Star Trek: First Contact (1996) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Resistance is not futile. It is voltage divided by current.

Star Trek: First Contact is the first full outing by the cast of The Next Generation, and is a treat for fans of the franchise. It culls together elements from the entire thirty year history of the television shows and films to depict a watershed moment in human history, as well as continue the stories of the Enterprise crew.

First Impressions

The crew of the Enterprise must once again go up against the Borg. These cybernetic beings have time traveled into Earth’s past and assimilated the planet, so it’s up to Picard, Data, Worf and the rest of the crew to go back to 2063 and stop them. The trailer provides a look at battling Borg onboard the Enterprise, a female member of the alien species, Data with a strange patchwork face, and Picard vowing not to destroy the ship again. It’s time for some First Contact!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

About one year after the destruction of the Enterprise-D (in Star Trek: Generations), Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is onboard the Enterprise-E, charting star clusters on the other side of the galaxy when the Borg begin an invasion of Earth. However, Starfleet has informed Picard that he is not to enter the battle. They are concerned that his capture and assimilation, as Locutus, into the Borg collective leave him vulnerable. But after hearing the destruction caused by the cyborg enhanced aliens, Picard orders Enterprise to Earth, taking command of the battered fleet and issuing orders about the best places to shoot the alien cube-vessel. As the Borg cube destructs, a sphere-ship emerges and using chronometric particles creates a temporal vortex around it which causes both it and the Enterprise to travel back in time.

Before entering the past, Lt Commander Data (Brent Spiner) makes note that Earth is entirely populated by Borg. They make the assumption that by traveling into the past, the Borg have altered the future. The ships arrive on April 4, 2063, the day before Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) makes an historic flight using warp drive for the first time. The Borg sphere blasts at an abandoned missile silo in Montana before being destroyed by the Enterprise. Unfortunately, the crew discovers Cochrane’s ship, the Phoenix, was damaged in the attack and may not be able to make its flight the next day.

While investigating the damage to the converted ICBM spaceship, Data prevents Lily (Alfre Woodard) from shooting them, believing the Enterprise crew to be with the Eastern Coalition–a faction that fought North America during World War III a decade previous. Picard and Data return her to the ship to treat her for Theta radiation poisoning from the damaged Phoenix. Meanwhile Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Chief Engineer LaForge (LeVar Burton) attempt to repair the Phoenix and get Cochrane ready for his infamous flight which leads to the first contact between humans and Vulcans. Unfortunately, the real Cochrane is nothing like history has portrayed. He is drunken and unconvinced that his contributions matter, even after Riker shares the fact that they have come back in time to help. If anything, that makes Cochran more eager to run from the ominous weight of responsibility.

Onboard the Enterprise Picard soon realizes that prior to the destruction of the Borg sphere some members of the cybernetic race beamed over and are attempting to gain control of the ship. Lily awakens, and unsure where she is, takes Picard hostage, believing him the enemy. He proves to her that he is here to help. They hide on the holodeck, in one of Picard’s Dixon Hill storylines, blending into the hologram in order to kill the Borg drones with a tommy gun. Meanwhile, Data is captured by the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) and held in engineering, in hopes that he will reveal the computer lock out code that prevents the Borg from taking full control of the ship. The Queen tempts him with grafts of real human skin onto his body which triggers his emotion chip.

On the planet below, LaForge leads an engineering team to repair the Phoenix and get it ship shape for a launch. His hero-worship of Cochrane, along with others, puts the scientist off and he runs away into the woods. But Riker and the other officers bring him back, a little hungover, but safe. Picard realizes the Borg are attempting to modify the sensor dish to send a distress call to the Borg of the 21st Century, leading to untold damage to the timeline. Picard leads Commander Worf (Michael Dorn)–now of Deep Space 9, and Lt Hawk (Neal McDonough) on an EVA walk to jettison the deflector array. Hawk is assimilated, but Picard manages to free the array and destroy it before any signal is sent.

The Phoenix makes its launch on time, swinging past Saturn and back to Earth. The Borg attempt to shoot down the warp-ship on its flight but Data, pretending to be under the thrall of the Queen, smashes the coolant tanks in engineering, causing all the bio-organic matter on the Borg to be dissolved. Luckily Picard, who had made a choice to sacrifice himself to destroy the Borg, gets clear in time. As everyone celebrates their victory against the Borg, and the successful flight of the warp-ship, a strange alien vessel lands in the clearing. Cochrane steps into his place in history by welcoming a trio of Vulcans to Earth. The crew of the Enterprise return to their time, having saved the galaxy once again.

“And you people, you’re all astronauts on some kind of star trek?” – Zefram Cochrane

History in the Making

Debuting thirty years and two months after Star Trek first aired on television, Star Trek: First Contact makes great use of the history of the franchise, while continuing the journey forward for Jean-Luc Picard, and his crew. It is the eighth overall film for Star Trek since 1979s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the first full outing for the cast of The Next Generation after Star Trek: Generations. It’s also the directorial feature debut for Jonathan Frakes (Riker). Paramount decided that having a person familiar to the series in the directors chair serves for the betterment of the films, as with Leonard Nimoy having directed Star Trek III: the Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (and ignoring Shatner’s helming of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). Frakes would go on to direct the next installment, Star Trek: Insurrection as well as having directed tons of television episodes from The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager all the way up to Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and The Orville, a Star Trek-style show.

The film marks the second time travel plot in a row, and the third Star Trek film to feature the characters traveling to different eras. Time travel was old hat to the franchise however, with the crews of the various ships traveling back in time often. But unlike Star Trek ending up in contemporary Cape Canaveral or the 1930s, and Star Trek IV taking the crew to late-20th Century San Francisco, First Contact takes a cue from Deep Space Nine’s “Future Tense” episodes by having the crew visit a moment in the audiences future, which is an historic moment for the characters in the Trek universe. The television episodes depicted the Bell riots of 2024 (from a 1995 real-world context), while First Contact shows what is arguably the most important piece of history in the Star Trek universe: the first contact between humans and Vulcans. A moment that would put the Earth on a course for greater things. Along with the Original Series episode “Errand of Mercy” which depicts the Treaty of Organia between the Klingons and Federation, this film shows the human race growing after a nuclear world war to reach back out to the stars and pull themselves into a new era of human evolution.

Genre-fication

Star Trek: First Contact is a Star Trek fan’s film. It contains all the major elements of a Star Trek story and introduces a number of other new elements, as it moves the characters forward towards future stories. The entire cast of The Next Generation makes an appearance, including Worf, who had become a regular on Deep Space Nine after the cancellation of the original show. It also featured many nods to the current Star Trek TV shows (Voyager and DS9) as well as elements familiar to fans of The Next Generation. These include the appearance of the USS Defiant (DS9) with Worf at the helm, the emergency medical hologram (Robert Picardo, Voyager), Ethan Phillips as a holographic Maitre d’ (Phillips plays Neelix on Voyager), and a number of characters from episodes of The Next Generation, including Ensign Barclay (Dwight Schultz), Nurse Ogawa (Patti Yasutake), and the Dixon Hill holodeck stories.

The film also includes the character of Zefram Cochrane, who first appeared in the ninth episode of season two of the Original Series, entitled “Metamorphosis.” Obviously played by a different actor, the Cochrane from the 1967 episode appeared much different, having been kept young by an alien companion. Small discrepancies might bother uber-fans, but the overall idea of delving into this particular character’s story is an exciting and fun trip into Trek history. The film also includes heavy allusions to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, as did Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. However, instead of the villain (Khan) being linked to the single-minded sailor Captain Ahab, it is the captain of the Enterprise who takes on that role. Lily helps Jean-Luc realize that his fervent aggression to single-handedly destroy the Borg could be his undoing.

The film also capitalizes on the wonderful cybernetic organisms, the Borg, which were introduced in the third season finale of The Next Generation, “The Best of Both Worlds, part 1.” These robotic aliens, which never seem to stop, and can constantly adapt to the weapons and tactics of the crew, are a huge step up in terms of antagonists to fight. The Borg present a real threat to Enterprise, as well as personally to Picard. His assimilation as Locutus in the two part episode is some of the best Star Trek around. His entire storyline in the film deals with his ability to overcome the trauma of his past, while making the decisions about his future, and the future of the entire Federation. Definitely high stakes.

Societal Commentary

Picard’s personal journey to come to terms with his past is set against Cochrane’s journey to become the greatest hero known to the star trekkers of the 24th Century. Except that Cochrane is just a man. He’s not a statue reaching out to the stars. He’s not the larger-than-life pilot of the Phoenix that would have schools named after him. And he’s not the hero that saved the Earth by creating a bridge between the stars. He is shown constantly questioning himself and running away from the pressure of a future where everyone treats him like a celebrity. He questions that perception, the perception of history, on a man who has created a space ship–not for the greater good, but to make money. Lots and lots of money, as he says. He finds trouble reconciling the ideal between how history sees him, and how he sees himself. This is the most emotional and resonating theme of all of the Star Trek films. It shows how individuals, regardless of their motives, can lead to great change. Even if it’s not the change they were considering. Cochrane eventually embraces his destiny, but on his own terms. Regardless of who people tell him he is, he decides to live his life as the man he knows he is, and let history make up its own mind.

This is contrasted with the personal journey for Picard. Years ago he suffered a deep trauma at the hands of these aliens who turned him into a cybernetic hybrid. He still has dreams of their ship, and of being connected to the hive mind. The film even suggested that the connection was never truly severed after all the implants were removed from him. His ideas of being the one person that knows the Borg and can defeat them gets reinforced by the events of the film. He shows up to save the fleet over Earth by knowing just where to hit the Borg Cube to destroy it. This puts him in place to follow the Borg back in time and destroy them. Even when the Enterprise is at risk, he refuses to destroy it, lest it mean admitting defeat–and the fact that in his previous outing (Generations) he also had to destroy his ship. Loss of life is very high for him where the Borg are concerned. Yet he fails to see the forest through the trees as his aggression to destroy the Borg overwhelms his sense of duty to his crew. Lily, who knows nothing of either him or the Borg, allows him to see his failings as a leader, and help him understand his place in the battle.

The final greatest element of the film, of course, is the First Contact itself. A moment that is teased from the beginning of the film, and one that had been referenced in previous shows and spin-off material. A moment when an alien ship, having noticed the evolution of humans, sets down on the planet, offering an olive branch of peace between two vastly different worlds. It seems obvious that one of Gene Roddenberry’s ideals for the show he created 30 years previous, was to serve as an example of what humanity could potentially be in the future. It was not a cynical continuation of warring Earth factions, but humanity as a leader in interstellar exploration. Where money and a job are no longer things that concern the average citizen. Where the betterment of the society and the self are the driving factors for personal growth. First Contact instills that moment of hope, where the petty squabbles of late-20th Century audiences and their countries, might someday be set aside, and the world might come together as one. The film still resonates this dream almost 25 years later, but there will probably not be an alien ship that arrives in 40 years to help us. There is hard work that people need to put in now for the future, if there is to be a real “first contact.”

The Science in The Fiction

In conjunction with themes of global community, and reaching out to the stars, First Contact makes an interesting metaphor out of the first warp-drive ship. The Phoenix, which is an allusion to the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes, is a converted nuclear missile. Cochrane and Lily worked to convert an ICBM from a silo in Montana into a spaceship that will literally change the entire trajectory of humanity. In the post Cold War era of the late 20th Century, they were literally changing swords into plowshares.

The film also upgrades the threat, and shares a little more about who and what the Borg are. Many crewmembers are seen assimilated by the injection of nanobots into their system. The change occurs quickly as various apparatus are grafted onto the bodies in order to make them stronger and more foreboding. Like cyborgs from other films, the Borg are a combination of organic and inorganic properties. But unlike the characters seen in those other stories, the Borg are a collective hive mind which removes the sense of self for individuals, making their abductions of people scarier. They serve as techno-zombies, injecting a little bit of horror into an otherwise science-fiction laden story.

The Final Frontier

Star Trek: First Contact serves as an eagerly optimistic film, even for all of its anxiety and fear. James Cromwell is great as the man who would be the inverter of the warp drive. His 21st Century sensibilities seem very contemporary, especially compared to the crew of the Enterprise. He also is a man who likes “classic” rock, sharing two fun songs with the crew. The first is Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride,” played on his solid state disc as the Phoenix launches into space. The music in conjunction with the blast off of the ship, gives a nice throw back to the heyday of the space program when ships like Apollo 11 were taking flight to put man on the moon. The later song, which Cochrane plays for the Vulcans is “Ooby Dooby” by Roy Orbison, a rocking, dancible number that helps portray Cochrane as the fun loving, hard drinking man that he is. It’s hard to believe that these songs would be over 100 years old when Cochrane was listening to them.

First Contact also sets up a lot of material that would be revisited in the second season of Star Trek: Picard. The return of the Borg Queen and Picard’s hesitations due to his past, as well as a time travel adventure into Earth’s past (and Starfleet’s history) were wonderfully portrayed as both fresh and an homage to everything that had come before. The film may have been the last great Star Trek film prior to the reboot in 2009 by JJ Abrams. It may also be the Star Trek film that speaks the most toward the principles laid down by Gene Roddenberry. While it does maintain a personal journey for the captain and the crew, the stakes are bigger and more universal than the previous Trek films, save perhaps The Motion Picture, and The Voyage Home. I encourage everyone to take another look at Star Trek: First Contact and think about the way that you are making the world better for future generations.

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