Star Trek: Nemesis is a 2002 American science fiction film directed by Stuart Baird. It is the tenth installment in the Star Trek franchise, and the fourth and final film to star the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was written by John Logan from a story he developed with Brent Spiner and producer Rick Berman. In the film, the crew of the Starship Enterprise deal with the threat posed by a clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) named Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who has taken control of the Romulan Star Empire in a coup d'état.
Principal photography for the film took place from November 2001 to March 2002. Nemesis held its world premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on December 9, 2002.
Released in North America on December 13, 2002, by Paramount Pictures, the film received generally mixed reviews and is considered to be one of the worst films in the franchise. It was also a box office failure, earning $67.3 million worldwide against a $60 million budget. Plans for another film featuring The Next Generation cast were scrapped, and the film series was rebooted instead with Star Trek in 2009. The television series Star Trek: Picard, a continuation of The Next Generation and Nemesis set two decades after the latter at the end of the 24th century, premiered in 2020.
Plot
On Romulus, members of the Romulan Senate debate terms of peace and alliance with the Reman rebel leader Shinzon. The Remans are a slave race of the Romulan Empire from the neighboring planet Remus, used as miners and cannon fodder. While a faction of the military supports Shinzon, the Praetor and Senate oppose an alliance. After rejecting the motion, a device left in the room disintegrates the Praetor and senators.
Meanwhile, on Earth, the crew of the starship Enterprise prepare to bid farewell to newly married officers William Riker and Deanna Troi. En route to a second ceremony on Troi's homeworld, they discover an energy reading on the planet Kolarus III near the Romulan Neutral Zone. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, security officer Worf, and android officer Data land on the planet and discover the remnants of an android resembling Data, named B-4. The trio is attacked by the native population and leaves the planet with B-4, which they deduce to be an earlier prototype built by Data's creator.
Enterprise is then ordered on a diplomatic mission to Romulus, where Shinzon has taken over the Empire and professes a desire for peace with the Federation. On arrival, they learn Shinzon is a clone of Picard, secretly created by the Romulans to plant a high-ranking spy into the Federation. The project was abandoned when Shinzon was still a child, and he was left on Remus to die as a slave. After many years, Shinzon became the leader of the Remans and constructed a heavily armed flagship, Scimitar. The Enterprise crew discovers that Scimitar produces low levels of deadly thalaron radiation, the same radiation used to wipe out the Romulan Senate. There are also unexpected attempts to communicate with the Enterprise computers, and Shinzon invades Troi's mind through the telepathy of his Reman viceroy.
Medical officer Doctor Beverly Crusher discovers that Shinzon is dying because of the process used to clone him, and the only possible treatment is a transfusion of Picard's blood. Shinzon kidnaps Picard and B-4, having planted the android on Kolarus as a lure. However, Data reveals he swapped places with B-4 and rescues Picard. They determine Shinzon plans to use Scimitar to invade the Federation, using its thalaron radiation generator to eradicate all life on Earth.
Enterprise races back to Federation space but is ambushed by Scimitar in the Bassen Rift, a region that prevents subspace communication. Despite the aid of two Romulan Warbirds, Enterprise is heavily damaged. Picard rams his ship into Scimitar, crippling both vessels. Shinzon activates the Thalaron weapon in an act of mutually assured destruction. Picard boards Scimitar alone to face Shinzon, and kills him by impaling him on a metal strut. With Enterprises transporters down, Data leaps the distance between the two ships equipped with an emergency transporter, transports Picard off the ship, and sacrifices himself to destroy the thalaron generator and Scimitar with it. The crew mourns Data, and the surviving Romulan commander, Donatra, offers them her gratitude for saving the Empire.
Back on Earth, Picard bids farewell to Riker, who is leaving with Troi to command the USS Titan. Picard meets with B-4 and explains that before he boarded the Scimitar, Data downloaded his memories into B-4, allowing him to live on.
Cast
Production Development
John Logan, Rick Berman and Brent Spiner spent nearly two years developing the concept. Logan wanted the Romulans to feature, finding their oily backhandedness more interesting than the straightforward violence of the Klingons as antagonists. He insisted the story could feature the Remans, thinking that the second of the two planets featured in the Romulan crest must refer to them. The producers considered adding the characters of Spock or Sela to the story, but considered them a distraction from the plot or too confusing to introduce for casual viewers. Through subsequent drafts, much of the Romulan political intrigue was jettisoned to focus on the Picard/Shinzon and Data/B-4 relationships. The cast members' input informed story and script changes; Stewart objected to an early idea that Shinzon was not a clone but Picard's lost son, feeling it had been already explored and lent itself to "uninteresting" emotional dynamics.
Stuart Baird was brought in to direct Star Trek: Nemesis by executive producer Rick Berman. It was Baird's third film following US Marshals and Executive Decision, although he had directed a variety of second units previously. Baird did not have a background in Star Trek; he was aware of the films and television series, but did not consider himself an expert on the subject. Berman explained that Baird would bring "fresh blood" to the film and that Berman had enjoyed "the sense of fun and action that existed in Executive Decision." Baird said in a promotional interview that this resulted in a non-typical Baird film, saying that it was "perhaps a little different from the dynamics of the previous films." He wanted to add energy to the action scenes and added some set pieces, such as the car chase. He called that scene a "signature piece" for the film, which turns dark after the crew is put in danger by the inhabitants of the planet. He also found that the cast would discuss any issues they had with the direction he gave to their characters. Despite Frakes' being in the cast and having directed the previous two Star Trek films, Baird decided not to seek his opinion on the direction of the film. He said that there was no resentment on set, noting that Frakes was completing work on directing Clockstoppers at the time and so likely could not have taken on directing Nemesis even if Baird had not been given the job. Baird had hoped that Nemesis would be enough of a success that he could consider whether to take the lead on a future, eleventh Star Trek film.
Casting Baird and Berman had been searching for someone who resembled Patrick Stewart but looked about 25 years younger; at one point they considered Jude Law. Baird specifically wanted an unknown actor and Tom Hardy auditioned by tape after Stewart asked Hardy's agent if he thought any of his clients were suitable for the role. Hardy was filming Simon: An English Legionnaire in Morocco at the time, and decided against using the requested text for the audition. Instead, he got possession of a full script for Nemesis, used a different part of the script, and filmed it partly nude. He was flown to Los Angeles to do a screen test with Stewart; Hardy later described his performance there as "appalling". However, he had recorded himself performing the same piece in a hotel room the night before and gave that tape to Baird, resulting in his being cast as Shinzon a few days later. Michael Shanks also auditioned for the role.
Marina Sirtis was "ecstatic" about the role Troi plays in the movie. She was pleased with the wedding scene, saying that the dress she wore for Nemesis was nicer than the one she wore at her actual wedding. She was happy to work once again with Wil Wheaton and Whoopi Goldberg, but felt that the film would be the last one with the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She remained certain that it would not be the last Star Trek film to be made, as she thought that Paramount Pictures would want to make a film involving a variety of characters from the different Star Trek series.
Ron Perlman and Hardy became friends on the set. Perlman said in an interview eight years after the release of the film: "I loved him when I first met him. I loved working with him. I found him to be really smart, really a great kid."
Design Nemesis called for a number of new ship and vehicle designs. Illustrator John Eaves developed concept art for the new craft, collaborating with the artists at effects house Digital Domain to adjust the designs as necessary when something worked in a two-dimensional drawing but did not look right once realized with three-dimensional computer-generated imagery (CGI). Shinzon's Scimitar was designed to appear to have a shared lineage with the new Romulan Warbird designs, but with the Romulan ships being sleeker, and the Reman ship more aggressive-looking with sharper edges. The new Warbirds retained elements from the Warbird Andrew Probert had designed for The Next Generation, namely a birdlike bow. Eaves also consulted reference books for ideas on how to create featherlike patterns on the ships, realizing he may have been consulting the same inspiration that Nilo Rodis had used when developing the Bird of Prey for Star Trek III. "So I went back and changed what I had done so as to not copy him," Eaves recalled. "In a way, it was a tribute to Nilo's ship without being a remodel of it." Scimitar's early concepts also echoed Rodis' Bird of Prey, with a large body framed by swept wings. Eaves decided to have the ship feature a "battle mode", with the wings splitting open as the film progresses to deploy the thalaron weapon. The initial digital model of Scimitar was more than two million polygons, and took two hours to render a single frame of it. Affects art director Ron Gress and CG modeling lead Jay Barton whittled the design down to roughly 1.5 million polygons to make it easier to render. Eaves also took advantage of the computer-generated nature of the ships to make subtle adjustments to the design of the Enterprise, which had been created for First Contact. Because of the orientation of battle scenes in that film, the ship was armed mostly towards the bottom and fore of the ship. In Nemesis, the script called for Scimitar to launch attacks at Enterprise's top and aft, so the artists added additional weapon emplacements in those areas to return fire. Other adjustments included tweaking the placement of the engine nacelles and adding more of a curve along the hull. The Enterprise model was made up of 1.3 million polygons, with the textures drawn from photographs of the real studio model fabricated for First Contact. It, and all the other digital models, were rendered in Lightwave 3D for exterior views and Maya for interiors. A few designs were partially realized through practical means, including the Reman Scorpions, and the all-terrain vehicles used in the Kolarus III sequence.
Production design was headed by Herman Zimmerman.
Filming
Principal photography began in December 2001 in Southern California.
In promotional interviews for the film, Patrick Stewart stated that room for a sequel was intentionally left.Patrick Stewart interview on Nemesis Revisited DVD Featurette