One Star Trek: Nemesis scene remains completely unwatchable

Star Trek: Nemesis has never been a fan favorite film in the franchise

The movie has been known as the film to end any fruther movies from the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast. Fans can offer so many reasons why Nemesis just wasn’t a good film. Tom Hardy, who played Shinzon, was often blamed the most for the film’s failure, and that hate took a toll on the actor to the point where he had thought about suicide.

There were many contributing factors to Nemesis’ failure at the box office. Shinzon could have been a perfectly good villain, but there was simply too much of him. Even Jonathan Frakes told Trekmovie back in 2009 that, had he directed, the movie would have been more about the cast of The Next Generation than Tom Hardy’s character because fans had gone to the theater to see “their family.” One scene in particular with Shinzon should have been deleted from the movie altogether as, in that one moment, he became a villain that no one could redeem.

Star Trek: Nemesis made a risky move that didn’t pay off.

When Praetor Shinzon, via a telepathic link with the help of his Reman Viceroy, violates Deanna Troi, he lost the audience, and we simply didn’t care what happened to him any longer. We weren’t looking for his redemption. We weren’t interested in how sad or desperate his childhood was. We only wanted him dead.

Though Shinzon didn’t touch Deanna physically, every viewer knew what was happening. Not only was this NOT the first time this had happened to Deanna (as she had been virtually attacked aboard the Enterprise in the season five episode of The Next Generation “Violations,”) but it was a completely unnecessary scene. Every viewer knew that Shinzon was evil. Throwing in a bit of psychic rape only made us hate him more.

To this day, that scene remains unwatchable in Star Trek: Nemesis. Deanna (Marina Sirtis) was only used as a tool to show the audience just how cruel Shinzon was, but we didn’t need that traumatic scene to confirm what we already knew.