Jenn & I just watched Star Trek — Nemesis tonight. We were both rather unimpressed. Between the bad directing, poor writing, and sub-par acting, it just didn’t work for us.

For starters, the bridge felt stiff and cluttered. Forget the warm sparseness of the bridge on the Enterprise D (for those of you not familiar with the various ships to bear the name Enterprise, that’s the one used in all the Next Gen episodes and the film Generations); the bridge here was darker, less open, and usually photographed with much closer shots. The new uniforms didn’t contribute anything beneficial (although they didn’t present a problem in First Contact).

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Our library has Star Trek — Q: The Fan Collective, a 4-disc collection of Trek episodes (mostly TNG, but some Voyager and one DS9) involving Q. We checked it out this week, and have been quite enjoying it. Some of the episodes are quite brilliant — Death Wish (Voyager) is a lot of fun, and All Good Things... (the TNG series finale) is still probably one of my favorite Trek episodes of all time.

Tonight we were watching Tapestry, a Next Gen episode where Picard nearly dies and is welcomed by Q to the “afterlife.” In this, he is given a chance to go back to his days just after graduating from the Academy and alter history, avoiding the fight in which he lost his heart. What struck me, however, is their use of physical appearance in Picard’s return. The uniforms were older, styled after the ones used by the original series cast in films 2-6. Also, and perhaps more strikingly, the haircuts and mannerisms of the characters seemed very 50’s. It worked quite well — by putting factors the audience would identify as old into the Trek universe (particularly in contrast to the crisp, futuristic appearance of the rest of the show), they successfully communicated to the viewer that the events they were seeing were some decades earlier than the show’s normal timeframe. Whoever came up with that idea had an excellent sense of how to draw a viewer fully in to an experience.