Star Trek: Nemesis
With the sounds of Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up the Sun" and U2's "Beautiful Day" blaring from my alarm clock, I woke up early to venture into very rainy and windy San Francisco to shop and to watch the new Star Trek movie. As a fan, I'm a bit biased, but I can distinguish between the good and the bad Trek adventures. And this is one of the better ones. Though sadly, this #10 doesn't come close to becoming a classic every Trek fan will reference, as #2 and #4 have.

With the assassination of the Romulan senate, Shinzon and his Reman followers take control of Romulus and ask the Federation to come and talk about peace. With the Enterprise nearby, Starfleet (specifically, Admiral Janeway from Voyager) sends Picard and his crew to Romulus to see what they want. Along the way, they find a prototype of Data, named B-4, obviously primitive with a limited positronic net, though visually alike. Once at Romulus, Picard is shocked to discover that Shinzon is a double of himself, instead of the vampire-like Remans. In fact, he's a clone of Picard. But even this relevation does not convince Picard to trust him and it forces Shinzon to move ahead with his own plans. The cloning process has an expiration date, and for Shinzon, time was almost up. As a result, he needed a full transfusion from the original, Picard, to stay alive. Furthermore, he's promised the Romulan fleet who put him in power that Earth will be destroyed in a matter of days to pave the way for invasion. He intends to do so with a newly controlled radiation once thought to be purely theoretical by Federation scientists. Instead, a microscopic amount can kill everyone on a ship. All this leads to a big battle in a rift with an ending where both sides lose.

The movie starts off awkwardly with the sudden death of the Senate, Riker and Troi's wedding, and the discovery of B-4. The infusions of small comedic touches seemed a little forced and sometimes not funny at all. It was nice to see Whoopi Goldberg and Wil Wheaton reprising their early roles from TNG. And I might've heard incorrectly, but the planet B-4 was on was a pre-industrial, pre-warp society. Then how did they get vehicles to chase after Picard, Data, and Worf? After this awkwardness, the movie gets into a good rhythm and has a very good climactic ending. Credit the creative solutions from Picard for this good ending. Truthfully, credit John Logan's script, who co-wrote Gladiator and an admitted fan of Trek. Direction was okay but whoever did the photography on the B-4 planet needs to be fired. It was so bright and bleached yellow, you couldn't see a thing. And who cast Shinzon, played by Tom Hardy? His acting was fine, but he doesn't look anything like Picard. True, in 30-40 years, you may look different from young to old, but really, that different? You get to see an Academy photo of him (looking just like Shinzon with shaved head) and you get the idea of "wow, no wonder he's never been married." Finally, this movie doesn't have much crossover appeal. Non-fans probably will be turned off by the inside jokes and the technobabble, making this a movie for fans and people familiar with the Trek phenomenon.

The final question is, is this the last we'll see of this crew? Judging from the box office receipts, yes. A $20 million opening weekend doesn't bode well for a film that cost $70 million. Judging from the ending, probably not. They leave the door open to another feature but they do show, as it is mentioned throughout the film, that Riker finally gets the command he's been chickening out of the entire series. I, for one, hope this crew does get another one. The other Star Trek series aren't strong enough to get a motion picture. DS9 was set on a space station, not too much hope for exploration and such. Voyager's premise was that they were stranded across the galaxy. Now that they're back, who cares? Enterprise is young and the fact that the timeline is before the feature films will confuse people. So if this was the end, it's a fitting one. After all, this is an even numbered feature film, it has to be good. 3 stars.

The updated order of Trek films from best to worst: 2 (Khan), 4 (the whales), 8 (the Borg), 6 (peace with the Klingons), 10, 7 (Kirk dies), 9 (eternal youth), 3 (Enterprise blows up), 1 (V'Ger), 5 (search for God)