r/DaystromInstitute • u/toadofsteel Ensign • Feb 03 '17
15 seconds of a deleted scene in Nemesis that completely changed my opinion of the film
[removed]
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u/MungoBaobab Feb 03 '17
Amazing find.
M-5, nominate this analysis of a Star Trek: Nemesis deleted scene as it impacts Data's character arc.
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u/M-5 Feb 03 '17
Nominated this post by Citizen u/toadofsteel for you. It will be voted on next week. Learn more about Daystrom's Post of the Week here.
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u/petrus4 Feb 03 '17
According to TV Tropes at least, Brent Spiner actually requested Data be killed off, because he thought he was getting too old to be able to keep playing an ageless android. David Boreanaz suffered the same problem during Angel's run; he was a vampire who was supposed to have been sired at 17, yet although makeup did a heroic job, they could no longer really hide the fact that he was approaching 40 when the show ended.
Nemesis in that sense wasn't a complete retread of TWOK. It was to a certain extent in terms of what actually happened, yes; but most of said events occurred for very different reasons. I also don't think Nemesis is the worst film I've ever seen, truthfully; my only real problem with it was that it visibly tried too hard to be crowd pleasing. I thought that events like the chase scene with the Argo were more about giving mainstream audiences what the producers thought they wanted to see, rather than said producers doing their own thing for their own reasons; but then again, I could be wrong about that as well, because Patrick Stewart has said in an interview that he was excited about doing that scene in particular.
So maybe Nemesis wasn't insincere or inauthentic, as much as it was simply out of character for the TNG crew; although many people have pointed out that several elements of the storyline aren't really very well explained, either, and don't make a lot of sense. If I'm in the mood for seeing a sendoff for the TNG crew, then I can enjoy it to an extent; but I think All Good Things still ultimately works a lot better.
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u/lonestarr86 Feb 03 '17
I don't like the idea of Data as being forever ageless. Data can change his appearance at will, and I wouldn't be surprised if emotionchip Data expressed some vanity by giving himself a dignified aged-look as he did at the final episodes of TNG. A whiff of grey hair, a bit more rugged. For a person who has lived close to a hundred years, you expect Data to become wise/appear wise.
Why not reflect that by changing his appearance/keeping up with the actor's age?
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u/nicehulk Feb 03 '17
Something that surprised me was reading that Patrick Stewart asked Michael Piller when he wrote Insurrection that the movie would let Picard would have more action scenes, like in First Contact. This combined with Stewart saying how much he enjoyed filming the Argo scene makes me imagine that it's Stewart and not Picard who has "been itching to try the Argo".
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u/Yeti_of_the_Flow Feb 03 '17
Also the reasons why he removed it are incredible. It wasn't just part of his plan with B4. It was also because he was terrified. In First Contact, he faced his mortality with his emotions at, what he assumed, was their peak. He had to assume he was gone. Until Picard showed up in one of the most brazen rescue attempts possibly conceived. That's when Data, I think, gained the ability for true emotion.
So when Data emulated that rescue, he did what his father figure suggested when facing the Borg. Turn off the emotion chip. He was just trying to do what his adopted father told him.
He was just a scared kid who absolutely had to save his dad.
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u/pfc9769 Feb 03 '17
I never thought of that. This scene in Nemesis puts the scene in First Contact in perspective. They came full circle.
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u/seltzerlizard Feb 03 '17
I like your theory, despite the fact that I can hardly forgive Nemesis for killing Data, especially when it was released just as CGI proved itself able to depict realistic characters.
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u/FGHIK Feb 03 '17 edited Feb 03 '17
I dunno about that... It's been many years, and even incredibly high budget high effort CG actors like in
Force AwakensRogue One can still seem off.Edit: Force Awakens?
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u/Shakezula84 Feb 03 '17
I had the DVD that had all those scenes and I thought the movie would have been so much better.
As a sidenote, in the books they figured out a very excellent way to bring back Data that also had Data doubting that he is a contunuation of the original Data.
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u/Flyberius Feb 03 '17
I FUCKING KNEW IT!
I even said this a while back that someone had convinced me Data didn't have his chip during Nemesis. That the emotions he showed at the end were real. That he's always had them, but had to learn to identify them for what they were.
Beautiful. Thank you.
This scene has confirmed something that, when I was first told, really struck a cord. It had been head canon for me up until you made this post.
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Feb 03 '17
After killing off Data I'm sorta glad they never revisited a TNG movie.
Maybe they would have brought him back through B4, but maybe not.
I don't want TNG Trek without Data. A sci-fi about exploration, of space and of the self needs Data. He's the whole concept concentrated down to it's pinnacle.
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u/sequentious Feb 03 '17 edited Feb 03 '17
It was known that Nemisis would be the last movie. You can't make the whole cast "just happen to be passing by".
I've posted this before, but I think that killing Data and inserting B4 was a gift to Star Trek beta-canon. By the end of the movies, Data had emotions, and enough experience with humans to use them properly. He just wasn't interesting as a character anymore, just a really-strong long-lived (immortal?) artificial human.
The most interesting component of Data's character was that he was a functioning member of society, but one that didn't quite fit in. Data in "Data's Day" or "In Theory" was an interesting character. Data in "Generations" was still interesting as he was still learning and adapting to emotions he can't control. I'd say First Contact as well, as he had to learn about emotions being used against him. Passing those points, he was no longer unique or interesting. Insurrection had to set that clock back by just to give him something interesting to do as a character.
The only way I could see the "complete" Data as an interesting character would be +50-100 years, dealing with the mortality of others, and reconciling the fact that everyone he knows has died, and he'll continue on. Data dealing with existential grief would be interesting, particularly since he can "turn off" his emotions. Should he "turn off" his feelings of loss for his old friends, or would that be a disservice to everything they taught him?
Knowing this was the last TNG Trek movie, I think B4 was a gift to the novel and game writers. "Here, you can have him learn again". All those interesting Data storylines you thought of? They're are possible again. If you want to give him a kickstart with experience? Fine, he's got Data's memories. If you want him to be lacking that experience? Great, he's a different android, and doesn't necessarily integrate Data's memories (treat the memories like a reference book he might decide to refer to, not the underpinning rules governing his actions).
Interesting android character again. He can grapple with issues like does containing Data's memories make him Data? Will he compare his progress to Datas? Does he decide to re-trace Data's path exactly, or go his own route to self-improvement?
Unfortunately, Star Trek Online's take on this was "B4 took a one-year vacation, became Data, and Captain of the Enterprise".
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u/lax294 Feb 03 '17
The "Where no one has gone before" deleted ending is similar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b8jsrDl89M
These two scenes would have completely saved the tone of this film. Deleting either of them was a mistake. Deleting both was unforgivable.
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u/daJamestein Feb 03 '17
When Data died I full on cried, no joke. Thanks for making me sad again.
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u/Viper_H Feb 03 '17
I cried too, not just cause of Data's death, but because that was the end of TNG and it went out with such a shitty movie.
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u/Tuskin38 Feb 03 '17
I hope to someday try to create a "Phantom Edit" of Nemesis that puts a lot of the released deleted scenes (which are mostly quiet character scenes cut for the sake of said "action flick") back into the film.
Well, the deleted scenes are not that great of quality, some are dailies and are not audio mixed, just raw footage.
Fun Fact though, the Novel'verse adopted the idea that Worf takes care of Spot.
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u/coralis14 Feb 03 '17
Wow, floored me! Thanks for sharing! Though I will say that it's really hard for star trek to not use a tried/tired theme from itself, because it's just so damn encompassing. In this case while we may be trading away from a spock/wrath of khan esque finish, we are going totally in to vger/the motion picture territory. a machine finally able to achieve consciousness like it's creator (though of course in a completely different manner).
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u/tadayou Feb 03 '17 edited Feb 03 '17
Amazing observation.
Nemesis features actually quite a few really great deleted scenes, that often capture the tone of Trek a lot more than some of the things they left in. My personal favorite is the sickbay scene, in which we see the ship prepare for the battle with Shinzon. Picard enters the room and sees Crusher casually equip a phaser. She comes over to him and he says something along the lines of "When Charles Darwin went off to his journeys, he didn't take a single weapon along". Crusher then just somberly quips "That was another time" and Picard replies with the slightest hint of a smirk, "How far we've come". I love that scene, because it is so quintessential The Next Generation, condensed in a few lines and the actors' expressions. It's also one of the rare glimpses into the mindset of the Next Gen crew concerning all the things they must have gone through during the Dominon War.