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Review by: Dan Cox | Rating: Two
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Director's commentary; A Star Trek Family's
Final Journey; New Frontiers: Stuart Baird On Directing Nemesis;
A Bold Vision Of The Final Frontier; Red Alert! Shooting The Action
On Nemesis; Deleted scenes; Photo gallery.
THEY’VE been boldly going where no man has gone before for
as long as we can remember, but the Star Trek franchise may finally
be running out of gas.
After 10 films in total and four featuring the Next Generation
crew, speculation is rife that Nemesis could mark the end of an
era, particularly with a tag line such as ‘A Generation’s
final journey begins’.
Yet there appears to be life in the old Enterprise yet. Nemesis
is one of the better films in the series and a timely reminder
of why the franchise has been able to thrive for so long.
The plot, on this occasion, finds Patrick Stewart’s Captain
Jean-Luc Picard and crew heading to the marriage of Riker and
Troi, only to find themselves diverted to the planet Romulus,
where the election of a new leader signals a possible end to the
planet's long hostility toward the Federation.
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Once there, however, Picard discovers that the new ‘Praetor’,
Shinzon (played by Tom Hardy), is in fact a clone of his younger
self and that the new leader has acquired a weapon of mass destruction
that could herald the end of the Federation, as well as Earth
itself.
Director, Stuart Baird, does a commendable job of delivering
a worthy possible conclusion to the Next Generation franchise,
including some nice nods to the past while not relying on the
viewer having an in-depth knowledge of the series. The special
effects are up to the usual standards of excellence that we have
come to expect.
He also delivers a shock to rival the death of Spock, involving
one of the central characters, while also including some nifty
set pieces, such as a sequence where the Enterprise rams an enemy
ship during a space battle and a Jeep chase on a remote desert
planet.
Nemesis is unlikely to win any new fans to the series and could
well mark the end of an era, but as a Star Trek movie it has to
rate among the better efforts, coming close to the giddy heights
achieved by The Wrath of Kahn (the second film in the series).
It is, by far, the best of the Next Generation movies yet produced
but if it is the end of the current run, then we can only look
forward to the movies from the two other series that are yet to
be done.
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