As this "attack of the clone" movie limps along at the box office like a wounded animal, it should be clear that a drastic change in the direction for the movie franchise is needed. Star Trek Nemesis is neither aimed at a general audience, nor at Trek’s core audience, instead falling in some hellish middle-ground where bad pictures go to die.

I think my disappointment with the Next Generation movie franchise is heightened by my belief that we still haven’t really seen a movie about the characters from the TV show. Something happened to Patrick Stewart between the end of the TV run and the start of the movies, and instead of the thoughtful and elegant Captain Jean-Luc Picard, we’ve been treated to movies starring Johnny Picard, action hero. But, dammit, Picard isn’t an action hero! That’s Riker’s role, or at least, it was for seven years on TV.

I realize the decision to put Picard at the center of all the big action storylines in the films is driven by amount of money paid to Patrick to star in them, but it just continually works against the premise of the series. The cool, intellectual Picard of the series has become a grinning, laughing off-road driving maniac, who apparently isn’t smart enough to order extra security (Worf and Data will do) when investigating a wildly out-of-place sensor reading on a potentially hostile planet. Is that “nitpicky,” or just an example of how the actions these characters are taking in the movies don’t jibe with anything we’ve seen before?

Take, for example, Johnny Picard, action hero, FREEZING UP AT A CRUCIAL MOMENT at the film’s ridiculous climax. (And, folks, we’re going to be talking about plot points here, so if you don’t want to know what happens, turn back now until you’ve seen the film.) Picard is so stunned by Shinzon’s attack and final words that he sits there, immobile, as the destruction of his ship is being counted down by the computer. That’s okay, because Data shows up to save Picard’s ass. But does Data use the knowledge he specifically referred to earlier in the film to stop the doomsday weapon from firing? I mean, there had to be a point to that whole “Data learning to read Reman computer controls” thing we saw earlier? Here’s where it pays off, right? Data can now read the Reman computer controls, and simply power down the big doomsday weapon, right? Uh, yeah, or apparently, Data can shoot it with a phaser, blowing himself and the Reman ship to kingdom come. I kinda’ thought suicide was against Data’s programming, but hey, after appearing in this movie, I can understand why he’d want to check out permanently.

Ah yes, the Reman ship. Funny, isn’t it, how the Remans, who apparently are looked over by Romulan guards, managed to build a ship that is more powerful than anything in the Romulan fleet, much less the Federation fleet? You’d think the Romulans would have noticed. (Or, at the very least, it would have put an end to the guards.) Then again, the relationship between Romulus and Remus (Sister planets? But one very much in control of the other, I thought … who knows?) was pretty poorly defined.

(By the way, is there really a Starfleet? Dear God, let’s see them then, as opposed to just seeing “dots” on a map of the quadrant. We don’t even get to see Riker’s new ship at the end of this film, one of the many times I felt cheated by Nemesis. More on that later.)

The modern Star Trek movies are about choices. Some choices, I agree with, and some choices, I could do without. (“Rain Data,” or B-4, is a particularly noxious choice.) I’d love to see Riker do something. I’d love to see Geordi do something, anything, other than read display panels. I’d love to see Crusher do something … especially with Picard. I mean, Troi and Riker get married, and we get nothing between Picard and his longtime forbidden love? If you want to change the characters in the movies, make logical, progressive changes that stem from what we’ve seen before. Worf, in particular, is played almost entirely for comic relief. Gee, I remember when the Klingons were a proud warrior race. Thinking back to the series, I remember Worf’s hatred of the Romulans, due to how they treated his family (completely ignored here, of course). I remember seeing Troi kick ass during an undercover mission ON BOARD A ROMULAN SHIP, when she actually passed as a Romulan commander (completely ignored here, of course). Missed opportunities abound.

I guess I just don’t understand why certain things that would make the movie make more sense to fans of the show get left out. I mean, I know how Rick Berman and company are desperate to make modern Star Trek appeal to the widest audience possible (hence, 7 of 9 and T’Pol, catsuit-wearing hotties designed to lure the "Maxim" crowd to the Trek universe), but c’mon man, throw us a bone! For example, a major, major storyline in the TV series involved Data’s evil twin robot brother, Lore. Granted, as plotlines go, “Evil Twin” isn’t the most creative, but still, Lore, who looked exactly like Data, except for that whole evil thing, was a major villain presence in the TV series. So in the movie, the Enterprise goes to investigate the discovery of an android in six pieces who, when reassembled, looks exactly like Data. Does anyone say, “Gee, remember the last time we ran in to one of Data’s ‘brothers,’ and we reactivated him, and he turned out to be horrifically evil, and allied with the Borg, and caused the death of a bunch of crew members?”

Nope. Not a word about Lore, lest we offend or challenge that vaunted “popular” audience. So when B-4 turns evil, and acts against the Enterprise, eventually leading to the death of a bunch of crew members, the only people who are surprised are the characters on screen. They shouldn’t be, and I certainly wasn’t.

As mentioned before, there were plenty of other times I felt cheated by this film. Let’s start with the end and work our way backwards. The end shot of the film, the big capper to the whole adventure is … um … the Enterprise up on blocks, in a spacedock, getting fixed. Well, that’s okay, because the shot before that showed … um … I don’t know, Johnny Picard, action hero, in his messy office, or something. (Why, in the movies, is Picard’s desk always cluttered with about a billion of those colored, translucent clipboard things???) How about a “going away” shot of Riker and his new ship? How about a “going away” shot of the Next Generation crew, at stations on the bridge? Let’s see our crew for the last time before they sail off in to the sunset, huh? Not the damn ship getting repaired.

Then there are the moments that are just too dumb to be believed. For example, Picard, Worf and Data have to go down to Mystery Planet to pick up the pieces of a positronic android. And they have to take this cool shuttlecraft and off-road ATV thing, not because it makes sense to do so – no, what makes sense is for Picard to say, “Geordi, erect a level five force field around cargo bay two, and have the pieces transported there” – but so we can have a poorly staged, false-jeopardy “chase” scene on the planet, where three of Starfleet’s most decorated officers, in violation of the prime directive, are unable to avoid detection by a pre-warp civilization. Gee, you think it has something to do with Picard setting down the shuttle two kilometers away from the signal they’re tracking? I mean, that’s not exactly right next to it. Not only do they not scan for approaching life forms (and remember, these scanners detected the positronic Data-like parts buried in sand from several light years away), but they let the natives get so close as to be able to shoot at Picard and company. Ridiculous and insulting. I mean, if you’re not going to play by the very simple rules established in 35+ years and 600+ episodes of Star Trek, then why should I care about what happens?

Oh, and Riker finally does have a big fight scene, but it's not with the guy who mind-raped his fiancé. It’s with the guy who helped, so I guess that’s close enough for vengeance. But the fight all takes place in a part of the Enterprise that is so unbelievable, I actually thought that he and the guy he was fighting had stepped in to an alternate universe. Actually, he may have stepped in to the Star Wars universe. The bad guy made his getaway a la Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie in A New Hope, cutting out a floor panel and dropping in to the tunnels below. And for “the galaxy’s most feared fighting force,” the Reman soldiers definitely trained at the “Storm Trooper Target Shooting Academy.” I think I counted one hit among the hundreds of shots they fired.

People who hate Riker (and that apparently includes the film’s writers) have a lot to like about the film, though. Who among us can forget Picard cutting off Riker’s balls in front of the rest of the crew with a cheery “You have the bridge, Mr. Troi?” Does that sound at all like Picard? Why not just have Picard call Riker p-whipped and get it over with?

I saw Brent Spiner, the beloved Data and co-writer of the film, on a behind-the-scenes special, saying, “To me, Star Trek has always been about action-adventure.” Um, really? Then where the hell were you during the original series, or The Next Generation, or Deep Space Nine? If anything, Star Trek has been about THOUGHTFUL action-adventure, and even that’s a stretch. Star Trek, at its best, is about what it means to be human. This movie, despite its cloning and brotherhood storyline, is not.

The movie’s other writer, John Logan, claims to be a fan of Trek. That’s great, John. But it didn’t show on screen. In short, I hope we’ve seen the last Next Generation movie. I don’t think I could stand seeing these characters put through another film like this. Which is too bad, because they used to be the stars of a pretty kick-ass TV show.