STAR TREK:NEMESIS - THE PRODUCTION

"Star Trek Nemesis" began principal photography on November 26, 2001, in California's Mojave Desert, not far from Edwards Air Force Base, and wrapped on March 7, 2002, in Los Angeles. By starting with the desert scenes-Captain Picard driving an Argo, a 24th century off-road vehicle-Stuart Baird established the rapid pace of the action that was to come.

Weeks before the scenes were filmed, Stewart had practiced driving the vehicle in a quarry. "It was extremely powerful, and I got a lot of pleasure out of driving it," says the actor, who, when it came time to go in front of the cameras, made full use of his training, and did more than 90 percent of the driving required for the spectacular chase scene.

At the conclusion of the sequence, the production returned to Los Angeles and Paramount Studios, where the entire cast experienced an eerie sense of dejá vu. For Stewart, the reunion "had a slightly unnerving feeling, in a kind of Rip Van Winkle way."

LeVar Burton, who returns as Geordi La Forge, agrees: "It was spooky replaying my character, but in a good way. Every time the cast comes back together, we pick it up as if we all were doing this the previous day, as opposed to, in this case, three years ago."

"As we were filming in the corridors of the Enterprise," recalls Jonathan Frakes, "I looked over and saw Patrick, Brent, Marina and LeVar. It was as if time had stopped and the same kibitzing that we've all cherished over the years was going on. I loved seeing my old friends again, and it was nice to meet some new friends as well."

Those new friends included actor Tom Hardy, who was eager to join the ranks of Star Trek's infamous villains. "Shinzon is a dynamic, young, bitter, helpless individual who comes to battle the man he was supposed to be . . . the man he felt he deserved to be," Hardy observes of his character. "He's torn between all he knows, based on his past, and what he believes he has the potential to be, in the form of Picard. As an actor, I found a human soul within the character and that made him a very interesting villain."

Casting Shinzon proved to be a demanding task for the filmmakers. Not only did the person portraying him have to be a competent enough actor to hold his own opposite Patrick Stewart, but he also had to look enough like Stewart so that the audience would buy him as both a dead-ringer of Picard and a younger version of him, too.

"It's not easy to find an actor who can inhabit the technical demands of such a role, while also having to look like someone else," says Stewart, who had nothing but praise for Hardy's performance. "Tom came through splendidly."

While Hardy bore a resemblance to Stewart, some adjustments had to be made to his appearance, and that's when makeup designer Michael Westmore worked his magic.

"Since Tom doesn't have a cleft in his chin and because his nose is quite different, I had to sculpt a latex nose and chin for him," says Westmore. "And, of course, I shaved his head. When the two of them did profile shots, or when they were in scenes together, there was definitely a feeling of a relationship between them, but they weren't identical."

The process of turning Hardy into a Stewart lookalike took a couple of hours each day before shooting, but Hardy wasn't alone during those long makeup sessions. Veteran Star Trek cast members Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn, who were daily transformed into their respective characters, Data and Worf, spent hours having their makeup done just as they had during their seven seasons on the television series and the three previous feature films.

Also joining Hardy, Spiner and Dorn in the makeup chair was Ron Perlman, who was no stranger to prosthetics, having spent three seasons as the star of the popular television series "Beauty and the Beast." His transformation into the Reman Viceroy took two-and-a-half hours.

"My character is the power behind the power, a little like Shakespeare's character Iago," Perlman says. "The Reman Viceroy is shrouded in mystery, so the particular challenge was to portray him in a minimal, selective way, rooted in stillness. That's a cool thing for an actor to wrap his teeth around."

Because Perlman's character is an alien species audiences have never seen before, the actor had the luxury of taking risks with the role, and makeup designer Michael Westmore had unlimited possibilities in creating the look of the evil Reman Viceroy.

"Remans live on a planet that gets sunlight only a fraction of the time," Westmore notes, "so the filmmakers wanted them to have an almost Nosferatu look about them without making them into vampires."

As for the Reman ship, the Scimitar, which is three times as large as the Enterprise, production designer Herman Zimmerman took his design cue from a breastplate that costume designer Bob Ringwood fashioned for the Remans.

"I extrapolated that breastplate into the cross bracing I used to build the ship," explains Zimmerman. "Then the same design motif carried itself through everything until it eventually circled back to the wardrobe department in the form of belt buckles for the Reman uniforms."

Such rippling of ideas doesn't surprise producer Rick Berman. "Over the course of 15 years we've put together a family of people, so we communicate in our own kind of shorthand," says Berman. "As a result, we avoid that period when everyone has to adjust to one another's style of work."

As the production wrapped, director Stuart Baird was satisfied that the arduous journey he had undertaken was well worth the trip. "Everyone involved with the film was very generous in sharing his or her vast experience," he says. "In the end, I feel we produced a film that will be appreciated by loyal Star Trek fans, and I also think we'll give those who have never experienced a Star Trek movie an exciting introduction to a wonderful new universe."

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