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STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
A film review by ih84rds@aol.com
Copyright 1996 ih84rds@aol.com
Since ST:First Contact premiered over a week ago, I've had several people write and ask what I thought of the film. I didn't get to see the movie opening weekend because I had both a sick baby and an ill wife, but we finally got to go Friday night. So here goes.
The Plot The first thing I heard about STFC was the plot and to say the least, I was uderwhelmed. It sounded like fan fiction based upon the brief version I initially heard and it sounded too much like Terminator for my liking. Over all, the film was faithful to that version, but Braga and Moore's script had enough twists and turns to overcome any geeky elements the original concept might have contained.
The Script With one exception (Data's "to hell with order's" speech), it was as tight and as polished as any of the Trek films. There were a couple of Treknobabble inconsistancies (see the NitPicks section), but I was impressed.
Direction In a nutshell, Paramount is crazy if they let anyone but Frakes direct the next film. It's obvious he loves Trek, respects the fans and on top of everything else, he's talented as a director. If Hollywood does not offer this man other projects in the future, it will be their and our loss.
Acting/Characters I had grown to hate Picard. After the political correctness of TNG's last two seasons, I lost all respect for him. After he had a chance to kill the entire Borg collective and passed it by, he allowed an entire planet to die in the name of the Prime Directive and eventually got Jim Kirk killed (okay this is a reach, but I was POed at him to begin with), I was thoroughly disgusted with both Stewart and Picard. I prayed that this movie would begin with Admiral Picard tossing Will Riker the keys the Enterprise-E, but STFC has changed my opinion. I will not call him "an action hero", but I do see him as a very complex man of deep convictions and feelings. If you take TNG and the two movies as a whole, the arc of Picard's development has reached a point where he is free of his demons and will be able become the captain that I've wanted to see since Encounter at Farpoint. Stewart is an incredible actor and I hope he stays involved with Trek. The rest of the characters felt more like real people than they did on TNG. I regret that we didn't see more of Sirtis and McFadden, but I loved seeing Barkely. LaForge has grown, but I wish we could have seen more than the engineering side of him. The only thing I had to keep asking myself is why the heck hasn't Riker taken command of a ship yet? When I heard that Cromwell was cast as Cochrane I worried that I would keep expecting him to say, "That'll do, pig." but he was great. No, he looked nothing like the guy who played Cochrane in TOS, but it didn't bother me. BTW, Steppenwolf was a perfect choice for the first warp test.
Technical The technical merit of this film is way beyond Generations. The previous movie looked more like a wide screen TV episode, but this one looked and felt like a movie. The effects were awesome though I'm still not sure what I think of Enterprise-E. I like it much better that Enterprise-D, but that's not saying much.
Summation Except, for the nitpicks listed below, I loved this movie. No, it wasn't Babylon5, Star Wars, Aliens or Terminator, but it was the one thing it set out to be: STAR TREK. Regardless of what you think of Rodenberry's vision of the future, this film was faithful to it while at the same time being one heck of a ride. I think Gene would have been pleased. Is this the best Trek film? I don't really know, but it does rank with Kahn and Undiscovered Country.
Nitpicks WARNING, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER - THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW
Nitpick#1 There's no way a tourniquet would have kept Worf's space suit from completely bleeding off into space. Nitpick#2 Plasma is a highly energized state of matter in which the electrons have been stripped from the atomic nuclei and exist as a high temperature, randomly charged soup. The surface of the sun consists of plasma. If warp plasma had spilled into Engineering it would have either risen as a hot gas would do or it would have uniformly dispersed through the compartment. Either way, Picard would have been toast. Nitpick#3 It was too darned easy for Geordi to configure to the nacelles to emit chronoton particles and send the ship back to the 24 th century. Why not call it the Timeship Enterprise if it was that easy? Granted, the story was over, but at least give us the sling shot effect and a final shot of the Enterprise blasting away from the sun back to the 24 th century.
Okay, that's it for what it's worth.
John
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