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 Jacen@mindless.com
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