Berman Mulls Star Trek XI

Sci-Fi Wire has the whole piece. It boils down to what (or who) is to blame for Nemesis’ lackluster performance. Sure the film wasn’t spectacular, but launching it against Harry Potter and LotR wasn’t real bright either.

Personally I was hoping Paramount would take their frustration out on Rick Berman and get some fresh (and original) brains on the team. Foolish optimism, I know.

7 replies on “Berman Mulls Star Trek XI”

  1. About an hour too short
    Well, 30 minutes. There were times in the movie that the cuts were so jarring that it hurt to watch. Really, this arbitrary 2 hour time limit that paramount has on ST movies is absurd.

    As for the movie itself: it felt like several really well done episode of TNG strung together.

    The ending was so absurd and cloying… it should have been about 10 minutes shorter.

    Someone tried entirely too hard to remake STII, and failed entirely.

  2. Fresh Brains

    Personally I was hoping Paramount would take their frustration out on Rick Berman and get some fresh (and original) brains on the team. Foolish optimism, I know.

    Like Joss Whedon?

    After Seeing Firefly Imagine What He Could Do To Trek.

    • Re: Fresh Brains

      Personally I was hoping Paramount would take their frustration out on Rick Berman and get some fresh (and original) brains on the team. Foolish optimism, I know.

      Like Joss Whedon?

      After Seeing Firefly Imagine What He Could Do To Trek.

      Visions of Worf tossing someone into a warp reactor…..

  3. I can’t believe Berman is puzzled …
    Maybe he’s too close to these projects to stand back and eye them objectively.

    This movie was like finding a song on a CD, by your favorite group, that’s really really horrible. You wonder: what were they thinking? Now this movie was *not* really really horrible, but against HP2 and LOTR it wasn’t compelling enough, even to die-hard Trek fans, to stay in theaters any longer than it did.

    We went over the movie’s flaws in here, I think I could safely say that Nemesis would have probably performed poorly no matter when it was released. If Paramount’s angels of finance decide to gamble one last time, and if Rick Berman reaches into his almost empty bag of tricks and produces another Nemesis, with only “Enterprise” to keep the name alive in the public consciousness it’ll probably be the end of the Trek franchise.

    • Re: I can’t believe Berman is puzzled …
      I agree that Nemesis was very disappointing. Firstly the plot was kind of mixed, and secondly they should have killed Data or not – they should not have implemented the half measure that they did in the form of B2 (or whatever, can’t quite remember his name)!

      The insane Picard clone who was being hyped as someone who could outwit and out manouvre Picard, like Khan could Kirk, did not live up to expectations – nor did the ultimate outcome being the destruction of Earth. “Oh no, we can’t quite get to Earth – oh, we’ll have to suffice with the Enterprise!” In almost every episode of Star Trek the ship is in danger of being destroyed – no change there!

      Data leaving this adolescent B2 behind with identical neural pathways/maps took something away from Data nobly sacrificing his life to save Picard. It lessened the impact. Not good at all.

      I thought the premise for the film was good: a secret Romulan plot to clone Picard and replace him, that went wrong, with the clone having to serve in dilithium mines (or whatever) with the Remans, who went insane and wanted to destroy Earth. It could have been a good film – but they opted for half measures – killing Data but not killing Data – destroying Earth, but only putting the Enterprise in danger.

      I also remember reading that Stuart Baird thought that it was important to have as much as the crew interacting with each other as much of the time as possible – as this is what fans like – and he thought that other ST films had not done this enough, and did not have enough in-jokes. He thought he addressed this! He did not. Insurrection was a lot better – much more fun, more characters interacting, more jokes, better enemies, better plot. I thought Insurrection was the best ST movie so far – but no one else agrees that I know of. It portrayed them as noble and human characters.

      I would love to see a Star Trek XI movie in which they try to repair some of the damage! I don’t know what it could be about… I would like to see another movie with TNG cast, but perhaps alongside the Voyager cast – don’t know how they could do it, but another movie would be cool.

  4. Bermen Sucks…Period
    Watchin the latest episode of Star Dreck where, T’its gets Vulcan AIDS, I can say conclusively that I wouldn’t pay 8 bucks for *anything* Bermen puts out on the big screen.

    In fact I didn’t see Nemesis but instead downloaded a crappy version from Kaaza saved the 8 bucks. My recomendation…SKIP Nemesis – or anything else with the Bermen/Braga label.

    Wait till a good version comes out on the interne and download it.

    Sad that a former Trekkie of the ’60s has to say this but Star Trek…officially…SUCKS.

    • Re: Bermen Sucks…Period
      What got me into ST was the cool ship designed and awesome starship battles. But that’s just what drew me in…eventually, character development became equally importan to me.

      Getting attactched to certain characters is unavoidable in a show you enjoy. Data, for example. I wish they hadn’t killed him off. But since they did, I’m glad he lives on, sort of, as B4. Atleast that way there’s a chance we’ll see him again in a future film. I’m glad the Nemesis team realized that many of us wouldn’t be happy seeing Data gone permanently. That being said, I do agree that Nemesis was a little too dark and devoid of humour. I also wish the ship-to-ship battles were more spectacular.

      My favourite ST series, after TNG, is DS9. So if they do make another ST movie, I hope it’s with either the TNG or the DS9 cast. Voyager…meh.

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