Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

Film Review

Resistance is futile!  After a muddled transition to the big screen in Star Trek: Generations (1994), the new crew of the starship Enterprise finally came into their own in this stunning effects extravaganza, arguably the best entry in the series of Star Trek films to date.  When Ridley Scott turned down the offer to direct the film, Jonathan Frakes assumed the directing duties - his feature debut, although he had already directed around a dozen episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and its various spin-offs, as well as playing one of the ST:TNG principals, Commander Riker.  Despite his lack of experience (which shows mainly in his laclustre direction of the actors), Frakes succeeds in delivering an action-packed sci-fi spectacular that surpasses anything seen so far in the Star Trek series, in both its scale and visual impact.  Star Trek: First Contact was the best 30th anniversary present any Star Trek fan could have hoped for.

Where the film particularly excels is in the quality of its special effects.  By the mid-1990s, digital effects had finally come of age and Star Trek: First Contact embraces the digital revolution with an almost manic vigour.  The results are stunning, and still appear stunning more than a decade after the film was made.  It is hard to think of a science-fiction film with a more spectacular opening shot - the camera pulling back from a close-up on the iris of one of Picard's eyes to reveal the captain to be standing in the Borg ship, and then pulling back further to show the ship hanging forbiddingly in space, like an omen of doom.   And this isn't a one off.  The film offers many jaw-dropping effects sequences of this calibre, with computer generated models that are so convincing you could swear they were solid physical entities.  Visually, the film has much the same impact that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey had when it came out in 1968 - it is a comparable game changer.

Of course, impressive visual effects do not, by themselves, make a great film.  Star Trek: First Contact owes as much of its appeal to its inventive story concepts, which include one of the most successful ideas of the ST:TNG series - the Borg, which appeared in the popular fourth season episode The Best of Both Worlds.  The Borg (who, by the way, are definitely not Swedish) not only make a worthy adversary for the crew of the Enterprise - they are a kind of conflation of every staple of the horror genre, part vampire, part zombie, part body-snatcher - they are also an effective metaphor for the dehumanising effect of technology on mankind.  As we become increasingly dependent on computers, iPhones, iPads, etc., can we be sure that we are not gradually being assimilated into some kind of collective machine consciousness, like the Borg?  With the benefit of a far bigger effects budget than the original television series could ever have hoped for, the Borg have a terrifyingly real screen presence, and are surely one of the most chilling sci-fi creations ever.

This eighth Star Trek film has one weak point in common with its predecessor, which is that most of the ST:TNG regulars fail to have much of an impact and are almost totally eclipsed by the guest actors and the effects.  Once again, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner (respectively Picard and Data) get all the interesting stuff, whilst the rest of the Enterprise crew are bundled into the background, like children told to keep out of the way when an important guest comes to dinner.  Stewart is at his Shakespearean best as a kind of hybrid of Henry V and Captain Ahab (happily quoting lines from Melville's Moby Dick) whilst Data finally succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh as he falls under the influence of a chillingly sexy Borg Queen (superbly portrayed by Alice Krige).  Alfre Woodard out-charismas most of the Enterprise crew as a ballsy space urchin-cum-warp drive engineer, and James Cromwell brings some badly needed reality to this portrayal of the eccentric inventor Zefram Cochran. 

Whilst the film is much darker in tone than most of the Star Trek films, the screenwriters managed to slip in a few well-judged humorous asides, making fun of the wide discrepancy between Cochran's reputation as a noble benefactor of mankind and the sordid hippy-style, self-interested reality.  If the writers had put just a little bit more effort into the characterisation, and if Frakes had shown just a little more attention to his actors, the film would have been flawless.  As it is, Star Trek: First Contact is an exciting, visually rewarding space romp of the first rank - the best thing so far in the entire Star Trek canon.  You will be assimilated.

Film Synopsis

As the Earth comes under attack from the Borg, a semi-organic, semi-machine collective intent on assimilating all life, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is instructed by the Federation to patrol the Neutral Zone in the newly built Enterprise-E.  Picard's superiors fear that his previous encounter with the Borg could make him a liability.  However, Picard believes that this experience means that he is best placed to defeat them, so he takes the Enterprise back to Earth, to join in the attack on the Borg ship.  Just before the Enterprise destroys the Borg Cube, a sphere escapes and creates a temporal vortex, through which it travels back in time to the mid-21st century, just a few years after World War III.  With humanity at its most vulnerable, the Borg intend to change human history by preventing a warp drive test flight that will allow man to make first contact with another alien species.  As Commander Riker leads an expedition to Earth to ensure the warp drive's inventor Zefram Cochrane succeeds in his historic endeavour, Picard wages war against the Borg on his ship, assisted by Cochrane's assistant, Lily Sloane.  As Data is captured by the Borg Queen and given skin grafts that provide him with his first sensual experiences, Picard and the Klingon Commander Worf must perform a death-defying space walk on the hull of the Enterprise to prevent the Borg from using the ship's deflector dish to summon reinforcements.  As the Borg begin to win the battle aboard the Enterprise, Picard faces a terrible choice.  Does he destroy his ship or order his crew to fight to the last man?  This time, the Borg appear to be unstoppable...