YOU know you're growing older when not only Captain Kirk's generation but also the Next Generation has passed its final frontier in the tenth Star Trek film adventure.

It is hard to keep Trek of events in the ever-expanding Enterprise enterprise but Nemesis is rumoured to be the end for Jean-Luc Picard's crew, and not before time judging by the lack of spice in these latest space travels. The future is surely behind them.

Yet topically, in this age of the Raelians, sinister cloning is at the core of the story by Gladiator scriptwriter John Logan. Disappointingly, however, the most contentious issue of our time is turned into a flashy battle of the baldies with a dearth of psychology that had marked earlier Picard performances by Patrick Stewart.

After the initial distraction - and trick opening - of Riker (Jonathan Frakes) marrying Troi (Marina Sirtis), plans for Riker to take command of his own space ship must be put on hold when the Enterprise is instructed to play ACAS in a little local space dispute between the Romulans and the Remans.

Stewart's Picard has a brief blast of fun zipping around on an intergalactic golf buggy, but the mission takes its inevitable turn for the worse when the despotic Romulan leader, Shinzon (Tom Hardy), starts throwing his ego around. He is a clone of Picard - the clue is in the baldness - and his ailing health and premature ageing means his only hope of clinging on to life and ambitions of galaxy domination is to tap into the body resource of the Enterprise captain.

So Picard and his evil young double are set on a collision course but this clash of the good and bad eggheads lacks an epic dimension, hindered by a script that is stronger on humour than insight or memorable lines.

Stewart's Picard is as stoic as ever, and wont to flashes of wit on loan from a Bond movie, but Hardy's villain goes from bald to worse, like his skin condition, and director Stuart Baird brings nothing new to the Star Trek franchise, broadly going where everyone has been before. The battles may be crisply staged and edited but the Next Generation are yesterday's spacemen.

So, where next for these dressing-up games in space? Is Star Trek spaced out?

Updated: 10:06 Friday, January 03, 2003