Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by John Logan, based on a story by Rick Berman, Logan and Brent Spiner
Original Songs & Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Directed by Stuart Baird
Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, and Tom Hardy

Features:

• Running audio commentary with director Baird
  
• Documentaries:
  
  • New Frontiers & A Bold Vision of the New Frontier: Stuart Baird and the direction of Nemesis
    
  • A Star Trek Family's Final Journey & Red Alert: Shooting the Action of Nemesis: interviews with the cast
    
• Deleted Scenes
  
• Photo Gallery
  

The newly promoted Captain Riker (Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Sirtis) have just been married before he is to leave the Enterprise and take his new command. However, before the wedding celebration is fully complete, the Enterprise is called to the Romulan frontier to negotiate a truce. They get quite a surprise when they land on Romulus; it seems that the person that they are to negotiate the peace with is a clone of Captain Picard (Stewart) named Shinzon (Hardy) who has plans of his own--which could involve the destruction of everything Picard and his crew hold dear.

I believe this to be one of the strongest of the Next Generation movies. What made it so is that they focused on continued character development rather than big action sequences. They opted to have it feel more like an elongated episode of the television show. In other words, it actually had a plot and the characters had some personal issues that they had to work through on top of the action sequences. Not only that, but there was also a political sub-plot at work as well. There are very few casts, directors, and editors that can keep all this stuff in the air without it getting muddled and confused--this movie does not get bogged down. These actors have lived in these skins long enough to already have a strong basis for character which helped this movie a great deal.

The documentary feature on this DVD is quite good. Baird's commentary is not the best that I've ever heard, but he does stay on task and does not waste time with a "love fest" for the cast and crew. He talks about design concepts and how they were sometimes dictated by what had been designed for television in the past. He also talks about mood and tone quite a bit. He also seemed to have a tremendous amount of trust for his cast. The only negative thing I can think to say is that there are large open areas where no commentary is presented.

All four of the documentaries are very good. They have really wonderful interviews with all of the cast and crew, and they don't get trapped in a lot of mutual stroking of the other members of cast and crew. The little pieces of the documentary feel like smaller parts of a much larger whole, but there is not an option to play all of them together, which would have been nice. Having them play separately seems like an attempt to make the bonus features list look longer than it actually is. I will say that this DVD has one other feature going for it: the deleted scenes. Here we have a rare occasion, because the scenes presented are so good that it seems as though most of them should have been kept in the film. I'm sure that editing this one was not a fun undertaking because there was so much good material to choose from.

If you are a Next Generation fan, you will definitely want to pick this one up. No doubt they will be re-releasing it as part of a special collector's edition set with some more special features on it at some point in the future, but until then, this is a nice treatment of the film. Non-fans should at least give it a rental.