Star Trek: Nemesis is terrible, horrible, no-good and very bad.

For many years, the fifth Star Trek movie (The Final Frontier) stubbornly and proudly held its place at the bottom of the pile. The Motion Picture, the first Star Trek movie, was totally bizarre and kind of on Stanley Kubrick's jock, but it was long-awaited by fans and ultimately pretty okay. Star Treks II-IV are widely regarded as the best of all Trek films, with the action-packed The Wrath of Khan being the most widely known and loved and the lolz-filled The Voyage Home being the most popular box office-wise. So, what's a self-satisfied franchise sitting perched atop that mountain to do? Where is there to go?

Straight down, apparently.

With a new television series in its infancy, Star Trek's exhausted writers began what was to become a long-running struggle (sometimes won, sometimes horribly lost) against the temptation of recycling and diluting old plot points. I don't even want to explain The Final Frontier to you right now because it's almost completely dull, and the mission to find God in the center of the galaxy or whatever is just so LAZY. It's the Wizard of Oz meets the first Star Trek movie (which, might I remind you, was not that great but could stand on its own campy merits. However, you can't go back to that after releasing three amazing blockbusters) and then crapped down to an unrecognizable level. Good writing probably could have saved this plot, but, uh...

But I'm not here to talk about ST:V, and honestly, I'm probably not even qualified to do so because I haven't watched it in ages. I haven't even watched the Rifftrax of it (I probably should, so I feel better about it and so people wittier than myself can supply me with jokes about it.) I'm here to talk about the tenth movie to be released under the Star Trek banner.

It's called Nemesis, but you can call it "Whoops".



Hot on the heels of a boring but passable ninth movie, Nemesis was supposed to be totally sweet. The first few minutes are really cool, actually, with a shot of the Romulan Capital and Senate and some crazy political intrigue, making you think, "Whoa, something that wasn't explored as much as it could have been in the series. This is gonna be intense!" Too bad they decided to continue the movie after that point. (Much like The Happening, they should have cut it off after 5 minutes.)

Cut to Riker and Troi getting married, Picard giving some windbaggy toast, and (almost) everyone looking positively PLEASED. Yawn! Why do all the Next Generation movies have to start with boring crap? Kirk and the gang are always climbing mountains or stealing ships or painting "HMS Bounty" on their stolen Klingon cruiser, but Picard and crew are always.. being ceremonious. It's bull, because I KNOW Troi can party.


But wait! It gets better! The Enterprise-E gets diverted and has to check some crap out on a planet, AND THEY GET TO DRIVE AROUND IN A DUNE BUGGY. At this point I'm pretty sure they just wrote this for shits and giggles, and/or after watching Galaxy Quest one too many times. Anyhow, wah wah wah, they find a Data prototype who's even more cluelessly hilarious, blah blah blah who cares and eventually they have to go to Romulus. (Sorry for the I-don't-care confusion, but you'd know approximately the same amount about what was going on if you WERE watching the actual thing right now, so don't worry.)

Picard meets a man who turns out to be HIS CLONE: Shinzon. The Romulans bred him years before to use him against the Federation, but then abandoned the project, and the clone was banished to crappy mining moon Remus, where he got pissed and vowed revenge and universal domination, etc. He's pretending that he wants peace with the Federation but he's really just plotting a complex scheme to wreak havok, and after some twists and turns the day is saved, and that's basically the rest of the movie.

Big issue #1: Crappy with the female characters YET AGAIN. Newly Domestic Troi's incapacitated by some brain interference, Crusher's underutilized as usual, and the female Romulan, Commander Donatra, is a classic Hollywood 'spurned woman betrays her lover' or whatever. She couldn't change her mind and do what was right because she was a highly intelligent military commander or anything, of course; she just wanted to fuck Shinzon's shit up cause he didn't want to bone. Barf x34534905345098.

Big issue #2: THEY STOLE THE ENDING OF THE WRATH OF KHAN. The movie was tolerable enough the first go-round, I suppose, but when they got to the part where Data sacrifices himself to save the ship, but lives on in his prototype B-4 who is child-like and has to re-learn everything... are we noticing AN EXACT REPLICA yet? The SAME crap happens with Spock in The Wrath of Khan and beyond, and his death and funeral comprise one of the most touching scenes(a rare Shatner moment of actual good acting)/excellent story arcs in Star Trek history. Trying to touch it within this dung heap of a movie is just insulting.


I get it. Everyone was tired when this came out, and Star Trek needed a breather. That doesn't mean you should forgive it and watch this movie more than once for canon's sake. Just do like me and pretend it never happened, and hope with me that J. J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reimagining will revitalize the franchise with fresh blood and less old dudes sitting around and farting.

Some of you might be reading this and thinking, 'how can you be so venemous about this one particular movie, when many of these problems happen elsewhere in Star Trek?' The main answer to that is that the producers and writers should have known better by 2002. To be simplistic: sexism and racism in 60s Trek sucked, but it was still progressive for its time, AND writers should have (and often did) get better about that as time went by. One can understand, to a point, the flaws in other, older Treks and still appreciate them because of their redeeming qualities; this film, supposedly the culmination of 35 years' work, had almost nothing going for it, and that's why it was so supremely disappointing.

Brandon Bird

I'd just like to take a minute to appreciate Brandon Bird. He's an artist who paints and draws all sorts of pop culture stuff, in the course of which he's done a few amazing Star Trek pieces. The one above is titled "The Death of Jennifer Sisko" and I think it's one of the most intense things I've ever seen. Deep Space Nine's pilot episode includes backstory into the life of its commander, Benjamin Sisko, who was in the infamous and devastating Battle of Wolf 359 against the Borg (Incidentally, my awesome friends over in the UK have a band named Battle of Wolf 359 that you should check out). In a heartwrenching flashback scene, Sisko must leave his trapped, injured/possibly already dead wife on board a ship that is exploding around him so that he can escape with his son.

This gave DS9 some excellent continuity and depth straight away, creating drama between Sisko and Captain Picard of The Next Generation fame, since Picard had been assimilated by the Borg and led them at Wolf 359 against the Federation. Sisko held him responsible for the death of his wife, which may have been unfair since Picard didn't have any control over his actions at the time, but he could barely stand to be in the same room as Picard. This friction set the tone of DS9 early as a show that would in many ways go against the precedents of other Star Trek series to be much darker both in plot and character development. As Sisko would later go on to say to Picard's omnipotent nemesis Q, "I'm not Picard."

At any rate, you should check out Brandon Bird's stuff; there are a few other Star Trek-related things thrown in there, and the rest are great too.

Dr. Leah Brahms; or, Why is Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge such a creepdog?

So here's the deal with Dr. Leah Brahms. She's a brainy babe who helped design the Enterprise-D's engines once upon a time. In this sweet episode called "Booby Trap" (TNG season 3), Picard and the gang get stuck in, you guessed it, an ancient booby trap from a long-ago war. Why do I think this is cool? Anytime anyone brings up races that had space travel long before we were even walking upright, I get shivers. It's one of those "good lord, THE UNIVERSE!" things.

But anyhow, to get out of this mess, La Forge needs to get creative with the engines, and creates an interactive holodeck program to help him think the crisis through. A holographic representation of Dr. Brahms teams up with him to save the day, and obviously he pulls a Barclay and digs on her hard since he's an awkward nerd who can't interact with women in real life (what's up with the Engineering crew, anyway?). Thing is, he created this fake woman's personality, so obviously they get along! They don't show it, but I'm sure they boned off-screen, which is creepy in itself cause she was BASED ON A REAL, LIVING WOMAN who never gave any kind of consent to have her image used that way. It'd be different if it was like, some purposely created fantasy in Quark's rentable-by-the-hour holosuites.

But anyhow, the part that is really disgusting comes in during a crappy episode a year later called "Galaxy's Child". I mean, the concept of alien entities who live in the vacuum of space is really cool, but the episode is so lame. (Keep in mind that when I say that, it's with love and I'd still watch the shit in a second. But I can recognize episode quality on a spectrum. Cue "NERRRRRRD!")

The REAL Dr. Leah Brahms is on board to inspect some engine stuff and work with Geordi. It's mad awkward because in real life she's kind of formal and cold, but Geordi feels like he already knows her and creeps her the hell out by being like "Oh, I LOOOOOVE x y and z" which he had already researched and knew were HER favorite things. That could be cool or cute, but he's just so creepy about it in the most obvious way. He's determined to seduce her since she's his dream brainy babe, but she's not into it and runs out on his carefully planned romantic dinner because she feels (rightfully!) that it's inappropriate. As they keep working together, he keeps being intense and dropping hints about things he knows about her. She realizes that he's really feeling it and drops the bomb: she's married. Oops. Geordi's bummed and vents to Guinan, who is a wise breath of fresh air in this episode, and is like "Stop being a dumbass creep, you created a fantasy version of her so you can't be mad that she isn't like that." Preach it, Whoopi.

Anyways, while Brahms is there, the Enterprise is in trouble again when those fools on the bridge accidentally kill one of the aforementioned space creatures while it is pregnant, and so they perform a space C-section to get the baby out. The baby immediately latches on to the ship and starts draining its energy. Crisis! Time to call upon the holodeck to work out a solution! Unfortunately, La Forge gets called away before Brahms gets down to Engineering, and an unsuspecting ensign directs her to the holodeck alone. She finds Geordi's old program WITH HER IN IT, and he breathlessly runs in to find her staring at her holographic self saying things like "When you're touching the engines, you're touching me, Geordi" or whatever. That's like the 24th century equivalent of finding your face pasted on to a body in a porn magazine belonging to some gross dude you barely know.

Obviously, Dr. Brahms is pissed and has put all the pieces together about Geordi's creepiness now. She starts yelling at him about how gross it all is. Instead of apologizing like a normal human being and being appropriately chagrined, he starts yelling back at her for being cold to him and not into his skeevy "friendly" advances, and storms out! He's mad that she wouldn't be his friend, but like, regardless of your actual personality, would YOU automatically be friendly to some dude you've never met before who is using personal information about you to impress you and make you feel weird/unsettled and try to mold you into this fantasy person he created who he can get in bed with? You'd probably be a little cautious. But he's mad that she didn't want to be best buds forever immediately upon setting foot on the Enterprise.

The worst part comes after the crisis has been solved. DR. BRAHMS APOLOGIZES TO GEORDI! She's all like, "sorry I was a cold bitch to you" and he apologizes for lying, and they have a good laugh and clink drinks and are best buds. What? Are you serious? She has nothing to apologize for. This was 100% him being a creepdog, or at the worst, 10% her not being the most friendly open person in the universe and 90% him being a creepdog. It truly and seriously makes me feel gross that a woman could be made to feel so bad for not being into a man's strong, sketchy advances WHILE IN A WORK ENVIRONMENT that SHE ends up being the one to offer the main apology! Sorry, Maurice Hurley, but you missed the boat on the ending of this one. Geordi should have been properly chastened and should have learned a more pronounced lesson from all of this, instead of Brahms being like "God it sucks that I'm so frigid, please forgive me and let's laugh it off."

Sorry that I said creepy so many times in this, but it's seriously the creepiest. Creep. Poor dude just doesn't have much experience with women, but there are many ways to portray that without involving this type of plot ending.