Star Trek: First Contact

Date: August 6, 2020

Musical Accompaniment: The movie soundtrack, of course.

Luis-style Summary: The Enterprise-E is ordered to patrol The Neutral Zone for stray Romulans while the Borg attack Earth. Picard and Riker look dashing, Crusher has blonde hair, La Forge has implants instead of a VISOR, and Troi has flatter hair. As Earth’s defenses start to crumble Picard disobeys orders and joins the fray, leading the surviving fleet to destroy the Borg cube and Worf, who was on the Defiant, to join them at tactical. Out of the cube comes a Borg sphere and it creates a temporal disturbance that alters the timeline so the Enterprise follows them to 2063, right before Zefram Cochrane made first contact with another species.

On the Enterprise the Borg beam over and slowly begin taking over the ship. Picard is ruthless, Worf battles, Data is captured, and several of the crew are assimilated. Data is held captive and meets the Borg Queen who tempts him with grafted skin and making him her partner, there is very likely android sex involved. Picard, Worf, and Hawk gear up to stop the Borg from connecting with their collective in the Delta Quadrant, but Hawk is assimilated and then spaced. Picard wants to fight but Lily talks him out of it so he plans to blow up the Enterprise, thus killing the Borg. Everyone evacuates but Picard, he tries to bargain with the Borg Queen for Data. Data pretends to be turned but then helps take down the Borg Queen.

Riker, La Forge, and an engineering team (including Barclay who fangoobers over Cochrane) have to fix the Phoenix so it can go out into space the next day. Troi finds Cochrane who is more interested in drinking and doesn’t want to become a monument to society, he’s in it for the money. Eventually they get everything up and running, while listening to Steppenwolf, and catch the attention of the Vulcans who are shortly introduced to music and whiskey. The crew of the Enterprise beams away and prepares to… wait for it… go back to the future. I’ll see myself out.

TL;DR: The Borg attack Earth and, when faced with losing, go back in time to try to stop Earth’s first contact with the Vulcans. The crew of the Enterprise-E must stop the Borg and help Zefram Cochrane achieve warp.

Favorite quotes:

Cochrane: And you people, you’re all astronauts, … on some kind of star trek?

LaForge: Look, Doc, I know this is a lot for you to take in, but we’re running out of time here.

A groan worthy placement of ‘star trek’ followed by a time joke in a time travel plot… sigh

Today is a Good Day to Die: ” Assimilate this!”

My Thoughts and Impressions: As much as I loved “The Voyage Home“, which was also a time travel story, I truly loved this movie. There are so many excellent moments that call back to a lot of things I am now familiar with. Crusher setting up the EMH in order to distract the Borg was one of the reasons we chose to wait to watch the movie in the middle of the fifth season of DS9. The holodeck scene, a callback to “The Big Goodbye“, was awesome and allowed there to be some non-sci-fi costuming in a way that made sense. La Forge gets to show off his shiny new eyes and it’s so nice to be able to see his face. Adding Worf back into the fray is believable because the Defiant would totally be out helping defend Earth, but I wonder what O’Brien is going to say about all the repairs that will be needed. Troi doesn’t get to do a lot, but I loved her scene in the bar. I do wish they had found a way to bring Guinan in, she’s still my favorite bartender… just don’t tell Quark. I loved the character of Lily and how she doesn’t take shit from Picard, she’s really the only one who could have given him the come-to-Jesus talk because everyone else has been under his command for too long. Worf came close but he’s still a subordinate and a Starfleet officer at heart. Lily was the breath of fresh air to cut through the chain of command in a meaningful way. I do believe, however, that the only reason the Enterprise didn’t actually explode is because Riker wasn’t in command.

The big four characters to focus on are The Borg Queen, Data, Cochrane, and Picard. The Borg Queen, who started out organic and slowly replaced herself with synthetic parts, is the opposite of Bicentennial Man as Andrew started out a complete android and slowly added human parts until he was no longer a machine. She dangles humanity in front of Data, who was only tempted for a fraction of a second, but she’s convincing enough that you’re wondering if she was able to break Data. Data does an excellent job of switching between emotion on/emotion off when needed while still having his unique Data-ness without the rambling. Picard is all over the damn place here. He starts off with PTSD flashbacks, becomes slightly defeated, then needs to save the day (which he does, kind of), is then utterly ruthless and hellbent on revenge and vengeance, and then finally morphs into the Picard we all know and love who listens to his crew and does what is best for all. Cochrane isn’t what we know him to be from the history books and it seems to much for him. Just like Picard, Cochrane needs to go through a whole slew of emotions and states of mind in order to come to terms with what his legacy will be, but you can see how space and meeting Vulcans can turn just about anyone.

Movie rating: While there are certainly some criticisms about the movie, they are slight and small and not worth me mentioning. In comparison to the other movies on my Rankings page, I believe it earns itself a warp 9.

TA Out!