I've fallen out of touch with the "Star Trek" universe. So far, I've managed to catch Scott Bakula's captaincy of the Enterprise exactly twice. I never much cared for "Deep Space Nine," and although "Voyager"'s initial missions contained the creative spark that current series overlord Rick Berman had last captured with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew, there's definitely been a slow leak in my interest in the whole schmeer.
Star Trek: Nemesis, billed as "a generation's final adventure," is less adventurous than previous "Next Generation" outings such as First Contact (which at least had the Borg Gamecube) and Insurrection (which, while not a terribly good movie by anyone's standards, featured Picard the Rebel). None of the above come close to Generations, which, with its pairing of the cerebral Picard and the testosterone-fueled James T. Kirk, was dense sci-fi fun. And there's nothing in Nemesis ' or any of the others, for that matter ' to rival Malcolm McDowell's hissy-fitting Sauron.
This "final" adventure has Picard and his trusty crew intervening in a Romulan coup d'etat and discovering there are more clones in the known universe than those stamped with a LucasFilm marketing tag. For non-Trekkers, the Romulans are the warlike bane of the peace-loving Federation of Planets. The coup is led by a member of that race's lesser caste, the Remans (Romulus and Remus ' get it?), who have been enslaved by their nattier cousins to work in the mines, and generally lead a life of tormented hopelessness.
Head Reman Praetor Shinzon, as it turns out, isn't even a real Reman, but a clone, and while Picard deals with his nefarious ways, Brent Spiner's android Data has to come to grips with a clingy, newfound brother, of sorts. And then there's the forever "unconjugated" marriage of Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and ship counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). Data sings, Worf (Michael Dorn) overdoes it on the Romulan ale, and a main character's life is sacrificed for the benefit of the others.
It's all very convoluted this time out, and awfully silly to boot, with Picard hamming it up in a dune buggy. All told, it's a weak ending to what has been a spotty series of films at best. It makes one long for the days of Khan, that bloodsucker, who at least had the presence of mind to chew the scenery with rough-and-tumble panache. Nemesis, by comparison, is about as exciting as a Tribble on Vicodin.
