Nemesis Clones

[Bry_Sinclair]

It was never stated exactly when or how the Romulans secured the genetic sample of Picard to clone, and in DS9 we have seen that clones don't need years to develop and grow (some can become sentient beings within days). So what was the Romulan plot? Did the get the samples of Picard onboard the E-D somehow? Or was it before then, maybe when he was still in command of the Stargazer? Or was it a plan the Romulans had been hatching for years, collecting a sample of a random officer with every intention of replacing them in a few years with the clone, to have their operative rise through the ranks?

Granted the last may be a stretch of the imagination, but weirded things have happened. It would just be coincidental that Picard would go on to have such a prominent career (unless the Romulans used an intricate selection process to find someone destined for great things).

Had they selected someone randomly, what if "Shinzon" was actually someone important from Picard's past (my thinking was Jack Crusher), whose death resulted in the plan being scrapped and the clone dumped on Remus. Would Picard facing off against the face of his late best friend have made for more impact (not to mention an actual storyline for Beverly in a TNG movie!)?

 

[Tosk]

How do we know Picard was the only one cloned?

 

[jaime]

It was never stated exactly when or how the Romulans secured the genetic sample of Picard to clone, and in DS9 we have seen that clones don't need years to develop and grow (some can become sentient beings within days). So what was the Romulan plot? Did the get the samples of Picard onboard the E-D somehow? Or was it before then, maybe when he was still in command of the Stargazer? Or was it a plan the Romulans had been hatching for years, collecting a sample of a random officer with every intention of replacing them in a few years with the clone, to have their operative rise through the ranks?

Granted the last may be a stretch of the imagination, but weirded things have happened. It would just be coincidental that Picard would go on to have such a prominent career (unless the Romulans used an intricate selection process to find someone destined for great things).

Had they selected someone randomly, what if "Shinzon" was actually someone important from Picard's past (my thinking was Jack Crusher), whose death resulted in the plan being scrapped and the clone dumped on Remus. Would Picard facing off against the face of his late best friend have made for more impact (not to mention an actual storyline for Beverly in a TNG movie!)?

They didn't even have to ditch young Picard...have the whole stargazer bridge crew cloned, Jack Crusher among them, have them masked as remans, when they unmask it will unsettle Picard, and if it transpires Shinzon lost his clone crusher in a formative experience too, it gives more mirror like pathos, and still gives Beverly a chunky story. Or play up a developing relationship with Picard in the Riker/Troi wedding scenes then have her confronted with her husbands doppelganger.
Mind you, there's already too many 'hey look at the doppelganger' things in that film.
On the other hand having the Reman elite being a bunch of forgotten Romulan science experiments could be fun. A disgraced Romulan scientist among them with a message from Voyager...a Klingon/Romulan teenager left over from the prison camp Worf found...total fanwank, but again, it's not like Nemesis wasn't already attempting that. Caitlin Dar should have been in the senate.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

How do we know Picard was the only one cloned?

How do we know the Picard we've been watching is the real Picard and not another clone?

 

[Dukhat]

Without the context of when the cloning actually took place, there can be no true answer to this question. I can only speculate.

1. It would make no sense to have cloned Picard 25 years before, because 25 years before, Picard was a nobody.

2. When Beverly states that all of a sudden Shinzon is accelerating in age to "catch up" to Picard's current age, that kinda implies that Shinzon was aging normally up to that point.

So why would the Romulans want to clone Picard? And how would they have done it anyway, being in isolation at the time?

 

[The Wormhole]

1. It would make no sense to have cloned Picard 25 years before, because 25 years before, Picard was a nobody.

Not so. 25 years prior to Nemesis should have been right around the time Picard lost the Stargazer. And we know from TNG that Picard's time on the Stargazer made him quite the celebrity within Starfleet. Indeed, in The Battle Geordi noted he read about the Stargazer's missions at the Academy.

And how would they have done it anyway, being in isolation at the time?

To be fair, that bit was frequently forgotten throughout TNG, and indeed the line itself contradicted the earlier episode Angel One where Starfleet and the Romulans were squaring off against each other at the Neutral Zone.

 

[Dukhat]

Not so. 25 years prior to Nemesis should have been right around the time Picard lost the Stargazer. And we know from TNG that Picard's time on the Stargazer made him quite the celebrity within Starfleet. Indeed, in The Battle Geordi noted he read about the Stargazer's missions at the Academy.

But my point was, why was Picard so special? Celebrity or not, he was just a ship captain. Nobody else in Starfleet was more valuable to clone than him?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I like to think the Romulans hatched their fiendish plan after interrogating survivors of the Enterprise-C and learning that one day Jean-Luc Picard, then captain of the USS Stargazer, will one day command the Federation's flagship.

Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey

 

[Timby]

But my point was, why was Picard so special? Celebrity or not, he was just a ship captain. Nobody else in Starfleet was more valuable to clone than him?

When in doubt, never forget that John Logan is a No Good, Very Bad Writer.

 

[Tosk]

But my point was, why was Picard so special? Celebrity or not, he was just a ship captain. Nobody else in Starfleet was more valuable to clone than him?

And that's my point. How do we know that he was the only one cloned? If the conspiracy was to clone potentials from across Starfleet, then the seemingly weird selection process is no longer a problem.

 

[eyeresist]

It was never stated exactly when or how the Romulans secured the genetic sample of Picard to clone, and in DS9 we have seen that clones don't need years to develop and grow (some can become sentient beings within days). ... Did they get the samples of Picard onboard the E-D somehow? Or was it before then, maybe when he was still in command of the Stargazer? Or was it a plan the Romulans had been hatching for years, collecting a sample of a random officer with every intention of replacing them in a few years with the clone, to have their operative rise through the ranks?

There are all sort of ways it could have happened. Unless they just retrieved a sample from some random planet Picard visited (unlikely, as it would be hard to confirm the DNA as his), we have to assume there were Romulan agents in the Federation under deep cover, which is not unbelievable. Once undercover, it would be easy to swab any surface Picard touched (assuming DNA tech far in advance of ours), or even take a skin sample while shaking hands. What I'm curious about is whether Romulans ever developed a viable personal invisibility cloak...

 

[Dukhat]

And that's my point. How do we know that he was the only one cloned? If the conspiracy was to clone potentials from across Starfleet, then the seemingly weird selection process is no longer a problem.

And if there were a ton of people cloned, then yes, it would have made a bit more sense. But the movie never gave that impression. If there were lots of clones made, then where were they all? Did the Romulans kill them all? If so, why did they randomly send Shinzon to Remus? Why not just kill him too? And if they were all sent to Remus, why is Shinzon the only one left? Why didn't he say anything about other clones?

Unfortunately, the movie seems to show that Shinzon was the only clone, made for whatever reason (they never actually gave a specific reason). I think Timby stated it best

 

[Lance]

Part of me likes to wonder if Shinzon is a by-product of the "Yesterday's Enterprise" reality.

Tasha Yar goes back in time, gets captured by Romulans, interrogated, raped and killed.

Sela, her daughter, is her virtual clone. Pointed ears aside (nothing a little surgery can't fix.)

With foreknowledge of Picard's future gained from Tasha's interrogation, the Romulans could've had some conspiracy going to replace Picard long before he ever got near the centre seat on NCC-1701-D. And with Sela free to murder her own mother (given our Tasha's death would have no bearing upon Sela's existence), one can imagine Shinzon and Sela taking their places aboard the flagship, Starfleet completely unawares until it is too late.

Woo. Conspiracy trees.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Unfortunately, the movie seems to show that Shinzon was the only clone, made for whatever reason (they never actually gave a specific reason). I think Timby stated it best

Maybe it could've ended like Resident Evil: Extinction (or probably a few other films), with a scene showing a lab underground on Romulus filled with Picard clones at various ages.

Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuuun!!!!!

 

[Dukhat]

Part of me likes to wonder if Shinzon is a by-product of the "Yesterday's Enterprise" reality.

Tasha Yar goes back in time, gets captured by Romulans, interrogated, raped and killed.

Sela, her daughter, is her virtual clone. Pointed ears aside (nothing a little surgery can't fix.)

With foreknowledge of Picard's future gained from Tasha's interrogation, the Romulans could've had some conspiracy going to replace Picard long before he ever got near the centre seat on NCC-1701-D. And with Sela free to murder her own mother (given our Tasha's death would have no bearing upon Sela's existence), one can imagine Shinzon and Sela taking their places aboard the flagship, Starfleet completely unawares until it is too late.

Woo. Conspiracy trees.

Keep in mind that if this were true, then the Romulans at the time would only have known about the Picard from the alternate timeline where the Federation was at war with the Klingons (and losing.) There would have been no reason to want to clone him, since in all likelyhood there would have been no Federation left to infiltrate.

 

[wayoung]

When in doubt, never forget that John Logan is a No Good, Very Bad Writer.

This is quite the statement. While Logan has had some clunkers he's also written some fantastic films. With how hands on Berman, Stewart, and Spiner were with Trek and how uncaring Baird was with the film it's unlikely we'll ever know how much of Nemesis was whose fault.

That said, I'd be much more inclined to lay the problems on a first time writer who never got another writing job (Spiner) and a third time director who never got another directing job (Baird) than the writer of Gladiator, The Aviator, and Rango....

 

[Timby]

Logan was rewritten heavily by William Nicholson on Gladiator, and Michael Mann did an uncredited top-to-bottom rewrite on The Aviator as a favor to Scorsese before it started shooting.

 

[wayoung]

Logan was rewritten heavily by William Nicholson on Gladiator, and Michael Mann did an uncredited top-to-bottom rewrite on The Aviator as a favor to Scorsese before it started shooting.

...And neither Spiner nor Baird worked in those fields again, and Berman was fired from Trek. Logan, on the other hand, is still writing (and re-writing others scripts, because that's normal Hollywood process as much as your post seems to make it seem like it's not) major films for respected directors such as Ridley Scott and Sam Mendes.

If you want to try and put all the blame on the one person whose career wasn't destroyed by Nemesis and has actually thrived for whatever personal dislike of the writer you have then go ahead, but it's disingenuous to state it as a fact when he was one of many people who made the film and had the least control of the final product when compared to Berman, Baird, and Spiner.

 

[Timby]

Spiner only came up with the story. And because Logan is a friend, Spiner used his clout to have it written into Logan's contract that no one could rewrite him.

And I'd hardly use longevity as a way of defending someone's talent. Ehren Kruger still gets regular work, and he's never written a decent movie in his entire career.

Fact of the matter is that if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. A bad script is a bad script, end of story.

 

[wayoung]

Spiner only came up with the story. And because Logan is a friend, Spiner used his clout to have it written into Logan's contract that no one could rewrite him.

Fact of the matter is that if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. A bad script is a bad script, end of story.

You're alleging that a hired outside writer had more control over the film than everyone else involved, including the other writer who came up with the story (you think Shinzon being a Picard clone was maybe part of that story, since it's the driving plot?), executive producer, and a hated by the cast director.

Your position that the script is the start and end of a movie is preposterous. Scripts are templates. Usually in flux during production. One part of a communal project involving producers, writers, director, cast, cinematographer, composer, editor - a bad script can turn into an Oscar winning movie for writing (see MASH, disowned by the writer as it used nothing from his screenplay until it came time to collect the statue) and a great script can turn into an absolute garbage movie (see Abduction, a blacklist script that transformed into Taylor Lautners abs, and 50 other failed blacklist films).

Editors probably have more control over the final product of a film than one of multiple writers - and speaking of people with poor careers following Nemesis, the editor of it did nothing worthwhile afterwards either, having been jettisoned from The Fast and Furious franchise when Justin Lin came in and revitalized it. Same with the cinematographer, doing one semi major movie seven years later (The Expendables) and nothing further of note.

Only one person in the behind the scenes production of Nemesis came out of the film with his career unscathed and moving forward. Yet you attribute the entire failure of the film to him. The rest of film industry would seem to disagree.