Star Trek Nemesis doesn’t suck as a Dracula movie
By Mike Poteet
Praetor Shinzon and his Viceroy form a sort of “dual vampire.”
In Stoker’s novel, Dracula can take many forms: a nobleman, a large dog, a vampire bat, or a mist. In Star Trek Nemesis, our “vampire” has two forms: Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy) and his Reman Viceroy (Ron Perlman, unrecognizable beneath his prosthetics).
As noted above, the Viceroy and his fellow Remans all look like Count Orlok in Nosferatu. Makeup artist Michael Westmore told Sci-Fi Wire two decades ago that Nemesis director Stuart Baird wanted a villain who looked like Orlok. But the Viceroy also has psychic powers, much the way Count Dracula does.
For his part, Shinzon lives on the blood of others—one other, specifically: Jean-Luc Picard. He is a clone created from Picard’s own DNA and, in the back half of the film, as Shinzon’s physical condition deteriorates, Dr. Crusher explains that only a transfusion of Picard’s blood might save Shinzon. “He needs your blood to live,” she says. It’s hard to get a more overt identification of Shinzon as a vampire.