Star Trek Nemesis Data...is he

I don't hate Nemesis, but considering all its flaws and liberties taken with the characters, I don't like it either.

That's the way I was for a while, until I did some research on LeVar Burton. It's like... wow. Seasoned actor, producer, director, award winner and the Reading Rainbow host! He's directed numerous episodes for The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. So with a resume like this, experience with EVERYONE involved with Star Trek spanning two decades, the studio (with Rick Berman's full support) decided to go to a man who's defining trait in the movie business was being an "editing doctor". Not only could he not pronounce LeVar Burton's name properly numerous times, he thought his character Geordie was an alien.

And if you can stay asleep through his commentary (he pauses more than Shatner does), he came up with the idea of giving the phasers a "lock and load" mechanic... Two movies ago, these same exact phasers were activated with a mere push of a button on it's side accompanied by a cool "charge" sound effect, but Baird thought that was unrealistic so he now has the phasers being ****** like a real rifle complete with, and I'm not joking, a stock cocking gun sound effect.
 
(Baird) came up with the idea of giving the phasers a "lock and load" mechanic... he now has the phasers being ****** like a real rifle complete with, and I'm not joking, a stock cocking gun sound effect.

I can only assume that this and other things like the off-roading sequence were done in some bizarre effort to make Trek more accessible to a wider audience.

Talk about backfiring: neither mass audiences nor the majority of Trek fans liked the film.


(And please... don't take this as negativity towards those who liked the film.

If you liked Nemesis, terrific! :thumbsup I won't poo-poo you so long as you don't poo-poo me for hating it. ;)

But facts are facts- of all the 11 films, it is the worst Trek movie in terms of revenue; it was even beaten by Star Trek V by 9 million dollars for crying out loud! :lol)



Kevin
 
But facts are facts- of all the 11 films, it is the worst Trek movie in terms of revenue; it was even beaten by Star Trek V by 9 million dollars for crying out loud! :lol)

Burton, I think you're missing the bigger picture here. Maid in Manhattan, a J Lo movie, not only out performed Nemesis on opening day, it grossed 150 million dollars world wide. Nemesis world wide gross? 67 million. MAID IN MANHATTAN did more than double the earnings of Nemesis.

I know there are many out there who will chime in and defend this statistic by stating that Star Trek Nemesis was up against The Two Towers and Harry Potter. To which I always reply, SO DID MAID IN MANHATTAN. Those two movies didn't prevent Nemesis from achieving a modest gross at the theaters, they just pushed the movie under the carpet because nobody, trekkies and general audience alike, didn't care about it. And the best part? Neither The Two Towers or Harry Potter were made under the pretense of trying to appeal to a "wider audience". Thank you Chuck Norris, thank you Paul WS Anderson and thank you Rick Berman.
 
I don't think even Gene knows what he was doing when he instigated this whole canon rule. He wrote an episode in the original series that openly states how women cannot become Captains of a Starship. That was finally overturned when Gene left the producer's chair

That idea was written for Turnabout Intruder, the final TOS episode, which was not written by Roddenberry.

I would agree that the movies and TNG got better as he became less involved, but the opposite was true for TOS. The third season suffered from his backing off.
 
That idea was written for Turnabout Intruder, the final TOS episode, which was not written by Roddenberry.

Not Roddenberry, huh? Well, it's a pity that whoever came up with the idea didn't take the time to go over Gene's positive take on humanity in the future with Star Trek. Who in their right mind would come up with an idea for an episode centered around a crazed, murdering lunatic who hates being a woman, swaps bodies with Kirk and still continues to do womanly things like filing her nails while in Kirk's body?

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:sleep..... Gene himself.

"Believe me, it's better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman."
 
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(gulp) I stand corrected. I'm surprised he even contributed any stories that late in the game.

But its suckiness is partly the result of the same issue that caused him to step back in the first place. His heart was not in the show in season 3, he felt the network had screwed him and he was in survival mode (leading to incidents like shoehorning an IDIC pendant into a show to create a market for Lincoln Enterprises tchotchkes).
 
It could have been a story idea he had earlier. The Omega Glory was based on a story idea that was a contender for the second pilot.

Another example on how Gene's ideas for Star Trek were so mind numbingly stupid it's a surprise he thought he would win an award for it. Omega Glory is nothing but a love letter to the United States done in such a way that it's practically insulting to other nations. It's just.... wow.

Here's the lowdown. America is a galaxy wide universal truth.

:behave

No! I'm serious. This planet has two waring factions. The Yangs (Yankees) and the Kohms (Communists). The Yangs are caucasions while the Kohms are asian. Somehow, without having any previous contact with Earth, the Yangs have managed to develop not only a constitution that's word for word identical to the constitution that we have, but also an AMERICAN FLAG that they pledge to with their hands over their hearts!

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I get that being American should be something to be proud of, but this is just stupid. The aliens from "A piece of the action" made sense (the aliens mimic things and some previous space traveller left his gangster book for them to find), the planet of Nazis made sense (The person responsible did this because hitler's germany was the one nation that managed to turn a battered, beaten country into an economic super power) and even the exact copy of Earth nobody understood why it was there made sense. This just feels so self-indulging.

As SFdebris said regarding this episode "If you want a scifi production that loves America, watch Will Smith punch an alien".
 
First we're talking Vietnam era 60s when that was written. You do know the difference in cultural climate right? I mean yeah now we're supposed to be ashamed of ourselves, back then, Mom and apple pie weren't bad things...yet.

Second I always took Lester's comment to apply to Kirk and not Starfleet as a whole. Ie he's a male chauvanist who couldn't conceive of a woman being in command, especially of a Starship.

But that's my opinion.
 
Second I always took Lester's comment to apply to Kirk and not Starfleet as a whole. Ie he's a male chauvanist who couldn't conceive of a woman being in command, especially of a Starship.

Well, if Gene Roddenberry wanted a series where all races and genders were treated equally, he sure failed in that department by having his MAIN CHARACTER act like that. And really, Kirk is not like that because we see him in Star Trek II acting just fine when Saavik takes the command chair to order the Enterprise out of Space Dock.

Gene, oh Gene. Your box was indeed a hazard.
 
First we're talking Vietnam era 60s when that was written. You do know the difference in cultural climate right? I mean yeah now we're supposed to be ashamed of ourselves, back then, Mom and apple pie weren't bad things...yet.

I do know the difference. That's one of the reasons why I loath Trek09 so much. Star Trek managed to grow up and tell stories that weren't in that mind set, yet now Star Trek is back to it's overly male dominated culture where the women can't command ships and always wear short skirts.

:darnkids

Darn kids.
 
I liked Nemesis as well. Sure there were some flaws, but even the best Trek movies had them. Then again, my opinion probably doesn't count because I didn't think Insurrection was as bad as people say it is.

MY big problem with Insurrection was the trailer. The way the trailer was put together they made it sound like a Federation civil war... and we got Picard disobeying orders from a morally corrupt Admiral.

I think Nemesis's biggest problem was the over-saturation of Trek at the time. Deep Space Nine was fading into memory, Voyager had just closed it's doors, and Enterprise had just begun. Not only was the general public sick of Trek, but a lot of the fans were getting sick of it too. A LOT of people felt like a break was in order (maybe a couple years). So, at it's peak, there were three Trek crews to follow: TNG in the movies, Voyager, and DS9. Talk about Overload.

Nemesis also came at a time when Trek was already hemmoraging viewers. Ratings had been on the downward trend since the end of TNG. DS9 held it's own pretty well, but Voyager started out pretty bad and never made back it's DS9 level audience (Voyager's problem was the peaks and valleys were too far apart - the good episodes were really well done, but the bad episodes were just painful to watch).

So, yeah Nemesis had poor box office receipts and plot holes, etc. but it was still the last remnant of the good Trek era.
 
Come to think of it, Data's death did leave me a little ticked off for two reasons: 1) Data's "soul" and 2) Brent Spiner's ego.

1) For the entire series and movies we've been throwing around the question of "Is Data more than the sum of his parts?" Everything pointed to "yes" until Nemesis. If B4 could become Data just because he copied a bunch of files, then Data isn't more than the sum of his parts - he didn't have a "soul" (or what ever you want to call it), it was just his program.

2) The whole situation looked a lot to me like this: Brent Spiner talked to the writers and said he wanted out of Star Trek. They said "fine" and gave him a death scene. As they filmed, Spiner got nervous that he might not be able to find other work and wanted them to write him back in... "just in case".
 
Brent Spiner talked to the writers and said he wanted out of Star Trek. They said "fine" and gave him a death scene. As they filmed, Spiner got nervous that he might not be able to find other work and wanted them to write him back in... "just in case".

That is more or less the case of Leonard Nimoy reprising his role as Spock in ST:II-

Nimoy didn't want to do the movie, however Nicholas Meyer convinced him by saying he would give Spock a glorious death scene. Nimoy laughed and agreed as it was the one and only thing that would change his mind.

So as the movie neared completion, Nimoy began having second thoughts about this being Spock's last outing (he was having a great deal more fun playing Spock this time than he anticipated). So the "Remember" part with McCoy was improvised, which became the catalyst for "Search for Spock".

It's a little unclear as to whether it was quickly scripted or was improvised on the spot.


Kevin
 
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