Star Trek: Nemesis
Director: Stuart Baird
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFaddan, Tom Hardy
In “Star Trek: Nemesis”, the Enterprise and her crew, led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, are summoned to the planet Romulus under the pretense of establishing peace with a hostile alien race. That peace is soon shattered when Picard and his crew discover a dangerous secret lurking on Romulus; a secret that could extinguish not only Picard’s life, but the existence of humanity itself.
Identity plays a vital role in the framework of the story, and nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in the characters of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his loyal comrade, Commander Data. The dilemma that both Captain Picard and Commander Data face in the film is the realization that although their own identities and those of their counterparts, Shinzon and B-4, are mirrored reflections of the same individuals, it is the essence of their moral character which makes them unique.
The irony of bond shared between Captain Picard and Shinzon is that while they share a unique connection in that they are literally the same person in the physical sense, they are very different individuals in a moral sense. Captain Picard lives by a code of moral integrity. His empathy for his crew, and even for Shinzon, himself, is what makes Picard an honorable man. While Shinzon is a man of extraordinary power, his mortal weakness is that while he wants to take Captain Picard’s identity as his own, he can never truly replace Picard. Although he needs Picard’s blood in order to ensure his own survival, Shinzon’s desire to destroy those who sought to oppress him has extinguished the fragile essence of his humanity and transformed him into an entity of darkness.
Although his initial purpose in the film is to aid Shinzon in stealing Picard’s identity, what Commander Data’s counterpart, B-4, different from Shinzon is that unlike Shinzon, his moral character…his “soul” so to speak…is able to be restored. When Data sacrifices his own life to save the life of Captain Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew, his memories are allowed to live on through B-4. When Picard re-activates B-4 to tell him of Data’s tragic demise, there is a moment as Captain Picard is leaving where B-4 begins humming a song that Data sang at the beginning of the film. While it is never clearly established that B-4 has undergone a positive character transformation, there is a certain comfort in knowing that the possibility of Data infinite goodness living on through B-4 is there.
© 2013 – 2016 Keriane Kellogg. All rights reserved.
Director: Stuart Baird
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFaddan, Tom Hardy
In “Star Trek: Nemesis”, the Enterprise and her crew, led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, are summoned to the planet Romulus under the pretense of establishing peace with a hostile alien race. That peace is soon shattered when Picard and his crew discover a dangerous secret lurking on Romulus; a secret that could extinguish not only Picard’s life, but the existence of humanity itself.
Identity plays a vital role in the framework of the story, and nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in the characters of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his loyal comrade, Commander Data. The dilemma that both Captain Picard and Commander Data face in the film is the realization that although their own identities and those of their counterparts, Shinzon and B-4, are mirrored reflections of the same individuals, it is the essence of their moral character which makes them unique.
The irony of bond shared between Captain Picard and Shinzon is that while they share a unique connection in that they are literally the same person in the physical sense, they are very different individuals in a moral sense. Captain Picard lives by a code of moral integrity. His empathy for his crew, and even for Shinzon, himself, is what makes Picard an honorable man. While Shinzon is a man of extraordinary power, his mortal weakness is that while he wants to take Captain Picard’s identity as his own, he can never truly replace Picard. Although he needs Picard’s blood in order to ensure his own survival, Shinzon’s desire to destroy those who sought to oppress him has extinguished the fragile essence of his humanity and transformed him into an entity of darkness.
Although his initial purpose in the film is to aid Shinzon in stealing Picard’s identity, what Commander Data’s counterpart, B-4, different from Shinzon is that unlike Shinzon, his moral character…his “soul” so to speak…is able to be restored. When Data sacrifices his own life to save the life of Captain Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew, his memories are allowed to live on through B-4. When Picard re-activates B-4 to tell him of Data’s tragic demise, there is a moment as Captain Picard is leaving where B-4 begins humming a song that Data sang at the beginning of the film. While it is never clearly established that B-4 has undergone a positive character transformation, there is a certain comfort in knowing that the possibility of Data infinite goodness living on through B-4 is there.
© 2013 – 2016 Keriane Kellogg. All rights reserved.