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Revisiting the Trek movie that brought the franchise screeching to a halt.
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00:00Well, my friends, the time has come. It was something we put off for as long as we possibly
00:04could, but no, no, no, no. Nemesis is here. Listen, I will defend some parts of this film.
00:11There are very interesting stories behind the scenes, and it's entirely unfair what happened
00:15to Tom Hardy after the release of this film, and it wasn't his fault. He didn't write it.
00:19For, however, the very legitimate problems that there are with Star Trek Nemesis,
00:23think of the positives. We have those beautiful new scimitar designs,
00:26and, of course, the Warbird designs, even though I do miss Andrew Probert's Warbird a lot.
00:31But anyway, we have that beautiful score from Jerry Goldsmith, which would, of course,
00:36unfortunately be his final act for Star Trek before he passed away. There are wonderful scenes,
00:42including the wedding. There's the return of Wesley Crusher, even if it's a blink and you'll miss
00:46it cameo. There's, of course, there's Guinan. There is so much. So what the hell went wrong?
00:52I'm Sean Ferrer for Trek Culture, and here are 20 things you didn't know about Star Trek Nemesis,
00:58part 1. Number 20. Patrick Stewart originally played both Picard and Shinzon.
01:04Though Tom Hardy, of course, ended up playing the part of the villainous Reman leader and Picard
01:08clone Praetor Shinzon, the very first version of the script actually had Shinzon being portrayed
01:13by Patrick Stewart as a more direct older clone of Picard. There sadly aren't any further details
01:18available online about how this would have changed the story, though it's fair to assume that Nemesis
01:23would have climaxed with Patrick Stewart effectively battling himself. Ultimately,
01:26the potential for goofiness would have been extremely high had they gone this route,
01:30so bringing in a young actor to portray a younger clone was probably the right call. However,
01:34a few years ago, a curious fan cleverly deep-faked Stewart into the role of Shinzon to give
01:39fans a speculative glimpse of how it could have turned out.
01:42Number 19. Brent Spiner wanted Data to die for one specific reason.
01:47Data actor Brent Spiner actually helped write Data's arc for the movie, in turn earning the
01:51single writing credit of his entire career to date. Though John Logan is credited as Nemesis's
01:56sole screenwriter, Spiner received a story buy credit. Spiner had been lobbying for many years,
02:01at least since the days of First Contact, for Data to be killed off, and so conceived a storyline for
02:06Nemesis where he would sacrifice himself to save Picard and blow up Shinzon's scimitar.
02:11Spiner's reasoning for wanting Data to die was simply as he felt he had aged too much,
02:15and that it made no sense for Data to be so noticeably advanced in years, being an android
02:19and all, and so Data died in Nemesis, albeit with the door being left ajar for him to return through
02:23his android brother, B4. In the end, much of Star Trek Picard's first season was ultimately
02:28concerned with tying off Data's arc seemingly once and for all.
02:32Number 18. Numerous legacy characters almost had cameos.
02:36Nemesis memorably features a fleeting cameo from Voyager's Captain Janeway as Vice Admiral Janeway,
02:42who briefly interacts with Picard in a video call, but several other peripheral Star Trek characters
02:46were intended to make cameo appearances in varying capacities. Most prominently,
02:50Seven of Nine was written a role in the film, and according to Jerry Ryan herself it was intended
02:54to be a substantial supporting part rather than a quick wink wink cameo. Ryan turned it down though,
02:59because she wanted to take a break from her busy schedule working on Boston Public, and also felt
03:03that the part never rose above being pure fanservice. She also turned down an offer to cameo at Riker
03:09and Troy's wedding, because she again felt it didn't make any sense for Seven to be there.
03:13Elsewhere, Ashley Judd's Starfleet Ensign Robin Leffler, a minor character who had appeared in
03:17two episodes of The Next Generation's fifth season, was written into an early draft, but it never panned out.
03:22And, finally, Denise Crosby lobbied producer Rick Berman to bring Tasha Yar's half-Romulan daughter
03:28Selah back into the fold somehow, but the writers never found a way to work her into the movie.
03:32Number 17. Director Stuart Baird clashed with the cast. It's been frequently reported that many
03:37cast members ended up clashing with director Stuart Baird, who wasn't particularly familiar
03:41with Star Trek before shooting started, yet producer Rick Berman felt he would bring a fresh
03:46energy to the flagging franchise. LeVar Burton and Marina Sirtis have since spoken disparagingly of Baird,
03:51Burton claiming that Baird often referred to him as Laverne on set, and Sirtis calling him an idiot.
03:56There were also reports that Baird was clueless enough about Trek that he thought Geordie was
04:00an alien. Bloody hell. Though Jonathan Frakes was more diplomatic, he did speak about how he would
04:04have directed the film differently, namely shifting the focus away from Shinzon and more towards the
04:09TNG cast. On the film's Blu-ray commentary, it's abundantly clear that Baird wasn't exactly happy
04:14with how the movie came out either, namely the enormous creative restrictions placed upon him
04:19throughout the process. Such is the nature of working on a gargantuan movie.
04:22Number 16. Wesley Crusher originally had a speaking role.
04:26One of the odder things about Nemesis is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Wesley
04:30Crusher, which can be seen momentarily at Riker and Troy's wedding, yet he strangely doesn't say
04:34a word. This is because most of Wesley's role was cut during editing. On the movie's DVD,
04:38there's a brief scene at the wedding after Picard's toast where he speaks with Wesley,
04:42who's preparing to run the engineering night shift on the USS Titan, serving alongside Riker and
04:46Troy. It's a small moment, but, like so many other deleted scenes in Nemesis, added welcome shade
04:51in character to a film that was so thoroughly lacking in it. Fans would have loved to have seen
04:55Wesley chatting with Picard again after years apart, but, alas, Baird made the bizarre decision to leave
05:01this short exchange on the cutting room floor. Number 15. Riker's back hair was removed with CGI.
05:08CGI sure is capable of incredible things, eh? Well, it played a major role in one of Nemesis's most
05:13infamous and oft-ridiculed scenes, the sex scene between Riker and Troy, which is interrupted by the
05:19extremely egregious and inappropriate scene of Shinzon's attempted mental rape of Troy.
05:25Because much of the scene focuses on Riker's back, the filmmakers asked Jonathan Frakes to
05:30shave his back for a more aesthetically pleasing visual, but he refused, and so it fell to VFX
05:34company to do the work instead, giving Riker's back a digital shave, and, to be fair, you'd never
05:39even know it, even though it's tough to believe that somebody actually cared this much about Riker
05:44having a tufty back. Number 14. Marina Sirtis almost didn't return.
05:49As much as she's an integral member of the TNG crew, Deanna Troy almost ended up being conspicuously
05:54absent throughout Nemesis due to negotiations breaking down between Marina Sirtis and Paramount.
05:59As it often does, the crux of the issue came down to money, with Sirtis feeling insulted by the
06:03apparent low-ball offer given to her. In interviews, Sirtis has spoken extensively about feeling
06:08undervalued compared to her male Cold Stars in particular, and claims that Paramount threatened
06:13to put Seven of Nine in the movie in her place if a salary agreement couldn't be reached. Sirtis
06:18plitherly retorted to the studio, Jerry Ryan won't do it for that money, that's for sure.
06:22Thankfully, the matter was eventually resolved, and though Sirtis was ultimately one of the cast's
06:26more vocal critics of Nemesis, or to be exact of Director Baird, she maintains that she was happy
06:32with Troy's role in the film. Number 13. The Enterprise ramming into the Scimitar was a
06:38mostly practical effect. Though the previous few Next Generation movies began progressively phasing
06:44out practical effects and had deferred to almost entirely digital shots of the Enterprise in action,
06:49a practical Enterprise effect was employed in Nemesis for one sequence. When the Enterprise
06:53rams the Scimitar on Picard's order during the final battle, a practical 17-foot Enterprise
06:59saucer was built and collided into a model of the Scimitar. The film's production crew shot the effect in
07:04slow motion at 360 frames per second to imply a greater sense of heft to the miniatures, and also
07:10hung the models upside down so the resulting debris from the clash would fall up as it would in zero
07:15gravity. VFX company Digital Domain then added explosions and other ambient elements to the scene,
07:21ensuring the end result is a winning marriage of practical and digital effects wizardry.
07:26Number 12. An estimated 50 minutes of material was cut.
07:30On Nemesis' DVD, Rick Berman claims that roughly 50 minutes of material was cut from the theatrical
07:35release in order to achieve a more commercial 117 minute runtime. Though 17 minutes of cut material
07:41appears on the DVD, that leaves over half an hour of footage unaccounted for. Most of the cut material
07:47was apparently character-centric scenes that fleshed out the relationships of the Enterprise's crew,
07:51which were cut to keep the emphasis on the battle between the Enterprise and the Scimitar. This includes a
07:56far longer wedding sequence in which Picard and Data have a lengthy heart-to-heart, a more involved
08:00subplot about Shinzon's obsession with Troy, more scenes with Data and B4, bigger parts for Worf and
08:06Dr. Crusher, and a more prolonged epilogue. It's infuriating that so much of this material remains
08:11locked away, because much of it sounds like it would have added considerable weight and nuance to a
08:16fundamentally threadbare film. Number 11. Jude Law was considered for Shinzon.
08:20In the summer of 2001, a few months before shooting was set to begin, rumours did the rounds online
08:27that Jude Law had been cast in the role of Shinzon, and though this of course turned out to be untrue,
08:32he was indeed in contention for the part. Originally, the plan was to find a name actor who resembled a
08:38younger Patrick Stewart to portray Shinzon, and Rick Berman settled on Law. However, director Baird argued
08:43that Shinzon should be portrayed by a basically unknown actor, eventually leading to Tom Hardy being cast in
08:49the part following an extensive and, by Hardy's word, appalling audition process. While it's easy
08:55to imagine Law pulling off the required menace, it was probably better to go for a less established
08:59actor in the role. And that's everything for the first part of our list, so please come back for
09:03the second part. Remember, you can catch us on Twitter, at TrekCulture. You can catch myself,
09:07at Sean Ferrick, on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Until I'm talking to you again,
09:11you look after yourselves, you live long and prosper, and I'll see you back here for part two. Thanks!
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