ime flies—even for the crew of the starship Enterprise 1701-E. The entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation returns for another big-screen adventure. But there are a few things different about Star Trek Nemesis, the 10th feature film in the franchise.
For one, director Stuart Baird knew nothing about Star Trek before signing on to helm the film. For another, Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Logan wrote the script (actor Brent Spiner also gets a story credit). And, unlike the last Trek film, Insurrection, this one has a lot at stake—both for the franchise as a whole and for the characters in the film itself. Change is afoot, with Riker and Troi finally marrying and heading off to their own ship, with Data finding his long-lost prototype "brother," the cleverly named B-4, and Picard having to face perhaps his most fearsome enemy yet—himself.
Although Paramount's teaser line about this being a "final journey" sounds ominous, and accurately reflects some of the events in the film, if Nemesis is successful then that eventuality won't play out—at least, not just yet.
Patrick Stewart (Capt. Jean-Luc Picard):
By using a screenwriter and a director who were not from the stable of Star Trek regulars, there's been a conscious effort to make Nemesis more accessible to audiences not already part of the fandom. Do you think that this will be the film that marks Star Trek's breakthrough?
Stewart: I hope so. We've been talking about crossover movies for so long, and feeling that we've almost made it, but not quite. First Contact was probably the one that got closest. I passionately believe that with this film, with Nemesis, there is a movie that ought to draw in a non-Star Trek audience. Actually, we need it.
What are your thoughts on the interplay between Picard and his clone, Shinzon?
Stewart: Originally, it wasn't a clone. Shinzon was actually Picard's son, a child he didn't know about. But the emotional consequences of that, I wasn't comfortable with. I thought there was a danger that it would lead to something sentimental, and troubled in the wrong way. Whereas the fact that he's Picard makes all of the difference, because he has to deal with himself, or with himself as he might have been. That, I think, is intellectually more interesting than if it's just a child he didn't know about.
Picard was a mentor to Data, just as he tries to be a mentor to Shinzon. Did that parallel come through to you as well?
Stewart: Very much so. That's a deliberate aspect of the story by Logan. It's classic Star Trek, of course, that you take a theme, and you examine it from different perspectives, so you have of course the human, emotional confusion of a man, and also the confusion of a different kind that exists in B-4 when encountering himself, as Data. Each one of those two relationships reflects on the other, I think, in quite an interesting way. And, of course, there has to be sacrifices in both cases.
Four years between films ... was this a happy homecoming for you, after so long away from Picard?
Stewart: Oh yes. I'm very happy to take responsibility for the fact that there has been a four-year gap between Insurrection and this one. From the moment we finished First Contact, I was arguing to anyone who'd listen that this two-year cycle was a mistake. From my point of view, it was a mistake, because by the time we finished doing the foreign press junkets, we were already discussing storylines for the next movie, so there was never a respite. And I thought that was particularly hard on Rick Berman. Not knowing whether or not there would be a 10th movie, we said goodbye to Insurrection feeling that was probably the end of the road. When it proved not to be the end of the road, everybody came back to it with terrific vigor and enthusiasm.
Will there be another film?
Stewart: I think we will know that by 10 a.m. Saturday morning [after the film opens]. For good or ill, that's the way things are in Hollywood these days. One thing, and one thing only, would make all of the difference to me, is if Logan would write the next screenplay. I would sign up for it sight unseen. I have so much respect for him; he's such an astonishing individual and writer.
Rick Berman, producer:
This film has more visual effects than previous Star Trek films. What went into making the effects as spectacular as they are?
Berman: Well, the bar is raised every time you produce a movie. Luckily, the price of visual effects tends to go down as the years go on. But then you look at Spielberg's movies, you look at Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and you realize that what the audience is starting to get used to is a higher and higher quality of visual effects. So in one sense the visual effects get less expensive, but in another sense you need better ones, and more, to keep up. In this case, we had over 50 percent more [effects] than we had in the other movies. And Digital Domain, which did the visual effects on this film, did a terrific job.
How did Stuart Baird become your choice for director, since he wasn't even familiar with the Trek universe?
Berman: No, he wasn't a Star Trek fan at all. In fact, I had to tie him up and make him look at four or five of the Star Trek films before we got started. But once we realized that we wanted to go outside for a director, I screened stuff from a variety of available directors, and I had meetings with maybe 10. And even though Stuart was not a Star Trek fan, by any means, his whole approach, and all of the discussions that we had about the script, made me think he was terrific. And he was acceptable to Paramount.
Nemesis is the 10th film in a long-established franchise. Do you ever feel like you're carrying the flame for Trek creator Gene Roddenberry?
Berman: I never really think of it that way. I think of myself more as a filmmaker and a writer. Star Trek is Gene Roddenberry's vision, not mine. And both myself and all of the people I work with try to do it as best we can. I never think of myself as carrying the mantle.
Brent Spiner (Lt. Cmdr. Data):
Data's ultimate quest was to become more human. Yet that would never be something that he could fully achieve. Do you feel his story arc, then, is a logical one?
Spiner: I think so. His programming has always been about serving mankind; that was why he was created. And so [his actions in the film] are the ultimate expression of the android, really.
How did you become involved in helping write the script?
Spiner: I was doing 1776, and my leading lady had a friend come to the show, and we went out to dinner afterwards. It turned out to be John Logan, and he was a big Star Trek fan. Cut to a few years later, and I brought him in to see Rick [Berman], and he clicked, and Rick said, "Why don't the three of us sit down and write a story?" And so we did.
Do you ever worry about being perennially associated with Data?
Spiner: It would be naive of me to think that I would get to the end of my life and nobody would mention Data again. But in truth, I don't think anybody knows who the hell I am, and I don't think the industry knows who I am. Star Trek fans know who I am, and they know who Data is, but for the most part, I think I'm almost a brand-new actor each time I go out. Which is both good and bad.
What are the strengths of this film?
Spiner: Well, it's got a really good script, for one thing. John's an excellent writer, and Stuart [Baird] brought a real intensity to the movie that he walks around with all the time. And I think we had a really wonderful villain in it. It just has a little bit of everything. It's by far the most emotional film we've done, and also, I think, the most action-packed.
Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi):
Was it difficult for you to play the scenes where Troi's mind is invaded by Shinzon?
Sirtis: It's happened to me a couple of times, where I'd have to play it on the show. I think it's more interesting to have a mental violation than to have an actual physical violation. And really, I have to play it like this is worse for her than being physically raped, because this is her sacred part, in her head, so it's much more distressing for her.
This time around, Troi is really integral to the plot—
Sirtis: —and she's not decorative. Yes, I was dancing a jig when I read the script. Finally, I got involved in the storyline, and I'm not just crashing the ship or doing things like that. I was really glad that she was involved in the denouement of the movie, and actually figures out how to beat these bastards. Without her, we'd need a new Enterprise again.
What was it like working with a director who was unfamiliar with Star Trek?
Sirtis: He was treating it like it was the first Star Trek movie, and that no one had ever watched Star Trek movies before. He didn't want the audience saying, "Well, what's going on?" If they didn't know Star Trek history, which happened a lot in our other movies; you had to have a background knowledge of our cast, and he didn't want that in this movie. But it's difficult as an actor, because he's saying to do this, and you say, "Well, actually, I wouldn't do that in this situation," and he goes, "I don't care, do it anyway." It makes you rethink a lot of your stuff, because you have to find a way to make it work, even if initially it seems wrong. Because if it's not true, it's not going to play true. He made us think a lot more over the last two years.
How has Troi evolved?
Sirtis: Well, she's not foreign anymore. When we started, she had almost this Russian accent, and now she's almost American. That's been a big evolution for her [laughs]. I think she's not as distant as she was when we started; I think she was a little untouchable, with a kind of aloofness. She's more accessible now, and that basically comes from me. Of course it's all based in me, because I've become more confident and grown as a person—and so she has, too. I've always tried to separate the two, and I was talking to a psychologist once, and I was saying, "I've created this alter ego, and her name is Deanna Troi," and she said, "Well, actually, you haven't, because all of the stuff that you draw on for her is yours." So she's evolved as I have evolved, and gotten older and wiser.
Stuart Baird, director:
What are some of your favorite scenes?
Baird: I'm really very happy with some of the dialogue sequence I had between Picard and Shinzon. It's very much like a man who suddenly discovered he has an illegitimate son that he never knew existed, and the child who knew his father existed, because he must have had a father, but never had a chance to meet with him. That's the dynamic between them. It's added to by the fact that now they're enemies and they're two halves of the same person, the same personality, really, because [Shinzon] is a clone. I'm particularly happy with the scene where we hear about Shinzon, but we don't meet him. I cut quite a lot of stuff out that we shot from the script in order to restructure this story a little bit so that the most powerful bits had a greater impact. And one of those was that we don't see Shinzon until Picard actually sees him. So we get the same impact of seeing his face when Picard sees his face, and the same shock when Picard realizes he's looking at himself.
The entire third act of the film is action-packed, with one battle after another after another. How hard was that to do, given the film's budget?
Baird: Within the budget considerations, I tried to make it as exciting as I possibly could in [cutting from] the interior to the exterior in a really dynamic way and giving the audience a real ride on that space battle. This is not a budget that you get on a Star Wars or a Bond picture or a Matrix picture; we don't have that budget, so we have to plan out our impacts around certain moments in order to get the maximum that we possibly can.
The space battle, I think, is pretty spectacular. We have a collision in it between the two ships in space, which I think works really well.
How do you approach addressing the trouble spots or strong spots of a film?
Baird: When you're working on a movie, all you're interested in are the bits that work least well, because the bits that work OK, you think, "OK," and you put those aside and concentrate on the bits that need more work. So you're constantly concentrating like everything's a problem.
John Logan, screenwriter:
You're a self-confessed fan of Trek yourself. Did that make it easier or harder to for you as you sat down to write the script?
Logan: It was a double-edged sword. Because on one hand, it made it easier to jump into the characters, because I thought, "Well, I know how Data expresses himself. I know the language of Riker; I know how they communicate with one another. I know the inter-family relationships very well. I know the political world very well." So that made it incredibly comfortable. And once I was able to capture Picard's voice, which was the hardest thing of all—and I give a lot of credit to Patrick for helping me—that made it a lot more straightforward to work on the script.
Film is different from episodic television, where every character can get his or her moment in the spotlight. Was it hard to construct a script that would service all of the characters in the tight time constraints of a film?
Logan: That is a source of some frustration to me, honestly, because we couldn't do that in the movie. And the movie had to be focused around the most important characters, which because of the theme of the story were Picard and Data. Those were the characters that we built to sort of parallel one another, and they have sort of echoing journeys through the whole movie, with Picard dealing with Shinzon, and with Data dealing with B-4, whom Brent also plays.
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