Cinema Sunday: Star Trek First Contact

Last year during the summer, I did six posts about the first six Star Trek movies featuring the cast of the original series.   

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture 
• Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan 
• Star Trek: The Search For Spock
• Star Trek: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek: The Final Frontier 
• Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country 

Now here in the winter of this new year of 2022, I'm posting the sequel, posts about the 4 films featuring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  

Cinema Sunday will be Non Star Trek starting February 6th. 

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Should Star Trek even be in the movies?

Keith R.A. DeCandido lives, eats and breathes Star Trek. If he's not writing Star Trek novels and short stories, he's blogging about Star Trek.  Here's what Keith once posted on the subject of Star Trek movies:  

"As a general rule, I hate Star Trek movies. Trek is primarily about the exploration of the human condition, and it’s much harder to do that in a two-hour movie, especially in the post-Star Wars age of spectacle."

He goes on to add that First Contact "works, both as a spectacle and as a Star Trek story."

And he is right. 

The best bet for spectacle in the world of the Next Generation is going up against the implacable Borg. 

But for Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, going up against the Borg is personal. 

After staving off an attack by the Borg on planet Earth, a Borg orb goes into a time portal and Earth goes into a more Borgified place. 

The Borg have changed history. 

Picard orders the Enterprise into the portal. They'e gonna change it back. 

The pivotal moment in history under attack is April 4, 2063 when after Earth has been devastated by the nuclear holocaust of World War III (that's 41 years from now. Something to look forward to), Zefram Cochrane makes his historic warp drive test flight which results in first contact with an alien species.  

The Borg do some damage to Cochrane's base before the Enterprise arrives to make them bugger off. Still, enough damage has been done to make the date with history less of a sure thing. Riker and others from the Enterprise get to work to help make sure Zefram Cochrane makes his flight with destiny.

If they can keep him sober long enough. Zefram Cochrane the ideal of the 24th century is hardly living up the reality of the man who built his warp drive ship to get rich and get laid.  

Meanwhile, there's shit going down on the Enterprise. The Borg have established a foothold on the ship and slowly, piece by piece, person by person are turning the ship and crew into Borg. 

Picard's kind of being an asshole about it. The trauma he experienced at the hands of the Borg back in "The Best of Both Worlds" is really messing with his judgement.  The rest of the crew are too deferential to their captain of many years to confront him but Lilly, Cochrane's assistant from Earth, has no such issues and confronts Picard on his bullshit. 

Picard agrees to blow up the ship to stop the Borg. 

Thankfully there is a Borg Queen who has taken an interest in Data which provides a pivotal plot point to defeat the Borg without destroying the ship. 

Which is good because we did not want to lose the Enterprise for two movies in a row. 

Zefram Cochrane makes his first warp flight which leads to Earth's first contact with... Vulcans. 

OK, that is a very high level overview of a far more complex movie but the main thing is First Contact rocks (shit blows up) and rolls (Patrick Stewart acts the hell out of this thing).  

Odds and ends: 

After being written into the Deep Space Nine cast, Worf returns with the Defiant to help fight the Borg and gets to be his wonderfully gruff bad ass self. 

"Assimilate THIS!" 

Hell yeah! 

Deanna Troi gets drunk on tequila to find out that the tall, rowdy drunk man is Zefram Cochrane.  This sequence is one of the funniest things ever in Star Trek and Marina Sirtis really sells this.

TROI: Timeline! This is no time to argue about time. We don't have the time! ...What was I saying?

RIKER: You're drunk.

TROI: I am not.

RIKER: You are.

TROI: Look. He wouldn't even talk to me unless I had a drink with him. And then it took three shots of something called tequila just to find out he was the one we're looking for. And I've spent the last twenty minutes trying to keep his hands off me. So don't go criticizing my counselling techniques. ...It's a primitive culture. I'm just trying to blend in.

RIKER: You're blending all right.

TROI: I've already told him our cover story. He didn't believe me.

RIKER: Yes. We're running out of time. Now if we tell him the truth do you think he'll be able to handle it?

TROI: If you're looking for my professional opinion as ship's Counselor, ...he's nuts.

Dr. Beverly Crusher is overlooked but does get a cool bit where she employs an ingenious distraction against the attacking Borg when she activates the Enterprise Emergency Medical Hologram. 

Robert Picardo, the EMH from Star Trek Voyager, makes a clever appearance here. 

Also from Voyager is Ethan Phillips as a night club Maître D in the Dixon Hill holodeck program. 

About the Dixon Hill sequence...

Jean-Luc and Lilly are in super urgent hurry to stay ahead of the Borg while Picard programs the holodeck for a Borg trap. But they take time to change into period appropriate clothes for the 1930's set Dixon Hill program?  Really?

Jean-Luc Picard machine guns down a horde of Borg while wearing a white tux and it looks cool but strains logic to get him there. 

It's a bit of a misstep in a movie that otherwise hits all the right notes with a heady mixture of humor, drama, action and adventure. 

The introduction of the Borg Queen gives us a strong point of view character to represent the Borg, someone to be all sinister and slimy and exude all the evulz. The Borg Queen will be a significant player in future episodes of Voyager. 

This might be a good point to check in with Data.

DATA: Captain, I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say ...to hell with our orders.

Data has more control over his emotion chip to the point where he can turn it off with a twitch of his head. Convenient.

The sequences where Data is held captive by the Borg Queen is riveting stuff as the BQ tries to use a human skin graft to Data's arm with all its attendant sensations to lure Data to the dark side of the Force...whoops! Wrong franchise. 

There's a moment when it looks like Data has succumbed to the evulz and given into the lure of the dark side of the...uh oh! Doing it again.  Anyway, Data saves the day in good ol' Next Gen fashion.  

Still there was a time when Data was tempted by the Borg Queen.  

PICARD: How long a time?

DATA: Zero point six eight seconds, sir. For an android ...that is nearly an eternity.

Between movies, Geordi LaForge gets cyborg eyes. After having been fucked with twice by aliens manipulating his VISOR (and resulting in the destruction of the Enterprise 1701-D), it's about time. The CGI of his eyeballs clicking and whirling about is pretty cool.  

What we see of the new Enterprise 1701-E looks pretty sleek,  a cool streamlined design. We don't get to spend enough time to appreciate the scale and nuances of the new ship despite a lot running around various corridors against the encroaching Borg. 

I agree with Keith R.A. DeCandido that Star Trek rarely works as a motion picture franchise and is better suited to episode television.

But Star Trek First Contact is a very viable exception to that view. 

Next week, Cinema Sunday continues our series with the Star Trek Next Gen movies as Worf sings Gilbert & Sullivan, Troi comments on the firmness of her breasts and Riker shaves his beard.

Next week we will experience Insurrection.  

Sorry! It's all down hill from here.