Star Trek Nemesis is the vampire movie to watch this Halloween.
Whether or not Star Trek Nemesis was a satisfying conclusion to the journeys of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his Enterprise crew is now a moot debate, given the impending arrival of Star Trek: Picard Season 3. But in my mind, there’s no question that Nemesis makes a pretty satisfying vampire story.
I realized the true nature of Star Trek Nemesis when I first read the vampire story which, while not the first vampire story, is the standard by which all others are judged. Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. In Dracula, Stoker wove together myriad strands of vampiric lore to create a tense tale of terror and suspense that still holds up, and still casts a spell on legions of readers.
Other observers have commented on similarities between Star Trek Nemesis and Dracula. “[E]ven though I have no idea if it was intentional,” Darren Franich wrote for EW in 2016, “I have to assume it was at least partially purposeful that Nemesis occasionally and specifically follows the structure of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” And last Halloween, Joe George at the official Star Trek website noted how the Remans in Nemesis “quite resemble” Count Orlok in Nosferatu (1922), the silent German “unauthorized adaptation of Dracula.”
Let’s take a look at some similarities between Star Trek Nemesis and Dracula by Bram Stoker.
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.
The vampire mentally attacks women, some of whom fight back.
Our own Rachel Carrington has pointed out how difficult the scene in which Praetor Shinzon, aided by his Viceroy, mentally rapes Counselor Troi is to watch. Rachel called the scene “completely unnecessary.” I’d agree we didn’t need one more psychic violation of Troi in Star Trek canon. But this distasteful and disturbing scene is perfectly positioned and necessary if we’re looking at Nemesis as a riff on Dracula.
As Franich noted for EW, Troi is “taking the place of Mina” Harker in Dracula, one of the two women in the novel whom the Count seduces/hypnotizes/violates through a “barely-defined” mental link. The other is Lucy Westenra. Poor Lucy does not survive her encounters with Dracula. Mina does, and her mental connection to the Count eventually helps vampire hunter Van Helsing, her husband Johnathan Harker, and the rest of the novel’s heroes hunt Dracula down.
The way Nemesis “pick[s] up on the triumphant part of the Mina Harker plotline” is one of the few points for which Franich praises the film. Troi turns her unwanted psychic connection to Shinzon and the Viceroy against them, using it to target the Enterprise’s photon torpedoes and delivering a crippling blow to their ship.
The vampire sees himself as a heroic freedom fighter.
In Star Trek Nemesis, Praetor Shinzon justifies his actions by painting himself as the Remans’ liberator. He asks Jean-Luc, “Were we Picards always warriors?”
Similarly, in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula sees himself as a heroic leader on the battlefield. Early in the book, while talking late at night with Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula recalls the many wars in which his ancestors—or, perhaps, he himself—has fought: “we of the Dracula blood … would not brook that we were not free” (Chapter II). As the novel continues, however, it becomes clear Dracula is continuing an age-old quest to conquer others, first in England, and then the world.
Other themes and images further establish Star Trek Nemesis as the franchise’s version of Dracula, from the crew’s initial shadowy, spooky audience with Shinzon on the Scimitar—compare Harker’s ominous arrival at Castle Dracula in the book’s opening pages—to the fact that Shinzon dies by impalement, just as Dracula’s brides are impaled by stakes in Stoker’s book. (The Count himself is done in by knife blades.) So if you’re looking for a Star Trek movie to watch this Halloween, Star Trek Nemesis is your best bet.