Subject: Retrospective: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

From: "Mikkel Lodahl" <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Dec 1999 03:58:53 GMT

Star Trek: First Contact
Directed by: Jonathan Frakes
Story by: Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore
Screenplay by: Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith

The Teaser:

The thought that ran through my mind upon completing my viewing of this
flick was: "Thank God that I've seen Star Trek: The Next Generation
[hereafter: ST:TNG] before!" While the movie might be entertaining to the
non-initiated (in fact, if my memory serves me correctly, a friend of mine
thought it very good in spite of his lack of Trek-knowledge), it grows
multiple times
richer when you know some back-story. It doesn't even have to be a lot, but
I'd recommend seeing at least the two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds" from
the ST: TNG series, which I recommend heartily.

The Synopsis:

Anyhow, the plot revolves around Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart;
Jeffrey),
who captains the oh-so-legendary starship U.S.S. Enterprise. A, to
non-initiates,
quite confusing prologue to the film tries to explain that Picard was once
part of
an alien cyber-collective named "The Borg", but fails to bring it about in a
totally
clear fashion. No problem, though, as it does validate the use of a
spectacular
matte painting depicting the interior of a Borg ship. "Cool," you think,
"What now?"

The film progresses at an amazingly quick pace, which has us involved in a
space
battle above Earth within the first fifteen minutes of the flick. The Borg
are back with a
vengence, it seems, and they want to assimilate all of Human culture into
their
collective, just as they assimilated Picard. While the quick pace easily
could have
been terribly wrong, it somehow feels right. The filmmakers seems to believe
that
we either know these characters well, and therefore don't need an
introduction,
or that we don't care. And, surprisingly, it works. My fore-amentioned
friend just
jumped on the rollercoaster so to speak, and went along for the ride.

And what a ride? A terrific one! After some nice effects showing how Picard
singlehandedly uses an unorthodox strategy to blow up the Borg ship, a small
contingent of Borg soldiers escape in a ball-like escape pod. They create
some
kind of temporal shift or other, and go back in time to the 21st century.
The Enterprise, protected by their closeness to this temporal thinggummy
sees
the horrible changes inflicted on the future by this: Earth has been
assimilated into
the Borg Collective. Picard decides that they should follow the Borg back to
"repair whatever damage they've done."

It just so happens that the Borg chose to go back to when humankind invented
warp-drive (faster than light travel) and tries to stop the invention. The
Enterprise
readily blows up the Borg Escape Pod, and an away team beams down to Earth
to see what damage the Borg has caused yet. Down there, Picard and company
discover that the Borg bombarded the home of Dr. Zefraim Cochrane
(James Cromwell; L. A. Confidential), the inventor of warp-drive. Meanwhile,
the
Borg have beamed over to the Enterprise and starts to assimilate the whole
ship.
Picard and his android sidekick, Commander Data (Brent Spiner; Independence
Day)
beams back to the Enterprise just before the Borg take control of most of
the systems
onboard, though not of the main computer.

And then the rest of the movie goes along smoothly. While Picard and Data,
aided by
Commander Worf (Michael Dorn; Deep Space 9 series) and a 21st century
"native" who
has been beamed up for medical treatment (Alfre Woodard; Grand Canyon) by
the
on-board Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden), battle with the Borg, first officer
Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), ship's counselor Deanna Troi (Marina
Sirtis),
and chief engineer Geordi LaForge (Levar Burton) tries to talk Cochrane into
cunducting
the warp-flight at the planned date, because else, they'll miss a passing
alien ship that will
contact Earth when it observes warp-speed in use.

The Rambling:

The movie is spectacular, and is in my opinion among the best Star Trek has
ever created,
right up there with "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Voyage Home" Jonathan
Frakes does a
good job directing; there is hardly a place where I would have done
differently. All of the cast
delivers no worse than decent performances; Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner
and
James Cromwell shining particularly. While the film does have a few of the
time-travel jokes
that were decidedly overused in The Voyage Home, they don't feel forced, and
are actually
worth a chuckle or two. The effects are stunningly created by Industrial
Light and magic, who
are without any doubt the leading in their field - and they prove it here.

Worth of mention is also the performance of Alice Krige (Barfly) who plays
the evil leader of
the Borg; the Borg Queen.  While this concept falls flat in theory, it works
beautifully in function.
The Queen captures Data somewhat half-way through the film and then proceeds
to try to
bribe him into revealing the code that unlocks the main computer, offering
him humanity. Spiner
and Krige play well off each other and the scenes are all a joy to see
[except for one, very brief
scene, where there's thankfully only one line - "We've had a change of
plans, Data"]. For some
reason I detest that scene.

The question is, then, how well does this flick carry on the TNG feeling?
Very well I think. While the
story quite clearly focuses on Picard and Data, it seems like all the
characters are pretty much
having as much screen time as they had in a typical episode of TNG. (With
the possible exception of
Dr. Crusher, who seems to be there only to have all of the cast in there)
The characters are captured
well, as they should be considering the source (Both Braga and Moore were
staff writers at TNG), and
the actors seem to have fun doing the film, and that reflects on the
performance quite more than one
should think. No-one gives a bad performance in this film (I would say that
Robert Picardo, who has a
cameo as a hologram, does, but that's just me hating his character [the
hologram, that is :-)]).

The Music:

The music was composed chiefly by one of my most favorite film composers,
namely Jerry Goldsmith.
"Chiefly" means that Joel Goldsmith, Jerry's son, composed three of the
tracks. The music lives up to
my expectations, underlining all the scenes that need underlining, and
actually quite good on its own too.
I particularly enjoyed the piece "Red Alert" which plays during the first
battle against the Borg. Also present,
besides the orchestral soundtrack, is two songs included to provide
atmosphere. One is the classic
"Magic Carpet Ride" performed by Steppenwolf (Born To Be Wild), the other an
early rock n' roll tune
by Roy Orbinson (Pretty Woman), namely "Ooby Dooby". Both of these play at
the discretion of Cochrane,
and "Ooby Dooby" could be considered his theme. Overall, a solid soundtrack
well worth a purchase.

The Summing-Up:

This movie, while being a must for Trekkies and ordinary fans of Star Trek,
is also quite a ride for the
odd Sci-fi fan who isn't all too much in on the Trek franchise (though who
that would be, is a question
worthy of a much longer essay). I'm in doubt where to rate this, so I'll
provide two different ratings:

Rating for Star Trek fans: 9/10
Rating for Ordinary Mortals [TM]: 7/10
Best Exchange:
                            "Someone once said: 'Don't be a great man, just
                             be a man. Then let history decide itself."
                            "What retorical nonsense. Who said that?"
                            "You did. Ten years from now."
                             -Riker and Cochrane

--
Mikkel Lodahl
[email-masked]