Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation made names for themselves by bringing speculative fiction to prime-time with a serious, long-running, and engaging series about a multicultural crew in a future where Earth’s problems had mostly been solved. Unfortunately, that formula never translated to the big screen. The best Star Trek movies (what fans refer to as the "even-numbers" --- Treks 2, 4, 6, 8, and now 10) are the ones that sidestep serious SF issues in favor of action and camp. Look at the history: the odd-numbered, SF-oriented Treks involved V’ger, the Genesis Planet, God, and whatever was going on in Generations. Every one of those films are almost universally reviled by fans. On the other hand, fighting a psycho, visiting the 1980s, making peace with Klingons, and defeating the Borg queen are the Trek movies everyone likes --- and the Trek movies centered on action, camp, and outright humor.

Nemesis follows in this splendid tradition by offering the next "even" Trek, supposedly the last voyage of the Next Generation crew. With everyone assembled for Riker and Troi’s wedding, the Enterprise-E picks up a strange signal on a pre-Warp world close to the Romulan Neutral Zone. Of course, they investigate. On a pre-Warp world, using the transporter violates the Prime Directive (don’t interfere in stuff that ain’t yours), but gallivanting around in a shiny laser-equipped dune buggy is OK. Picard gets a moment of pure joy as he tears around an alien desert, picking up parts of what turns out to be a prototype of Data.

No sooner does everyone get back to the ship than Admiral Janeway call Picard on the Interstellar Network, both establishing the nonexistent future of Voyager movies by revealing her new desk job and establishing the plot of the movie by ordering Enterprise to go to Romulus and discuss peace with the new Praetor of the Romulan Empire. The new Praetor is Shinzon, a Reman. Until Shinzon assassinated the entire Romulan senate, the Remans were the slaves and whipping boys of the Romulan Empire, a mix of 1920s-era Nosferatu-style vampires and modern, brooding high-school Goths. Now, the Remans are a force to be reckoned with, because not only do they have an enormous battleship that fires Enterprise-sized torpedoes and has a new kind of radiation designed to wipe out entire planets, but they managed to build it all while they were miners and slaves. Any race that can accomplish that deserves to rule the galaxy.

But the fun doesn’t end there. It turns out that Shinzon is a clone of Picard, who was at one time going to replace the good Captain. When the Romulans abandoned that project, instead of killing such a politically sensitive creature, they instead sent him to grow up bitter, resentful, and free of morals in a harsh mining environment. Oops. At any rate, Shinzon isn’t interested in making peace --- as if this wasn’t obvious by his menacing visage and the sinister music that follows him around. In fact, he’s out to attack the Federation and use his nasty radiation on the unsuspecting inhabitants of Earth --- and who better to stop him than Picard and company?

Nemesis follows the even-Trek formula to a T. Yeah, it’s campy, and there are some plot holes large enough to park Shinzon’s ship for a little shore leave. But that’s what makes a good Trek movie, and Nemesis is better than average. The only movie to successfully combine the SF elements of the show and the action of the films was The Undiscovered Country, and Nemesis doesn’t come close to that, but for fun value and action sequences, it’s right up there with Wrath of Khan and First Contact. Fans who recognize the limitations of the Trek films should be duly impressed; the fanboys will no doubt pan it and complain.

Final Grade: B