10 Star Trek Twists That Pissed Everyone Off
2. Shinzon Is A Rapist
This reviled and completely unnecessary plot point in Star Trek Nemesis stuck out like a sore thumb at the time, and remains an awful moment in Trek ever since. Tom Hardy's Praetor Shinzon is revealed, via a telepathic link enabled by his Reman Viceroy, to be a rapist. He violates Deanna Troi. Though he physically doesn't touch her, the insinuation is clear.
There are several reasons why this twist was simply awful. First, it relegated Deanna from a bit-part character to a device by which the audience discovers something about the villain. After fifteen years of Star Trek, that simply wasn't fair to the character. Also, once a character is revealed a rapist, there is almost no way for an audience to empathise with them again.
Therefore, any conversation that followed between Shinzon and Picard rang hollow. While he may have been talking about the desperate youth he spent in the Reman mines, the audience had lost any and all sympathy for the character. From the moment he appeared in Deanna's quarters, audiences were simply waiting for his inevitable death scene.