Predator: Nemesis' Scimitar; The Official Starships Collection Special 18

With one of the largest arsenals in the history of Star Trek, the Romulan/Reman Scimitar made a big impression even if the movie it featured in didn't.

Dwarfing the USS Enterprise-E, the vast Scimitar was the flagship for Picard's clone, Shinzon, as he took control of the Romulan Senate and looked to expand further afield.

Eaglemoss had a huge run on this model at its initial release meaning that I’ve had to wait a little over 9 months for its arrival and quite a bit has happened since then!

But there are a few concerns with this one. Those wings certainly give it some width but they are dangerously flimsy and bend at the slightest touch. As a major part of the design it's hard to get past holding them at some point. Both sides of the wings are heavily detailed with the unique panelling detail of the whole ship and that rolls back into the main hull. 

Everything about this ship screams aggression with the fang like weapon protrusion from the shoulders as well as the forked nose section. The central upper piece of the hull is the only part in metal which also means that the whole thing is surprisingly light. 

On screen the Scimitar looked a lot darker with the light blue highlights from its power sources glowing a lot stronger visually. The model itself is toned back down to the original design (as best is possible). Here those blue spots don't show up as well against the lighter grey and almost fade into the background. Initially it looks like they are only on the central section but check in a different light and you'll see that the whole model has this effect. It's the two extremely light colour tones that make it almost indistinguishable from the main hull.

Atop the main section there's a lot of that hull patterning and on the ventral side it's completely different. The line of symmetry runs front to back and there's something new to see from every angle. Even from the side you can catch the recessed centre line which is the best spot to see some of the very fine highlight blue detail perhaps thanks to the darker shadows.

The most impressive pieces though on the Scimitar are those touches around the nose and also to the rear beneath those overhanging engine pods.  To the front Eaglemoss have ensured all the weapon points are easy to see face on while at the back there's a lot of parts slotted together to complete the various extremities.

The winglets affixed to the top and those rear pods are good and sturdy additions onto the frame leaving only the wings - a huge bit - as the structural concern. Just don't be heavy handed. Scimitar has a lot of parts, possibly the most of any of the Specials and certainly over and above any of the regular issues. There are inserts for the main section, winglets top and bottom plus the pods to the rear and the build quality to bring all that together is very, very good. The seams and fittings are completely invisible and even checking the engine pods you have to look underneath to see how they are assembled. In this respect it's a masterclass on concealment to provide a polished and "flawfree" finish.

The stand fitting isn't too good with the Scimitar's weight pulling it to the front and also - oddly - slightly to one side meaning that the rear doesn't sit against the clear plastic grips. The plug into the black base might need a shade of filing down to get the sit right as there's a fair bit of movement.

The 20 page magazine is a treasure trove of sketches in the Design article that have probably rarely if ever been seen. The Scimitar hasn't received a lot of page time when it comes to exploring its background and this issue does a lot to address that. Scimitar, as you can find out here, was bristling with weapons at every point, backed up with an almost impenetrable cloaking device, Reman fighters, superior warp drive to the Enterprise and more.

Including a lot of screenshots from Nemesis, the issue details all the key features of the ship including a forward view of the ship with the wings open and closed. Those views are also included from its solo screen appearance and gives a bit more clarification to the deployment of the thalaron weapon that made it even more deadly.

This is a very, very special Special backed by the point that it sold out fast and took some time to restock (might also be due to a pandemic) but is one that fans need to have in the collection. It suits the larger size of these editions perfectly and the difficulty in bringing it to life only increases the desire to get hold of it. 

Getting the right information to build it has taken some time but it's meant the Scimitar has been made right and at the right time in the collection. Up to this point the only one available was the smaller Attack Wing miniature so don't wait to pick one up!

Read all our other reviews of The Official Starships Collection from issue ONE here.

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A Final Insult: Nemesis?

About two years ago I started writing a post on Star Trek: Nemesis that never made it beyond a few straggly lines. It rested in Development Hell until +James Patrik happened to mention he fancied drafting up a piece on the tenth motion picture. Who was I to refuse so, with a major rewrite, James and I can finally present one of SKoST's Lost Posts seemingly perfectly timed as Beyond begins filming and I actually managed to watch this movie again over the weekend...

Nemesis.  In the thirteen years since its release, its very name has become an epitaph to a bygone era of Star Trek.  

Hammering the final nail into the “Prime” universe’s coffin, its critical and commercial failure signalled the end of the Berman/Braga paradigm and the start of a long period of hibernation for the franchise.

While painfully aware of its terrible reputation among fans, we are firmly in the minority who appreciate the film for the fantastically flawed piece of Star Trek that it is.  Released at a time when interest in the franchise was at an all-time low, Nemesis exists as a curious beast when compared with the rest of the film franchise. Perhaps it's one that deserves more attention than the lauded First Contact if only for its shortcomings.

Four years after the previous film, Nemesis gathers all the familiar faces for what Paramount’s marketing department was quick to bill as a ‘generation’s final journey’.  But right away, things don’t look right.  After such a lengthy break, the characters look noticeably older, and sadly, appear to be operating on autopilot.  Having Stewart and Spiner involved in the production ensures the movie rapidly degenerates into the Picard and Data Show perhaps giving only Frakes as Riker an opportunity to spread his action wings.  Much like Insurrection before it, the growing influence of its stars during production only served to dilute the original story and satisfy ego. That over-familiarity with the subject matter could well have been a major thread in the unravelling of the franchise as it hobbled into the 21st Century.

Indeed, it is in the film’s story that the most significant problems can be found.  An ardent Trekkie, John Logan (an otherwise superlative writer) proves that fanboys aren’t always the right people for the job.  Culling elements from The Wrath of Khan, Logan’s theme of mirror images is an intriguing one, rife with storytelling potential.  Tom Hardy delivers an able performance as Shinzon, but alas, never really feels like Picard.  Much like Nero after him, his motivations remain unclear, robbing the film of its narrative spine. For Data, the discovery of yet another Soong-type android in the form of B-4 feels contrived and tired. Almost as bad is the egregious dune buggy sequence in which he is discovered (supplanting the gimmicky ‘manual steering column’ of the previous film). B-4 might even be seen as a huge insult and the biggest deus ex machina ever to grace Star Trek. Kill Data but hey, if all fails we can still bring him back. This kind of stuff might have worked in 1987 season one of The Next Generation (cue synth score) but not in cinematic 2003 territory.

It has often been said that Star Trek’s main draw-card is its characters.  Nemesis is a film that finds these characters out of focus, lost to action sequences and scenes of boring exposition.  The film’s deleted scenes reveal the mindset of the film-makers in the kinds of edits that were made.  For those who own the Blu-ray or special edition DVD, you can see a proper scene with Wesley, a final farewell for Beverly, the arrival of Riker’s replacement and a poignant reflection on the passage of time between Picard and Data. But the cuts also reveal an even darker edge to the film which would have seen Troi encounter Shinzon in a terrifying telepathic attack and add weight to the flimsy story which gives the counsellor very little to do.

The blame for these unkind cuts is often laid at the feet of director Stuart Baird.  While clearly able to put together a cracking action sequence, Baird shows little regard for the beloved The Next Generation crew, excising the more character driven scenes in favour of action, action, action!  While he has never commented on the film in the years since, numerous cast members have publicly criticised his direction, citing on set conflicts (referring to LeVar Burton as “Laverne”) and a fundamental misunderstanding of what Star Trek was about.  The end result is a story that feels emotionally bankrupt.  Compared to Spock’s funeral service, Data’s wake (and Sirtis’ crocodile tears) lacks emotional punch. It's almost gut-wrenchingly bad and comes close to ruining 15 years of hard work in minutes.

There is no payoff for the audience, and the film simply sputters to an end. Tragically the closing moments have Picard and B-4 engaging in little more than a sing-along which, while it reveals Data is still around - somewhere - it's a bit limp given the significance of the hour and you're left hoping that there will be another movie to give the crew the send-off they richly deserve. Even numbered this may be, high quality it ain't.

For a film that makes so many mistakes, it does get quite a few things right.  Tonally, the film is refreshingly dark – enhanced by a foreboding (and excellent) score from Star Trek stalwart Jerry Goldsmith who deftly weaves electronic elements into an otherwise traditional sci-fi film score. Linked intrinsically to the franchise on both the big and small screen though it could be said that his involvement had been as overstayed as Berman's tenure at the top. Certainly one thing that can be applauded in the JJ-verse is that Michael Giachinno's score has brought a dynamic versatility to events. However, Goldsmith does solidly deliver with Nemesis, more aware of his material than the director may have been.

The climactic battle in the Bassen Rift is without a doubt one of the most exciting sequences in all of Star Trek.  Featuring the final on-screen appearance of the Enterprise-E, Nemesis makes good use of much improved CGI technology, delivering a battle unlike anything seen in Star Trek before.  For the first time, viewers saw redshirts despatched into the vacuum of space as the main bridge was blown apart, not to mention the Enterprise ramming the Scimitar in a sequence that is both exciting and terrifying. The Scimitar itself is a work of art. Rightly noted as a predator by Picard upon decloaking it's one of the most vicious, dominating and memorable ships ever and does get to bear her teeth. There is a great Attack Wing miniature available and hopefully we'll get to see an Eaglemoss entry in the Starships Collection soon when they manage to work out all the finer details. 

It is in this way that Nemesis points the way forward, offering Trekkies a sign of things to come; more action, faster pacing and huge set pieces (and ships).  After examining these high octane elements, one might speculate that at this point Berman had become aware of the shifting demands of modern audiences.  Was it too little, too late? Potentially but by the time he might have realised it was time to move on the final nail was in the coffin and the drastically diminished box office takings revealed how bad things actually were.

Alas, all speculation is moot. This film now stands as the final instalment in the “Prime” movie franchise, replaced in 2009 by JJ Abrams Nu-Trek.  Though the two films released thus far have been resounding financial successes, they continue to polarise the fan base in a way Nemesis never did.

Set in the year 2379, Nemesis represents the farthest point in future history depicted on screen.  With series Star Trek Enterprise scrapped in 2005, and the Nu-Trek films continuing, Star Trek has effectively been trapped in prequel-land ever since. Even the majority of the more well-known fan films tend to rely on the cheaper-to-produce classic era.

I have always felt that The Next Generation crew deserved better - a fonder, more definitive farewell. Before the film’s 2002 release, Patrick Stewart claimed that there were plans for a sequel; however those appear to have been consigned to the dustbin. With the third rebooted Star Trek film being released next year, and a number of dormant media properties being reborn (The X-Files, Heroes, Full House) there may still a slim chance that Picard and co will be seen on screen one final time.

Who can be certain?  It’s sci-fi.  It’s Star Trek.  And there are always possibilities - at least that's what Spock said...and he was right.

Have we got it right? Go on - you know you can't resist commenting about Nemesis...