Trekkies can debate about which “Star Trek” movies are the best and worst, but 2002’s “Star Trek: Nemesis” tends to rank near the bottom. The last movie to feature the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Nemesis” was promoted as “a generation’s final journey.” Instead, about 20 years later, the “Next Generation” band came together once more for “Star Trek: Picard” Season 3 to ensure a better send-off.

Not even the cast of “Star Trek: Nemesis” were happy with the movie. On a recent episode of the “Dropping Names with Brent and Johnny” podcast, Brent Spiner (Data) and Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker) hosted Ron Perlman (who played the Reman Viceroy in “Nemesis”). All three of them recalled working on “Star Trek: Nemesis” together, and their memories are not fond. For the actors, there’s one clear culprit: director Stuart Baird, who did not come to the movie with any “Star Trek” experience and waffled without it.

Frakes recalled specifically that Baird didn’t understand he was coming in as the director of a tight-knit group: “Patrick [Stewart] and I all offered to have lunch with him, because we’d done 182 episodes and three movies together. I said, ‘Is there anything we can do to help you?’ He was not interested in talking to us at all about how we rolled. Talk about a family, because we rolled as a family.”

Previously, Frakes has said he doesn’t blame all of the failures of “Nemesis” on Baird, but also that it feels like “arrogance” that Baird didn’t take up his offers for advice. Keep in mind, Frakes wasn’t just playing Riker, he’d directed several “Next Generation” episodes as well as the previous two “Star Trek” movies: “First Contact” and “Insurrection.” Based on how “Nemesis” turned out, perhaps Baird should’ve heeded Frakes’ invitation.

Ron Perlman’s words for Stuart Baird on the podcast were even harsher. For context: Baird was not originally a film director, he was a film editor. He directed two movies prior to “Nemesis,” those being “Executive Decision” and “U.S. Marshals,” and he hasn’t directed since.

As an editor, Baird’s resume is pretty impressive: he edited several of Richard Donner’s most acclaimed movies, including “The Omen,” “Superman,” and “Lethal Weapon.” But he was also not a people person, according to Perlman, who didn’t hold back on how much he felt Baird was not the right man for the job:

“He was not a director, he was a f***ing editor that the studio owed a favor to because he saved a lot of their turkeys. They would bring him in when they had a turkey, and he would recut it and turn it watchable. So he was a very talented editor, but he was not a director… He’s not a filmmaker. [It’s] that attitude, like, ‘anybody can do this, you know, let’s just give it to that guy.'”

Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi) might have the harsher words for Baird of all. Discussing what went wrong with “Nemesis” for the book “The Fifty-Year Mission” by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, she opined: “The director was an idiot.”