Nemesis: Alternate Ideas

Some were, some weren't. Look at Measure of a Man, Family, The Drumhead, Inner Light, I, Borg, All Good Things, Ethics, Who Watches the Watchers, Pegasus, Lower Decks, First Duty...

 

Are those rated highly?

 

I'm not so sure about that. By the time Nemesis premiered, there weren't as many casual moviegoers paying money to see a Star Trek film. I would bet good money that most of the people in the theater were already watching Trek on TV.

But let's play devil's advocate and say you're right. Then making a movie about the Dominion War would have been even worse. The non-Trek TV watching audience would then be going into a movie where the characters are fighting some war that the audience knows nothing about and aren't invested in because they haven't been watching the show.

 

That's where the two sentence movie pitch comes in.

How to explain the Dominion War in two sentences.
"StarFleet, a peace keeping and exploration armada; trespassed into a region of space occupied by a hostile superpower. All attempts to reconcile for this offense have failed and now galactic war has broken out."

Easy breezy. You don't need all the nitty gritty details covered in the show from season 2-7. The general audience only needs the cliff notes. Gamma Quadrant discovered via Wormhole, destruction of USS Odyssey, the Founders willing to accept nothing but complete subjugation of the entire Alpha and Beta Quadrants and finally War!

Using new aliens (the Son'a in INS or the Remans in my revision), helps to separate the movie's events from the show's events. The key is to not relitigate everything DS9 was doing in 2 hours. But to tell a standalone story under the cloak of the larger Dominion War. Similar to how every war movie doesn't cover the start of the conflict. You jump the audience in with the story you're telling. By the conclusion, the story/battle is over and the audience is satisfied with that. We the hardcore fans know the resolution won't be until the show wraps.

 

I’d start with throwing out the idea and starting again

I think the strongest part of NEM was the beginning of a thaw in relations with the Romulans, like TUC was for Klingons. Unfortunately the first ST movie prominently focusing on Romulans then sort of didn’t…

If the clone angle is really what they wanted, have Stewart play both. But I’d say go back to the drawing board on that aspect of the plot. Which is most of it I know.

 

Would casual moviegoing audiences want to see a Star Trek film about war? Probably not in 2002.

 

Here’s a shocking idea, a Star Trek film without a big bad like I and IV. I’d have loved that. A true SF film for the TNG crew to go out on.

 

Totally agree it didn't help that NEM was released in 2002 at around the same time as those other movies.

I love INS, I think perhaps because the cast seem to be enjoying it so much. A Changeling/Dominion War movie would be epic. A TNG/Janeway/7 of 9 teamup vs the Borg could follow up on Unimatrix Zero.

Definitely would make more sense for Stewart to play both. It might have made more sense why they wanted to clone Picard if Sela was in the movie. (It has been a long time since I last saw NEM so I might not be remembering it correctly.)

 

A few of them definitely are. Arguably overrated, actially.

Kor

 

First things first, drop Shinzon. He was nothing but a shoehorned plot device that only served to inflate Patrick Stewart's role. He could have been a clone of 'anyone' and it wouldn't have mattered. Not because he's the bad guy, but because Shinzon is not like Picard in any way.

I think a cool way to finish TNG would have been to do a conclusion to the Unification storyline. Bring Romulus and Vulcan together, end the conflict between the Empire and the Federation and bring about real change to the franchise. Resorting to another bad guy who wants to destroy Earth doesn't have the impact it used to, especially when it does nothing but return to the status quo.

And maybe seeing Spock finally accomplish what he had set out to do would have been a preferable ending to his character than delivering retconned exposition about NuKhan. The idea that he dies alone in a universe that is not his just sounds horrifying.

 

exactly this.

 

Especially as there was such a long time until any Star Trek set after Nemesis.

 

I know what you’re trying to say here, but they did this in the form of Star Trek: Insurrection, and it was tepid, dull and generally awful.

With the exception of “All Good Things,” I don’t think any one of those episodes would have made a good or successful feature film at the time. If you want to make more stories like that, then extend TNG for an 8th season, and don’t transition it to feature films.

I agree. I think it’s a misplaced thought a lot of fans cling to that somehow a Dominion War movie would have been successful.

The bottom line is that TNG was not well-suited for the silver screen. TOS was much more suited because

1. The characters and tone of TOS were much more naturally suited for action, adventure and comedy, which is what franchise sci-fi movies are fueled on generally.

2. When TMP premiered, there was a gap in time between the series and and the premier of the film. It allowed the films to “be their own thing” and focus on the changing lives and circumstances in the Trek universe in a way that felt very organic, exciting, and welcome.

 

A Dominion War movie could have been cool or it could have very much not been, the whole Dominion and war with them were pretty far off from TNG, a movie of it (with the war of course not at all ending) could have felt like TNG was dealing with another show's plots and themes. And some kind of break from the intensity of First Contact was appropriate even though Insurrection went too far the other way into goofiness

A changeling would probably be less unique than Shinzon but evil younger twin is just a pretty bad idea so that would probably be a change for the better.

 

Instead of a plot to destroy Earth, why not a plot to destroy Betazed? And its proximity to the founding worlds of the Federation means those planets are next in line for the Dominion.

At least by making it Betazed, you can believe that the planet might get destroyed. That feeling is not there if Earth's the target.

 

Seeing a planet of empaths deal with a threat would have been interesting

 

If you want to stir things up, destroy Earth and have it stay that way. It would certainly stop writers on falling back on it in order to create stakes that aren't

"I think that in the same way that New York City becomes this anchor point for people in the Marvel movies; that’s Spidey’s stomping ground, that was the stomping ground for Tony Stark, that was the stomping ground for The Avengers, it’s New York. We wanted to do the same thing with Earth in the Star Trek movies."
- Damon LIndelof

I'd like Star Trek to move away from that mentality.

 

That mentality shows that person complete misses the point with Star Trek.

 

Yes!! Too many of the movies rely on villains.

I agree. I'm not sure what the plot should have been, but if we're going to do a movie about the Romulans, not tapping into that storyline is a missed opportunity. Plus - a chance to bring back Leonard Nimoy.