While obviously it was reminiscent of TWoK, his death was still surprising for TNG and maybe necessary for the last TNG film to feel like a finale without feeling too reminiscent of TUC.
No. And at the time I thought they were trying to rip off TWOK. But then JJ came along and really ripped it off. I get that maybe Spiner didn't want to play him anymore. And maybe B4 was supposed to be the reset button. But step back from that for a minute. After Data got the emotion chip, how much more was there for him to explore about humanity? Maybe B4 was going to be a flawed Data replacement. With new challenges for the character to explore.
The Enterprise-E had all of its shuttles and the Captain's Yacht, any number of crew could have taken any number of shuttles over to the Scimitar. One person could have remotely operated a shuttle to fly into the Scimitar's wrecked shuttle bay, then induce a warp core breach. There is no way a starship will survive a warp core breach from inside, even if it is from a shuttle's warp core. If boarding had to happen, then Picard could have lead multiple squads of security personnel is multiple shuttles, or use the transporters of the shuttles to get to the Scimitar.
...Really, the entire scenario here is somewhat ill conceived. The writers want to convey a continuing threat to Earth from Shinzon's supership, indicating that half a movie's worth of space battling has achieved nothing at all. And then Picard alone is supposed to turn the tables? On the other hand, Shinzon is harmless now: if Picard only dared blow up his ship, the Scimitar would be destroyed as well. But Picard hesitates because his precious countdown timer is broken, meaning blowing up the Enterprise would mean death to the heroes as well. So what does Picard do? He commits suicide anyway, only now in an inefficient way that in no way guarantees Shinzon's demise. The stakes here are either absurdly high or absurdly low, making Picard's actions seem stupid no matter what. Timo Saloniemi
That was a terribly ill conceived film from the start...For the record, I don’t really consider Data dead as his essence/files (whatever you want to call it) were transferred to the absurd B-4. Talk about anti climatic.
Of course, this scenario would have no emotional investment whatsoever. We care about Data, whereas shuttle #37 means nothing.
The better question, I feel, is: did B4 have to exist? If you're going to kill off Data, must it be so frigging obvious not only THAT you're going to bring him back ... but HOW you're going to bring him back. Nothing like being beaten over the head with it ... rather insulting, actually.
...and a huge missed opportunity. We were all expecting Data to snuff it and be reborn...so perfect time to switch it up... Data: "Goodbye" At the last second, Wesley beams in and slaps an transporter beacon on Data! Wesley: "I've got this...sure it will be a messy death with me dying slowly and horribly, with many splattering noises...but I'm happy to do it! Oh and I'm taking all record of my mom on that scottish planet with me!" See? Much better.
...only to find himself safe in his seat on the Enterprise bridge, as the 1701E crashes through the Scimitar, piloted by Troi, who is heroically fried by a console overload... ...except that Beverly revives her with a hypospray injection, then trips and gives herself an accidental overdose, and...
Yeah, but wasn't "Nemesis" originally a setup for a sequel... ...which never took place because of poor ratings because it really wasn't a good movie for TNG to end on... The fact the movie plays "connect the dots" with Star Trek II while offering nothing original of any credibility while treating its audience like idiots doesn't help. Really, young Picard had no hair all of a sudden?? Troi can telepathically influence minds all of a sudden? How the Scimitar could be built so perfectly with nobody knowing? Bottomless pit deck in the Enterprise for Riker and Hellboy to risk falling into? Red Letter Media says more and with more entertainment value than my response anyway... (though he's wrong with "Generations" and STIV, and decrying how depressing the movie is but then saying Picard is out of character by smiling and laughing LOL) Oh, Red Letter Media uses naughty language at times. The worst offender is in point #6 since "looses" is not a word...
The Powers That Be are often in La La Land, as we all know. They will release a shite movie, under the impression that it's going to spawn, or continue a franchise -- simply because it was released -- because it's under a franchise umbrella. So, yeah, when NEMESIS was developed & released, they're all like, "we'd better not burn any bridges, here, with all that popcorn at stake." I guess when you're rolling in the Benjamins, it's easy to believe that everything's supposed to go your way. In the 4 years since INS, TNG's cast had aged noticeably, with no exceptions. I continue to be astonished how bad they ALL look in NEM. They really were too old to be playing Space Heroes and it was time for the franchise to move on. And that's hard to do, when you've had a stable, reliable source of revenue, using the same cast for decades. So, yes, there were all of these red herrings offered up in NEM, like TITAN and B4 and even Picard's getting a new #1 ... and all to no avail. But, that's entertainment, for you: one day, you are a star ... the next, you're in the rubbish heap!
I don't quite get it. Young Picard looking like Tom Hardy is bad, yeah. But what influencing are you talking about? Why should we think nobody knew about the building of the Scimitar? And why would the ship not have bottomless pits when the one in ST:TMP already had one (along the vertical glowing doodad at Engineering, as the movie budget almost allowed them to show more than two decks in the same set, with the help of mattes and mirrors and whatnot)? ST:NEM isn't too bad on continuity issues or the rate at which it introduces new Trek stuff. It's just very badly written, from the dramatic point of view, with poorly motivated characters. Timo Saloniemi
The self destruct was off line because of the damage during the ramming. I guess he could have had Geordi try to fix it or light some flash paper at the base of the warp core, but knowing he didn't have a lot of time, Picard opted to go over and destroy the device himself. What Picard SHOULD have done was arm the self destruct to go off on impact. That's where he slipped up. Instead he waited until both ships were free again and a distance away.
Or sent a few shuttles and runabouts to attack the Scimitar and a couple of shuttles to pull the Enterprise away
Really, they just needed a couple of lines. "Hello, Geordi. If I may ask, do you notice anything different about me?" "Actually Data, you look....terrible." "Excellent, I have installed a program designed to simulate aging in my features."
Which makes about as much sense as "Manual override" being offline. It's the manual overide, meaning it should not need anything "online" to work. Like when we're talking about a door, for example. All a self destruct sequence is, to my knowledge, is the release of containment fields in the anti-matter pods. All that would take is interruption of the power flow to the containment fields and WAHOOM... No more ships.
I thought the "Data aging" thing was indicated in "All Good Things" where Data at Cambridge had that long grey streak in his hair. His housekeeper said he looked like a skunk. The real reason they killed Data was that the Nemesis writer/producers were desperately casting about for a "hook" for the movie.