Logan Wrote 'Nemesis' For Fans

Longtime Trek fan John Logan set out to achieve one goal with 'Star Trek Nemesis' - write a film which would appeal to the core fan base.

"My intention all the way along was to write a movie for the fans," Logan said in an interview with TrekWeb. "I think that's why they hired me, because I'm a fan, I have a responsiveness to fans and what they want and how they respond to things. If the fans reject this movie then I will feel awful; I will feel like I failed at my job. If the fans like the movie and the general audience doesn't, I don't care because I've done my job."

With that objective in mind, the Academy Award and Emmy-nominated writer decided to shake up the franchise a little. "We make radical choices in 'Nemesis' and certainly we push the envelope on certain things and that was our intention from the very beginning but, being a fan, I know I respond to the same things that any human being responds to when they are being told a story. They want to be challenged, they want to be provoked, they want to be entertained, they want to feel sweep and grandeur."

Like the other Next Generation trips to the silver screen, 'Nemesis' places Picard and Data at the forefront of the action. In this case, Logan said it was because he happens to be a big fan of both characters. "I think every Star Trek fan has their favorite characters. My sister is the world's biggest Worf fan; she kept calling saying, 'Worf's going to be really big in this, right?' and I'm like 'uh, huh.' The characters I always responded to were Picard, Data and Deanna, I just loved those characters. I loved all the characters but those were the characters that really excited me. So I was in the unenviable position of writing a movie that focused on those characters. If it were my sister writing it, it would be like Worf, Worf, more Worf."

Unfortunately, in a two-hour feature there just wasn't enough time to deal with each regular character as fully as Logan would have liked. "At times that was very difficult because I wanted to write parts for everyone. I wanted to write a really good Crusher arc or a really good Worf arc. So the first cut of the movie was like two hours and fifty minutes because it had all this stuff in it! The process of honing it down into the 'Nemesis' that we have was really a sort of educational process for me as well. I'm incredibly proud of the movie and I can only hope the fans will be proud as well."

The full interview, in which Logan also talked about cuts, his homage to Gene Roddenberry and the ending of the film, can be found here at TrekWeb.

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