Wouldn't that have kind made more sense and been alot simpler?
Why didnt they just use Lore instead of B4?
- Thread starter Beyerstein
- Start date
After all the trouble he's caused?
Since Brent Spiner had a hand in developing the story, I'd imagine a large part of it is that he wanted to play a new character rather than rehash an old one. Character actors like to stretch themselves, to play a wide variety of roles.
Also, I think Lore would've brought too much backstory and baggage with him. A feature film needs to be accessible to a general audience that isn't intimately familiar with the series. True, TWOK was a sequel to "Space Seed" and FC was a sequel to "The Best of Both Worlds." But if Lore had been brought back for the movie, it would've competed too much with the Shinzon story. It would've been a case of the "too many villains" syndrome that undermined the Batman sequels and Spider-Man 3. And it wouldn't have served as a good swan song for Lore because of that competition for screen time and attention. (And there's no way Lore could've been the main villain. As popular as Spiner and Data were with movie audiences, Patrick Stewart was the undeniable star, and so the story about his double had to take priority over the story about Data's double.)
Besides, it couldn't have been Lore because the story involves Shinzon using B-4 as a Trojan Horse to infiltrate the Enterprise and allow the abduction of Picard. The Enterprise crew would never have trusted Lore enough to give him the chance to do that.
One other possible consideration is that Lore was created by Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley, who would've gotten royalties for his reuse in the film. Maybe the producers figured it was more cost-effective to create a new character. That's why Enterprise abandoned their original idea of making T'Pau a regular and created T'Pol instead.
Also, I think Lore would've brought too much backstory and baggage with him. A feature film needs to be accessible to a general audience that isn't intimately familiar with the series. True, TWOK was a sequel to "Space Seed" and FC was a sequel to "The Best of Both Worlds." But if Lore had been brought back for the movie, it would've competed too much with the Shinzon story. It would've been a case of the "too many villains" syndrome that undermined the Batman sequels and Spider-Man 3. And it wouldn't have served as a good swan song for Lore because of that competition for screen time and attention. (And there's no way Lore could've been the main villain. As popular as Spiner and Data were with movie audiences, Patrick Stewart was the undeniable star, and so the story about his double had to take priority over the story about Data's double.)
Besides, it couldn't have been Lore because the story involves Shinzon using B-4 as a Trojan Horse to infiltrate the Enterprise and allow the abduction of Picard. The Enterprise crew would never have trusted Lore enough to give him the chance to do that.
One other possible consideration is that Lore was created by Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley, who would've gotten royalties for his reuse in the film. Maybe the producers figured it was more cost-effective to create a new character. That's why Enterprise abandoned their original idea of making T'Pau a regular and created T'Pol instead.
Couple that with the last time we saw Lore, he had been dismantled and his primary processor destroyed.
Adding Lore would have just made things needlessly complicated for Nemesis. Nemesis had it's problems, but the idea of B4 wasn't one of them.
I think by the time TNG came around, whatever character was created for the show belonged to the studio, not the original writers. If the original writers still owned the character, then he probably would not made later appearances during the run of the show.
I think by the time TNG came around, whatever character was created for the show belonged to the studio, not the original writers. If the original writers still owned the character, then he probably would not made later appearances during the run of the show.
It's not a question of ownership. Lots of people get confused on this issue. All Star Trek characters and concepts from the beginning have belonged to the owners of ST, first Desilu, then Paramount, now CBS. But the original creators were still entitled to be paid royalties for the reuse of their characters and concepts, even though they had no ownership of them.
It's an extension of the same work-for-hire principle that applies to everyone who writes for a TV show. If you enter into a work-for-hire deal, then everything you create is the property of your employer, theirs to do with as they please without needing your approval or agreement. However, in exchange, they are obligated to pay you for your work. And in the case of TV scripts, that includes not only payment for the initial writing of the script, but royalties for the reuse of your work or elements thereof. Usually that means you get a royalty every time the episode you wrote is rerun or sold on DVD (which is why illegal downloading is bad, because it deprives creators of money), but it also means you get a royalty if clips from it are used in a later episode, and it generally means you get a royalty if specific characters or entities that you created are reused in a later episode. It's got nothing to do with ownership; it's a facet of the compensation you get in exchange for surrendering any ownership.
Yes, it's true that this doesn't preclude the reuse of guest characters altogether. After all, TWOK brought back Khan and FC brought back Cochrane and the Borg. So I'm not saying it would've been impossible for them to use Lore. I'm just saying that creating an original character would've cost them less money than using Lore, and that could've been one of the factors influencing the decision.
They didn't use Lore in Nemesis because Lore wouldn't have fitted into the story at all. The point was that while Data and Picard aspire to better themselves, B-4 and Shinzon do not.
B-4 is content to stay a simpleton android (although he had the android equivelent of severe learning difficulties) and Shinzon is content to wallow in self-loathing and continue a life based around recieving and inflicting of suffering (his idea of ambition was "kill everyone on earth because they led happier lives then me").
Lore wouldn't have worked in place of B-4 because he had ambition. Lots of it.
B-4 is content to stay a simpleton android (although he had the android equivelent of severe learning difficulties) and Shinzon is content to wallow in self-loathing and continue a life based around recieving and inflicting of suffering (his idea of ambition was "kill everyone on earth because they led happier lives then me").
Lore wouldn't have worked in place of B-4 because he had ambition. Lots of it.
^But Shinzon had tons of ambition too. I mean, the guy conquered the entire Romulan Empire, and that was just the first step in his plan. The same that went for Shinzon could be said about Lore -- that though he aspired to better his status in life, to increase his power and self-gratification, he didn't aspire to better himself, to try to improve himself as a person.
Doesn't change anything one way or the other.
At the time, the two most successful movies...
And the first time we see B4 he's in pieces and a bit of a simpleton.
B4 could've benifited from a good firmware update. Download your patches, B4!
You do not invalidate what I said, you merely point out surface similarities. Lore had been deliberately dismantled and his primary processor destroyed by Data. The only thing left that worked was the emotion chip. If you're saying that the destruction of the processor would have left Lore in a similar condition to B4, consider that what was done was comparable, not to a lobotomy, but the surgical removal of the cerebrum. Even if Lore's body would have still been able to function, Lore was gone. What was left was little more than spare parts for Data.
On the lines of Christopher, I feel the movie was already undermined by leaving the villain with too little to do, by splitting our attention. That has always been a problem with the TNG ensemble cast: even when the main focus is on two of the hero characters, at least two other heroes get so much attention that little is left for the villain - let alone for the villain's sidekick.
Shinzon was full of potential and evil motivation; indeed, the whole point of this character was the potential he had been built for, the motivation behind his creation, not just in the dramatic sense but in the in-story sense. He was blatantly created to be Picard's evil twin even in-universe. He should probably have been allowed to become one, to usurp Picard's position at some point of the movie or at least attempt to do so. Instead, this usurping motif was wasted on a sidekick character - Data usurped the position of his evil twin, in a move that might have been an ironic twist if it had been allowed to mirror some sinister move already made by the main baddie!
B-4 was a fine sidekick in that he had no ambition or motivation that would have competed with that of the main villain. He was still an unfortunate distraction. Lore would have had plenty of ambition and motivation, eating into Shinzon's without complementing it. Shinzon was underused as is; with Lore, he'd have become the sidekick and Lore the main villain.
Any movie can take one evil twin. Two is rather awkward, though. I wonder what would have happened if the Romulans had begun an extensive Doppelgänger campaign, and all of our heroes would have had to face their evil twins?
Timo Saloniemi
Shinzon was full of potential and evil motivation; indeed, the whole point of this character was the potential he had been built for, the motivation behind his creation, not just in the dramatic sense but in the in-story sense. He was blatantly created to be Picard's evil twin even in-universe. He should probably have been allowed to become one, to usurp Picard's position at some point of the movie or at least attempt to do so. Instead, this usurping motif was wasted on a sidekick character - Data usurped the position of his evil twin, in a move that might have been an ironic twist if it had been allowed to mirror some sinister move already made by the main baddie!
B-4 was a fine sidekick in that he had no ambition or motivation that would have competed with that of the main villain. He was still an unfortunate distraction. Lore would have had plenty of ambition and motivation, eating into Shinzon's without complementing it. Shinzon was underused as is; with Lore, he'd have become the sidekick and Lore the main villain.
Any movie can take one evil twin. Two is rather awkward, though. I wonder what would have happened if the Romulans had begun an extensive Doppelgänger campaign, and all of our heroes would have had to face their evil twins?
Timo Saloniemi
I was half expecting Tom Riker to turn up.
That's what B4 was : /
So Shinzon was supposed to sneak aboard the Enterprise-E and rummage Data's laboratory, steal Lore's body parts, reprogram him and spread the body parts on a backward planet near the Romulan sector?
Movies aren't made for the diehard fans of a TV series who followed character arcs over seven years. The general public had no idea who Lore was, so the movie started fresh with a new android prototype. Soong's wife told Data in "Inheritance" there were three prototypes before Lore and Data. This one is the B-4 (a nice Easter egg for those counting), one that Juliana Tainer didn't know about.
...Or then not. Tainer could have been right about only "B-1 through B-3" (or whatever Soong's silly names for them) existing, and B-4 might not have been built by Soong after all. Rather, B-4 could have been item #47 on the Romulan plan of creating Doppelgängers of Starfleet personnel, Shinzon being #357 or something. The android could have been built in Data's image, but the Romulans fumbled the construction and only managed to produce a useless moron - one that shared a past with Shinzon, was known to this rebel leader thanks to this connection, and was therefore utilized in his sinister plot eventually.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Similar threads
