Reconsidering Nemesis...

[Dukhat]

Wow, you really never know when to quit, do you? You have your opinions and I have mine. Neither of which can be conclusively proven with what we see in the film. Not sure what your problem is by feeling the need to make personal insults by calling me a fool, which is against board rules, not to mention usually a desperate last resort when an argument doesn't seem winnable.

And by the way, you did mention about Shinzon potentially being shot. I mentioned about the fictitious thousands of other clones potentially being shot, and attributed that to you, based on the word "shot." So yeah, maybe I did misquote you, but that's hardly a valid reason to resort to personal insults.

 

[Lance]

Unless we are to assume that the Romulans got their Picard clone first time out of the vat, then I think the idea of there being multiple other 'attempts' knocking around out there sounds feasible. Unless they killed all the failures? But why not kill Shinzon as well?

 

[Dukhat]

Unless we are to assume that the Romulans got their Picard clone first time out of the vat, then I think the idea of there being multiple other 'attempts' knocking around out there sounds feasible. Unless they killed all the failures? But why not kill Shinzon as well?

I believe I already said that

If there were thousands of Starfleet officers cloned, what happened to them all? Why would they send them all to the mines when they could foment a rebellion with their sheer numbers? And if they just shot them all, why didn't they shoot Shinzon too? Again, everything in the movie seems to imply that Picard's clone was a one-off idea.

*Edit* Reading you post again, I see that you might have meant the Romulans tried multiple times to clone just Picard. If that was what you meant, I apologize

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Again, the device reads all of your memories. There would be no need for keeping her around for traditional interrogation anymore, since the sum total of her knowledge would be dumped into some Tal Shiar computer core. You're thinking in conventional terms.

Did you ignore what I wrote? That tech would have been 20 years out of date when and if they used it on Tasha. Being a security officer in wartime, she would have been trained to resist such things.

Why? They're fighting the Klingons, not the Romulans. She wouldn't be trained to resist the probing techniques of a race that nobody ever sees anymore and isn't involved in the war anyway.

She MIGHT be trained to resist a Klingon mind-sifter, but considering that device can't actually BE resisted (if they probe deep enough it basically kills you and reads your memories anyway) but the Romulan mind probes appear to be much more refined than that.

Anyway, we know for a fact that the Romulans DID, somehow, find out that Tasha was from the future and that Picard sent her there. We know this because Sela knows this, and it doesn't seem to be a state secret. So however they actually got the information from Tasha, they clearly had it by the time Tasha died, maybe the mid 2350s at the latest. By the time Picard meets Sela during the Klingon civil war, Shinzon (all of them?) were probably just arriving on Remus.

I kind of find the idea of Shinzon being a young (~10-12 years old mentally) tactical genius with limited social experience in the mold of Ender's Game to be pretty interesting. It certainly explains some of his more irrational anger toward Picard, Earth, and women like Deanna. He's a child in an adult's body with no social interaction beyond this warrior cult he was raised in and elevated to leader/savior of.

This and your previous post were great, too bad the movie didn't really cover any of that, it would have helped, a lot.

Shall I commit the venial sin of suggesting that Sela would have been a much better choice of villain for Nemesis? Seeing how she actually is, you know, his nemesis? And unlike Shinzon actually has a halfway coherent reason for wanting to destroy Earth? Or even for wanting to destroy the Enterprise in particular?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

They should have had Tom Hardy play Sela. He seemingly transforms himself into a different person for every movie he's in anyway. He would be better in the role than Denise Crosby.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't see Crosby's performance taking much way from the cinematic abomination that Nemesis turned out to be. But if you had to recast the role -- which, let's face it, none of us would really mind -- the list of actresses who could pull it off is longer than Sean Connery's resume.

 

[BillJ]

Shall I commit the venial sin of suggesting that Sela would have been a much better choice of villain for Nemesis? Seeing how she actually is, you know, his nemesis? And unlike Shinzon actually has a halfway coherent reason for wanting to destroy Earth? Or even for wanting to destroy the Enterprise in particular?

You want to go back in time and guarantee less people pay to see Nemesis than originally, put Denise Crosby in a central role.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But the film would have a new scapegoat.

It also might have veered into "so bad it's good" territory, instead of just being shitty and boring.

 

[Amaris]

Shall I commit the venial sin of suggesting that Sela would have been a much better choice of villain for Nemesis? Seeing how she actually is, you know, his nemesis? And unlike Shinzon actually has a halfway coherent reason for wanting to destroy Earth? Or even for wanting to destroy the Enterprise in particular?

You want to go back in time and guarantee less people pay to see Nemesis than originally, put Denise Crosby in a central role.

Yeah. I adore Denise Crosby, but her acting was so wooden, the Blue Fairy kept trying to make her into a real boy.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Shall I commit the venial sin of suggesting that Sela would have been a much better choice of villain for Nemesis? Seeing how she actually is, you know, his nemesis? And unlike Shinzon actually has a halfway coherent reason for wanting to destroy Earth? Or even for wanting to destroy the Enterprise in particular?

You want to go back in time and guarantee less people pay to see Nemesis than originally, put Denise Crosby in a central role.

Which would ALMOST be a good point, except for two things:

Thing 1^ and Thing 2 ^
And this happened three movies earlier. Insurrection isn't exactly a tough act to follow either.

Besides, I wouldn't have ruled out a recast; they did it for Saavik and the Borg Queen, they could do it for Sela too. If anything she's a more interesting character than "inexplicable clone of Picard that we've never heard of before and don't really care about" Shinzon.

Shall I commit the venial sin of suggesting that Sela would have been a much better choice of villain for Nemesis? Seeing how she actually is, you know, his nemesis? And unlike Shinzon actually has a halfway coherent reason for wanting to destroy Earth? Or even for wanting to destroy the Enterprise in particular?

You want to go back in time and guarantee less people pay to see Nemesis than originally, put Denise Crosby in a central role.

Yeah. I adore Denise Crosby, but her acting was so wooden, the Blue Fairy kept trying to make her into a real boy.

My I touch your hair?

 

[Dukhat]

Why? They're fighting the Klingons, not the Romulans. She wouldn't be trained to resist the probing techniques of a race that nobody ever sees anymore and isn't involved in the war anyway.

We don't know anything about that. This is a parallel universe branching off from 2344, and all we saw of it was the Enterprise-D 20 years after that. Anything could have happened in that time that we don't know about as far as the Romulans are concerned. For all we know, alt-Starfleet knows everything about the Romulans from the last 20 years. They certainly knew enough about Romulan ships from 2344 to be able to give Garrett some tactical advantage information about them.

Anyway, we know for a fact that the Romulans DID, somehow, find out that Tasha was from the future and that Picard sent her there. We know this because Sela knows this, and it doesn't seem to be a state secret. So however they actually got the information from Tasha, they clearly had it by the time Tasha died, maybe the mid 2350s at the latest.

No, we don't know that the Romulans knew about Tasha being from the future just because Sela knew. Tasha told Sela the truth when she was only a little girl. We don't know for a fact that she told anyone else, or that Sela did. And even if she did, for all we know the Romulans either didn't believe her or didn't care, based on the treatment we know Tasha to have received after she was captured.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No, we don't know that the Romulans knew about Tasha being from the future just because Sela knew. Tasha told Sela the truth when she was only a little girl. We don't know for a fact that she told anyone else

It's one thing to suggest that Tasha managed to keep it a secret for a number of years, mindprobes notiwthstanding (yet even Luther Sloan, who IS trained to resist them, ultimately failed to keep his secrets when Bashir and O'Brien used them).

But it is a MASSIVE stretch to believe that Sela wouldn't have told the Romulans what her mother told her about their origins, especially after her execution, and MOST especially given her feelings towards her mother's "betrayal." If nothing else, she would have done it just to prove her loyalty to the Empire; it might even have been part of how she got promoted in the first place.

Most importantly, even if one assumes Tasha is somehow resistant to mind probes despite us lacking a SHRED of evidence for this to be the case, Sela certainly isn't. If the Tal'Shiar ever used them on her as part of a loyalty test, they'd know instantly if she had withheld that information.

Romulans either didn't believe her or didn't care, based on the treatment we know Tasha to have received after she was captured.

Tasha's treatment would be little different if they DID believe her. Again, using the mind probes means they would already know everything she knows and is no longer valuable as an intelligence asset.

 

[Dukhat]

^The whole point of this conversation is that someone speculated that the reason why the Romulans cloned Picard was because they thought he'd be important based on the possibility that alt-Tasha or Sela mentioned him. Not to belabor this anymore, but I simply find that a quite unbelievable reason.

 

[Mudd]

1. Make a bad movie.
2. Make the bad movie longer.
3. ?
4. Profit!

The open question is would the full-length movie have been bad.

The correct answer is "yes."

Unless by "the full-length movie" you mean "some other Star Trek movie not containing most of the stuff that's in Nemesis."

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

"Nemesis" is a bad movie. It failed because it was a bad movie and didn't stand out among the other movies released at the same time as it.

 

[Timo]

Wow, you really never know when to quit, do you? You have your opinions and I have mine. Neither of which can be conclusively proven with what we see in the film. Not sure what your problem is by feeling the need to make personal insults by calling me a fool, which is against board rules, not to mention usually a desperate last resort when an argument doesn't seem winnable.

Umm... WHAT?

I don't give a rat's ass about how an "argument" or a "debate" ends up in this fictional context. But you won't get away with being obnoxious to the fifth power.

"Calling you fool"? That's a filthy lie. However, I have no interest in insults of any sort, so you can avoid being designated "filthy liar" easily enough, by retracting the claim.

Conversely, here's an apology for anything you might have perceived as "calling you fool". Wasn't meant, wasn't said (I thought), still isn't meant. I like disagreeing with you. A lot.

So yeah, maybe I did misquote you, but that's hardly a valid reason to resort to personal insults.

Agreed. So why did you?

First saying "I won't deign to talk with you", then crying out for board rules when all conversation on this board doesn't cease nevertheless, is one thing. Escalating that into baseless claims about personal attacks is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, though.

How about just ignoring any use other posters make of Trek claims and interpretations you have made, if said use doesn't personally interest you? They were good claims and interpretations, good grounds for further argument, and a worthy legacy for another bit of harmless speculation on a subject that we all love (or love to hate, as often is the case with ST:NEM).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

"Calling you fool"? That's a filthy lie.

Oh, feel free to cling to your faith and never reconsider a position, I have no objection to you making a fool out of yourself that way.

Jesus Christ, just fucking drop it already. I'm done conversing with you; feel free to do the same.

 

[slappy]

Only two entities know what Picard would and would not do: The writing staff, and Patrick Stewart himself.

I agree with most of what you said, but I don't agree with this sentiment necessarily. Stewart played Picard and imbued Picard with a sense of himself or aspects of himself, but I don't think that means he always knows what's best for the character or has his best interests in mind. There's a reason he's an actor and not a writer. And it doesn't necessarily exempt writers from such criticism either. There are Trek fans that know these characters far better than the writers do. Sure, Paramount can do what they want, but fans have rejected the movie quite a bit and that's kinda the real final decision.

 

[Jedman67]

I believe, based on some of the conversations above, that the reason Shinzon used B4 as a lure for Picard and the Enterprise was because of Tasha's relationship with Data in the Naked Now, and what she told Sela about it before she was executed.

 

[BillJ]

I believe, based on some of the conversations above, that the reason Shinzon used B4 as a lure for Picard and the Enterprise was because of Tasha's relationship with Data in the Naked Now, and what she told Sela about it before she was executed.

We have no idea if the events from "The Naked Now" ever happened in the altered timeline.