As J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek (2009) warped into theaters, a lot of young people experienced Trek for the first time. It created the perfect opportunity for an overview of previous Trek movies that could help new fans discover a broader appreciation for what had gone before. Always up for a challenge, I took on the review of my least favorite of the prior films, assessing the pros and cons of the film for a fresh audience without decades of exposure to the franchise. The excerpt below is the opening of the article (with a few bonus phrases that were cut for space in the magazine).
Star Trek Nemesis: The Clone Wars
A generation’s final journey begins . . . The tag line for Star Trek: Nemesis made it clear that this was to be the farewell voyage for Picard and crew, and this freed the writers to shake things up. The screenplay by John Logan (from a story by Logan, Rick Berman, and Brent Spiner) therefore wrapped up some story arcs that had been spread across seven years of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the three previous films featuring the series’ stars. For example, Commander William Riker finally accepts promotion to captain and also finally marries Deanna Troi, ending his “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” syndrome on multiple levels. Although these long-awaited character developments are nice, neither the wedding nor the new ship, the Titan, appear in Nemesis, failing to deliver an emotional pay-off for fans—contrast this with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which featured Captain Sulu’s Excelsior as an integral part of the plot. . . .
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