Star Trek: Nemesis

Directed by Stuart Baird

Written by John Logan,

Rick Berman and Brent Spiner

Starring Patrick Stewart,

Brent Spiner and Tom Hardy

Classification: PG

Rating: **½

Familiarity breeds content with Star Trek fans, and the 10th movie in the series does nothing to mess with the series' comfortably monotonous fantasy formula. The space crew investigates a mysterious incident, there is a lot of background exposition, transporters are used, the spaceships blast each other, and LeVar Burton's character declares some variation of, "Captain! Our shields are down to 4 per cent!" The threat is more ritual than suspense. Nobody ever walked out of a Star Trek movie saying, "Something very much like that once happened to me."

The current episode, the first in four years, is launched with a double shot of pomp. In Scene 1, the senate of the bellicose Romulans is reduced from a haughty legislative body to a heap of corpses. In Scene 2, Captain Jean-Luc Picard makes a toast to his crew members, Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), at their wedding dinner in Alaska.

While returning to Troi's planet, the Enterprise picks up one of those annoying "positronic emanations" from an unexplored planet. This leads to the discovery of a mangled prototype of the android Data on a remote planet, followed by a rather ordinary movie car chase that eats up a sizable percentage of the movie budget.

Soon we ease into the core of the franchise: one juicy imperilled universe, surrounded by a roll of technobabble and exposition, with a side order of twinkling camaraderie. The camaraderie gets supersized this time out, thanks to the threat, or promise, that this is the last voyage involving the crew of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. Once again, perhaps the most impressive effect is Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard, using his Shakespearean training to make long mouthfuls of nonsense sound almost persuasive.

If there's one teeny element of risk in the current Star Trek offering, it's the decidedly unequal representation of the cast. The story focuses almost exclusively on Captain Picard and Data (Brent Spiner). The other cast members serve as little more than reminders of episodes long past: With their big hair and ample makeup, the female characters -- Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) -- look even more as if they used to sing with ABBA.

The chubby, well-groomed first mate Riker seems onboard primarily for ballast, and to exchange warm male-bonding gazes with Picard. Worf (Michael Dorn), the Klingon lieutenant commander with the tortoise shell in the middle of his forehead, is reduced to grumpy comedy.

Spiner plays two parts, the human-computer, Data, and his dumber prototype, B4, who lacks Data's human urge toward self-advancement (an urge that Spiner, who gets a writing credit on the script, apparently shares). Meanwhile, Picard faces his "nemesis," Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a youthful clone of Picard, assembled from some scrap of his DNA. How do we know Shinzon is a clone? Well, he's bald and speaks with an English accent, so the conclusion is inescapable.

Originally designed as a Romulan secret weapon, Shinzon was decommissioned and sent to slave in the "dilithium" mines of the nearby planet Remus, where he became the ward of an evil Reman (Ron Perlman). Shinzon insists that if Picard had suffered the same childhood, he would be evil too. But the warlord's philosophical position is suspect because he also has a weapon of mass destruction on his ship, aimed at liquidating Earthlings. The requisite spaceship shoot-'em-up (with the usual pesky diminishing shield-capacity problem) ensues.

The movie is directed by Stuart Baird (U.S. Marshals), in what must be one of the more relaxed directing gigs going. Scene 1: Familiar characters sit in chairs on the bridge and exchange technical jargon. Scene 2: Models and computer-generated imagery zip about the screen and fire lasers at each other. Repeat with occasional variation until conclusion.