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

From: [email-masked] (David Hines)
Date: 4 Dec 1996 16:24:18 GMT

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                         STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
                                [Spoilers]
                       A film review by David Hines
                        Copyright 1996 David Hines

(Previously posted to rec.arts.sf.tv and rec.arts.startrek.current.)

_Star Trek_, like all science fiction and skiffy, requires a certain
amount of suspension of disbelief.  In the best of _Star Trek_, the
only requirement is that the viewer accept the somewhat improbable
universe that the Franchise presents: one in which socialist ideals
reign true; one in which people strive to better themselves and
humanity, as well as all the little fuzzies out there; one in which
poverty and crime and bad luck are things of the past.  In the world
of _Star Trek_, everyone is healthy and happy (or as near either of
those things as possible), and things always work out in the end.

That's a lot to swallow, but provided the viewer can choke that down,
a good time may be had by all.  That is, assuming that we're talking
about good Trek.  Bad Trek tries to get the viewer to swallow too
many horse pills; witness the typical episode of _Voyager_, wherein
we're expected to accept clumsy technobabble, miserable plotting,
and characters who are supposed to be capable doing no end of stupid
things.

_Star Trek: First Contact_'s (hereafter: FC) greatest flaw
is that it has too many horse pills.  That's a pity, because otherwise
it's a surprisingly well-done film: well-acted, well-directed, and
(of course) well-effected.  The devil, as always, is in the writing;
and while the writing is good enough to make FC better than
_Generations_ by roughly an order of magnitude (and does something
interesting below the surface -- I'll get to *that* in a minute),
it's not good enough to make me stand up and cheer the movie as a
complete success.  It's decent, in the neighborhood of two and a
half to three stars out of four, but it would require more work to
make it stand tall.  Well worth your time at a matinee; don't spend a
gazillion bucks on a night ticket, unless you have access to a theater
with a mega-huge screen and great sound system.

Spoilers follow 30 blank lines and a ^L.



Thankfully, most of the painful swallowing takes place at the
beginning.  If the Federation can't trust Picard, why isn't he safely
behind a desk?  If the situation was so critical, why didn't the admiral
order *Riker* to take command of the Enterprise?  Didn't the Federation
even try to make a stand outside the Sol system?  Why didn't the Borg
travel back to the twentieth century before attacking Earth (it would've
been much easier, and wouldn't have resulted in the loss of the cube)?
Why did Picard's trick work?  Why did he know about it, and not tell
anyone else in Starfleet before now?  Why was the Enterprise
able to hang around for a minute or so before zapping back in time
with the Borg's hole in time?  Why were they able to follow the Borg
at all?  I could have swallowed one or two of these problems; coming
in so quickly, and so closely on each other's heels, they were utterly
indigestible and made the opening of FC almost entirely unwatchable.

That's not to say there's not more swallowing to be done elsewhere
in the film; there is, a mixture of bitter pills small (such as the
Borg assimilation time being reduced to a few seconds, "inoculation"
against radiation poisoning) and large (such as Picard's fight with Worf,
which I'll get to).  It's just that the beginning forces the viewer to
swallow a lot of horse pills in very little time.  The effects are
beautiful, but the medicine that gets the movie going is *very*
bitter, and needs more than a generous spoonful of eye-candy to
help it go down.

Once the pills are choked down, however, a people-oriented plot
takes over.  Thank Cthulhu, because that's where Trek is strong, and
because the caliber of the actors is such that it can smooth over
rough spots, provided the spots are *relatively* far apart.  The cast
members deliver fine performances, particularly James Cromwell,
Alfre Woodard, Alice Krige, and Patrick Stewart.  (It's a bit annoying
that most of the best roles went to non-featured players; I get
the feeling that Sirtis and McFadden would have killed for an eighth
of the screen time Alfre Woodard got... then again, neither of them
is as good an actor as Woodard.)  There are wobbles, from time to
time; however, once the godawful beginning is left in the dust,
FC begins to move and becomes a pretty enjoyable movie, largely
because of the performances and direction.

There are, however, two major exceptions to the rule.  Both of them,
oddly enough, have to do with Picard.  The first is Picard's fight with
Worf, his refusal to down the ship, followed by an argument with Lily
and a sudden reversal.  The acting is fine; I don't have a problem with
it (Woodard, especially, shone in that scene).  The problem is that it
comes out of nowhere.  Picard hates the Borg; we know that.  But his
sudden lunacy doesn't feel right.  Stewart acts it well, but the script
doesn't give us enough of a reason to buy it.  It has set us up to
see Picard as a Borg-hater, but one who has some reason to believe he
can defeat the Borg where no one else could.  Until the scene in
question, we haven't seen Picard as seriously unstable; we've seen him
as strongly affected by what the Borg are doing, yes, but no reason
to see him like this.

I'd easily have been able to accept the scene if Picard was shown to
have an over-inflated view of his own capabilities; if he *knew* he
was going to win, and didn't scream about it, then I'd buy it.  It
would have worked largely as staged; the crew could have bought in,
with only Lily disbelieving him.  Ahab wasn't a screaming lunatic;
although he did rant on occasion, he was passionate and strong enough
to convince his crewmen, to win them over with strength of personality.
Picard came off like a spoiled child.

The second problem comes just after this:  Picard goes to get Data,
but he doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about the *other* Enterprise
crewmen who've been assimilated?!?  I find that creepy, to say the
least; while I realize that Data is the only regular threatened by
the Borg, you'd think Picard would feel a bit sorry for all those
Ensigns Throwaway.  Just for a second.  Maybe even try to do something
for *them.*  Just a thought, y'know.

I realize that my review up to now has been largely negative, so here,
without further ado, are some Things They Got Right:

Although the Picard-as-Ahab scene didn't work for me, I was delighted
that they *tried* it.  A *fallible* character is a zillion times better
than an infallible one; Trek has been rightly criticized for its
unbelievably infallible characters -- and for its fallible characters
whose dumbest screw-ups never get more than a mild rebuke -- and
the fact that the Trek folks realized this error, and tried to correct
it, pleases the hell out of me.  Now, if they'll just start taking
this attitude on the series more often...

The zero-g fight pleased me.  Not just because it was pretty accurate,
but because it took place on the *underside* of the Enterprise hull.
Three-dimensional thinking, *at last!*

Direction, direction, direction.  Here's hoping Frakes gets more
mainstream directing gigs, so he doesn't have to host any more of those
goddamned UPN paranormal shows!

The fact that they went to an honest effort, instead of just going
through the motions.  Of course, now that I've *seen* that even Brannon
Braga can make a try, I'll be even more harsh on their miserable flops
from now on. *grin*

And, last, a funny subtext.  Trek has made social commentary on many
things before, but FC saw Trek commenting on Trek... and doing it in
a very interesting way.  I don't think anyone else has commented on
this, but when it hit me during the film I doubled up and came close
to ROTFL.

Here, I'll tell you when it hit me; see if you can get it.  It hit
me *hard* in the scene in which Zephram Cochrane, Riker, and LaForge
are sitting in the little cockpit, and Cochrane discusses his reasons
for building the ship.  He's not building it for hope, for the future,
or for any of the reasons the history books suggest.  Cochrane's motive
is money (although how he expects to become filthy rich in a world whose
infrastructure has been largely devastated is a *really* good question).
He doesn't have a vision.  He just wants cash, naked women, and a nice
strong drink.

The funny thing is that posterity idealizes Zephram Cochrane.  They
build statues and monuments to his memory.  They write him up as a
great man, as being just shy of the Second Coming, as being a hero.
But Zephram Cochrane is none of those things.  He's a lecherous, drunken
reprobate who did what he did for purely material reasons.

Zephram Cochrane is *Gene Roddenberry.*

I haven't seen anyone comment on this interpretation yet -- and that
surprises me; I'd think someone would have.  For me, Trek's spoofing
of its creator's own unlikely pop-culture icon status was probably
the best part of the movie.  It gives the film a bit of a subversive
bite for the viewer who looks below the surface, and I think it redeems
some of the surface's flaws.  FC still isn't a perfect movie, and you'll
note that it shies away from spoofing the problems that plague Trek
today... but the fact that it goes back to its roots and pisses on
them in the same movie is *really* delightful.

And that, in a nutshell, is that.  Nicely-made, well-done movie; flawed
but still very enjoyable.  If it weren't for the inept beginning, I'd
give it three stars out of four; as it is, I'm giving it two and a half
for being an honest effort with a sprinkling of some really nice stuff.
Here's hoping the next one is better, and - more importantly - that
Brannon Braga learned something from this movie and brings the fruits
of his knowledge onto _Voyager_.

(                              STATLER
               I hope he brings the fruits onto _Voyager_.

                               WALDORF
               Yeah, and I hope they're poisoned!)

Well, I can dream, right?  Anyway, FC is a good start; let's see Trek
start cranking out more good stuff.  Maybe the next Trek movie will
be even better.

David Hines
[email-masked]