Would Nemesis have been a better movie if it focused solely on the Romulans and cut out the Remans?

The Romulans helping Shinzon's coup are also problematic. We never find out just how many there are other than two ships, and once it's apparent that their coup has failed, they're all ready to buddy-buddy up to Picard, who gladly accepts their offer even though throughout the entire film it showed that these Romulans wanted to invade Earth! Donatra makes some flimsy excuse about Shinzon not wanting to Invade Earth but to destroy it, but really, what's the difference?

That's probably the one thing that makes sense in this entire silly plan of theirs, since that's essentially what happened. Although it still doesn't solve the inherent problem that Picard doesn't realize that these Romulans were the ones that wanted to invade the Federation in the first place.

 

I don't see Picard having a problem with that. Romulans who want to invade Earth are the sort he is familiar with, and in reasonable terms with. For the past 200 years or so, somebody has been saying "we can handle the Romulans!" and this somebody has been right.

Now, Romulans are good enemies because they are so predictable - and much like the Imperial Japanese Navy in WWII, they trip in their own feet when doing this needlessly complex scheming and dancing, instead of just going for the jugular. Shinzon is unpredictable, but direct, which is bad for the Federation.

As for the Scimitar being built in a secret location by Remans, what could possibly go differently? Would the Star Empire build its warship in a public location? Would Romulans build it when labor is for slaves? That part never rang untrue for me.

The exact specs of the Scimitar do bother me. Why build an all-around warship when you only want to sneak to a location cloaked to deliver a single-shot doomsday weapon? Especially if your strategic aim is to not deliver the weapon? Or if you are building the ship specifically to give your designated Spartacus a means to perform a coup for you, why do you give him a working WMD rather than a dud?

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Federation was very recently (as of Nemesis) allied with Romulus against the Dominion. He "teamed up" with Donatra. I don't believe she ever said her immediate goal, or the goal of the Romulan Senate, was to invade earth, it was Suran who wanted to defeat Earth - to cripple the ability for the Federation to attack a weakened (from the war) Romulus.

As the Doctor said in Message in a bottle: "Paranoia is a way of life for you, isn't it?". Sloan correctly predicted the future would be Romulan agression.

I wonder if we'll find out in The Picard Show that section 31 actually caused the Horbus nova.

 

I've kind of thought it might have been a group of T'Pring-like Vulcans: it would be logical to remove the threat represented by the Romulans, it couldn't cause their extinction because of their colonies, plus, they're the same species as Vulcans, and it would encourage remnants to reunify with their Vulcan relatives and adopt their ways or those of the humans, who are Vulcan allies. It would explain why they were slow to help - they did not want to help, they were causing it.

 

Whether Picard had a problem with it or not isn't the point. The point is that based on what we see, the Romulans basically got off scot-free even though the whole sorry situation was their fault to begin with. Suran, Donatra, and the rest of the plotters suddenly just become the good guys at the end of the movie and the audience never found out if their traitorous actions against the Empire were ever found out and dealt with. At the very least, their actions indirectly caused the death of Data. I'd think Picard would be quite disturbed and upset about that.

 

Nothing in canon indicates that. Section 31 certainly were concerned about Romulus post war (Inter Arma...),

The script states that Spock promised to fix it, and that the fastest ship was commissioned by the Vulcan Science Academy. The most likely inferrence from the below in my mind is that the Vulcan Science Academy is the "we" (not the federation or starfleet) that tried to stop the supernova, and starfleet was somehow prevented from being involved.

With Sloan's statement about the post-war quadrant, and his approval of Bashir's "you're planning the next war" statement, this could plausibly tie in with the idea that section 31 managed to cause a supernova with a subspace shockwave large enough to wipe out Romulus. We know supernovas often (but not always) cause subspace shockwaves, and we know they destroy planets in the way depicted (doh), and we know that starfleet could have the knowlege instigate these explosions (using trilithium). What we saw on screen implied it was the Romulan home star that exploded (similar visual effects as the Generations explosions)

Here's what we know about the Star Trek supernova

 

The one and only bit from the Countdown comic that might not be in direct contradiction with the movie is the one where Spock's claim about the threat of an approaching supernova explosion is not taken seriously by anybody who knows anything about stars. Of course, in the comic, Spock has exclusive access to data that supports his fears (from Nero no less). But in TOS, Spock is always making outrageous claims without evidence the audience would be aware of ("the Doomsday Machine is extragalactic"), and he generally is assumed to be right anyway (although we never quite learn whether he was). Perhaps it takes one of our regular heroes to believe in Spock's claims?

Fair enough. But Picard has no particular knowledge of Donatra's involvement; she's there exclusively to help, with no past to sully her reputation. Why would Picard vent his anger at her?

As for fallout in general, it's not within the scope of the movie to show that. But Romulans are always plotting evil things, and they always fail. I really don't see how this one would be more exceptional than the others...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think Michael Pillar's original ideas for Insurrection, using the Romulans as the villains, would have been better as either the ninth or tenth film.
I think there's a lot of unnecessary elements in Nemesis that convolute the story. If the villain was still played by Tom Hardy but was just some Romulan slave that led an uprising that instigated a coup, which led to him being contacted by and building a relationship with Picard and leads to them eventually becoming enemies, I think it works just as well. I feel the same about the Remans and also the Aenar.
If you like Shinzon being Picard's clone, that's fine.

 

Again, it's not about Picard venting anger. It's about the role the renegade Romulans played in all this mess, and the fact that they only sided with Picard at the end when it turned out that Shinzon had become an unreliable ally, even though he finally relented and did what they wanted. They could just as easily have let Shinzon destroy Earth (since they wanted to invade the Federation anyway) but for some nebulous reason Donatra has a change of heart, mainly because she thinks Shinzon is an asshole. And despite attempts to minimize Donatra's role in the coup, she was part of it, and should have been held responsible for her actions along with the rest of the Romulans. But that doesn't happen. They just buddy-buddy up to Picard, who gladly accepts their friendship with blissful ignorance although the audience knows of their treachery. It makes Picard look foolish.

 

Er...how was Picard supposed to know what Donatra had done?

 

Romulan treachery? Whatever next?

Unlike in TOS, where Romulans where honorable and Klingons stabbed you in the back, by the 24th century the roles had reversed.

 

It doesn't matter that Picard didn't know. The audience did.

Which only reinforces the fact that Donatra and the rest were just a bunch of untrustworthy assholes that Picard all too readily accepted as allies even though they were the ones that started the whole sorry situation.

 

So...Picard should have acted against Donatra based on audience knowledge?

 

Uh, no. Since, as you say, he didn’t know Donatra was part of the coup, the least she could have done was confess to him that she and her cohorts made a bad choice, since we as the audience knew this. But as far as we know, she didn’t.

 

Short answer: no.

Reason: Everything about Nemesis was artificial and filled with shortcuts. It's problems were not just limited to Remans and Romulans. It was a thinly veiled rehash of Wrath of Kahn whereby they tried to manufacture a Kahn-Kirk revenge story plus a cynical manipulative attempt to shadow Spock's death in killing off Data (which was null and void because they had Rain Man-Data already in the background to take his place). Nemesis was just an awful movie period. Star Trek V at least was sincere and honest just poorly executed. Nemesis had zero excuses as it had the studio love and support Shatner's outing was denied. Nemesis was beyond a rewrite to fix or salvage.

 

Why would she? To be a decent person?

Should Sisko tell the Romulans that he lured them into the Dominion War?

 

The problem is that the story doesn't make much sense. They would have to write a different movie. The whole premise is not just silly, it doesn't work. It raises too many questions, the worst offender being: how do the Romulans manage to hold the idiot ball for so damn long?

That being said, the movie is stupid and ridiculous and just plain bad (imho), but I watch it anyway from time to time. There's not much to defend in this thing, but at least it doesn't have Insurrection's broken aesop.

 

I don’t know, since I can’t speak for Donatra or her conscience. You’ll have to ask her. I’m just saying what I think she should have done.

Yes, eventually. But like above, I can’t speak for Sisko’s conscience either. Personally, I think Sisko should have apologized to Picard at the end of “Emissary” for being such a dick to him when they first met, but apparently he didn’t feel the need to do that either.

 

I'm in the minority but I think simply casting Stewart as Shinzon as well would have been enough. That would have been amazing. Anyone besides him was doomed to fail, and Hardy was already too coked up to be of any use.

 

He should have had a goatee though