"Star Trek: Nemesis" 
2002 
PG-13 117 minutes

The latest movie from the second generation Star 
Trek crew featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard 
(Patrick Stewart) and his band continues in the 
cerebral vein of its predecessors. A clone of 
Picard winds up taking over the Romulan republic 
and prepares for war against Picard's 
"Federation," thus bringing the "nature vs. 
nurture" argument to the fore.

From its beginning in the 1960s, "Star Trek" has 
had a strong communist flavor to it, because in 
the future (at least in two of the Star Trek 
series) there is not much by way of trade or 
profiteering. "Replicators" construct whatever 
humyns require. Such an advanced technological 
existence is something Marx talked about when he 
referred to "superabundance" in the "productive 
forces" as a necessary condition for people to get 
over their property-induced stupor. It's clear no 
one stands around asking for money or using money 
before ordering something from the replicators. 
People walk right up and take what they need.

The "Federation" has often stood in for roughly 
bourgeois Western values against various 
"totalitarian" and "authoritarian" enemies. Ever 
since the "classic Star Trek" Captain Kirk and the 
"Doctor" stood for Western individualism against 
Spock's Vulcan group logic, the political 
parallels in Star Trek have tended toward 
increasingly posing Western Liberalism against 
authoritarian rule. (Yes, Western conservatives, 
when you hear the term "Western Liberalism," 
unless you are fascist yourself, you are being 
included. Liberalism is your ideology: you oppose 
left-leaning reformist "liberalism," another usage 
of the same word.)There were some Star Trek
movies all too directly paralleling the Cold War.
If we could excise those few bad apples from the collection,
Star Trek would be almost uniformly at least slightly
progressive and far better in content than the
average Hollywood fare.

In contrast with Picard representing Western 
values, the "nemesis" named Shinzon is a clone of 
Picard who instead of enjoying cushy Earth life 
(substitute Western imperialist life) spent 10 
years as a slave in dilithium mines. He arrives at 
power through a coup of the slaves against 
parliamentary government. There is nothing Liberal 
about Shinzon and he plans destruction of other 
races; even though he is the same exact genetic 
material as Picard, who says it is humyn to aim 
for making oneself better (and not through 
genocide).

There's not much to like about Shinzon, but that 
is the script-writer's fault. When Shinzon is 
recounting how he freed the slaves, Picard asks 
how many lives it took him to do so. We saw 
Shinzon's allies kill off the Romulan senate, but 
we do not actually see how much violence it took 
to get that far. The nemesis throws off the 
question by saying "too much" violence was 
necessary to free the slaves. At that moment, 
Shinzon was seeking to use peace negotiations to 
prepare for war, something that imperialists have 
done the last 100 years. Saying it took "too much" 
violence was not meant as an indication of the 
nature of the oppressors, just a good-will gesture 
to deceive Picard as future war adversary.

The "nemesis" character has no inherent drive to 
power, and instead the script-writers lead us to 
believe that Shinzon does what he does strictly 
out of a psychological drive to avoid being Picard's 
historical shadow. While we have seen such 
backward petty-bourgeois expressions in real-life, 
it would be a mistake to offer as the film does 
repeatedly that the motivations of war are petty 
psychology. On the one hand, the idea that people 
are their own worst enemies is a good angle for 
deep thought development--a plus to having a 
"nemesis" character.  On the other hand, for MIM, 
rampaging against an empire and its allies that 
allowed slavery in the dilithium mines would be 
plenty justified. Shinzon just needed some Maoist 
scientific leadership and he would have been 
a great revolutionary. Even so, freeing the slaves
goes to his credit.

Garnering $18.75 million its first weekend "Star 
Trek: Nemesis" may be the last of the Picard 
series of "Star Trek" movies, the end of the 
"Generation." The Associated Press called it the 
"dullest and drabbest" of the "Star Trek" movies, 
but we would say that "Nemesis" benefitted from 
borrowing from "Star Wars" in effects and action 
scenes. In that sense, it was in fact most 
impressive. 

For us Marxist scientists who believe the masses 
make history, we would point out that the whole 
"Star Trek" premise is that a handful of officers 
on a ship create almost all the action/history. 
This is in fact the view of the bourgeoisie, which 
is a tiny minority of the world which believes it 
is making all history. In fact, the second-in-
command has to go duke it out individually with 
one of the bad guys on the ship in hallway chutes 
reminiscent of "Star Wars"--despite the fact that 
the ship has a crew of thousands. This aspect of 
the movie is true to the original premise of "Star 
Trek," but it reinforces the bourgeois view of 
history as made by individual heroes instead of 
classes or other large social groups. In a 
relatively low-budget TV series, the small crew 
against the universe is a nice premise, but it 
becomes more questionable with a full-blown movie 
budget.

On the political side, the Liberal humyn-rights 
whining on behalf of a parliamentary system that 
enforced slavery detracts from the value of the 
movie despite its making a point that environment 
determines persynal character, not genetics or 
god. Nonetheless, we recommend this movie and give 
"Star Trek" consistent credit relative to what the 
public sees on TV and movie theaters in general.