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STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
[Spoilers]
A film review by David Hines
Copyright 1996 David Hines
(Previously posted to rec.arts.sf.tv and rec.arts.startrek.current.)
_Star Trek_, like all science fiction and skiffy, requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. In the best of _Star Trek_, the only requirement is that the viewer accept the somewhat improbable universe that the Franchise presents: one in which socialist ideals reign true; one in which people strive to better themselves and humanity, as well as all the little fuzzies out there; one in which poverty and crime and bad luck are things of the past. In the world of _Star Trek_, everyone is healthy and happy (or as near either of those things as possible), and things always work out in the end.
That's a lot to swallow, but provided the viewer can choke that down, a good time may be had by all. That is, assuming that we're talking about good Trek. Bad Trek tries to get the viewer to swallow too many horse pills; witness the typical episode of _Voyager_, wherein we're expected to accept clumsy technobabble, miserable plotting, and characters who are supposed to be capable doing no end of stupid things.
_Star Trek: First Contact_'s (hereafter: FC) greatest flaw is that it has too many horse pills. That's a pity, because otherwise it's a surprisingly well-done film: well-acted, well-directed, and (of course) well-effected. The devil, as always, is in the writing; and while the writing is good enough to make FC better than _Generations_ by roughly an order of magnitude (and does something interesting below the surface -- I'll get to *that* in a minute), it's not good enough to make me stand up and cheer the movie as a complete success. It's decent, in the neighborhood of two and a half to three stars out of four, but it would require more work to make it stand tall. Well worth your time at a matinee; don't spend a gazillion bucks on a night ticket, unless you have access to a theater with a mega-huge screen and great sound system.
Spoilers follow 30 blank lines and a ^L.
Thankfully, most of the painful swallowing takes place at the beginning. If the Federation can't trust Picard, why isn't he safely behind a desk? If the situation was so critical, why didn't the admiral order *Riker* to take command of the Enterprise? Didn't the Federation even try to make a stand outside the Sol system? Why didn't the Borg travel back to the twentieth century before attacking Earth (it would've been much easier, and wouldn't have resulted in the loss of the cube)? Why did Picard's trick work? Why did he know about it, and not tell anyone else in Starfleet before now? Why was the Enterprise able to hang around for a minute or so before zapping back in time with the Borg's hole in time? Why were they able to follow the Borg at all? I could have swallowed one or two of these problems; coming in so quickly, and so closely on each other's heels, they were utterly indigestible and made the opening of FC almost entirely unwatchable.
That's not to say there's not more swallowing to be done elsewhere in the film; there is, a mixture of bitter pills small (such as the Borg assimilation time being reduced to a few seconds, "inoculation" against radiation poisoning) and large (such as Picard's fight with Worf, which I'll get to). It's just that the beginning forces the viewer to swallow a lot of horse pills in very little time. The effects are beautiful, but the medicine that gets the movie going is *very* bitter, and needs more than a generous spoonful of eye-candy to help it go down.
Once the pills are choked down, however, a people-oriented plot takes over. Thank Cthulhu, because that's where Trek is strong, and because the caliber of the actors is such that it can smooth over rough spots, provided the spots are *relatively* far apart. The cast members deliver fine performances, particularly James Cromwell, Alfre Woodard, Alice Krige, and Patrick Stewart. (It's a bit annoying that most of the best roles went to non-featured players; I get the feeling that Sirtis and McFadden would have killed for an eighth of the screen time Alfre Woodard got... then again, neither of them is as good an actor as Woodard.) There are wobbles, from time to time; however, once the godawful beginning is left in the dust, FC begins to move and becomes a pretty enjoyable movie, largely because of the performances and direction.
There are, however, two major exceptions to the rule. Both of them, oddly enough, have to do with Picard. The first is Picard's fight with Worf, his refusal to down the ship, followed by an argument with Lily and a sudden reversal. The acting is fine; I don't have a problem with it (Woodard, especially, shone in that scene). The problem is that it comes out of nowhere. Picard hates the Borg; we know that. But his sudden lunacy doesn't feel right. Stewart acts it well, but the script doesn't give us enough of a reason to buy it. It has set us up to see Picard as a Borg-hater, but one who has some reason to believe he can defeat the Borg where no one else could. Until the scene in question, we haven't seen Picard as seriously unstable; we've seen him as strongly affected by what the Borg are doing, yes, but no reason to see him like this.
I'd easily have been able to accept the scene if Picard was shown to have an over-inflated view of his own capabilities; if he *knew* he was going to win, and didn't scream about it, then I'd buy it. It would have worked largely as staged; the crew could have bought in, with only Lily disbelieving him. Ahab wasn't a screaming lunatic; although he did rant on occasion, he was passionate and strong enough to convince his crewmen, to win them over with strength of personality. Picard came off like a spoiled child.
The second problem comes just after this: Picard goes to get Data, but he doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about the *other* Enterprise crewmen who've been assimilated?!? I find that creepy, to say the least; while I realize that Data is the only regular threatened by the Borg, you'd think Picard would feel a bit sorry for all those Ensigns Throwaway. Just for a second. Maybe even try to do something for *them.* Just a thought, y'know.
I realize that my review up to now has been largely negative, so here, without further ado, are some Things They Got Right:
Although the Picard-as-Ahab scene didn't work for me, I was delighted that they *tried* it. A *fallible* character is a zillion times better than an infallible one; Trek has been rightly criticized for its unbelievably infallible characters -- and for its fallible characters whose dumbest screw-ups never get more than a mild rebuke -- and the fact that the Trek folks realized this error, and tried to correct it, pleases the hell out of me. Now, if they'll just start taking this attitude on the series more often...
The zero-g fight pleased me. Not just because it was pretty accurate, but because it took place on the *underside* of the Enterprise hull. Three-dimensional thinking, *at last!*
Direction, direction, direction. Here's hoping Frakes gets more mainstream directing gigs, so he doesn't have to host any more of those goddamned UPN paranormal shows!
The fact that they went to an honest effort, instead of just going through the motions. Of course, now that I've *seen* that even Brannon Braga can make a try, I'll be even more harsh on their miserable flops from now on. *grin*
And, last, a funny subtext. Trek has made social commentary on many things before, but FC saw Trek commenting on Trek... and doing it in a very interesting way. I don't think anyone else has commented on this, but when it hit me during the film I doubled up and came close to ROTFL.
Here, I'll tell you when it hit me; see if you can get it. It hit me *hard* in the scene in which Zephram Cochrane, Riker, and LaForge are sitting in the little cockpit, and Cochrane discusses his reasons for building the ship. He's not building it for hope, for the future, or for any of the reasons the history books suggest. Cochrane's motive is money (although how he expects to become filthy rich in a world whose infrastructure has been largely devastated is a *really* good question). He doesn't have a vision. He just wants cash, naked women, and a nice strong drink.
The funny thing is that posterity idealizes Zephram Cochrane. They build statues and monuments to his memory. They write him up as a great man, as being just shy of the Second Coming, as being a hero. But Zephram Cochrane is none of those things. He's a lecherous, drunken reprobate who did what he did for purely material reasons.
Zephram Cochrane is *Gene Roddenberry.*
I haven't seen anyone comment on this interpretation yet -- and that surprises me; I'd think someone would have. For me, Trek's spoofing of its creator's own unlikely pop-culture icon status was probably the best part of the movie. It gives the film a bit of a subversive bite for the viewer who looks below the surface, and I think it redeems some of the surface's flaws. FC still isn't a perfect movie, and you'll note that it shies away from spoofing the problems that plague Trek today... but the fact that it goes back to its roots and pisses on them in the same movie is *really* delightful.
And that, in a nutshell, is that. Nicely-made, well-done movie; flawed but still very enjoyable. If it weren't for the inept beginning, I'd give it three stars out of four; as it is, I'm giving it two and a half for being an honest effort with a sprinkling of some really nice stuff. Here's hoping the next one is better, and - more importantly - that Brannon Braga learned something from this movie and brings the fruits of his knowledge onto _Voyager_.
( STATLER
I hope he brings the fruits onto _Voyager_.
WALDORF
Yeah, and I hope they're poisoned!)
Well, I can dream, right? Anyway, FC is a good start; let's see Trek start cranking out more good stuff. Maybe the next Trek movie will be even better.
David Hines dzhines@midway.uchicago.edu
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