBER!

- Picard leaves Data in command, but Data instead puts Troi in command and goes to throw himself into space to reach Hardy's ship to help Picard. Truly incredible special effect for this.

- In Hardy's INNER SANCTUM, Picard blasts the door down and opens fire on the guards (stun? kill? who knows). The THALARON INTERMIX CHAMBER is charging, so Picard has to fight like five extra guys who come out of nowhere. He breaks his gun by smashing it against someone's face (yeah, really) and so is forced to engage Hardy in hand-to-hand. Now he's got to race to stop the weapon from firing while the bad guy leaps him from behind and tries to kill him. This happened in both Generations and Insurrection, and might as well have been happening in First Contact.

- The ensuing knife fight is the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while. Picard does like, Matrix bullet-time dodging of the knife. Anyway, THE WEAPON is deploying with an impressive special effect, it's like flower petals opening to reveal a big laser.

- Two hilarious things here: first is that there are spikes surrounding the (completely unshielded) intermix beam, for no fucking reason, which Picard nearly gets impaled on. Second is that after Picard throws Hardy's knife into the beam (which it incinerates, because I guess the knife was organic?), Hardy smugly reveals his AUXILIARY BACKUP KNIFE. Get a load of Johnny Two-Knives and his two knives.

- LET OFF SOME STEAM, BENNETT


- Hardy impales himself on it even further, just to annoy Picard. Picard stands there and lets himself be strangled as opposed to taking like, a step to the left or right. Hardy dies of his injuries anyway. With one minute left until THE WEAPON fires, Data enters the room. Picard's got PTSD and can't move, so Data shoves the EMERGENCY TRANSPORT UNIT on him and beams him to safety, then sacrifices himself to destroy THE WEAPON.

- Everyone's bummed about Data's death. Donatra calls and tells everyone that yeah, she's fine thanks, thanks for checking up on her and all that. She's sending over medical supplies to help the people who got mangled when Picard rammed their faces into Hardy's ship, and assures Picard that he is now a FRIEND OF THE ROMULANS.

- Data's funeral, he was the most human of us all and so on and so forth. Riker's finally leaving, by the way! Years of complacency at an end! Picard tries to tell B-4 about what a hero Data was, so he can maybe learn to be like him one day.
[close]

Well honestly, I didn't hate that. It wasn't very good but I didn't find it actively alienating in the way I did with parts of First Contact and Insurrection. This felt more like Generations - a potentially interesting idea for a story, stripped of anything that could make it work, and then stretched to 2 hours, padded with lots of shit exploding. It felt like one of those naff two-parters from the series, maybe of the sort of quality of something like Descent, but with a far higher budget.

The only huge misstep is Shinzon's attack on Troi, which is absolutely fucking pointless. I don't know why it was there or what was going on. Was there any tactical advantage gained from trying to form a link with Troi, or was he literally just trying to rape her? The only payoff to this is Troi being able to use the same psychic bridge to locate the ship in the nebula later, but otherwise the plot (and Troi, for the most part) are totally absent from the film, and a one minute scene where Troi goes "oh yeah actually I can find his ship" doesn't justify the bullshit we had to sit through earlier. If Shinzon was trying to rape Troi, it destroys any sympathy you might have with him later on (and the film does want you to have some). If he wasn't trying to rape her, and that was just a very bizarre depiction of him attempting to gain access to her psychic abilities for some reason or another, then why did it have to be portrayed in that way? Either way it's shit.

Other than that it's mostly a half-arsed action movie with not much else going on. I like that Picard actually makes an attempt to talk to the bad guy this time around, unlike in previous films, but it's all very perfunctory and clearly just there so that Shinzon can go "no" and justify our subsequent defensive violence against him.

The action is boring as usual but some of the sequeneces have a bit of imagination to them - the dune buggy chase is risible but a bit of fun, the six-hour fight between Riker and Nosferatu (I never got his actual name) in the vents is spectacularly bad in the best way possible, and the shuttle rollercoaster ride to escape Hardy's ship the first time is genuinely quite cool.

Now that I've thrown faint praise at the film, and detailed my main big criticism, here's a quick list of everything else wrong with it:
The Remans actually are subjugated but nobody cares, because Shinzon's such a dick. It'd be nice to learn what any of the Remans think about this, whether or not they agree with or are aware of his genocidal plans, maybe some people who've suffered so badly at the hands of the Empire that they see Shinzon as their only hope. As it stands, we don't learn what any Remans at all think, because the movie is obsessed with just showing Shinzon. As a result, there is absolutely fucking nothing to get into on any level in this story. There's no discussion to be had of anything. Shinzon is a one-dimensional cartoon character and the people under his command are just there to be shot at.

The concept of the Romulans cloning Picard is absurd (although, oddly, it jarred with me much less than I feel like it should have done, maybe because the Romulans actually are insane enough to do that - remember stuff like "The Mind's Eye"). Nothing's done with it either - we're told repeatedly that Shinzon and Picard are mirrors of each other who would be in each other's place if they'd experienced each other's circumstances, but nothing ever comes of that. Picard never really shows the sort of bloodlust that Shinzon has, Picard isn't a rapist as far as we know, and Picard doesn't tend to execute people for failing him. Shinzon, similarly, shows none of Picard's traits. There may have been something to get into here - Picard tends to be a rigid and dogmatic type of person, at least in much of the TV series, and sees a lot of things as black and white, almost always casting himself as the hero. In the worst examples, he sees people's lives as mere thought experiments (Pen Pals, Homeward, etc), and regards mass suffering and death as necessary - no price too high for someone else to pay for Picard's principles. You could use that to create a very convincing villain, who could give his own self-righteous Picard-style speeches against Picard, which would be a bit of fun. But as it stands, Shinzon is nothing like Picard and vice versa, so it's a total waste of a plot point, and they just made Tom Hardy shave his head for no reason.

The movie is rather devoid of humour, to make a subjective complaint. One thing I appreciated about the other films were the jokes - Insurrection managed to be genuinely quite funny when it wasn't making you watch the Space Amish knobheads. This all feels a bit po-faced, although there is a tone of some optimism which I felt was missing from the other films, what with Picard repeatedly attempting reconciliation with Shinzon and the Romulans ultimately coming to regard the Federation as friends at the end (shame about the Remans, but then again, they deserved to be enslaved in mines because they're scary vampires who shoot at you).

The death of Data feels a bit off in the same way the death of Kirk did, but I'm not really taking any of these films seriously enough to care.

Otherwise, I thought it was a halfway-competent shallow action movie. Tom Hardy should be singled out for praise for his portrayal of Shinzon, he really throws himself into this terrible fucking role and commands a lot of screen presence, and he manages to hold your interest, even if only because you're laughing at his Skeletor-esque delivery. Things move at a fairly quick pace and the action keeps ramping up over the course of the story.

If I - presumably as some kind of cruel and unusual punishment - had to rewrite this, I'd probably cut a lot of crap out to give much more focus to the plight of the Remans, so we can actually understand what Shinzon's doing and why he's got so much support. I'd add additional scenes for the Romulan commanders who ultimately stand against Shinzon on moral grounds, so we get to know them better (as it stands, the only thing we know about Donatra is that she tried to seduce Shinzon - why???). I'd cut the "mind rape" plot entirely because it's deeply fucking shit and perhaps instead have Troi form a different kind of mental link with Nosferatu, maybe one that she could use to talk him down later, since Remans are apparently telepathic. I'd have Shinzon give Picard-style speeches - "oh no, I will not turn my back on the suffering of the Remans, to do so would be a violation of every moral I hold dear", "those who stand against my plan to liberate the Remans are mere petty thugs who turn their back on suffering they cannot see", and so on, and have him be completely immune to reason because he's already made up his mind. I'd focus in a lot more on the "nature vs nurture" theme and have Shinzon and Picard really hash it out with each other (to do this, you'd need Shinzon to actually have a point, hence the need to rewrite the Remans and really focus on their oppression).

I'd also extend the dune buggy scene so that it lasted an hour, and I'd have Picard enter a dune buggy racing tournament which we'd have to watch in full. I would also replace Riker with Neelix.

Overall, I think my favourite TNG film was Generations, which is sad because Generations was shit.

4/10


Malcy

The alternate ending is much better than the one used in the film.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mPSobEdKlT4

16:10 in that video, couldn't copy the time stamp on my phone.

dontpaintyourteeth

absolutely buzzing to read the full lemming Nemesis review

just registering that now

dontpaintyourteeth

every time they aren't in dune buggies everyone should be asking- where's the dune buggies?

daf

#2150
If Shinzon planted B-4 for the Star Trekkers to pick up (and spy on them) - why do the Star Trekkers then find themselves immediately attacked and almost killed - risking not getting B-4 on to the Enterprise, and crumbling his whole crackpot scheme!

Surely Shinzon could have planted the B-4 bits on a planetoid without a bunch of murderous Mad Max greaseballs on the lookout for a Mad Max greaseball rumble  . . .

. . . or did Shinzon set up the attack as well, and if so . . . WHY?

- - - - - -

fun fact : according to the commentaries, B-4 was originally going to be called B-9 (geddit?) - until someone remembered that was what the Robot in Lost in Space was called.

Wonderful Butternut

I think you've been way too generous there. I find Nemesis fundementally flawed where as the other movies have comparatively silly problems.

The core of Nemesis is the battle, both literally in terms of space lasers and mentally/emotionally between Picard v Shinzon. It falls completely flat on its arse because Shinzon is a non character who isn't remotely plausible, even by Star Trek standards. Soran and Ru'afo might not top any 'greatest bad guy ever' lists, but they shit all over Shinzon.

He's nothing but a petty dictator in a leather S&M suit barking vaguely ethno-fascistic slogans about Remans being warriors and therefore they have to go exterminating the Federation. And obviously he's not even Reman himself, just to make this "we are a race bred for war!" nonsense even stupider. They might bred for war mate, but you were grown in a test tube to replace Picard and infiltrate Starfleet. This fatalistic attitdue to the Reman 'destiny' based on being Remans and his own need to kill loads of people and topple the Federation to make a name for himself becomes entirely laugable when you account for the fact that he's in the process of living a completely different life than the one that he was specifically created for. He is living proof that a sapient being has agency and does not have to do what they were 'bred' for.

Maybe this is supposed to be some sort intentional contradiction in his character, but I doubt it. Picard doesn't turn that on him on a specific enough way for me to think they meant it. Instead he goes on about how great being human is and how you can become more than you are. But in his own way Shinzon's already achieved this, by breaking from the life of suffering and presumably premature death that the Romulans intended for him once they discarded the idea of using him to infiltrate Starfleet. But despite already having broken his 'programming' once, Shinzon says he can now only destroy cos that's all he knows, and the Remans are bred for war and conquest and that's that. You sure that one of them might not prefer to be an architect?

And I really don't understand the bit where he tries to get Picard to tell him about "we Picards". It's not needed to lull them into a false sense of security, they discover the Thalaron radiation in the very next scene, so any suggestion to the audience that he might be an ok bloke had no possibility of sticking, and it is completely at odds with everything else he does. It feels like it was left over from an earlier point in the writing process where Shinzon was characterised differently.

Crucially, I find Shinzon to neither be like Picard or to be a plausible direct opposite of him. So there's no real depth to him being Picard's clone and the couple of bits where Picard muses about whether he's like Shinzon or not feel like fluff, as he quite obviously is not anything like Shinzon. They were going for some sort of nature v nurture debate, but it fails to land, imo. The film would not have been fundamentally different had Shinzon just been an evil Romulan or Reman, and the character time been devoted to someone else.

All in all, he's only a threat because of his ridiculous combined superweapon / ubership.

Once the fundamental base of the movie is this bad, anything else they could've done in the movie is mitigation. And they didn't even mitigate it. The dune buggy scene is stupid and unnecessary. B-4's existence could've easily been left out and written around, he's just there to give Data a few lines reassuring Picard that Shinzon is nothing like him, and throw the audience a bone that Data might not be permanently dead. The Romulan Star Empire, shown as apparent equal of the Federation for the most part, is a banana republic where you can just kill the current government and take over. The crew apart from Data and Picard basically do nothing, even more so than in Generations or Insurrection. Oh, apart from Troi who gets mind-raped. I bet Sirtis thought the lengthy arguments she had with Berman & Braga about pay that caused her to start smoking again were really worth it after doing those scenes.

Data dying did have emotional impact tbf, as much for how much I wanted someone to hug Geordi as anything else. But it was undermined by the telegraphing earlier with the personal transporter that only works for one person.

And finally, a word on the movie's crowing action sequence, the Bazen Rift battle. If you're concluding the movie with a 20 minute shiny spaceship battle, then you're appealing to space laser obsessed nerds. That's completely valid. But as a space laser obsessed nerd, I can tell you that space laser obsessed nerds care about details. So details need to be right. What you definitely don't want is the bad guy having a ship that is complete bullshit within the context of the universe it's set in. And of course, that's exactly what they did.

It's not that it's more powerful than the Enteprise, it's that it's so much more powerful that the Enterprise runs out of ammunition attacking it without inflicting any real damage beyond disabling its cloak. And it has a previously theoretical bioweapon built into it, which definitely doesn't look something a 10 year old came up with doodling in their maths book.

How do the Remans even have this thing? Remans are subjugated to the point of being used as slave labour and meat shields, yet they were able to build the Scimitar and develop a superweapon at a "secret base"?1 In one of the most paranoid, distrusting police state societies shown in Star Trek, where you are not allowed have secrets? The fuck? It all feels like artificial stakes raising for MOAR ACTION that they do in the movies, which apart from FC tends to be to the detriment of the movie.

It's a pity that they fouled that up, because it's actually a decently directed set piece. It's visually clear, they cut to the bridge to show the two captains flexing their tactical skills, the battle has actual progression, the effects are crisp and so forth. Compare it to the mess that was the season 2 finale of Disco where there's just a confusing mass of ships everywhere for the guts of two episodes with no one winning or losing at any point. Wouldn't have saved the movie, but it would've been something done right.

tl;dr - Nemesis is fucking shit. And along with Johnny "Worst Captain Ever" Archer advancing the cause of the White American in space, it killed the franchise for several years.

Definitely the worst TNG movie, and 2nd or 3rd worst ST movie overall, depending on where you place William Shatner masturbating onto a roll of film (Star Trek V) and making a shit version of the Wrath of Khan (Into Darkness).

1(And yes, I know there's a comic or novel or something that says the Remans stole the Scimitar from the Romulans, but that's not in the movie. Shinzon specifically tells Picard they built it)

Blumf

Quote from: Lemming on July 31, 2022, 01:51:55 AMI'd also extend the dune buggy scene so that it lasted an hour, and I'd have Picard enter a dune buggy racing tournament which we'd have to watch in full

"To win this race now, we're going to have to jump Dead Man's Gorge!"

daf

180 | "Star Trek: Nemesis"



The Clone Bores

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• The Best Man Speech Sketch
• Data's Irving Berlin Blue Sky Belt-out
• Worf's Nudey Wedding Willy Worry
• The Unsafe Velocity Vehicle Sketch
• Android Arm Ankle-Grab
• The Cliff Catapulting Car-Catcher Stunt
• B-4 Bumpkin-Brother Bonce-Backup
• Troi's Terrifying Riker-Replacing Nightmare-Knobbing
• Data's "Move along puny human!"
• Enterprise's Big Telly Window Wrecked
• Picard's Space-Chicken Crumple-Crunch Collision
• Riker's Revenge Rumble >>> Viceroy's Terminal Tumble
• Data's Ship-Saving Self-Sacrifice  Space-Swim
• Shinzon Skewering Stomach Stake
• Riker's Data Whistle-Whatsit Wake Anecdote
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• "Data ... Shut Up!"
• Guinan's 23 Wedding Whopper
• "Ladies and Gentlemen and invited transgendered species"
• Tea Earl Grey Hot #6 : Admiral Janeway
• Betazed Bonking Break Belayed
• Shinzon's Shalaft's Syndrome Psychosis
• Picard Pube-Clone's Pretend Peace Plan
• The Redundant Memory Port Mystery
• Technobollocks : Tertiary EM Band
• Data's Purple Prod-Pad's Password Puzzler
• "Would you like me to drive, sir?"
• Technobollocks: Cascading Biogenic Pulse
• Romulan Rescue Write-off
• Troi's Telepathic Troll-Tracking Trick
• B-4's Brother Back-up Blue-Sky Soong-Song
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :


 

superthunderstingcar

"Romulan ale jokes should be illegal."
"They are."

Lemming

DS9 thread is up for all who are interested: link

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on July 31, 2022, 11:16:41 AMHe's nothing but a petty dictator in a leather S&M suit barking vaguely ethno-fascistic slogans about Remans being warriors and therefore they have to go exterminating the Federation. And obviously he's not even Reman himself, just to make this "we are a race bred for war!" nonsense even stupider. They might bred for war mate, but you were grown in a test tube to replace Picard and infiltrate Starfleet. This fatalistic attitdue to the Reman 'destiny' based on being Remans and his own need to kill loads of people and topple the Federation to make a name for himself becomes entirely laugable when you account for the fact that he's in the process of living a completely different life than the one that he was specifically created for. He is living proof that a sapient being has agency and does not have to do what they were 'bred' for.
Shinzon really is shit in a way that undermines the whole thing. I dread to think what would have happened if a less capable actor was cast in the role. The last part of your paragraph here didn't even occur to me, but it's absolutely true! Would have been a great point for Picard to make.

I do wonder if the "Remans are natural warriors" thing is meant to be legit, or if that was just propaganda he'd absorbed. They're a "warrior race" who are "bred for conquest", but also routinely get enslaved in dilithium mines by weedy Romulans. The Enterprise crew regard them as warriors as well, but that's just off their dodgy LCARS Wiki.

Blumf

There's a skeleton of an idea here that's okay, but then it's buried by dumb action movie crap.

In a way, it's a retread of Tapestry, we're seeing what Picard would be like if his life was changed in some way. That's a decent concept. And the Romulans would try a crazy, over-engineered scheme like this. But then we get all the other stuff poured over it.

I like the idea that the Romulan government is decapitated. Plenty of scope for interesting stories and action in a civil war setting, but did we need the Remans for that? Could Shinzon not have taken over and twisted (or lead a breakaway faction) that reunification group Spock was working with? Having that split run top-to-bottom in Romulan society makes it much more plausible that killing off the senate would stick. Then you'd have a mess of factions to deal with; who is that Warbird aligned with? etc. Maybe Picard and Data need to get back to Romulas make contact with the Vulcan reunification group.

But no, lets have the Remans and another instance of ugly == bad, because cinema audiences r the dumb. A new race that has vague and confusing traits and abilities. Powerful warriors who are easily subdued, telepaths(?) (the less said about the Troi mind-rape plot, the better. Disgusting and lazy), and builders of big ships, without the paranoid Romulan state noticing. They've got whatever they (the writers) need, it seems.

Ultimately a dumb action flick with Trek branding. Some of the action is fun to watch, but it's not a film you'd bother with again, even if it turned up on TV and the remote was just out of your grasp.

Mr Trumpet

I believe this film was shot while Tom Hardy was still on crack, but shortly before he became an item with Hoshi off Enterprise. It's the first thing I can remember seeing him in anyway.

Bad Ambassador

He was off the crack by this point, although him and Linda Park getting together is news to me.

bgmnts

Don't want to bump an old thread but decided to start this up again, episode 23 of series 4 called "The Host".

Is this the first episode where someone expresses concern at having their molecules jumbled up when being beamed? To the point where they'd rather risk their lives? Don't remember anyone freaking out about being beamed before.