23 Years Later, Trekkies Finally Unveil the Fix That Could Redeem Star Trek's Worst Movie

Every so often, the internet coughs up a take that makes me mutter: yep, that would have fixed it. This time it is Star Trek: Nemesis, and Reddit is 23 years late with the best note anyone could have given that movie.

"Tomalak should have been in the movies!"

That headline from a TNG subreddit thread by user TotallyRegularBanana is the whole ballgame. Nemesis gave us Shinzon, a moody clone of Picard played by a young Tom Hardy, and somehow turned a film marketed as a Romulan story into a detour about Remans and a superweapon. Meanwhile, the perfect foil for a final TNG outing was already sitting on the shelf: Tomalak.

Why Tomalak would have actually felt like a finale

Tomalak, Picard's smartest Romulan counterpart from TNG, came with history, tension, and that icy mutual respect that made their standoffs pop. Imagine the last TNG movie cashing in on that long-running chess match instead of introducing a whole new species and a last-minute clone. You tie off years of Romulan build-up, you keep the stakes personal, and you give Picard a rival who can win the room without a planet-killer. That is a goodbye with some weight.

Nemesis, on the other hand, sidelined the Romulan Star Empire in its own big-screen showcase and handed the story to the newly invented Remans and Shinzon. The result felt undercooked across the board, and the stakes never quite landed because so much of it was brand new in what was supposed to be a send-off.

The bigger problem: it plays like bargain-bin Khan

Part of why Nemesis has a reputation as the series low point is that it keeps tracing the outline of The Wrath of Khan without earning it. You can spot the pieces: a grudge-obsessed villain, a doomsday device, and a climactic, sacrificial goodbye. It is all there, just thinner. If you are wrapping up TNG, the last thing you want to do is drop in a brand-new race and recycle another era's greatest hits.

Quick file on Nemesis

• Title: Star Trek: Nemesis
• Release year: 2002
• Franchise/era: Star Trek – The Next Generation
• Film number: 10th Star Trek feature
• Director: Stuart Baird
• Writers: John Logan (story & screenplay), with Rick Berman and Brent Spiner credited
• Main cast: Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard), Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), Brent Spiner (Data), LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher), Michael Dorn (Worf), Tom Hardy (Shinzon)
• Primary antagonist: Shinzon, a Romulan-grown clone of Picard
• Plot focus: Picard confronts his clone, who plans to unleash a planet-destroying weapon on Earth
• Music: Jerry Goldsmith
• Box office: about $67 million worldwide on a $60 million budget (per Box Office Mojo)
• Significance: final TNG-era film; last on-screen appearance of Data

And behind the curtain...

The production did not help. Stuart Baird reportedly never quite connected with the TNG cast and came in trying to retool things from the ground up. Between that vibe and the script's Kirk-era deja vu, you get a movie where a lot of choices add up to less than the sum of the parts.

So would Tomalak alone have saved it?

Not by himself. Nemesis had multiple problems. But putting Picard's established Romulan rival at the center would have solved the biggest storytelling miss: it would have made the final TNG movie feel like an earned culmination, not a late-series detour. As a what-if, it is annoyingly perfect.

If you want to revisit the debate firsthand, Star Trek: Nemesis is streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S.