GWC Podcast #164: Star Trek X: Nemesis

i must agree that the actor playing shinzon confused me my first time watching it. like i understood he was a clone of picard, but i didnt get why he didnt look like picard. i didnt get that he was a younger picard. i just say huge ships flying around and big explosions. COOL

FWIW, I was kidding about Stewart playing Shinzon as it seems like people playing versions of themselves almost always ends up seeming a bit comical. We already know that so many different factors affect who we are and how we look that a genetic clone may or may not look exactly like the donor.

I figure the only real issue (if anything) with Shinzon’s appearance is continuity. We’ve seen a “young” Picard twice in TNG – once in Tapestry:

(BTW: Played by one Austin native Marcus Nash [link to story where I found image] whose sister it seems played Picard’s daughter in Inner Light.)

And again (sort of) in Rascals:

But even that doesn’t bother me that much. I suspect that Nash as Shinzon wouldn’t have really carried the same creepy weight.

About podcast 31 or 32 I think…

We also saw a younger Picard in an episode with a mind raping alien praying on past bad memories of the crew. IIRC, in Berverly Crusher’s case we see the day her husband died and Picard had to tell her the news. At that point, ~10 years earlier, he had wispy hair on top.

Also, in Inner Light didn’t PS’s real son play his son on the episode? He didn’t seem quite imposing enough to play a Star Trek heavy though…

I haven’t listend to the cast yet, but I was wondering if any one else thinks it a little wrong that Janeway becomes and admiral before Picard, or Sisko? She did a lot with the USS Voyager, but was it really admrial worther, at least more so than the other captains?

Dang, should have proofed that before I finished

That ep is called “Rascals”? Even better.

Nemesis is the only ST movie I have seen in the theater during its initial release (until Friday, that is!). When it came out my little brother, who is NOT a Trekkie, was young enough that his idolization of his big sis was enough to get him really excited to go see it with me. We went to the theater right outside my grandparents’ retirement community and were the youngest people there by at least 45 years. Even if it isn’t the best Trek movie ever, we had a blast.

I’m halfway through the podcast but had a couple of thoughts.

1.) I HATE the Riker John Wayne walk. He looks like he tied one on in the forward cabin.

2.) The guy texting while driving was doing it for SIX minutes. Talk about a tool.

3.) Star Trek time travel - cool. LOST time travel - confusing.

4.) I like the updated Star Trek. I just got the Blu-Ray version and it’s awesome. I also gives you the ability to swith between the old and the updated versions while it’s playing. I’m old enough to have seen Star Trek during it’s initial run. My Dad and I were big fans. Star Trek and Lost in Space. We were hooked! I also like the updated Star Wars, but I agree that music remixes stink compared to the originals.

5.) Riker back hair? Gives me the willies thinking about it!

6.) Haven’t heard Audra’s cleavage report yet, but Troy was looking pretty good in that wedding dress!

7.) Shinzon bald? He WANTS to be like Picard, only badder. He shaves his head.

Can’t wait to hear the rest of the 'cast.

You guys rock!

With Riker, it’s all about the beard, baby.

//youtu.be/Ck-VIA1GUCY

I think Starfleet’s probably offered Picard an admiralty more than once, but he probably doesn’t want it; heeding Kirk’s advice from Generations not to “let them promote you.”

Did anybody else get scratchy sounds off their podcast? You know, my sony ericsson earpiece that connects to my phone costs $18 a pop and I wear them out every few months :frowning: I just got a new ear piece a couple of weeks ago :cool:

Re: the darker tone of Nemesis. I am glad we re-watched this film, because I did not remember how good it actually was. Watching it semi-“on its own,” not after years of a steady diet of TNG in reruns, it really works quite well because it rings changes on some of the most notable “tropes” of TNG (eg. exploring what it means to be human via Data the android, galactic political intrigue, deep questions of identity…)

What struck me most, though, is this is really a Star Trek vampire movie! I just read Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time, and the parallels are remarkable.

  • Our heroes are up against villains who prefer darkness to light, and most of whom have pointed ears–just the way Stoker describes Dracula.
  • Shinzon literally needs Picard’s blood to live, to stay young–sound like any Transylvanian Un-dead you know?
  • Shinzon is able to molest Troi in her dreams, the same way Dracula molests Lucy and Mina in theirs–and Troi uses that mental connection to locate Shinzon the same way that Mina keeps tabs on Dracula’s whereabouts for Van Helsing.
  • There is thematic overlap – e.g., lots of talk of mirrors: Shinzon, metaphorically speaking, doesn’t cast a reflection; instead, he claims to be a reflection of Picard.
  • And when Shinzon is killed, it’s by a “staking” that would make Van Helsing proud. :wink:
  • And the Remans look like the first film depictions of Dracula, in the German film Nosferatu. I have to believe that was deliberate.

Now, as Audra our resident English professor could tell us, it’s not enough just to notice a pattern of symbolism; one has to interperet it to find a meaning… and I’m not sure what message(s) Nemesis is conveying with all the vampire imagery. Maybe someone out there in the hive mind can make some sense of it.

The edit button is my best friend.

Yup, I heard those scratches early on in the podcast. I thought my ipod was wigging out given the typically superior audio quality of the cast. Just must have been one of those things…

Oh, and one reason that Clint Howard seems to be so ubiquitous in the movies is that he has the benefit of being cast in just about every Ron Howard project…

Re: the names “Romulus” and “Remus” – Maybe someone has said this earlier, but I always thought those had to be names the Federation gave to the planets and its people, not the names they called themselves. Diane Duane wrote a whole series of novels in which she “establishes” (scare quotes since novels not canon in Trek) the “real” name of the race is Rihannsu.

Same with “Vulcans” – there is no way they call themselves that, unless it is a mighty big coincidence. I am guessing from the dialogue we hear in ST-TMP at the Kolinahr ceremony that the Vulcans’ name for themselves sounds enough like the English word “Vulcan” that it became an acceptable subsitute for the real word (that we humans probably can’t pronounce correctly, anway :wink: )

In response to Sean’s “cloaked shooting in a straight line”…

… I always thought they could’ve taken a page out of Kirk’s book like in Star Trek VI: modify a torpedo to hone in on the Scimitar’s impulse exhaust trail, then “target that explosion and fire”.

I mean, if Kirk and Sulu could do it with ships as primitive as they were in that era, you’d think they’d have found a way to capitalize on the strategy some 80+ years later.

I’ve been wondering about the name thing for a while. I tried asking my husband whether or not “Vulcans”, “Romulans,” and “Remans” were names they called themselves or names the humans called them and he told me to just ignore it and pay attention to the damn episode.

Something else about the “historical” Romulus and Remus: Romulus killed Remus–I can’t recall why–and named Rome after himself. Became the first king of Rome, too, for what it was worth at the time. (Hovels and a sausage fest of bandits? Doesn’t sound like much of a kingdom to me.)

Not bad advice, but overthinking is like catnip to geeks. The idea that the names are assigned by “us” and not “them” is one that’s gone out of fashion (see ‘Beijing’) but used to be accepted as the norm (see “Cologne, Germany.”)

Something else about the “historical” Romulus and Remus: Romulus killed Remus–I can’t recall why–and named Rome after himself. Became the first king of Rome, too, for what it was worth at the time. (Hovels and a sausage fest of bandits? Doesn’t sound like much of a kingdom to me.)

The dispute was what to name the city. At that time it wasn’t much, but then neither were most kingdoms in the area. Romulus conquered a lot of territory, according to legend, and Rome began its ascent.

It’s not a bad analogy for the conquest of the Remulans by the Romulans. (Of course, at the time ‘we’ named them, ‘we’ didn’t know about that.)

Nemesis is not my favorite Trek movie, but I have to say it probably has the best space battle in all of Star Trek.

Shatner vs. the flashing lights and big knobs:

//youtu.be/v/1sEI8ENley4&hl=en&fs=1

I think Picard never gets to be an admiral because HE IS LOCUTUS OF BORG! I really think that is his “letter in his file” that means he never makes admiral…ever. Much the same as Worf rescueing Jadzia means he will never command. ( see some DS9 episode in season 6) This is a real occurance in military carreers. There is often one evaluation or inciddent in ones personel jacket that apon review will hold one back from command … no matter how capable the person might otherwise be.

I think Janeway gets to be an admiral, but she gets to be one of those shitty TNG Admirals that you feel really barley deserves it. She just happens to have no screwups… and is one of many in line. She also captured the Maquis ( thru no skill of her own) , gathered Inteligense on the Borg ( which any captain who was there could have done) … and MOST importantly… saved an admiral’s son. Just enough “ok” stuff to push a merely competant Captain ( who was lucky enough to have those events in her lap) to the top of the list. Watch Voyager… she is just the run of the mill Starfleet Captain. She’s not Kirk, Picard, or even Sisko really. She is just acting as excpected. In the military, if you do this and get a few lucky carreer breaks, you will become an admiral. She just has a letter in her folder that says “promote no matter what”

This is comeing from. myself, an Army officer that is a “just as expected” officer. But because I was a Ranger in Somalia in 1993, when I was 19, enlisted, and got a few medals and they wrote a book about us and made a movie and a few history channell shows… I get promoted EVERY time I am up for it beyond the guys that are my equal ( and often superior). Honestly because I was somewhere and did something at an age, and in a capacity that has nothing to do with my ability to command. I have that “letter in my jacket” that say promote no matter what. True P-funk story.