Subject: REVIEW: STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Timothy W. Lynch)
Date: 25 Nov 1996 18:51:08 GMT

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                            STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
                                   [Spoilers]
                       A film review by Timothy W. Lynch
                        Copyright 1996 Timothy W. Lynch

In brief:  The best Trek film in fourteen years, possibly at all.  See it, 
and see it on as big a screen as possible; you won't regret it.

Written by:  Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore (screenplay); 
	Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore (story) 
Directed by:  Jonathan Frakes

[NOTE:  normally for TNG and feature Star Trek reviews, I include a
detailed synopsis.  Under the assumption that readers of
rec.arts.movies.reviews and rec.arts.sf.reviews wouldn't be that
interested, this version does not include it.  Those wanting a review
with synopsis can look in r.a.startrek.reviews or
r.a.startrek.current, or check my FTP site at ftp.alumni.caltech.edu.
Those wanting a synopsis alone for some reason can check
r.a.startrek.info.]

Two years ago, when "Star Trek: Generations" premiered, I was 
beginning to harbor serious doubts about Trek as a franchise.  "Star 
Trek: the Next Generation" had recently finished its seventh season, 
which despite a few gems was a very uneven season; "Star Trek: Deep 
Space Nine" was in the middle of a terribly disappointing third season; 
"Star Trek: Voyager" didn't exist yet [which, as it turns out, was a 
blessing]; and "Generations" itself was, though reasonable, somewhat 
less than satisfying.

What a difference two years can make.  "Voyager" may be more or 
less beyond hope, but DS9 is back to producing enjoyable television 
(if not quite the sort it made in its first two years), and with "First 
Contact", the movie run of TNG looks to be rejuvenated.  

"First Contact" is quite unlike any Trek film that preceded it, and on 
the whole I think that's a good thing.  Even in the mid-21st-century 
setting that much of the film provides, there are no goofy fish-out-of-
water jokes that were so prevalent in the fourth film (and which, while 
funny once or twice, don't age well).  Also gone are some of the 
lackluster villains that have peppered the later films (neither ST3's 
Commander Kruge nor "Generations'" Dr. Soran particularly 
impressed me, and I refuse to discuss the fifth film's existence at all); 
and gone is the difficulty of making the characters believable after 
twenty-five years that plagued the last few films in the series featuring 
the original cast.

What's back successfully, for the first time since "Star Trek II: The 
Wrath of Khan", is a tortured personal core to the story.  (ST6 tried it, 
but backed away from it by the film's end.)  This one was also more 
difficult to pull off:  in ST2, Khan's obsessive pursuit of revenge was 
a serious threat to the heroes, but there was no challenge of making 
Khan sympathetic in the process.  Here, since Picard was the one 
feeling bloody-minded, there was a real risk of turning some of the 
audience away from the hero -- and given the years-long wait between 
films and the pervasive myth among some segments of fandom that 
Starfleet characters and the Federation must be perfect, that's a worry 
with considerable implications behind it.  "First Contact" took that risk 
and damned the consequences, which I can't help but applaud -- and 
it's a credit both to both the screenwriters and to Patrick Stewart that I 
find Picard even more interesting and worthwhile a character than I 
did before.

A lot of care was taken to make Picard's plight understandable both to 
long-time fans and to the more casual viewers.  For anyone who 
didn't know about Picard's past as Locutus of Borg, one's education 
began from the opening shot of the film, an extraordinary pullback 
showing Picard as the only wholly human face trapped in a 
monstrously large Borg cube.  Further elements, such as Starfleet's 
concern over whether Picard would be an "unstable element" during 
the Borg engagement -- a nontrivial concern that some fans had been 
asking about for years -- were brought in in a completely natural 
fashion.  I haven't talked to anyone yet about the film who wasn't a 
hardcore enough fan to know all that had gone before, but I've a 
feeling that the back-story would be clear even to them.

A way in which "First Contact" differs substantially from ST2 is that 
while the latter film had several themes in it -- revenge, age vs. youth, 
and several others -- they all revolved around one man, namely James 
T. Kirk.  "First Contact" branched out a bit more:  while Picard's 
quest for vengeance was a significant component of the film, so too 
was the Borg's attempted seduction of Data (in several senses of the 
word), and so too was Zefram Cochrane's confusion at becoming a 
legendary historical figure in the world he helped bring about.  As a 
result, the film was rather more complex than the second one, which I 
appreciate.

That complexity also applied to the plot, in spades:  while it wasn't 
quite on the level of Doc Brown having to take out a blackboard to 
explain the plot to the audience in "Back to the Future, Part II", there 
was a lot going on.  The early stages of the film, though, helped make 
that complexity a bit easier to grasp by being more straightforward:  
just about everything up to the discovery of assimilated crewmembers 
is not only linear, but downright inexorable.  It's a cinch that Picard is 
not going to stay on the sidelines forever, despite Starfleet's orders; 
it's equally expected that the Enterprise is going to follow the Borg 
back in time after the Borg have attempted (successfully, it would 
seem) to alter the course of history.  I've thought another working title 
for the film could have been "Full Circle", as the story wound all the 
way from the Trek "present" back to the dawn of the Federation 
without seeming cramped by its scale.  

The Earthbound side of the tale, with Our Heroes [tm] trying to 
persuade Zefram Cochrane to go ahead and create the history he 
already had been about to do (everybody got that?), was clearly the 
lighter side of the story, as a counterpoint to the relentlessly grim tale 
being spun aboard the Enterprise.  It wasn't all for laughs by any 
means, as the fate of the Federation was at stake and Cochrane did 
have to deal with his future; since that future was a bright one, 
though, there was little real sacrifice involved.  As such, the story 
there flowed more from the banter and the conversation than anything 
else, and more than ninety percent of it flowed quite well indeed.  
(The one line that fell really flat for me was "so you're saying you're 
astronauts, on some kind of star trek?"  Ow.  Ow ow ow.  Never 
write that again.)  Troi's drunk scene was far funnier than I expected, 
James Cromwell's performance as Cochrane was just over-the-top 
enough to be entertaining without descending into late-period Shatner, 
the repeated bursts of hero-worship made perfect sense (and with 
Dwight Schultz making a five-line or so cameo as Lt. Barclay, they 
worked even better), and the idea of having to build a better world out 
of the ruins of the old really felt ... well, almost inspiring.

On the Enterprise, on the other hand, the story started out dark and 
descended into the horrific in a way Trek's never done in a movie 
before.  Some of the early scenes (like the "something coming out of 
the shadows in engineering" bit) didn't do much for me, but once the 
initial takeover is complete and it's clear that Picard and company are 
at a major disadvantage, the story turned into one of desperation.  
Desperation and revenge work well together as themes, so I wasn't 
surprised to see them linked; regardless, though, the plot traveling 
from one long-shot to another actually had my heart pounding in a 
way no SF movie has done to me in quite some time.

As is perhaps typical for time travel stories, though, there were a few 
moments in the plot that made me very briefly say "wait a minute...", 
but surprisingly few.  I did wonder why no one suggested the idea of 
traveling back in time to just *before* the Borg arrived and destroying 
the ship then -- but as soon as the Borg presence on the Enterprise 
was known, that objection disappeared.  I wondered a little bit about 
the seeming coincidence of the Borg queen being one of the few Borg 
who made it back into the past and aboard the Enterprise, but given 
how overwhelmingly powerful the Borg are in many ways, I don't 
have many difficulties with accepting that they're going to manage a 
few things we just don't figure out.  The one concern I had that never 
quite went away is why Riker and Geordi accompanied Cochrane on 
his legendary flight; with every last detail of Cochrane's mission being 
studied by high school students in the future, you'd think they'd want 
to stay well out of sight.  Given the circumstances (such as Lily's 
absence, since I assume she'd have been in one of those two seats 
otherwise), it's justifiable, but that's one case where I think the 
justification should have been given.  (I also think the idea of Picard 
being able to hear the Borg in his mind should have been fleshed out a 
little more; it made sense overall, but I definitely had a few questions.)

On the character side, the two regular characters who were given the 
most to do were, not surprisingly, Picard and Data.  I've already 
mentioned Picard's revenge quest, but it was best brought out in the 
Picard/Lily confrontation in Picard's ready room.  When Picard tried 
to hide his desires behind his old platitude about how 24th-century 
humans have outgrown vengeance, I was cheering Lily's "bullshit!" 
cry in response.  Every single moment in that scene was not only 
watchable, but compelling:  from Picard's outburst where he breaks 
his "little ships", to the varied references to _Moby Dick_, to Picard's 
final realization that he may be sacrificing everything he has for a 
moment of pain, there really wasn't anything about that scene I'd 
change.

"The Last Temptation of Data" didn't come off quite as well, but it 
was extremely successful nonetheless.  Many of these plot points 
(Data being given flesh and being literally seduced by the Borg queen, 
for instance) are ones that I'd heard about months ago and really 
winced at; they sounded terrible.  Once it all got placed in context, 
though, it seemed chilling in the same way some of Bram Stoker's 
original _Dracula_ was:  sexuality (or, in this case, Data's entire 
humanity) as a curse.  Much of the credit for that has to go to both 
Brent Spiner and especially Alice Krige, who turned a character I was 
expecting to loathe into one I found compelling viewing, but some of 
it is really just waiting for the ideas to be placed in context.

Having praised Stewart, Spiner, Cromwell and Krige, I should also 
mention that Alfre Woodard did a strong job as Lily Sloane; I didn't 
find her performance quite as sterling as the others', but it was a near 
thing.  She only had two really major scenes, and both worked well:  
the "Ahab" one with Stewart I mentioned earlier, and the one where 
Picard reveals to her where she really is.  In the latter, she was the 
stand-in for the audience, giving us her own sense of wonder; and 
boy, did she ever.

(The rest of the cast?  Fine, but they didn't have all *that* much to do.  
They generally fared better than last time, though, with the exception 
of Gates McFadden, who again was left with only a few token 
scenes.)

That leaves the presentation:  visuals, music, direction, and so forth.  
In that respect, "First Contact" was absolutely stunning.  I've seen a 
lot of SF films in my time, but visually "First Contact" is probably the 
biggest treat since "Blade Runner", and the biggest treat set in space 
since "Star Wars" hit the big screen nearly twenty years ago.  There 
were several striking moments (the opening pullback being one, and 
the glorious shot of Picard, Worf, and Hawk striding out onto the 
underside of the ship being another, along with the entire more or less 
scientifically accurate zero-g combat sequence), and Frakes was very 
careful not to linger too long on them (which would risk turning parts 
of the movie into parts of the first Trek picture back in 1979).  The 
effects, the music and Frakes' direction combined to give a real sense 
of atmosphere to the assimilated Enterprise, and on the big screen it 
was tough not to let a certain feeling of awe seep in -- especially in the 
final scenes, where we finally get to see Earth's first contact with the 
Vulcans.

A few other notes for trivia fans:

-- One of the ships in the initial Borg attack is the Bozeman.  I don't 
know if it's intended to be the same one we saw in "Cause and 
Effect", but it's certainly still Brannon Braga's hometown.  (And gee, 
Bozeman's in Montana.  Fancy that coincidence.)

-- Jerry Goldsmith put in a couple of musical stings that sounded 
familiar.  In the early scenes with Worf, he re-used the Klingon theme 
from "Star Trek: the Motion Picture" to good effect, and one of the 
early shots of the battle on the hull included a riff that sounded 
suspiciously like the early notes of "Also Sprach Zarathustra", of 
"2001: A Space Odyssey" fame.  

-- "2001" was clearly on the everyone's minds during that scene.  
While the magnetic locks are being eliminated, the graphic showing 
the program status refers to subunit "AE35"; in "2001", it's the AE-35 
unit which allegedly fails, thus throwing off contact with Earth.  Very 
cute.

-- Most of the cameo appearances worked well for me:  Schultz's 
quick turn as Barclay was a scream, and Ethan Phillips' human 
appearance as a bouncer in Picard's Dixon Hill scenario was cute.  I 
was less enchanted with Robert Picardo's guest appearance as the 
Emergency Medical Holographic program a la "Voyager"; the idea 
was fine, but the implication that this doctor has the same personality 
that the one on "Voyager" developed over the span of months is not.

-- And, on a personal note, there's one character now deceased whom 
I'd like to see return.  Who might that be?  The redoubtable, yet 
tragically assimilated, machine-gunned, and mutilated Ensign Lynch.  
I know the name's coincidence -- but hey, I can still be amused by it.  
:-)

That would seem to cover it.  (Whew.)  So, some closing summaries:

Writing:  A few small unanswered questions or muddled moments 
	here and there, but startlingly few for such an ambitious story.  
	Nicely done.
Directing:  Not bad for a big-screen rookie.  :-)  Keep him.
Acting:  Kudos to all.

OVERALL:  I probably should make it something like a 9.5, but I 
can't resist giving an extra half-point for the Ensign Lynch cameo :-), 
so it's a 10.  Bravo; would that they all could be like this.

Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
[email-masked]	<*>
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