There should be no more TNG

[Uraniun235]

Ah, so the ion storm wasn't over them and hence transporters could safely be used.. so why not beam the shuttlecraft and the vehicle back to the ship as quickly as the indigenous race were discovered to be heading their way, stop a massive violation of the Prime Directive.

Poor judgement on the part of Picard and Co. Or, their transporter can't transport that much mass over that distance (as the shuttle and ground-vehicle probably weigh quite a bit more than the craft that Picard and Data stole from the Scimitar).

[Darth Wong]

Shitty writing.

Suspension of disblief yadda yadda rules this out sadly. Kind of like a Parsec and ANH

I see your reading comprehension is still pitiful. Since the whole thread subject is the quality of writing in Nemesis, Suspension of Disbelief is irrelevant.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Perhaps it would help if he stopped jumping into threads and actually read them. He seems to do that a lot in PSW, too.

[Darth Wong]

Are you serious? Did it ever occur to you that if they can localize these pieces of Data from light-years away, they can probably locate them far more accurately from low orbit and simply beam them up into the ship?

Then why did Picard and Co. have to putz around on the surface stumbling across the pieces, instead of coordinating with the Enterprise and moving directly to their locations?

Shitty writing. Their sensors had no problem locating the fragments. Worst-case scenario, they could have simply beamed down to the general location of each fragment, put a tag on it, and beamed it back up. Less than a minute at each location, and almost no chance of detection by the natives.

And even if they beam down, do you realize that the storm would have to be halfway around the planet not to be visible from where they are?

That's what it looked like when Enterprise moved into orbit.

What's it going to do, abruptly accelerate to lightspeed before they can beam up?

Stranger things have happened. Or Geordi's just stupid. Besides, we both know Picard wanted an excuse to play with his new toy. This might have been Geordi giving Picard an excuse he could put in the ship's log so he could go be stupid on the planet.

Which would in turn call the quality of writing into question, which was the whole point of this thread. It was made very clear in the movie that Picard did want an excuse to go joyriding, but Captain Picard is not an adolescent joyrider! Such behaviour goes against everything we know about his character, and you can't watch TNG and then watch Nemesis without getting the idea that the guy who wrote the latter never bothered to watch the former.

And again, what happened to the Prime Directive? In TNG, they would have beamed down in native clothes so that they could stay there even if transport was temporarily interdicted by a storm.

The Prime Directive appears to have been shit upon.

Well, that's the whole point, isn't it? The writing was awful.

The fact that they did not successfully pull off the operation does not change the fact that it was basically the same operation. They intended to use a holoship to maintain the illusion of never having left the planet.

It was the same operation, but it wasn't the same plot as the episode.

Not precisely the same plot. But it was close enough that you could call it a rip-off, just as V'Ger was a ripoff of Nomad.

There was no Ion storm visible in all directions- it couldn't have reached them within an hour, let alone a few seconds.

Go back to the visual where Enterprise first approaches the planet. There's a blue cloud in the distance beyond the planet.

Then they can track it easily, and determine if it's approaching with plenty of lead time to beam their away team back. Not a problem except for the idiot writing which ignored this prudent option.

[Super-Gagme]

Perhaps it would help if he stopped jumping into threads and actually read them. He seems to do that a lot in PSW, too.

A lot? As in today, so I've been lazy today. I apologise Wong, didn't mean to offend.

[Uraniun235]

Heh, I've gotten so used to trying to argue shit in-context it's hard for me to step out of it. My apologies.

I agree, Nemesis is a pile of shitty writing, and Picard has been twisted from a dignified senior starship commander into a fucking action hero by the movies. In some ways, I think First Contact was one of the worst things to happen to the franchise; Picard picked up that goddamn phaser rifle and hasn't put it down since. He's become more of an action hero than Kirk ever was, even if Shatner had managed to get the footage of him firing akimbo phaser pistols that he wanted in ST5!

And then there's the fucking fanwank Scimitar. The hideously boring dialogue from Shinzon about how he grew up and it was so harsh and oh Picard aren't we so alike? The godawful "I'm your clone so obviously we're alike!" bullshit, the horrid battle (WHY didn't they have the Federation fleet join in for a big final battle royale?!?) with the now-cliche area of space that fucks up some piece of technology and the "fire while cloaked" bullshit. The attack fliers that are introduced but only used once (and what a fucking waste of space that hangar was, too!).

And the one moment that really makes me want to throw things at the screen: "Auto-destruct is offline." I would gladly punch everyone involved with that script in the face for that atrocity. JUST GO DOWN THERE AND MANUALLY EXPLODE THE ANTIMATTER PODS!

Argh!

I have to share one story though... near the end, when Picard says "On screen" after the viewscreen has been destroyed. I don't think that was intended to be a gag, but by god when I saw that in the theater, damn near everyone in the theater laughed at that.