Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies: #2 - Star Trek: First Contact

Looks like an album cover by an Eiffel 65 cover band

Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty, and at long last, too. I'm ready to move on to other blog projects, but I can't just leave this stone fully unturned. Let's go ahead and get the last two entries in the countdown done and out of the way. The first of which is often considered the greatest The Next Generation movie that was made, certainly by me as well. Star Trek: First Contact. A movie that teaches us that wars are worth settling, as long as you risk half your crew and contemplate blowing up your trillion-dollar starship to try and destroy your enemy. To settle the score is to risk everything, life and limb, to achieve your goal no matter how costly, and this movie shows Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard and Brent Spiner's Data stretched to their peak mental and physical stress limit. It's a truly wonderous classic. In many ways, it's even following the style of The Wrath of Khan, it's a loose sequel to a television episode... except whereas Wrath of Khan was more of a direct followup, this one just followed up a few concepts. If you haven't already and want to, check out the Next Generation two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds", in which Picard is assimilated into the Borg collective.

It is the 24th century. Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) awakens from a nightmare in which he relived his assimilation by the cybernetic Borg six years earlier, including a gruesome shot of a drilling going into his eye. Cringey right from the get-go. He is contacted by Admiral Hayes (Jack Shearer) who informs him of a new Borg threat against Earth. Just what PTSD Picard wants to hear. Time for a chance to get assimilated again! Picard's orders are for his ship, the USS Enterprise-E, the coolest and most advanced ship in the fleet, to patrol the Neutral Zone in case of Romulan aggression; Starfleet is worried that Picard is too emotionally involved with the Borg to join the fight. Except, it would make total sense to have Picard join the fight since he's the one who's dealt with the Borg the most. Learning the fleet is losing the battle, the Enterprise-E crew disobeys orders and heads for Earth, or as Data (Brent Spiner) says for the trailer "To hell with our orders"... where a single Borg Cube (which is literally a cube) ship holds its own against a group of Starfleet vessels. The Enterprise-E arrives in time to assist the crew of the USS Defiant and its captain, the Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn). Worf is upset because his first command gets destroyed and he's forced back into a supporting role. Picard takes control of the fleet and directs the surviving ships to concentrate their firepower on a seemingly unimportant point on the Borg ship. The Cube is destroyed after launching a smaller sphere ship (which is literally a sphere) towards the planet. The Enterprise-E pursues the sphere into a temporal vortex. As the sphere disappears, the Enterprise-E discovers Earth has been altered—it is now populated entirely by Borg. Realizing the Borg have used time travel to change the past, the Enterprise-E follows the sphere through the vortex. It's a total Back to the Future time travel plot, except Picard's not trying to sexually assault his own mother.

What do you mean I'm not in any of the future movies?

The Enterprise-E arrives hundreds of years in its past on April 4, 2063, the day before humanity's first encounter with alien life after Zefram Cochrane's (James Stromwell) historic warp driveflight; the crew realizes the Borg are trying to prevent "First Contact". After destroying the Borg sphere in an astonishingly easy fashion, an away team transports down to Cochrane's ship, the Phoenix, in Montana. Picard has Cochrane's assistant Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) sent back to the Enterprise-E for medical attention. The Captain returns to the ship and leaves Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) on Earth to make sure the Phoenix's flight proceeds as planned, dealing with a drunk and belligerent Cochrane. While in the future Cochrane is seen as a hero, the real man is reluctant to assume the role the Enterprise-E crew describe.

A group of Borg invade the Enterprise-E's lower decks and begin to assimilate its crew and modify the ship, apparently stragglers left over from the Sphere explosion. Picard and a team attempt to reach engineering to disable the Borg with a corrosive gas, but are forced back and Data is captured in the melee. A frightened Sloane corners Picard with a weapon, but he gains her trust. The two escape the Borg-infested area of the ship by creating a diversion in the holodeck. Thank goodness that Harry Potter wasn't really a thing yet, otherwise they might've escaped to Hogwarts in the holodeck. Picard, Worf, and the ship's navigator, Lt. Hawk (Neal McDonough), in a truly tense and well-put together scene, travel outside the ship in space suits to stop the Borg from calling reinforcements by using the deflector dish. The pacing, the special effects and the suspense in the scene are all exquisite. A well-done, awe-inspiring scene. As the Borg continue to assimilate more decks, Worf suggests destroying the ship, but Picard angrily calls him a coward. Sloane confronts the captain and makes him realize he is acting irrationally. Then the best line in the movie is uttered: 

"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them PAY for what they've done!"

Hilarious delivery. I quote it in any situation, no matter how hilarious! Anywho, Picard eventually orders an activation of the ship's self-destruct, then orders the crew to head for the escape pods while he stays behind to rescue Data.

Zombie-faced robots. Now Star Trek has done it all.

As Cochrane, Riker, and engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) prepare to activate the warp drive on the Phoenix, Picard discovers that the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) has grafted human skin onto Data, giving him the sensation of touch he has long desired to obtain the android's encryption codes to the Enterprise-E computer. I never got why Data would want to feel and be human. Being an Android is so much more badass, in my opinion. I'd stay an android forever. Anywho, although Picard offers himself to the Borg in exchange for Data's freedom, Data refuses to leave. He deactivates the self-destruct and fires torpedoes at the Phoenix. At the last moment the torpedoes miss, and the Queen realizes Data betrayed her. Thank goodness, too. He could've Back to the Future-style erased everything that the first warp flight fixed. In a hasty manuever, Data ruptures a coolant tank, and the corrosive vapor eats away the biological components of the Borg. With the Borg threat neutralized, Cochrane completes his warp flight successfully. The next day the crew watches from a distance as an alien Vulcan ship, attracted by the Phoenix warp test, lands on Earth. Cochrane and Sloane greet the alien Vulcans. Having ensured the correction of the timeline, the Enterprise crew slip away and return to the 24th century. How? We never see. I didn't think time-travel was a common thing in Star Trek and that like... ships were built to do it anyway.

Star Trek: First Contact is a tensely acted, suspenseful storyline that gives an interesting spin on a classic story. Patrick Stewart gives us the best Picard performance he's given us in all of the movies. The TV show had other masterful performances by Picard but this one beats all the movies by a mile. First Contact also builds on Data's wish to think and feel human emotions, something he expressed interest in having done in Generations. The discussion he has with the Borg Queen in the middle of the movie just following his capture is both intense and well-written. First Contact overall is a stellar, comedic and light-hearted entry in the Trek movie mythos. Superb movie. Give it a watch if you haven't already.