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I don't know what is up with all this Trek backlash, however, and I remain puzzled as to why Nemesis seems to have taken the brunt of the punishment. It is certainly a perfectly fine entry in the big-screen Trek sweepstakes, and it is hard to imagine anyone not preferring it over The Final Frontier or the dismal Insurrection. Taken on its own terms, Nemesis is a spiffy little space adventure: it's got a pretty cool dual storyline (watch Jean Luc and Data battle their alter egos!), a hefty amount of action (watch two starships collide!) and all of the usual stupid banter Trekkers seem to like (watch the audience cringe as Data sings!) While I am far from an expert on Star Trek, as a causal viewer, Nemesis is not nearly as sucky as you probably have heard.

Since it is always fun to theorize about big-budget Hollywood failures, let me throw in my two cents in and guesstimate that perhaps Nemesis just plays it too safe. With the kids grooving on the likes of X-Men and The Matrix these days, perhaps a bunch of 50-something Enterprise crew members just don't cut it? And unlike many of the original cast Star Trek big-screen adventures, all of the Next Generation movies could just have easy been small-screen episodes, only with better effects and a longer runtime. Nothing here feels special, and while it is far from bad, admittedly Nemesis never really differentiates itself from its syndicated TV origins.

The potential camp factor in Nemesis is also high, with the plenty of unintentional laughter lurking around every corner. As Picard's doppleganger, newcomer Tom Hardy gives one of the most overlooked performances in Trek history as Shinzon (a name too close to "Shit-zon" for comfort). Unfortunately, as is so common with modern sci-fi, his wardrobe is so fashion-conscious that the character (not the actor) comes across as a white, bald sci-fi version of Prince in Purple Rain, if that's possible. (I must ask of both recent Star Trek and Star Wars, where do these characters get their ridiculous neo-futuristic S&M outfits?) The worlds of Trek are also far too clean - where is all the reality and grunginess? The film also suffers from too many soliloquies and long, drawn-out dialogue exchanges. (Just grab a phaser and starting shooting, geesh!) And when is some of the supporting female cast going to get something substantial to do? For the fourth Next Generation flick in a row, Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden are left stranded, forced to stand around, smile and look pretty. Hey, how about giving the ladies a real storyline in the 23rd century?

Typical Trek bitching aside, I still really liked Nemesis. It looks good, is enjoyably cheesy and even treats us to a faux-Star Trek II ending that shamelessly attempts wring tears from the eyes. (It doesn't work, of course, but hey, at least they tried to shake things up a bit.) It is no secret that Nemesis is likely the end of the Next Generation on the big screen, and story-wise, it does wrap things up fairly well, albeit in the that cheating Star Trek kinds of way. (Star Trek crews may part, but they can also always reunite when the next script requires it.) Nemesis isn't a great film, or even a topnotch Trek film, but I suspect it will do just fine on video. If you missed it in the theaters (and judging by the box office grosses, you did) it is well worth catching up with on DVD.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

What a wonderful transfer this is. Presented here in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio and anamorphically encoded, Nemesis is likely the darkest and most sleek Trek film ever. Sort of like David Fincher meets Star Trek, director Stuart Baird and director of photography Jeffrey L. Kimball bathe Nemesis in dark purples and greens (with a dash of burgundy and burnt mustard yellow thrown in for good measure), and I think it looks really cool. And this is a topnotch transfer, which gets everything right and is just about perfect.

Everything I want to see in a great DVD transfer is here. Pristine print, rock solid blacks, excellent contrast and vivid, vibrant colors. Hues are dead on with no smearing, noise or inaccurate fleshtones. Detail is splendid, with excellent shadow delineation even in the darkest scenes, which this flick is full of. It is smooth, finely texture and wonderfully sharp. I'd say this is about the best Trek transfer I've yet seen, with even the blown-out panoramas of the Data android planet sequence coming through perfectly. To top it off, I noticed not a smidgen of edge enhancement nor any compression artifacts. Spiffy!

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Just as groovy as the transfer is the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. It is highly aggressive, and the Trek-makers spared no expense with the sound design on this one. Frequency response is terrific, with spacious highs and terrific low end, especially in all those action sequences. Dynamic range is also impressive, with the soundtrack often veering from the lowest lows to the highest highs with finesse. Stereo separation across the fronts is excellent, with dialogue also clean and clear despite all the bombast. Surround use is highly aggressive, with noticeable discrete effects throughout, and near-transparent imaging across the entire 360-degree soundfield. My only complaint is that the mix can be too subdued in terms of ambiance and the lack of true score extension, but the battle scenes certainly deliver. A DTS track would have made this even better, but this is still good stuff!

Also included are English and French Dolby 2.0 surround options, along with English subtitles and Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Ah, studio myopia. Perhaps I'm just jaded, but it seems that more and more these days, the big studio DVD releases lack any sort of perspective or humility. Case in point is Star Trek Nemesis. Everything here is perfectly fine - we've got the commentary, the featurettes, the deleted scenes...all omitting just one little factoid. Nemesis totally bombed at the box office and is probably responsible for sinking the whole Trek big-screen empire. Whoops! Just make sure you don't mention that...

First up we have the new screen-specific audio commentary with director Stuart Baird. I don't know when this was recorded, but Baird makes no mention of Nemesis' reception nor hints at what its place in the Trek pantheon might be. Instead, he is an amusing guy but a bit slow. Suffering from the old "let me just recite what is on the screen like a radio play" syndrome, he tends to talk realllyy sllllowllly liikkkkeeee thhhhiiiisssssss, to the point where I thought perhaps he decided to sit down in front of the mic with a few too many pints of beer. In between the too-frequent gaps of silence, he does offer some solid production antecedents and shares his vision for Nemesis. Relatively unfamiliar with the series (a plus or a minus, depending on your viewpoint), I got a kick out of this track even if most will find it pretty slow-going.

Next up we have not one but four featurettes. (All are presented in full screen and 2.0 stereo, with optional subtitles.) First up is basically a two-part interview with Baird, "New Frontiers" (10 minutes) and "A Bold Vision" (8 minutes). Stewart calls him "one of the world's most brilliant action directors" (really?) and previous Trek helmer Jonathan Frakes politely demures that the franchise "needed a change." Meanwhile, Baird shares his non-Trekker take on Nemesis: would you believe a sci-fi update of Rebel Without a Cause? No? Yes! Next up are the usual gaggle of cast and crew onset EPK interviews collected in "A Star Trek Family's Final Journey" (16 minutes) and "Red Alert! Shooting the Action of Nemesis" (10 minutes). As far as these types of things go, both are perfectly entertaining. All of the main cast (Stewart, Frakes, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Whoopi Goldberg and a typically dour Brent Spiner among them) participate, and gush over the storyline and the script by John Logan, who also appears. The action stuff is actually kinda interesting, which, along with all of the featurettes, benefits from a clever use of split screen and some cool stuff like the dune buggy sequence and the grand-smashing of the Enterprise. (Factoid alert: Look for X-Men helmer Bryan Singer in a blink-or-you'll-miss cameo as an ill-fated Enterprise crew member who gets sucked out of the bridge.)

Perhaps the highlight of the extras here is the collection of 7 deleted scenes, totally just over 20 minutes. All are presented in just fair-quality non-anamorphic widescreen with production dialogue only, but each includes various introductions from Baird, Stewart and producer Rick Berman. A couple of these scenes are pretty substantial and long, and Trek fans will enjoy a brief single-scene peek at the character of Martin Madden (played by Steven Culp), who was entirely cut out of the finished film. In an interesting tidbit from Berman, the original cut of Nemesis ran almost 45 minutes longer, but sadly not all of this cut footage is included.

Rounding out the extras is a decent still gallery with approximately 40 conceptual drawings and sketches and...nothing. In a move sure to annoy almost all, Paramount has reconfigured their startup so that now, after the disc starts you are greeted by a preselection screen prompting you to choose between a set of short video trailers and the actual Main Menu. It's frustrating and rather unnecessary, and in a very frustrating move, none of the actual trailers for Nemesis are included on the disc at all. Whatever!

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts