The Worst Star Trek Movie Secretly Connects To The Best TNG Episode
Star Trek fans often debate over which of the films is the best, but most of us can agree on the worst: Nemesis, an action film starring baby Tom Hardy, which brought the TNG film era to a disappointing end. Perhaps the only thing that redeems that film is that it brings us plenty of info about the Romulans, including the fact that they decided to clone Captain Picard. The movie implies he was cloned before becoming captain of the Federation flagship, which means the Romulans probably knew how important Picard would become thanks to Tasha Yar traveling to the past in the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
Star Trek: Nemesis
For this Star Trek: Nemesis theory to make sense, we’re going to need to channel Ensign Tilly and harness “the power of math, people!” The movie doesn’t tell us exactly when Shinzon was cloned, but we get some interesting clues: we know that he spent almost 10 years in the Reman mines before being sent to fight in the Dominion War, and before he was exiled, Romulan leadership wanted to eventually replace Captain Picard with this clone. Romulan leadership changed around 2365 (as explained in the TNG episode “The Defector”), and the new leaders gave up on this crazy plan.
A Possibilitiy Raised By Nemesis
Now, why is all of this Star Trek: Nemesis math important, and where does “Yesterday’s Enterprise” come in? At first glance, it makes sense that the Romulans would want to clone and replace Captain Picard…after all, he is an influential Starfleet officer who commands the Federation flagship. However, based on the dates provided by Nemesis, it seems like Shinzon was created sometime in the 2350s, and Picard didn’t take command of the Enterprise-D until 2363.
Star Trek: Nemesis implies that this clone plan was both complex and ambitious, and that brings up an obvious question: why would they have wanted to clone Picard a decade or more before he became so important? There are many possibilities, but the most tantalizing one is that the Romulans had future knowledge of how important Picard would become. As for how they could know, that goes back to the classic TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
Yesterday’s Enterprise
This episode came out a full 12 years before Star Trek: Nemesis, and it portrayed how our reality changed to one where the Federation and the Klingons were at war, all thanks to the Enterprise-C coming out of the past thanks to a spatial rift. Picard discovers that the older ship was thought lost in battle defending a Klingon outpost from the Romulans, a sacrifice that effectively paved the road to peace between the Federation and the Klingons. Tasha Yar was alive in this altered reality, and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” ended with her replacing the dead Captain Garrett and taking the Enterprise-C into the past to save the future.
The Sela Conundrum
That story highly implied that Tasha and everyone else died, but later TNG episodes revealed that she was captured by the Romulans and eventually killed, but not before giving birth to the half-human, half-Romulan villain Sela. Neither Tasha Yar nor Sela are mentioned in Star Trek: Nemesis, but the time-traveling shenanigans of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” meant that the Romulans had access to a Starfleet officer from the future. Through everything from routine conversation to exotic torture, they might have learned of how important Captain Picard would be and concocted a clone plan to eventually seize control of the Federation flagship.
Nemesis Is Still A Strange Film
This theory is a lot of fun, but I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t make Star Trek: Nemesis a better film. But it’s interesting to speculate how that film’s Byzantine plot might have been influenced by “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” which would mean Trek’s worst film was connected to its best episode. If only a spatial rift could open up in real life and let us travel to the past and convince Paramount to create a better film rather than one whose highlight was Picard acting like an extra from a Mad Max film.
