Podcast # 222 - "Nemesis"

Rico · April 12, 2009, 11:30:44 AM

This weekend I cover the last TNG film, "Star Trek: Nemesis." Lots of interesting things to talk about, plus movie talk - of course and listener comments. As well as the contest winner. Enjoy!

http://www.treksinscifi.com/podcasts/TreksInSciFi_222_Nemesis.mp3

wraith1701 · April 12, 2009, 03:38:17 PM

I've been looking forward to this all week! This film gets an undeserved bad rap, in my opinion.

KingIsaacLinksr · April 12, 2009, 05:45:40 PM

It gets a bad rap because they broke so many Star Trek rules....

Don't make me list them :P

King

Geekyfanboy · April 12, 2009, 06:34:09 PM

Quote from: wraith1701 on April 12, 2009, 03:38:17 PM
I've been looking forward to this all week! This film gets an undeserved bad rap, in my opinion.

I'm with you on this.. like Insurrection it's a nice addition to the Trek films... IMO

Geekyfanboy · April 12, 2009, 06:34:34 PM

Quote from: Kinglinksr on April 12, 2009, 05:45:40 PM
It gets a bad rap because they broke so many Star Trek rules....

Don't make me list them :P

King

Please list them.. I want hear these Star Trek rules that it broke.

X · April 12, 2009, 08:00:31 PM

Quote from: StarTrekFanatic5 on April 12, 2009, 06:34:34 PM
Quote from: Kinglinksr on April 12, 2009, 05:45:40 PM
It gets a bad rap because they broke so many Star Trek rules....

Don't make me list them :P

King

Please list them.. I want hear these Star Trek rules that it broke.

Ditto. What rules were broken?

moyer777 · April 12, 2009, 08:22:32 PM

Just got done listening to the podcast. GREAT STUFF! I am glad you pointed out some of the things you did Rico. It's not my favorite film as I mentioned in my comment to you, but it is TREK! Man I almost cheered out loud when you announced the winner... till it wasn't me. :) Ha ha!

I think your comment about the 90/10 personality thing was pretty cool to think about. Thanks.

KingIsaacLinksr · April 12, 2009, 09:02:29 PM

The Car that was considered a "technological advancement" or something like that. (Hmm, I seem to remember we have hover-technology now....)

The Enterprise survives the entire fight while the two Romulan Warbirds are destroyed easily. (Yes, I realize that Shinzon wasn't trying to destroy them...but it got a bit far).

Why the Romulans only get scrap up two ships....I seem to remember that they made the statement: "Romulans always think two steps ahead". Wouldn't they have forseen the entire Shinzon incident? Why, in the heart of the Empire, could only two ships be brought to bear?

Data's "brother". Last I checked, Data's Father only mentioned they could go Data and Lore working. Everything else had failed.

Why would the Romulans allow the Remens to develop Scimitar ship? This seems like a big gap to me....they have never allowed the Remens to advance so far. And "Secret shipyards" is a tad much, I just can't see how it could have been developed without anyone knowing.

Also, the Scimitar is too powerful for its own good. No ship in the Alpha/Beta quadrant is that powerful. (If you forget the Borg and some other species)

Shinzon: Clone of a main character is an overdone plot. Riker was acceptable, but this is going a tad far. Yes, I realize multiple "clones" of people exist in Star Trek, but this is overdone.

Emergency Transport Unit...............................bad idea.

"We are out of Photon Torpedoes." Ok, this ship has over 250 torpedoes of mixed photon and quantum design. I don't want to go back through the movie, but I'm more than certain they didn't fire 250 torpedoes in that entire battle. It would have been far more reasonable to assume that the torpedo system failed.

That's just a few things. No, I do not like the movie. It was poorly scripted, felt worn out and tired and basically killed the TNG series from ever having another movie made. So yes, I'm not happy with it.

King

Feathers · April 13, 2009, 02:43:21 AM

An excellent podcast, but then I enjoyed the film as I said in my comment. The covergae was good and provided a well rounded view of the film in my view.

I thoughrougly enjoyed listening to it this morning - I even thought I sounded OK, which is a first!

What do people think of Denise Crosby trying to get in on the act? Part of me feels it would have been cool to have her involved but the cynical side of me wonders if this was just a way of trying to cash in on the series she walked away from. Her choice, her price to pay.

Having said that, had she been there, I would have enjoyed it.

I can agree with King that I think the emergency transport unit opens up too many possibilities and perhaps shouldn't have been introduced. Getting into detail like that, I can agree that there are perhaps a few more things that could have been better thought through. The development of the Reman ship is in the same category although that has been explained away as the Remans getting a free hand in return for joining in the Dominion War.

At the end of all this and despite some of it, I still enjoyed the film as I said on the show.

SilverFox · April 13, 2009, 04:48:39 AM

To Be totally honest, I really liked this movie.

Yeah there were some things that King mentioned that you did see. But all in all, this was a well rounded script, the story was worth the funds I used to see it in the theater, and the copy I purchased on DVD. It was also a fitting closure for the Next Gen Cast.

Trekkygeek · April 13, 2009, 06:00:59 AM

Tim makes some very good points there but it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the film, after all the world of Star Trek is littered with gaffs and deviations from canon but we suspend our disbelief and enjoy anyway.
I really liked Nemesis and look forward to listening to the podcast.

Rico · April 13, 2009, 06:20:10 AM

Tim - as far as your rules list, it's more a list of things you didn't care for - which is fine. Let me answer some things though. Shinzon is meant to be a very cunning and intelligent person (a lot of it due to the fact that he is a clone of Picard). This allows him to form a pretty good size following, take out much of the Romulan government and assume power. Therefore, at that point he has most of the military on his side. This is why Donatra only manages to get two ships to rebel against him and help the Enterprise (oh - Donatra's ship survives too).

I think the idea of B-4 is plausible. Dr. Soong would have certainly had other prototypes, Data and Lore were just the only fully-functional models. The emergency transport idea has been played with before, even back in the original Trek series with transponders under the skin. Again, this fits with the Trek universe.

It's certainly fine to not care for the movie, but I wouldn't let some of this little stuff bother you. To me (like I said on the podcast) it's really a story about how people evolve and come to be the type of people they are.

X · April 13, 2009, 03:59:07 PM

Quote from: Kinglinksr on April 12, 2009, 09:02:29 PM
The Car that was considered a "technological advancement" or something like that. (Hmm, I seem to remember we have hover-technology now....)

The Enterprise survives the entire fight while the two Romulan Warbirds are destroyed easily. (Yes, I realize that Shinzon wasn't trying to destroy them...but it got a bit far).

Why the Romulans only get scrap up two ships....I seem to remember that they made the statement: "Romulans always think two steps ahead". Wouldn't they have forseen the entire Shinzon incident? Why, in the heart of the Empire, could only two ships be brought to bear?

Data's "brother". Last I checked, Data's Father only mentioned they could go Data and Lore working. Everything else had failed.

Why would the Romulans allow the Remens to develop Scimitar ship? This seems like a big gap to me....they have never allowed the Remens to advance so far. And "Secret shipyards" is a tad much, I just can't see how it could have been developed without anyone knowing.

Also, the Scimitar is too powerful for its own good. No ship in the Alpha/Beta quadrant is that powerful. (If you forget the Borg and some other species)

Shinzon: Clone of a main character is an overdone plot. Riker was acceptable, but this is going a tad far. Yes, I realize multiple "clones" of people exist in Star Trek, but this is overdone.

Emergency Transport Unit...............................bad idea.

"We are out of Photon Torpedoes." Ok, this ship has over 250 torpedoes of mixed photon and quantum design. I don't want to go back through the movie, but I'm more than certain they didn't fire 250 torpedoes in that entire battle. It would have been far more reasonable to assume that the torpedo system failed.

That's just a few things. No, I do not like the movie. It was poorly scripted, felt worn out and tired and basically killed the TNG series from ever having another movie made. So yes, I'm not happy with it.

King

I'm going to address each point for you.

The car is an off road unit that is part of a shuttle. If you needed to hover somewhere you could just use the shuttle. It is a wheeled unit because perhaps wheels are more energy efficient than a hover unit and having both would be redundant.

The Enterprise was built to survive the Borg and did so in previous movies, so her toughness isn't an issue. She's supposed to be the best the federation can offer.

The Romulan situation. At the beginning of the movie, it is clearly established that the military wants Shinzon to take over. Them not having ships in the area is not hard to believe since he was being supported by them.

You are also wrong about Data and Lore. While Data and Lore were fully successful, they were not the only creations. Data's "mother" was also an android that Soong created and more advanced than Data or Lore. Add to that B4's mental issues could be considered a failure by Soong who wanted them with advanced intellect. This does not mean that B4 was never built only that Soong considered him a failure.

The secret ship yard is completely plausible given that the Romulans used the Reman in the War and allowed them to build their own ships. Not a stretch to see them allocating some of those resources to a secret ship.

The Scimitar is a ship built for war with none of the ethical restrictions that the Federation or even the Romulans had in creating such a ship. It deserves to be powerful because they were not holding back.

The Clone aspect of a story has Never been used in Trek except for two episodes. One in Voyager and one in DS9. In Voyager the whole ship and the crew became duplicated by the liquid silver lifeforms from the Hell classed planet and in DS9 someone cloned themselves and murdered the clone to set someone up for murder. Shinzon is the first and only genetic clone of a star trek main character in the history of the franchise. It's like saying since they did shows with faster than light travel, any other show with technology that also allows faster than light travel is too much.

The emergency transport unit is a good transition on Starfleet technology.

Out of photon torpedoes. Easy enough to do. Most ships don't have the ability to instantly replace their stores of weapons and tend to reload during docking. Giving that they are also on a diplomatic mission, it isn't hard to believe that they only allowed to carry a set number of torpedoes to negotiate peace.

I can give you a dozen issues with each show, movie, and book each. It's nothing new.

For me, there was only one real problem with the movie. It was written for the fans and wasn't enough there for people that just wanted to come into the movie for the first time.

Bryancd · April 13, 2009, 04:08:28 PM

Not to get in the way of this geekiness, but my only issue with Nemesis was that it lacked soul. It felt kind of dark and dreary without any life to it. I think the TNG cast deserved a better final film.

KingIsaacLinksr · April 13, 2009, 04:17:10 PM

As good as your points are. Which I do stand corrected on some, I feel that the movie just failed. It just lacked that....that feeling that it was truly Star Trek. (I know, viewpoints are always different here)

The movie left a bad taste in my mouth at the end. Whether it was the fact that TNG could never make a movie since then, or the fact that it felt tired, it just felt off. I've watched the movie five times now. The first time I thought it was good. Then the newness wore off and basically, I compare this movie to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. It was great the first time you watched it. After that, you never ever want to see it again. Otherwise, your opinion of it worsens each time. So thus, I don't watch it.

I know I'm alone here in my opinion, but that's how I feel about it. I can watch any Star Trek movie and enjoy the experience except for two: Star Trek The Final Frontier and Star Trek Nemesis.

My :2cents

:)

King