With Captain Picard’s Enterprise-D being destroyed at the end of Star Trek: Generations, it was little surprise to see him piloting the new (and much bigger) Enterprise-E. (Seriously, the Federation must be loaded if it can afford a replacement Enterprise every couple of years) Picard and company are out and about when the Borg attacks Earth. For you non-Trek savvy folk out there, the Borg is a colony of cyborgs that capture living subjects and turn them into cyborgs with no individuality whatsoever and also adding the individual’s knowledge into their collective brain.
Instead of helping Earth, Star Fleet orders the Enterprise to stay in the neutral zone and make sure the Romulans don’t get frisky with all the hub-bub going on. Really, Star Fleet doesn’t trust Picard to fight the Borg. He was once assimilated by them but escaped and holds quite a grudge. In other words, it’s kind of a rehash of Kirk vs. the Klingons from the original series.
Picard defies orders and helps save the day. But, the Borg shoots a probe into the past in order to prevent humans from ever discovering warp speed travel. The Enterprise follows in hot pursuit and ends up orbiting a mid-21st Century Earth. The crew goes down to investigate any damage the Borg did and realize that the Borg has nearly altered human history. The crew then makes it their mission to make sure a loony scientist does in fact discover warp travel and makes first contact with extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, those still on the Enterprise must face off against a faction of the Borg that beamed itself on board and are now assimilating the crew and taking over the ship.
While a standalone Picard vs. the Borg plot would have made for a boring movie (again, think Kirk vs. Klingons) the sub-plot of help ensure Earth’s first contact with extraterrestrials makes Star Trek: First Contact one of the most original films in the Star Trek series.
Sure, we’ve already done the whole ‘time travel with the fate of the Earth in our hands’ thing before, but the way they do it gets brownie points from me. And the fact that the two plots tie in well with each other makes it rather good. Instead of a flimsy deus ex machina kind of tie in, the fates of one group directly affect the fates of the other.
The visuals are actually pretty good, up until the end, where a level of the Enterprise fills up with a very poorly constructed cloud of CGI gas, resulting in some lousy blue screen work. The biggest fault of this film involves the cast. The crew of The Next Generation just aren’t as engaging as the original series bunch. I even grew up watching a few episodes of The Next Generation, but there just wasn’t as much chemistry. This was also fairly apparent in Star Trek: Generations, but I feel more strongly about commenting on it here.
Captain Picard is a joy to watch- he’s well read and very intelligent. Data is pretty much an annoying android version of Spock, except that instead of pondering the illogical behavior of humans as Spock did, Data actually strives to become more human. Sometimes it works but it usually comes off as being a little trite. Worf is kind of like Gimli from Lord of the Rings. He’s there to add that dash of extreme culture clash (being Klingon), but he never really manages to grow on you during the course of the film. The rest of the crew are just kind of there on the periphery and barely do anything memorable. It’s almost as if you’d need to watch the entire Next Generation series to understand where everybody is coming from.
Despite whatever shortcomings exist among the cast, the story makes up for it pretty well. There are some very cool literary allusions and some fine acting on Patrick Stewart’s part. The Borg actually do make for a good opponent as their bland features and emotionless state effectively creeps you out each time they’re on screen. A better cast dynamic and some better visual effects in certain places would put First Contact on even footing with the best films in the series (Star Trek II and III).
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
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