'STAR TREK' FALLS OFF TRACK WITH MEDIOCRE 'NEMESIS'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

SO IT HAS come to this. After taking a little extra time to bring in some fresh eyes to try to rejuvenate the ``Star Trek'' franchise, the best they could come up with is giving Picard his own Mini-Me, creating a new alien race that looks suspiciously like the Orcs in ``The Lord of the Rings,'' and fashioning an ending straight out of ``Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.'' If this is indeed the swan song for the ``Next Generation'' gang, the end can't come soon enough. It's time to deep six them into deep space and start all over again.

``Star Trek: Nemesis,'' the latest voyage into the final frontier, finds the Enterprise gang wading into the middle of a Romulan civil war. It seems the Romulans have a sister planet called Remus (don't get me started) and the Orc-like Remans have long resented their second-class status. Spending your whole life working in the planet's dilithium mines - without the alien equivalent of a canary - will do that to you.

One inhabitant of Remus is really miffed. His name is Shinzon (Tom Hardy), and he's a clone of Picard, bio-engineered by the Romulans to take the good captain's place in some far-fetched battle plan. But the Romulans dropped that idea, and Shinzon has been stewing like a mad cow ever since, plotting revenge.

The thing is, Shinzon, with his purple Spandex and leather getup, looks a lot like Dr. Evil dressed up in a Halloween Jacko costume, so it's hard to take him too seriously as any kind of threat. He's also rapidly dying, which makes you wonder about the roundabout way he's taken to snaring Picard (Patrick Stewart) in his fiendish trap.

But then, nothing about ``Nemesis'' makes much sense when you think about it. That's fine, since a certain cheesiness has always been a part of the ``Star Trek'' universe. Nobody has ever watched ``Trek'' for the sterling acting (save perhaps for Stewart) or the groundbreaking effects or glacial storytelling. The characters, their interplay and an up-with-people humanism have been the franchise's calling card.

What's missing, then, from John Logan's lightweight screenplay is any sense of the grand themes or fun that characterized previous ``Trek'' efforts. The relationship between Picard and Shinzon is undercooked; it doesn't get much deeper than Picard studying his reflection in the mirror, worrying over a dark side that may lie within his soul. (Either that, or he's checking to see if he missed a spot while shaving his head that morning.)

The only other character to get much of a plot line is Data (Brent Spiner), and it's not a very good one, involving as it does a sort of mentally challenged second Data. The rest of the characters are ciphers, and the movie's few attempts at humor are corny even by ``Trek'' standards.

Basically, ``Nemesis'' plays like an extended episode of the television series, one that would rank somewhere in the middle in terms of quality. One could debate whether a director with a little more panache than a flat-lining Stuart Baird (``Executive Decision'') could have turned this mediocrity into something worth seeing, but it's clear that Paramount isn't interested in spending the money to find out. ``Trek'' has lived long, but it has been some time since it has actually prospered. Pull the plug.

STAR TREK: NEMESIS - Two stars

(PG-13: sci-fi action violence and peril and a scene of sexual content.)

Starring: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy.

Director: Stuart Baird.

Running time: 1 hr. 56 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: There goes the odd-even theory.

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Photo:

Shinzon (Tom Hardy), left, an imperfect, dying Picard clone made by the Romulans, faces off with the real Picard (Patrick Stewart) in ``Star Trek: Nemesis.''