This is the item to talk about the movie "Star Trek First Contact"

28 responses total.

OK, I thought it was a great zombie film, but there are many little plot or
script thingies that continue to annoy me.  

Spoiler alert!!!























Like, how was Worf authorized to help blow up the Enterprise?  And why did
Picard go down to the planet at all?  Worf was rescued from the nearly
destroyed Defiant, so it's not like they really had time to reassign him to
the Enterprise and teach him all the passwords, and Picard apparently went
down to the planet just so he could suspect the Borg from further away.
And what was the whole "first contact" subplot really about?  Did they need
more material to fill out 2 hours?


OK, I did really like it, anyway.  ;)

I was wondering about Worf's access, too.  I dunno, I expect those
kinds of plot holes from a Trek movie.  >8)

My biggest disappointment, though, has to be the existence of the
Borg Queen.  Not the execution, mind you, I thought the actress
did well with it.  Just her mere existence.  I had always thought the
most terrifying aspect of the Borg was that their technology had
taken over their existence, that there was no living being in control
any more, the machanisms themselves were the driving force behind
everything the Borg did.  The Borg could be considered a "force of
nature", in a perverse way: incredibly powerful, with no human
being capable of controlling it.  Like Moby Dick.

Now, suddenly, the Borg are controlled by one being, and when she
dies, all the other Borg die too.  Huh?  Instead of a force of
nature, the Borg are now just another bunch of movie bad guys, and
the movie ends when the chief baddie is killed.  BFD.  I've seen it
before, and if I wanted to see it again, I'd go rent "Die Hard" from
the video store.

Hmm... I wonder how long it will be before "queen borg" becomes a snide office
term?  ;)

My biggest problem with this film is that you can tell all these problems are
the result of the writers wanting/needing to set up certain situations.  So
Picard is all the way down on the planet when he suspects the Borg are
invading the ship, to show how good a Borg-hunter he's become.  So how does
he get to the surface?  No problem, he does a Kirk and beams right down. 
Later on, Riker, who has been left in charge of the ship, is also magically
availble on the planet surface to take over from Picard again...

The Queen Borg is a pretty obvious thing.  They needed to have a "personality"
to fight, not just these faceless zombies.  So they create a personality who
seems *way* too human (shades of Voyager!) to interact with.  I did like the
bit with Data being tempted, though.  

And the holographic doctor was a very cute touch.  :)

And when Picard, Worf, and Disposable Crewman #38 go out to cut off the dish,
that DC#38 guy was converted to Borg so fast that 30 seconds after being
caught, he's already attacking Picard!!!  Arrrgggghhh!!!!

In fairness, I liked the Data aspects of the plot too.

I was thinking about this today, and realized that the "zombie movie"
analogy is actually very relevant to my argument - imagine if
"Night of the Living Dead" had had a King Zombie, whose death
would cause all the other undead to perish!  Would this be considered
one of the classic horror films of all time?  I doubt it.

I thought the Picard/Borg conflict didn't come to much.  Picard rages and
does a fine Ahab, but never quite engages the enemy.  He doesn't meet the
queen borg till the end, and then he has no effective plan.  Data just uses
that as an opportune moment to revive plan A.  With all that build-up of
Picard's personal grudge against the borg, I would have liked to see some
pay off.

I'm reminded of the wonderful Star Trek II, where Kirk and Khan have a
wonderfully personal one-on-one fight through the whole movie, even though
half the time they aren't even on the same ship.  I would have liked to see
Picard engage the borg like that.

I really did like the "First Contact" sequence, with the Phoenix looking like
a natural as a primitive forebearer of a Federation starship, and the first
contact with the vulcans.

My question has to do with the time thing.  So, if all the borg dies when they
are cut off from the queen, did all the borg die when she went back in time?
If not, did they all die when she died in the past?  If she died in th past,
did they ever really exist in the present?

And how did they rebuild the dish so they could go to warp speed.  As I recall
my SF mechanics, they need thast big old deflector dish to avoid running into
things while engaging warp.

I'd assume that the deflector dish was rebuilt before they left,
at the end.  (And yes, it's purpose is to deflect any objects
the ship might run into, at warp or impulse speeds.  In theory,
the Enterprise probably took some micrometeorite damage while
they were fixing it, unless they put the shields up the whole time.)

As for the other question, as janc said in another item, that's just
one of those questions you're not supposed to ask while watching Trek.
>8)

A problem I had with it is they didn't explain any of the changes they 
made in the characters.  Not that I minded Geordi having new eyes, but
it would have been nice for someone to say "Oh, hey, nice eyes.  When'd
ya get those?"  Or Data having a convenient toggle switch for the emotion
chip?  Wasn't that thing permanently fused to his neural net?  And why
doesn't anyone (except Worf) ever get reassigned when they blow up a 
ship?  It's like Starfleet just hands one over.  "Oh you blew up the 
Enterprise again?  Hey, no prob, here's a brand new one.  You guys take
care of this one, okay?"

And that was one of the things I really liked about the movie:
Star Fleet telling Picard to go as far away from the Borg ship
as possible while the fight was going on.  Yes!  Someone in
Star Fleet has a brain!  They don't want to put a possible
traitor in the middle of a battle!  Who'da thunk it?

Of course, Picard had no qualms about disobeying the order,
since he knew they wouldn't relieve him of command anyway.  >8)

Yeah, that too.  How many times can a Captain disobey a direct order
before getting his ass kicked out of Starfleet?

Depends on the result of his action... <grin>
Kirk did get demoted.... 

About the queen Borg: The Borg have a hive mind, much like certain insects.
And in an insect colony, everything revolves around a queen. So it would
make sense that the Borg would have a queen, too.

Yes, but for all the Queen Borg blathering on about how the Borg had gotten
rid of their imperfections, they still have a rather nasty weakness in having
a queen they depend on.

well, I thought the whole point was that perfection was in the eyes of the
beholder.  it is obvious that we think them inperfect.  is perfect supposed
to be invulnerable, too?

Just saw "first contact" last night with my son at the el cheapo $2 Plymouth
Penn theatre.  Some comments:  The death of the queen borg did *not* kill the
other borg - it was the coolant that dissolved all organic material, including
the skin grafts on Data.  As far as the self-destruct, one must assume that
Picard had reassigned 1st- & 2nd-officer status upon Crusher & Worf before
the self-destruct mechanism was engaged.  The assimmilation process
demonstrated in the movie sort of invalidates the "minor" stuff done to Picard
on TNG TV shows:  I couldn't see anyone returning to normal huamnness given
what was done in the movie.  Thoughts about that one?  Lastly, was it already
canon that the Vulcans made first contact with earth in 2063?  Did they have
their own "prime directive" at the time, or were they only too happy to 
advance earth's star trekking?  Did earth & Vulcan essentially found what
became to be known as "The Federation"?  Does anyone remember the episode in
TOS featuring Zephren Cochran & "The Companion"?  :-)

Well, lots of points to cover!  ;)

1.  I remember that even the Borg mounted way up on the walls suddenly
convulsing and collapsing when the Queen Borg died, so it wasn't all the 
coolant.

2.  Would the Captain be allowed to just reassign people and then turn around
and use them to trigger self-destruct?  Could be, if they were all "cleared"
to a certain level.  I doubt it, though.  Too much power for the Captain.

3.  The assimilation process is certainly more dramatic.  I think it was
largely a plot device, not a Borg innovation.  But the effects of that process
are contradictatory even within the movie... One guy pleads to be put out of
his misery, another is sufficently Borged to attack Picard 20 seconds after
being attacked himself (the sensor dish scene).

4.  I don't recall whether the Vulcans were the first, although from the
description of the cultural effects (peace and harmony, dedication to higher
causes) that it wasn't the Klingons who made first contact.  ;)

5.  I do recall the TOS episode where Cochran was introduced.  I'm really
starting to miss the Olde Trek!  

"First Contact" is a fun to watch movie that will leave even the most 
lukewarm Trek fan frustrated for weeks.  Too many annoying little plot
thingies.  ;)

Re: #*-1 2. - If the 1st officer were killed, the captain would certainly have
to be able to assign someone else that position.  And with that position would
come the self-destruct responsibility.  One must assume that a captain
wouldn't capriciously reassign a new 1st officer just to get someone to join
him in the self-destruct party...

That assumes the Captain is making assignments, instead of a software system
that handles emergency replacements.

Yes, the Vulcans were the first race we contacted, and together humans and
Vulcans began what would become the United Federation of Planets.  But, I
seem to recall a friend of mine saying they had the year of contact wrong
in the movie.  Have to ask him.

There are two schools of thought on who made first contact.

The first is that it was the Vulcans.
The second is that it was the pigfaced aliens.

The Vulcans are now considered Canon.

This response has been erased.

Who were the pigfaced aliens?  Was that a joke or did they show up in some
series or another?

The Tellurites were in the "Journey to Babel" episode of the
original series.

Actually, the role-playing game said that it was the Centaurians
who made first contact.  But who plays that any more?  >8(

Ship captains have always had the power to make field promotions.  In the very
episode where Picard was assimilated, Riker was officially given a field
promotion to captain by some admiral, and then Riker named whats-her-name as
his first officer.

There was a manual put out early in the period after the series ended that
list the ships leading up to the Enterprise.  In it, the Tellerites were said
to have shown up and demanded the surrender of the Terran Fleet or their
immidiate extermination.  The Tellerite ship was a small mining ship I think.

The Captain of the Terran ship refused, the Tellerite backed down and offered
to aid us instead.

        The commanding officer of any ship is called Captain, RIker need not
be promoted to acquire the title.
        (Picard's death was enough.)

in answer to the Queen Borg dying:
first of all her death in any time period wouldn't kill the rest of the borgs
because she was mainly cybernetic and ofcourse would have multiple backups.
there may have even been a copy (her entity) on each of the borg ships. her
death in the past would not have caused the borg to never exist because she
was from the future. her past self would have needed to have been killed to
cause the borg never to exist. ah all these paralel time lines and alternate
future things always get my blood flowing :) 

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