It wouldn't kill Paramount to make a 5th TNG movie, or will it?

[Christopher]

^But somebody else makes Star Trek Online, don't they?

 

[BillJ]

^But somebody else makes Star Trek Online, don't they?

Cryptic Studios.

 

[SPCTRE]

^ Yup.

Oh, and I forgot to mention keen games based in Frankfurt, Germany. They're working on an upcoming browser-based MMO set during the Dominion War (Star Trek: Infinite Space).

 

[lurok]

though this is slightly off-topic, the "Spiner was getting too old to play Data" thing always struck me as silly. It's sci-fi folks, there are always writing possibilities. Just have Data install an program that mimics human aging or something.

Such a thing was already alluded to in TNG: "Inheritance." Geordi says of the Julianna android: "It's part of her aging program. Not only does she age in appearance like Data, her vital signs change too." However, this throwaway line was forgotten by Insurrection, in which Data said, "My operation depends on specifications that do not change. I will never know the experience of growing up."

Besides, I don't believe it was purely about his aging appearance. Brent Spiner is a character actor whose background is in the theater. A character actor's craft is about diversity, about trying new and different things. (Remember, Spiner's most prominent roles before Data were a German coachman in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway and a dimwitted hillbilly on the sitcom Night Court.) It's understandable that he wouldn't want to be stuck playing the same role for the rest of his life -- especially once the later movies completely abandoned the potential of the emotion chip and regressed his character to square one rather than letting him continue to grow. Maybe he just decided there was nothing more to discover about Data, or that he'd rather explore playing different characters, characters that were appropriate to his advancing age and let him use what it gave him, rather than a perpetual man-child like Data.

Good post. I quite like some elements of Nemesis though the cast/characters do feel old and tired - esp. Picard, Troi and Riker. Might have been nice to have a passing-the-torch film though...

 

[Christopher]

Might have been nice to have a passing-the-torch film though...

To whom? I doubt the DS9 or VGR casts had sufficiently wide popularity to carry a movie franchise.

And we did get a passing-the-torch film, two years ago, when Leonard Nimoy came out of retirement to pass the torch to new incarnations of the TOS crew.

 

[sonak]

though this is slightly off-topic, the "Spiner was getting too old to play Data" thing always struck me as silly. It's sci-fi folks, there are always writing possibilities. Just have Data install an program that mimics human aging or something.

Such a thing was already alluded to in TNG: "Inheritance." Geordi says of the Julianna android: "It's part of her aging program. Not only does she age in appearance like Data, her vital signs change too." However, this throwaway line was forgotten by Insurrection, in which Data said, "My operation depends on specifications that do not change. I will never know the experience of growing up."

Besides, I don't believe it was purely about his aging appearance. Brent Spiner is a character actor whose background is in the theater. A character actor's craft is about diversity, about trying new and different things. (Remember, Spiner's most prominent roles before Data were a German coachman in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway and a dimwitted hillbilly on the sitcom Night Court.) It's understandable that he wouldn't want to be stuck playing the same role for the rest of his life -- especially once the later movies completely abandoned the potential of the emotion chip and regressed his character to square one rather than letting him continue to grow. Maybe he just decided there was nothing more to discover about Data, or that he'd rather explore playing different characters, characters that were appropriate to his advancing age and let him use what it gave him, rather than a perpetual man-child like Data.

Good post. I quite like some elements of Nemesis though the cast/characters do feel old and tired - esp. Picard, Troi and Riker. Might have been nice to have a passing-the-torch film though...

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

 

[BillJ]

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

It's not masquerading as anything. When I first saw Nemesis, the first thing I noticed was how little energy the actors were putting into the performances. Compared to The Undiscovered Country, the performances were downright lifeless.

They came off as too old and too tired.

 

[T'Cal]

That TUC was made even after that abomination known as TFF means that TNG still has a chance. In the right hands and on TV instead of the big screen, TNG or perhaps TNG's era could thrive again. The strength of that show was its great ensamble cast, which can't get the attention they need in a movie or two.

 

[sonak]

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

It's not masquerading as anything. When I first saw Nemesis, the first thing I noticed was how little energy the actors were putting into the performances. Compared to The Undiscovered Country, the performances were downright lifeless.

They came off as too old and too tired.

um, right, that's my point. It's a criticism of the performances(which is part of the movie, and the director's and actors' and actresses' fault.)

It's not saying that "the cast was too old." It's saying "the performances lacked energy."

that's totally different.

 

[ALF]

It would kill them. I have proof, but I can't link to it. Take my word on that.

 

[BillJ]

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

It's not masquerading as anything. When I first saw Nemesis, the first thing I noticed was how little energy the actors were putting into the performances. Compared to The Undiscovered Country, the performances were downright lifeless.

They came off as too old and too tired.

um, right, that's my point. It's a criticism of the performances(which is part of the movie, and the director's and actors' and actresses' fault.)

It's not saying that "the cast was too old." It's saying "the performances lacked energy."

that's totally different.

Let's put it like this: the cast of TNG were too old and tired to be featured in an action-movie series.

 

[inflatabledalek]

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

I think it's a difference of approach in the two film series. The TOS crew have very few big physical action scenes across the movies, and in TUC the only real one, Kirk Vs. Kirk, is played entirely for laughs. More often than not the action is space battles, which mainly requires sitting on the bridge and shouting "Fire!" every so often.

Scenes in Nemesis of Picard taking on a ship full of armed psychopathic monsters and winning and Riker trying to look remotely threatening to Ron Pearlman just look ludicrous.

That line in Inheritance has always seemed a bit off to me because it acts as if Data has always had an ageing program and this is well known, even though previous episodes have acted as if he will never change. If they were trying to introduce a credible way of dealing with Spinner's ageing they'd already forgotten it by the end of the season as in All Good Things shows Data not having aged a bit and only slightly messed about with his hair in twenty years.

 

[sonak]

isn't it funny, though? You hear this about the TNG cast being too old and tired by NEM, and yet the cast isn't nearly as old as the original cast was in TUC. I think it's yet another criticism of the movie masquerading as being about another factor.

I think it's a difference of approach in the two film series. The TOS crew have very few big physical action scenes across the movies, and in TUC the only real one, Kirk Vs. Kirk, is played entirely for laughs. More often than not the action is space battles, which mainly requires sitting on the bridge and shouting "Fire!" every so often.

Scenes in Nemesis of Picard taking on a ship full of armed psychopathic monsters and winning and Riker trying to look remotely threatening to Ron Pearlman just look ludicrous.

That line in Inheritance has always seemed a bit off to me because it acts as if Data has always had an ageing program and this is well known, even though previous episodes have acted as if he will never change. If they were trying to introduce a credible way of dealing with Spinner's ageing they'd already forgotten it by the end of the season as in All Good Things shows Data not having aged a bit and only slightly messed about with his hair in twenty years.

hmmm.. yeah, I guess you're right. They did kind of go the route of making Picard action hero guy in the film series which he hadn't been very often on the show.

And yes, having sixty-plus-year-old Picard as the guy to take on Shinzon and the Remans at the end of NEM was ludicrous by any standard, papered-over with a ridiculous "Data, this is something I have to do."

Data's response should've been "respectfully sir, you're being an idiot."


but still, the issue of performances lacking in energy is totally different than the age of a cast.


an eighteen-year-old actor or actress can give a lifeless performance and an eighty-year-old can give an energetic one.

 

[T'Cal]

While I will admit, Picard was buff in FC, it was over the top to make him a Rambo-like character in NEM where he LITERALLY shot from the hip and killed numerous Reman soldiers who were known as great warriors. If any one should've been the bad-ass, it should've been Riker. But, again even he was getting older. Rather than inexplicably including Worf in this story, they should've introduced a new, younger tactical officer who could've taken on successfully the role of tough guy.

As for Data, killing him in NEM was done very well. It was one of the best-handled plots in an otherwise forgetful movie. If they ever wanted to bring Spiner back, they could've easily explained that B4 was programmed to age like their mother was by Soong (see TNG's Inheritance).

 

[DonIago]

I thought killing Data off in NEM was a patent rip-off of killing Spock in TWoK. Minus any emotion associated with it. How convenient that they just found an android who looks just like Data!

 

[Christopher]

I thought killing Data off in NEM was a patent rip-off of killing Spock in TWoK. Minus any emotion associated with it. How convenient that they just found an android who looks just like Data!

It's an unfortunate misconception that B-4 was only introduced to allow Data a way to come back to life. He was actually put into the story to parallel the Picard/Shinzon relationship, and an essential part of the story was establishing that B-4 couldn't grow into a being like Data, that he lacked the capacity for growth and learning that Data had, and that was what made him a flawed reflection just as Shinzon's inability to let himself grow made him a flawed reflection of Picard. Throughout the movie, it was driven home that B-4 was just too limited, that all Data's attempts to download memories into him or make him smarter just plain didn't work. The ending where B-4 sang the song wasn't really meant to say "Hey, Data will be resurrected, no problem," but merely to suggest that maybe some small bit of Data's efforts had rubbed off on B-4 and he'd be able to grow at least a little bit, serving as Data's legacy. But it didn't really work as it was intended to, because just about everyone sees it as something that was only done as a back door for resurrecting Data. And that's because they remember what happened in TWOK/TSFS.

Except that the bit at the end of TWOK about Spock not really being dead so long as we remember him, and the final shot of the torpedo tube on the surface, wasn't really intended as a way of bringing him back either. It was just something the filmmakers added as an afterthought when test audiences found the ending too depressing. It was just meant to give the ending a more hopeful tone, as was the ending of NEM. It wasn't until later, when they were planning TSFS, that they decided to build on the potential implicit in TWOK's ending.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It's an unfortunate misconception that B-4 was only introduced to allow Data a way to come back to life.

The way it was done, that was the obvious suspicion. If they didn't want to give that impression, they needed to rethink the whole scenario.

 

[Therin of Andor]

the issue of performances lacking in energy...

Which is the fault of the director, who supposedly shot lots more footage (that went unused) than any previous ST directors, even though Stuart Baird couldn't achieve the dynamic takes he needed for the lines and scenes that audiences find lacking.

We know from cryptic comments by the cast that they didn't have a lot of faith in Baird. He'd boasted that he didn't really know the show, thought Geordi was an alien, etc.

 

[Christopher]

We know from cryptic comments by the cast that they didn't have a lot of faith in Baird. He'd boasted that he didn't really know the show, thought Geordi was an alien, etc.

But then, Nicholas Meyer didn't know a thing about Star Trek before he came onboard, and most people think he did a pretty good job with it (though I don't particularly care for his interpretation).

 

[Therin of Andor]

But then, Nicholas Meyer didn't know a thing about Star Trek before he came onboard, and most people think he did a pretty good job with it (though I don't particularly care for his interpretation).

But he did his homework. Just like Harve Bennett did. And Robert Wise.