A Brief Guide to Star Trek

movie like
First Contact
. The
San Francisco Chronicle
review was a little more upbeat, describing the film as a ‘tight, highly-entertaining spectacle’ with ‘fascinating ideas, mind-blowing visuals’, but the
Los Angeles Times
thought the film was let down by a lack of ‘adrenalized oomph’. Even without much ‘oomph’,
Star Trek: Insurrection
claimed $70 million at the US box office (a $22-million drop from
First Contact
) and $112 million worldwide (a whopping $34 million less than the previous film).

    One of the rejected early ideas for
Star Trek: Insurrection
was a riff on
The Prisoner of Zenda
, which would have seen a doppelganger of Picard threaten to take over his role as commander of the
Enterprise
. The idea was revisited for
Star Trek Nemesis
, even though Rick Berman had initially (under the studio’s direction) begun to explore the possibility of the tenth
Star Trek
movie not featuring
The Next Generation
cast at all. ‘There was an attitude that I should go out and find a new Tom Cruise’, Berman told startrek.com of the drive to find a younger crew for the
Enterprise
in response to the relative failure of
Star Trek: Insurrection
. ‘I felt strongly against that for two reasons. One reason was that when we were developing this movie, the
Enterprise
[TV] series was coming out. So the
Star Trek
audience was about to get introduced to a whole new cast of young characters on television.For us to simultaneously introduce them to a whole new cast of young characters in a movie seemed to be insane to me. The other reason was I felt that after a four-year absence from the screen, the fans really wanted to see Patrick, Brent, Jonathan and company again.’
    It was Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner who brought screen-writer John Logan to Berman’s attention. Logan had been Oscar-nominated for his work on
Gladiator
(2000) and was a very much in-demand screenwriter – but crucially he was also a big fan of
Star Trek
. ‘I thought this was exciting’, said Berman. ‘Rather than going with people who’d been involved with
Trek
television for so many years, here we had a fresh, A-list, Hollywood writer who happened to be a gigantic fan of
The Next Generation
.’ The only strong stipulation from the studio that Berman had to adhere to was to use acclaimed film editor and director Stuart Baird (
Executive Decision
,
U.S. Marshals
) to direct the film, further taking the movie away from the creative involvement of those who knew
Star Trek
intimately (Frakes later directed children’s movies
Clockstoppers
(2002) and
Thunderbirds
(2004)).
The Prisoner of Zenda
idea resurfaced, according to Berman, in ‘the whole idea of a Picard clone. It went from Picard’s son to a Picard clone that was the same age as Picard, where Patrick would play both characters. Finally, it ended up being the Tom Hardy character that was a clone of Picard, but not a look-alike. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief in the choice of actor.’
    Hardy – then known for the TV mini-series
Band of Brothers
, but later better known for movies such as
Bronson
(2008) and
Inception
(2010) – was cast as the movie’s villain, Shinzon. He’s a Reman clone of Picard, plotting to take over the Romulan Star Empire and take his revenge on Picard and the Federation for their perceived abandonment of him. In this motivation, the confrontation between two equally matched protagonists and in the submarine-like space battle scenes,
Nemesis
was heavily modelled on
The Wrath of Khan
, but somehow failed to be anywhere near as engaging.
    The movie’s sub-plot built on
Insurrection
with its focus on Data, and originated from actor Brent Spiner (who gained a story credit on the film). The discovery of a prototype version of Data (dubbed B-4) set the scene for the Spock-like self-sacrifice of Data to save Picard and the
Enterprise-E
at the movie’s climax. Data variants had appeared before on
The Next Generation
, including evil ‘brother’ Lore (‘Datalore’, ‘Brothers’, ‘Descent’, ‘Descent Part II’) and his ‘daughter’ Lal (‘The Offspring’, ‘Inheritance’). The introduction of B-4 was probably intended as a safety-net way of reviving Data (through a download of his pre-
Nemesis
cortex) in any future
The Next Generation
films, in the same way that Spock was brought back after depositing his consciousness within McCoy’s brain.
    The production of
Star Trek Nemesis
did not go as smoothly as that of the other
The