Star Trek: First Contact *** (1996, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, James Cromwell) – Classic Movie Review 1925

Director Jonathan Frakes’s 1996 Star Trek 8 is proficient, pacy and painless.

The second movie featuring the Next Generation characters, following Star Trek: Generations (1994), it is mildly entertaining yet sometimes a bit of a yawn since it’s caught without a really exciting yarn and it is marred by some weedy humour and widespread references to the later two TV series, which may be unfamiliar to some movie audiences.

Good though Patrick Stewart is as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, strong, weighty and authoritative, we do miss old Captain Kirk, as we keep expecting William Shatner at least to make a guest cameo – for Shatner is the Star Trek movie.

Its TV-style story is perilously exposed and is hard put to sustain on the big screen since it is little more than just a premise, a couple of set pieces and a finish. The insidious Borg, half-machine, half organic race of aliens, plan to invade Earth at its most vulnerable time in the second dark age just after World War Three, and via some time vacuum, arrive at a missile complex in Montana on April 4, 2063, the day before the legendary flight of the warp drive rocket called the Phoenix by Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) which would lead to ‘first contact’, the meeting between humans and ETs.

The crew of Picard’s newly commissioned Starship Enterprise E follows the Borg, who retaliate by attacking and infiltrating the ship to try to take control of it. in order to prevent the first contact. Then Picard faces a dilemma that he can destroy the Borg but apparently only by destroying and evacuating the Enterprise, which he refuses to do – you have to draw the line somewhere, he declaims. Since there’s very little actual action or story, everything depends on the acting and the production.

Guest turns by Alfre Woodard as Cochrane’s strong-willed partner and Alice Krige as the bad Borg Queen add to Stewart’s gravitas to give the film substance and a lift-off, while Brent Spiner as the android Lieutenant Data is a good deal more sympathetic and appealing than in the previous Generations movie. Michael Dorn as the Starship’s tame Klingon engineering officer has a couple of powerful clashes with Picard, though the ancient rock ‘n rolling earthling Cochrane is a terribly annoying character, oddly since Cromwell was so appealing as the farmer in Babe.

The then state-of-the-art design and impressive special effects make for a particularly good-looking production. And those, combined with gung-ho attitudes and the daffy humour, will undoubtedly keep Trekkers happy enough, many of whom will probably appreciate the crowd-pleasing humour.

Frakes also plays Commander Riker, while LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Neal McDonough, Dwight Schultz, Patti Yasutake, Robert Picardo also co-star.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1925

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