Shinzon

WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Trek X: Nemesis in here. This is everything I remember about him from the movie.

- Spoiler Space -

Played by Tom Hardy

Years ago, the Romulan military devised a plan to place a mole within the Federation, by cloning Captain Jean-Luc Picard and replacing him with a clone loyal to them. However, before they completed the project, a new government was put in place that scrapped the project. Shinzon, at the age of 9 years old, was sent to Remus to die in the dilithium mines there. While in the mines, he met a Reman who defended him against the guards, and eventually they escaped. On Remus, he built a warship, the Scimitar, and he has equipped it with technology banned in the Federation that generates a form of radiation with biogenic properties. It spreads out from its source, and turns all living things it touches to dust. After an ally of his activated the device in the Romulan senate, he ascended as the new Praetor and named the Reman who helped him in the mines as his new Viceroy. He sends a message to the Federation, claiming to desire peace, but his true intent is to capture Picard and then destroy Earth. When Shinzon was cloned, an plan was made to accelerate his aging to make him catch up with Picard, but it was not done and has caused his cellular structure to begin breaking down. He plans on a DNA transplant from Picard, but when he is unable, he attempts to destroy the USS Enterprise-E with his radiation weapon.

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Source: Seing Star Trek: Nemesis tonight

Some fans have questioned the timeline behind Shinzon's creation. Shinzon is a biologic clone of a twenty-something Jean-Luc Picard and he has been aging at a regular rate. The Romulans had planned to speed up his growth, but their disinterest in doing so led to the horrible illness Shinzon began to suffer from. Now, if Shinzon really did grow up in normal time, that means he was created twenty years or so prior to Star Trek X: Nemesis which, in the Star Trek timeline, means that when the Romulans hatched their cloning scheme, Jean-Luc Picard was not even yet the captain of the Enterprise-D. Why did the Romulans have such an interest in Picard at this time in his career? Did they see great things coming for him? Or was this entire plan a long-shot to begin with?

It has been suggested that it would have been more feasible for the Romulans to have obtained a sample of Picard's DNA during the time he spent on Romulus in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification". After all, at this point in time Picard was the captain of the Federation flagship, making him a much more attractive cloning target than he would have been during his time on the USS Stargazer, his previous command.