Star Trek: First Contact Review
by Mark Farinas (trotsky AT icanect DOT net)December 4th, 1996
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STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT
A film review by Mark Farinas
Copyright 1996 Mark Farinas
Star Trek: First Contact is not only the worst movie of the series, but one of the worst movies ever made. Its worthy of MST3K in every way, shape and form. A movie for the masses? Even if it wasn't a Trek movie it would be horrid. Want to know why? Those who loved this movie and those who hated it should read on and respond through e-mail and posting. Flame or respond intelligently, I don't care!
And now for my First Contact review:
Let it be known I love Trek. I love TOS and TNG. I, however, hated the last movie and this one even more. I went with two other friends to the largest screen we could find. When the words "A Rick Berman Production" came on we all booed and hissed. First Contact opened with a very disturbing dream sequence showing Picard and his trials during his assimilation in Best of Both Worlds. This was done exactly like Ripple's dream in the beginning of Aliens. Not too original, and overly graphic. It actually scared me. But FC goes totally downhill from here. The plot advances so quickly its hard to really keep up with without your head spinning a bit.
This is why I say it's a bad movie period. It was put together horribly. One thing lead to another and another without taking time to breath. The plot moves at warp 10. We get the warning of the Borg invasion, then we spend 30 seconds thinking about how dumb SF is for not allowing the E-E to join the battle (which was idiotic saying its SF's newest ship armed with the newest weapons and a crew that has saved Earth quite a few times in the past). Then 10 seconds more to make the decision to go to earth (all the way to Earth from the Neutral Zone in time to save the day? This should have taken weeks, but this is a shit movie, right?).
Now we witness the biggest battle in Trek history. We've all been waiting for it: tonnes of Fed ships against a Borg cube. We missed it at Wolf 359, but now the time is here. It lasts 30 more seconds of the movie. We are 2 minutes into the movie and all this has already transpired. I cant take it! The battle is ended because Picard knows some kind of weakness in the cube that he doesn't explain. Why should he? It would slow the plot to warp 8. And why didn't he point this spot out to the E-D crew in BOBW? Would have been cooler than the stupid "sleep" resolution they came up with that ended TNG's best episode rather sloppily. But the ending of this battle was even more sloppy and was ended this way to advance the so called plot faster.
And now it gets really silly. A Borg escape craft easily hurls itself into the past with yet another of Trek's many tachyon pulse things. The Borg can do that? Then why bother fighting for any world? Why go to the 21st century? Why not go back to primordial times? Rewrite the hole universe in their image straight from its beginnings on!? Why not have done that a long ass time ago? Well, the E-E is sucked in after it and blows the crap out of it with the new DS9 invention, "quantum torpedoes". This is, of course, another stupid way of getting the term "quantum" into the show. "Quantum this and that" I'm sick of it.
But all the E-E's vital functions are off-line due to the time travel and they have no idea the Borg have invaded the ship. This is know do to a number of idiotic scenes that were ripped from every horror movie ever made. I laughed my ass off when the first two crew members got it. It was that stupid.
Meanwhile, on the surface we meat Zephram Cochrane. Remember him in "Metamorphosis"? Remember how moral and upright he was? How clean cut? Well, he's a drunken capitalistic bastard here. He wants nothing but naked women, money, and power. He's also now from Montana. Why? Because Berman Trek is geocentric. Cochrane was originally from Alpha Centauri and we can all guess that, since Alpha Centauri is Sol's closest neighbor, the ACs probably came and visited us. Why the hell not? But not for Berman and Braga, those twits. Yeah, and the original Enterprise's main engineering was in the secondary hull even though that big, red "hall way" with the grill over it was obviously the impulse engines! Thhhhpppptt!
And where'd he get the dilithium? It isn't a synthetic material. You mine it out of the ground. As far as I can tell, there is none on Earth. The fact is, a man doesn't take the leap Cochrane did from go nowhere alcoholic to goody two shoes. It don't work. If that Cochrane had been trapped on a planet for a hundred years with anything he wanted it would have been booze, not a fig tree. Thus Cochrane becomes an antihero.
Back to the Borg threat, we find that the Borg have not only invaded, but redecorated. This looks so much like Aliens its not funny. Right down to Borg coming out of the walls. Not only that but they came out of these silly Borg Craftmatic Adjustable Reclining Beds with Goofy Sparking Electrical Headrests. And where'd they get the parts to do this? Did they excrete it out their mechanical poop shoots? And they are also assimilating bits of the crew. With what? How'd they get all this stuff aboard with out being noticed immediately? HOW? This is a lot of freaking equipment here!
Data has been captured and is being seduced by the disappointingly simple looking Borg Queen. Now the Borg are totally ruined. The concept of this single, simple creature as the head of this immense force. Not a super computer or entity, but a lousy, bodiless nit-wit. And what is such an important person doing on a mission like this? Why isn't she at home working from afar as any all powerful leader would? Oh, and not only is she evil, but she's moist and she accessorizes wonderfully. Did you get a look at the fabulous shade of lipstick she was wearing? It made the scaly, pale thing even more alluring. Hot stuff!
Data, of course, gets his emotion chip permanently activated (did I mention he can turn it off now? I'll give them that as it's been two years and perhaps he's worked out these bugs). The chip, it seems, not only gives him emotions, but makes him uncontrollably horny as he is willing to touch lips with the most grotesque and repulsive woman since Cher. This image has been permanently burned into my retina as I can still see it when I close my eyes.
Data is also getting real skin grafted onto him. I thought he could already feel. It ain't so hard to make a robot have physical sensation. Just make certain stimuli send certain messages to the "brain". But the skin also brings pain, and its got blood in it.
Picard returns to the E-E and meets up with Cochrane's assistant, Lilly, who was injured on the planet and had the get medical attention on board. Together they escape the Borg through the holodeck in a scene made just so Patrick could pull off a few rounds as an action hero and allow us to see the Borg get all shot up in slow-mo.
Now some have said that non-trekkers could not understand this movie due to its close ties with BOBW and Metamorphosis. But that's just not so because both of these back stories are explained in laborious detail. These are actually moments when to plot becomes tedious because to the Trekker these are givens. Not only that, but they are told in "Babylon 5" style. You know, in B5 every character gives a long monologue about a tragic part of their history. Just like Picard gives to Lilly about his assimilation. Oye.
Picard now no longer gives a flying fuck (yeah I cursed, fuck you) about his crew, something no other Trek captain has ever done. The Captain Ahab thing, done to death already in all Trek incarnations, is reheated to a toasty brown. Picard should be over this part of his life already as he delt with it in "I, Borg". He had the oppotunity to wipe them out, he delt with his rage and hatred, and he conquered it with reason and compasion. Why bring it back now? He actually kills one of his own men who is in the process of Instant Assimilation, a grotesque and unforgivable action. He also dissects a Borg that was one of his own crew with out even flinching and learns the Borg's plan of using the deflector dish to tell the 21st century Borg to attack Earth now.
Picard, Worf, and Lt. Hawk (who was said to be the next "Lt. Saavik") put on EVA suits and go out to get the Borgs working on the dish. Let me tell you right now, I hate this new E-E. It is a cheap cut and paste of the Voyager's primary hull, the Excelcior's secondary hull, and the E-A's nacelle struts. It was so totally unoriginal it was sick. Not only that, but the external shots looked like crap. This was the ship that looked the most like a model. I expected to see a string at any moment. It was painted in dayglow colours too. Red, yellow, blue and bright, bright white. The amount of detail in this model was not worthy of a motion picture.
This was overly noticeable as the three crew men trekked (oh, did I mention how stupid and trite I thought Cochrane's "some kind of Star Trek" line was?) over the ship's hull. They finally stumble upon the Borg who are putting together some transmitter in the middle of the dish. Lucky for the crew this particular portion of the ship can be easily ejected. Does the whole ship come apart like this? Or was this just a moronic, useless function that was added just for this scene? I'll pick the second. This was plain dumb. This whole scene could have been totally cut and other portions of the movie, like the whole opening sequence, lengthened.
As if this is not stupid enough, the crew is attacked in zero-g and merriment ensues. Worf carries his Mek'leth with him everywhere it seems. Picard does a cute jump across the dish. This was the STUPIDEST part of the movie. Picard floating over the deflector was hilarious, and I totally lost it. I could actually see the part of the suit were the string was attached pulled slightly outward. Yes, I admit it, I wet 'um. Then Hawk is attacked by a Borg and thought dead until he reappears and attacks Picard because he's been subject to Instant Assimilation. Yep, without his pressure suit being disturbed and without any equipment the Borg got all these funny mechanical doo-hickies on his face and he's turned against the captain. Do we care what happens next?
The Borg, BTW, are not wearing any protective outfits outside. Remember this for later. It will come up again.
Worf and Picard get back in the ship when they find that they have to destroy the ship to stop the Borg because phasers no longer have any effect at all. But Picard, being the antihero that he is, refuses to let go of the ship. So he decides he's going to doom himself and his crew. And you know what? No one cares! We're gonna blindly go to our deaths! Crusher doesn't debate him and says "If that's his orders we have to follow them". Like hell! You're the doctor! Pronounce him unfit for command! Either that or talk him out of it! Your Bev! He loves you! You know him better than anyone else. How many times have you said "Jean-Luc! I disagree!" But no, this new character, Lilly has that job. Yep, someone Picard just met totally turns his whole outlook around using the Ahab argument. She then admits she's never read Mobey Dick and you can feel all the Beaver and Buckwheats in the cinema thinking "See! I don't gotta read ta be smart!"
Abandon ship! The ship is on autodestruct and everybody's running for their lives! Everyone but Picard who is gonna go save Data. That's right, you forgot about Data, didn't you? At the same time, Cochrane is admitting what an ass he is in B5 style to Riker who pollutes the timeline even more by even telling the man quotes he'll make up in the future. They then fly off into the sky and seeing the earth from above convinces Cochrane what an ass he is. Gee another instant transformation. The second one in as many minutes. Cochrane has to go to warp fast to attract the attention of the Vulcans doing a survey mission near by to come land on Earth.
In engineering Picard shows up to find Data and stop the Borg single handedly. It seems Data is one of them now and allows the Borg access the main computer and stops the autodestruct system. He then fires "Quantum" torpedoes at the Phoenix. These are the slowest moving torpedoes in the history of Trek. This wasn't even a dramatic slow-mo effect. It was in real time. The torpedoes miss and it turns out that Data's really a good guy. He then smashes his fist through a coolant chamber releasing freezing gas. Picard jumps up and hangs on to the ceiling as the gas freezes and shatters the Borg's organic parts. Now, think about this. The vacuum of space is 3 Kelvin. The Borg were outside, unprotected, in space, and this didn't effect them at all. If the Borg don't need oxygen, pressure and heat to survive, then why bother with having environmental systems on their ships?
But this coolant gets 'em. By this time Picard's uniform is ripped to shreds and is totally sleeveless. He then swings on a bit of tubing to land on the other side of the room and has as the gas sucked out of the room. Picard sleeveless and swinging? What the fuck is going on here? That is so Predator/Terminator/Aliens/Rambo/any other action movie you can think of. This is Picard as his lowest.
The Phoenix goes into warp, faster than light, and stays there for five whole minutes. So fast, stars streak by. Mind you, it takes 8 minutes to get to Jupiter at light speed. But when they come out of it they seem to be no further than the Moon's orbit away (judging from the size of Earth when they looked back at it after the jump). Does anyone else see a problem with this?
The Vulcans detect the warp field and they come a running. They pick up the warp field, but not the four massively powerful projectiles fired in the same area. A weapon so potent it destroyed a Borg ship. If I was a Vulcan, I'd wet myself, turn around, and hope my ass wasn't spotted by who ever fired those shots. Cochrane introduces them to cheap booze and cheesy mock 1960's retro music. The E-E goes back to there time period which is totally unchanged, which is suprising as I'd think Riker or Jeordi would have told Cochrane something totally history shattering (yeah, as if they haden't already).
Hey, how'd they get back? They used the same shit as the Borg. Yeah, the same damn shit. I swore again. I'm that mad. Will it be that easy from now on? Can they do this all the time? If something bad happens, can they go back a day and fix it? Can Rick Berman and Brannon Braga go back in time to stop Gene from creating TOS and convince him to work, instead, on the plots for Deep Space Nine and Voyager? Can they, huh huh? Of course not, this technology will be forgotten right away. And why did Lavar Berton throw a fit and not wear the visor in this movie? He was only on screen for about five minutes of the entire movie.
All in all, this movie sucked. Generations was pretty damn bad, but this was even worse. The worst Trek movie ever made! One of the worst action movies ever made. It was dull, unbelievable, and seemed like it was slapped together in a hurry. I could have made a better movie than this. Hell, I could make a better series than the two Bs have. Come on people! Let's end Star Trek for a few years! Maybe in a decade or two some new, better producers will take up the cause. Hell, maybe it'll be me when university's over. Flame on!
Mark "Trotsky" Farinas
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