In the film, the crew of the Starship Enterprise deal with the threat posed by a clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard named Shinzon, who has taken control of the Romulan Star Empire in a coup d'état.

The television series Star Trek: Picard, a continuation of The Next Generation and Nemesis set two decades after the latter at the end of the 24th century, premiered in 2020.

Meanwhile on Earth, the crew of the starship Enterprise prepare to bid farewell to newly married officers William Riker and Deanna Troi.

En route to a second ceremony on Troi's homeworld, they discover an energy reading on the planet Kolarus III near the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Medical officer Doctor Beverly Crusher discovers that Shinzon is dying rapidly because of the process used to clone him, and the only possible treatment is a transfusion of Picard's blood.

Enterprise races back to Federation space but is ambushed by Scimitar in the Bassen Rift, a region which prevents subspace communication.

[5] The cast members' input informed story and script changes; Stewart objected to an early idea that Shinzon was not a clone but Picard's lost son, feeling it had been already explored and lent itself to "uninteresting" emotional dynamics.

[8] Baird and Berman had been searching for someone who resembled Patrick Stewart but looked about 25 years younger; at one point they considered Jude Law.

However, he had recorded himself performing the same piece in a hotel room the night before, and gave that tape to Baird, resulting in his being cast as Shinzon a few days later.

Illustrator John Eaves developed concept art for the new craft, collaborating with the artists at effects house Digital Domain to adjust the designs as necessary when something worked in a two-dimensional drawing but did not look right once realized with three-dimensional computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Eaves decided to have the ship feature a "battle mode", with the wings splitting open as the film progresses to deploy the thalaron weapon.

Affects art director Ron Gress and CG modeling lead Jay Barton whittled the design down to roughly 1.5 million polygons to make it easier to render.

In Nemesis, the script called for Scimitar to launch attacks at Enterprise's top and aft, so the artists added additional weapon emplacements in those areas to return fire.

[13] A few designs were partially realized through practical means, including the Reman Scorpions, and the all-terrain vehicles used in the Kolarus III sequence.

[citation needed] The make-up team sought to make Hardy look more similar to Stewart by creating latex prosthetics from moulds of the latter's face.

These included numerous versions of noses and chins, and in order to reduce the visible size of Hardy's lips a fake scar was added.

[20] Positive early reception to Digital Domain's efforts led to an increase in the scope of work, as Baird was able to lobby the studio to fund more expansive effects sequences.

[20] The opening sequence on Romulus used a three-dimensional (3D) environment built based on two-dimensional matte paintings originally done by effects house Illusion Arts for the television series.

[15][20] Illusion Arts also produced other shots of the Romulan capital seen later in the film, brought to life with animated people and moving ships in the sky.

[21] Although the majority of the exterior shots of ships were computer-generated, a practical 17-foot Enterprise saucer was built and collided into a model of the Scimitar for the film's climax.

The score opens with airy synthesizers under a trumpet performing an augmented triad before preceding into Alexander Courage's Star Trek: The Original Series fanfare.

Clone hysteria also focuses on the loss of individuality; Shinzon suffers a crisis of identity upon meeting Picard and must destroy the original to survive.

[29] David Green argued in 2009 that Nemesis was the apotheosis of the franchise's recurring challenges to traditional conceptions of masculinity, offering a version of Paradise Lost that can be seen to have queer themes.

Merchandise included a line of action figures, trading card set, soundtrack, novelization, and tie-in official magazines.

[41] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the film is a "rather harebrained story that's relieved to a degree only by some striking visual effects and by Patrick Stewart's outstanding presence as Picard".

[42] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, commenting that the crew "indulge[s] the force of humanity over hardware in a way that George Lucas had forgotten."

[43] Stephen Holden of The New York Times said that the film is a "klutzy affair whose warm, fuzzy heart emits intermittent bleats from the sleeve of its gleaming spacesuit".

[44] Diana Relke suggested that in the post-9/11 cultural consciousness, the message of an illegitimate political leader launching an unprovoked war might have been a parallel to real events American audiences were not ready to entertain.

[10]: 45 The movie was not well-loved among the cast, with LeVar Burton and Marina Sirtis speaking unflatteringly of Baird, criticizing him for not watching any episodes of The Next Generation.

[52] The film was released on Blu-ray on September 22, 2009 as part of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection in the United States.