...it's been a loong road, getting from there to here, it's been a loong road - Heavens above, what's this? There's something a bit weird about the fact that the latest Star Trek movie is still showcasing the Next Generation cast, mainly because in the eight years since they knocked the TV show on the head, over thirteen seasons of Trek of various kinds have been broadcast in the States. Time and the franchise have moved on, but here they are, still plugging away, seemingly coelacanth-like in their staying power.

Until now it's always been fairly easy to predict whether or not a Trek movie will be any good or not: the rule is that even-numbered entries are on average far superior to their odd-numbered kin. And in case you were wondering or had lost count, Star Trek: Nemesis is the tenth in the series, so on paper at least the omens were good.

Something is rotten in the state of the Romulan Empire and so Baldy, Beardy, Pasty-face, Cornish-pasty-face, Dopey, Bashful and Doc must squeeze back into their uniforms and fire up the warp engines one last time. (Although not before some schmaltzy goings-on at Riker and Troi's wedding reception, where before you can groan 'Oh, God, Data's going to start singing,' Data starts singing.) Pausing only to collect Data's disassembled android twin and engage in a wholly superfluous dune-buggy chase, the Enterprise arrives at Romulus to find a coup has occurred and the suspiciously bald and English-sounding Shinzon (Tom Hardy) is now in power. Shinzon professes friendship towards the Federation but it turns out he has a giant magic technobabble ray gun and he's not afraid to use it. With Data's duplicate also proving treacherous, it soon becomes apparent that Picard and the gang are facing an attack of the - oh, bother, Lucas got there first, didn't he?

John (Gladiator) Logan's script if nothing else hits all the buttons to keep the hard-core Trekkie audience happy. Not that this is necessarily a good thing as Trekkies (like devoted afficionados of most cult TV) are as a rule so reactionary and hidebound as to make members of the average London gentlemen's club look like pot-smoking libertarians by comparison. So Whoopi Goldberg gets a cameo, as does Wil Wheaton (his is tiny and dialogue-free). Fans of Voyager get an appearance by Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, fans of Enterprise get a teeny-weeny mention of the 'USS Archer' (presumably named named after Scott Bakula's character) and fans of DS9 get... Well, apart from a couple of mentions of the Dominion War they get diddly-squat - Worf is back on the Enterprise, his posting to Kronos as Federation Ambassador forgotten about, along with the Romulan-Federation alliance - all rather irritating to those of us who actually prefer our Trek space-station shaped. Mmm, who was that just complaining about Trekkies being sticks-in-the-mud...?

But beyond all the Trek continuity (and if you've stuck with me this far you're either amazingly tolerant, a member of the Post team, or a Trekkie and no doubt lusting for my blood - whichever, you have my apologies) the script is... mmm, well, it's very much a latterday Star Trek script in that any subtlety or thematic content is banged on about repeatedly and at great length, which kind of defeats the object of including it in the first place. Including Data's twin, B4, is arguably a mistake for exactly this reason: apart from counterpointing the 'evil twin' theme, attempts to use B4 to provide either comic relief or pathos fail, and his presence undercuts what little impact the climax has. The climax is, by the way, blatantly nicked from The Wrath of Khan but lacks shock value and genuine emotion this time around.

Director Stuart Baird does a pretty good job of making this look like a proper film as opposed to a big-budget TV episode (something Jonathan Frakes, director of the last two, couldn't quite manage), but he's hampered by the fact that most of it occurs on starships, and that the last segment is a very, very long battle which gets rather repetitive (some unorthodox tactics from Picard notwithstanding). The only member of the 'guest cast' who makes in impression at all is Tom Hardy, who gives a sly and witty performance as the Picard-clone. The great Ron Perlman, who's virtually made a career out of acting under prosthetics, is almost wholly wasted as Hardy's henchman - he gets a peculiarly long and involved punch-up with Riker that adds nothing to the plot, but that's about it. A nearly unrecognisable Dina Meyer also gets one okay scene, but also falls foul of the assumption that the audience is only here to see the regular crew and (maybe) the villain.

The Star Trek movie series has struggled with one major problem this last ten or fifteen years: the existence of the various different Star Trek TV series. As a franchise, the makers of Trek clearly realise that their core audience wants roughly the same thing from whatever outlet they go to, whether that be a TV series, a book, or a movie. The result has been a string of movies that - for the most part - have seemed safe and cosy and predictable and little-more than large-scale TV episodes, and Nemesis is ultimately no exception. There are bigger, better, more cinematic SF and fantasy movies out there these days, and I can't imagine the appeal of Star Trek: Nemesis extending much beyond the hard-core fanbase it was clearly made for.