“He Was A F—ing Editor”: Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner And Ron Perlman Skewer ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’ Director
2003’s Star Trek: Nemesis was the fourth feature film for the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew and their final big screen voyage. Deemed a bomb by Paramount and panned by critics and fans, the movie was the last one in the Trek film franchise until it got rebooted six years later by J.J. Abrams with Chris Pine and crew. There are multiple reasons for the failures of Nemesis, but many involved in the project point to director Stuart Baird as a primary villain. The latest bit of Baird-bashing comes from Jonathan Frakes (who had directed the previous two Star Trek movies) and Brent Spiner on their new podcast Dropping Names with special guest (and Nemesis co-star) Ron Perlman.
Baird bash
Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes have insisted from the jump that their podcast, Dropping Names with Brent and Jonny, is not a Star Trek podcast — but it is at least an interesting coincidence that so far, outside of Seth MacFarlane, the guests with Trek ties that they’ve had on all worked on Star Trek: Nemesis. Their first guest was LeVar Burton, Geordi LaForge himself. Then they had John Logan, the movie’s screenwriter. Most recently, they caught up with Ron Perlman, who played the Reman viceroy in the movie. In their conversation, Perlman joined other members of the cast who say director Stuart Baird, an acclaimed Hollywood editor by that point, was ill-fitted to direct the pivotal and ultimately disappointing final film in the TNG saga.
Perlman said the cast observed Baird “had no people skills whatsoever” and believed he was only there because he had saved some major Paramount projects over the years. “He was not a director, he was a f—ing editor that the studio owed a favor to,” Perlman said. “Because he saved a lot of their turkeys. They would bring him in when they had a turkey, and he would recut it and turn it watchable. So he was a very talented editor, but he was not a director… He’s not a filmmaker. [It’s] that attitude, like, ‘anybody can do this, you know, let’s just give it to that guy.’”
Patrick Stewart with director Stuart Baird behind the scenes of Star Trek: Nemesis
Spiner agreed with Perlman’s assessment of Baird as being “not a director,” but Brent praised Baird’s “world class” resume as an editor, which included Superman and Lethal Weapon before Nemesis and Casino Royale and Skyfall (where he reunited with Logan) after it. Frakes said the cast knew they might be in trouble when Baird turned down offers to have conversations with them about their characters and the franchise in general.
“Patrick and I all offered to have lunch with him, because we’d done 182 episodes and three movies together. I said, ‘Is there anything we can do to help you?’ He was not interested in talking to us at all about how we rolled. Talk about a family, because we rolled as a family.”
Ron Perlman as the Reman Viceroy in Star Trek: Nemesis.
After leaving Frakes hanging on that offer, Frakes says Baird also left him and Perlman literally hanging for an extended period of time while they were filming the stunt on the catwalk while they discussed a change to the scene. “And Ron swings over and he whispers in my ear, ‘We’re too old to be action heroes,’” Frakes said.
The group also talked about how Nemesis was the “breakout” role for a young Tom Hardy (Shinzon), with Perlman saying “he was so sweet, and so deferential.” Spiner also noted how Hardy was “not treated well” by Baird.
Revisiting Nemesis
Some have accused the original ten Star Trek movies of having a predictable pattern: The odd-numbered ones are not as strong as the even-numbered ones. Sure, those “odd” movies have defenders (“The Motion Picture is Trek at its most cerebral!” “Search for Spock” has the fun stealing-the-Enterprise scene!” “What if Shatner got to make The Final Frontier he envisioned?” “Generations unites the two most iconic captains!” “Insurrection… Okay, you got me”). But if you really want to prove that rule is a myth, you just have to point to the final film. The even-numbered Star Trek: Nemesis, acknowledged in production and marketing as the likely swan song for the Next Generation cast, nearly plunged the franchise into oblivion.
Publicity photo for Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Nemesis had certain things going for it. Seeing the cast again is always great, Riker and Troi got married, the visual effects rebounded from Insurrection, and, well, there’s not much else. The movie puts the stars in action beats that feel a bit awkward for their ages, like Perlman alluded to (and like the original cast in Star Trek V). There’s the questionable-at-best “violation” that the viceroy does to Troi, which pays off in the counselor being able to guide the Enterprise’s targeting system to find the cloaked ship, a power we’d never seen from Betazoids. The moment was somewhat redeemed in the series finale of Star Trek: Picard, but I digress. The biggest criticism is the central message of the movie was confusing: Why couldn’t Shinzon aspire to be more than he was, exactly? Isn’t he aspiring to be a leader for the Remans? Are we all purely products of our environment with no hope of escaping them or determining our own values?
Data’s death was heroic (if a little sudden), but Logan saying earlier this year that the expectation was that Data would come back (presumably through B-4) had that creative team gotten to do another movie means it might not have amounted to much. The deleted scenes are charming, but they hardly hide a cure. There’s a quick chat with Wesley Crusher, some whimsical moments in the mess hall with B-4, another scene where Picard and Data share a glass of wine, where Worf and Geordi go through Data’s belongings, and a gag intro to Picard’s new first officer. But if you add them all to the movie, it doesn’t change the muddled theme or dial back the action. Perhaps it would have landed like Star Trek V — for all its warts, at least it had Kirk, Spock and Bones together around the campfire.
Since the train is rolling here, one final point that doesn’t get mentioned much but says something about the movie: There are a number of shots with production errors that can be distracting if you notice them. Since the film was made with real monitors showing the computer images the characters were looking at, there are a few instances where you can see reflected green screen.
That screen sure is green
It’s comforting to know this was not the final time we saw the Next Generation cast, but any time this is on, the parts that resonate the most are the classic moments with them: The briefing scenes, Picard and Data (as well as Geordi and Data) talking about life, and the goodbye between Picard and Riker were just right.
What do you think of Nemesis, which will turn 25 next winter?
You can watch the full conversation with Spiner, Frakes, and Perlman, which also touches on how the latter’s new studio will get more movies made, here:
Keep up with everything to do with the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
