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STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
[Spoilers]
A film review by Jonathan P. Crone
Copyright 1996 Jonathan P. Crone
The Odd/Even rule gets proven again.
Star Trek First Contact is a romp through the Star Trek mythos that simultaneously shows the strengths of 'Trek' and the maddening weaknesses of Trek.
The Strong: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner
Spiner pulls off a top notch job as Data gets teased by the Borg Queen with his ultimate desire. Right up to the climatic moment, you don't see the 'wham' coming.
Frakes just set himself up with a lucrative career as a film director. Good pacing, a strong style with the scenes inside the enterprise, a understanding of what is good about a Trek movie. As an actor we didn't have too much of the 'I'm Kirk's replacement' or the smugness that was regularly made fun of in 'Q' episodes. Its almost as if the Second in Command = good director rule needs definition. Nimoy, Frakes... not bad company.
Stewart's performances in individual scenes were stronger than the best that we saw from Shatner in complete movies. Patrick Stewart is the best part of First Contact. The portrayal drifting from the frustrated, to the man of action, to obsession, to resolution is delivered in a quality, appealling manner.
Unfortunately, everyone else is window dressing. Sirtis and Mcfadden get almost a prefunctory obligitory scene each. (But Sirtis made the most of it, with a hilarious scene with the Zephram Cochrane character)
Getting Michael Dorn onto the Enterprise was handled extremely well, but once he was onboard, Worf almost faded into the scenery. Too bad.
LeVar Burton had some good scenes with James Cromwell (Zephram Cochrane) but didn't get a chance to truly shine.
The guest stars were well chosen. The actress who played the Borg Queen had a perfect degree of menace, and in one scene (you'll know it when you see it) with Spiner/Data you could just feel the audience going 'whoa' Alfre Woodward had to be cast for her one key scene where she faces down Stewart/Picard. The rest of the movie, she gets in the way, but in one key moment she plays off the 'picard' mythos very well.
James Cromwell as Zephram Cochrane had a tough job. He has to play off everyone treating him as a hero, even if he doesn't believe he is one.
Well done. He ably plays the drunk who suddenly has to put up with hero worship.
The special effects are well executed, especially in the initial key combat sequences.
The new Enterprise is very pretty.
The distressing habit that Trek unveiled in Trek 6, that of the cameo appearance, carries on full strength into First Contact. One of the cameos, that of the Emergency Holodoc is well timed, but I could have done without hearing Nelix's voice in Ethan Phillip's (curiously uncredited) cameo in the holodeck, or Dwight Schultz's utterly pointless cameo as Brocoli (sorry, Barclay)
And now to the nasty bits.
My wife and I sat having dinner after the premier wondering if we'd just watched Aliens again or not. We finally decided that the best phrase was 'If imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery, then James Cameron (Director/writer of Aliens) must be damned flattered' First Contact is StarTrek meets the Aliens gang. That is not all bad, but damn it, this could have been MORE.
Scenes directly calling back the image of chest bursters from Aliens, a whole mental process of 'If they're going to get assimiliated, kill them first, its the best for them' down to the claustrophobia of the combat scenes in the corridors of the Enterprise felt pulled from Aliens.
The really bad. (SPOILER CITY BELOW)
Data and Jean-Luc save the Enterprise, save Zephram Cochrane, save humanity yet again. The scene changes, and beam off they go, hop onto the Big E, and whiz, snap bang, back through time end of movie.
WOULD SOMEONE in the STAR TREK UNIVERSE STOP WRITING RESET BUTTON ENDINGS DAMN IT!!!!!!!!
I stopped watching Voyager because of crappy writing and magical mystery reset endings in 30 seconds. (plus technobabble etc.) DS9 still moderately suffers from this disease.
The Enterprise has just had most of its crew assimilated and Borgified, the ship itself has been collectivized and has been borg modified from decks 26 up to deck 3 or 4. ( A guess) They've jettisoned the deflector dish for crying out loud, and now 'SNAP BANG' off to warp?
Even a ' Captain's Log: we've spent 2 weeks in orbit repairing damage to the Enterprise and rigging a new deflector emitter. We now bid farewell to earth of the past with new hope" Something like that...
NOT Whiz bang, the ship is ready to honk back to the future????
Anyways, First Contact managed to in 2 1/2 minutes of film to damn near ruin my enjoyment of the film. Too bad...
Incidently: The Defiant gets thoroughly trashed at the beginning of the movie.. Anyone wondering if DS9 will have a throw in it to provide an 'absence' of the Defiant for a few episodes while it gets repaired? Given Trek's inability to provide for continuity, I'm not counting on it...
First Contact is worth seeing. Some bloody annoying weaknesses that are unfortunately endemic to the entire Trek universe as corrupted by Rick Berman, but still worth seeing.
JpC
-- Jonathan P. Crone P.Eng 613-763-8624 Fax 613-763-5568 ESN:393-8624 BNR PCS Systems Development cronejp@bnr.ca
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