Star Trek: First Contact (Star Trek VIII)

This the eighth of a series of essays on the first ten Star Trek movies, the Trekalog.

by William S. Kowinski

The 2020 television series Star Trek: Picard begins with a sweet dream, of Picard and Data playing poker on the Enterprise-D, though it ends suddenly with destruction. When asked about his dreams Picard says, "The dreams are lovely.  It's the waking up I'm beginning to resent."

The 1996 feature film Star Trek: First Contact begins with a nightmare.  Captain Picard relives his partial assimilation into the Borg collective, seems to wake, but the nightmare is not over.  Nor is the nightmare of the reality that is to come.

When the Next Generation crew were scheduled to make their first solo movie (after the transitional Star Trek: Generations) probably the easiest creative decision to make was selecting the antagonist.  It had to be the Borg.

The chief antagonist of the original series 23rd century crew was the Klingons, who captivated viewers and had an expanding presence on subsequent series and original crew feature films.  The antagonist of the 24th century Next Generation crew that seized imaginations and quickly became iconic was the Borg, even though they appeared sparingly.  "Resistance is futile" became almost as familiar as "Beam me up, Scotty."  (So it's not surprising that the Borg show up in the plot of Star Trek: Picard's first season.)

From "Q Who." Screencaps via TrekCore.com.

Developed by writer Maurice Hurley from an idea by Gene Roddenberry, the Borg were cybernetic beings (or cyborgs), organisms physically  augmented by technological implants.  The individual Borg were linked into "the Borg collective," constantly communicating and operating with a single plan and purpose. Their general purpose was to "assimilate" other civilizations by physically absorbing and transforming other beings into the Borg.  Their technology was much more advanced than that of the Federation, so they appeared unstoppable.

The Borg then are the sum of many sci-fi fears, taking on characteristics of machine beings, as well as relentless biological beings like ants, and the various forms of zombies in folklore and fiction. (In fact, in First Contact, the 21st century character Lily calls them "cybernetic zombies.") Their closest conceptual ancestors were probably the Cybermen from Doctor Who.  At least at first glance the Borg are the paradigmatic Other or alien, so different from "us" that there is no common ground, nothing to engender empathy, let alone rational communication.

The role of the Borg is related to that other iconic TNG creation, the omnipotent cosmic being Q.  The  Enterprise first encountered the Borg because Q brought them together.  The Borg originate in the vastly distant Delta Quadrant, and otherwise might not have come across humans for centuries, if ever.

In Q's first appearance in the series premiere ("Encounter at Farpoint"), he was particularly annoyed by what he saw as human arrogance.  Indeed Captain Picard does exhibit this Achilles Heel of an advanced society that had radically bettered itself.  Though the transformation merits satisfaction and self-confidence, Picard sometimes sounds a little smug and self-righteous.

Picard bests Q in this encounter but in a subsequent meeting ("Q Who"), Q is again annoyed by Picard's overconfidence. With his vast experience of the cosmos, Q introduces an adversary in the Borg that Picard is forced to admit is beyond what the Federation can cope with or even understand.

Later, in "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter, Picard's confidence is turned into utter humiliation when he is partially assimilated by the Borg, and his knowledge of Starfleet is used to destroy the armada assembled to defend Earth.  The Enterprise crew rescues Picard, who then provides the key to destroying the Borg cube.  In the next TNG episode ("Family") Picard is shown at his ancestral home--the Picard vineyard in France-- trying to deal with the traumatic aftereffects.

But remnants of that trauma remain buried in Picard, and this is a starting point for the First Contact feature.

Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, writers of the previous feature Generations, were assigned to write First Contact.  They started with the Borg and the device of time travel, but the story went through many versions and iterations. Eventually they hit upon the premise of the Borg trying to stop the first warp drive flight and subsequent first contact of humanity by alien beings that transformed human history and sent it on a trajectory that included Starfleet, the Federation and the 24th century home of the Enterprise.

The story would travel back in time, but to an era that was, from the perspective of the movie's audience, still in the future,   This decision would mean writing Star Trek history concerning the mid- 21st century, augmenting if not completing the story of how the Star Trek universe began.

Even at this point, however, the story went through major changes.  The first draft that made the rounds within the production had Captain Picard on the 21st century Earth's surface, trying to make sure the warp flight happens on schedule, while Commander Riker is on the Enterprise in orbit above, battling a Borg incursion. Among those objecting to this draft was Patrick Stewart, who felt the Captain belonged on the ship.  The decision to switch the Picard and Riker locations was the key to First Contact's success, as a movie and as probably the most profound exploration of the soul of Star Trek in any single story.

Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab
in 1998 TV film of Moby Dick

It's not clear at what point the writers decided to invoke Herman Melville's Moby Dick in a key scene late in the movie, nor if they consciously structured Picard's story to refer further to Melville's novel, even mapping it to some extent.  It may be that they--or others involved --had studied the novel and knew it well (for instance, Patrick Stewart, who provided the paraphrased quotation Picard recites, and who just two years later starred in a film version.)  Or at the other extreme they only knew its basic premise and had never read it, like Lily in this movie.  But the echoes add to this story's profundity, not only in the arc of Picard's character, but that of Starfleet, the Federation and the Star Trek universe itself.

Picard's nightmare that opens the movie story is of his real experience with the Borg, numbed and violated with implants, a technological torture.  (The camera pulls away from him to show for the first time the immense size of the Borg cube, a move that is quoted in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard.)  His secondary nightmare is that the nightmare is over, he's safe and intact on the Enterprise, but he's not--an implant erupts from his skin.  Then he awakens to the real nightmare of the Borg invasion of Federation space.

At first the residual effect of his assimilation experience seems to be a ghostly connection with the Borg collective mind, an ability to faintly hear what it is saying to itself.  Sidelined by Starfleet (because of his assimilation, he's not trusted) as the Borg approach Earth, he ignores orders and arrives as the fleet is being destroyed by a Borg cube, a repeat of the past.  But this time his knowledge of Starfleet is not being used by the Borg; instead he is able to use his knowledge of the Borg to locate the vulnerable spot, and the cube is destroyed.

But not before a Borg sphere emerges and heads for Earth, with the Enterprise pursuing.  The sphere creates an envelope that travels back through time, with the Enterprise-E caught in it.  (The Enterprise-D was destroyed in Generations, providing an opportunity for a new, more feature-film friendly set.  First Contact was made as the Deep Space Nine series portrayed a darker 24th century, and the Enterprise-E is more of a ship of war.)  Before it leaves the 24th century, the Enterprise observes the Earth changing to a Borg planet.  The Borg sphere is about to change the past in a way that totally alters the future.

Following the sphere back into the past, they see it fire on a target on the Earth's surface.  The Enterprise quickly destroys the sphere, undefended against technology they did't expect to encounter.  But what was the target?  It was an old missile complex in Montana, from which the first warp drive rocket would be fired the very next day.  Its warp signature would in turn alert a passing starship, and the ensuing "first contact" would lead to transformations that later would lead to Starfleet and the Federation.

But none of that would happen without that first warp flight, accomplished by one of the 24th century's most revered historical figures, Zephram Cochrane.  By preventing that, the Borg changed the future.  Now it was up to the Enterprise-E to save that future.

"Encounter at Farpoint"

As the Enterprise finds itself orbiting above a mid-21st century Earth, we get the first new glimpses of that historical period in the Trek universe since TNG's series opener, "Encounter at Farpoint."  We learn that what is now called World War III left 600 million dead and most major cities destroyed, paving the way for the regression of civilization and the post-apocalyptic horror suggested by Q's inquisitional court in "Farpoint."

Viewers of this movie today, even more than its first viewers, have cause to shudder at the chronology.  The mid-21st century is just a generation or so in our future, and scientists expect that global heating will be creating major stresses on many places and on many governments at about that time.  The US military and other experts have been warning for years that the climate crisis is the most dangerous threat to the future, partly because of the warfare it could easily engender.  If there is a nuclear war, issues arising from climate would be the most likely cause, in our future.

Dr. Crusher inoculates herself and crew against radiation poisoning
before beaming Lily up to the Enterprise for treatment

The Enterprise arrives about a decade after the war.  But in Montana, Zephram Cochrane (played by James Cromwell) and his associate Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) interpret the Borg missiles as an attack by a combatant faction of that war.

 So when Captain Picard and his away team arrive, Lily assumes they are hostile and fires on them.  Data disarms her, and Dr. Crusher beams her back to the Enterprise to be treated for radiation she absorbed while checking out the damaged warp ship, a converted intercontinental ballistic missile, aptly renamed the Phoenix. (The movie shot these scenes in a real decommissioned ICBM silo converted to a museum, with a spacecraft cockpit constructed to fit neatly on top of a missile where the warhead would have been.)

But when he checks in with the Enterprise, Picard understands what apparently minor problems with environmental controls actually mean--somehow the Borg transported from the sphere into the Enterprise undetected, and were beginning to assimilate the ship, after which they would assimilate the planet, and the future with it.

Picard and Data immediately return to the Enterprise, while Riker, La Forge and Troi remain on the surface to make sure the warp drive flight really happens.  The action in these two locations, with this configuration of characters, comprises the rest of the movie.

The story on the surface is relatively straightforward, often with a comic tone, beginning with Troi getting drunk with Cochrane (this is probably the best-remembered scene featuring Marina Sirtis.) The main action is getting the Phoenix ready for its scheduled flight. Its running gag is that an obviously flawed Cochrane is increasingly uncomfortable learning of his heroic status in the future.

In contrast, there are at least three threads to follow on the Enterprise, with three distinct tones.  One is the relationship of Lily and Picard, after Lily escapes from sickbay armed with a phaser.

The Enterprise officers must divulge the future to both Cochrane and Lily, for somewhat different reasons.  On the ground, Cochrane's cooperation is needed to repair the Phoenix and complete the warp flight that will restore that future.  On the Enterprise, Picard must first of all prevent Lily from vaporizing him, and then soothe her into her fantastic surroundings, though he must also tell her about the Borg.

The result is bringing together and augmenting strands of Star Trek mythology and stating them more definitively than before.  On the ground, Riker, La Forge and Troi explain the stakes of the warp flight to Cochrane.  A passing survey ship of unnamed but friendly aliens notices the warp signature of the Phoenix, and decides to land and initiate first official contact with Earth.  It changes everything.  It brings the peoples of the Earth together in ways no one thought possible, Troi tells him, unified by the knowledge of a populated universe.  Within fifty years, Earth sees the end of poverty, disease and internal warfare, while humanity begins its star trek (Cochrane blurts out the two words himself.)

Cochrane sees only the distant Enterprise through his telescope.  But Lily is our stand-in on the ship,  as we again experience the wonder of all this, beginning with her first view of the Earth's surface from orbit ("You're not in Montana anymore," Picard said, which is a literal statement of fact as well as a smile for those who get the Wizard of Oz reference. This line was apparently a late addition, as it doesn't appear in the novelization.)

Picard tells her about the Federation, comprised of over 150 worlds spread across 6,000 light years of space.  She wants to know the size of the Enterprise--Picard tells her it's 24 decks and nearly 700 meters long (facts that--according to Jeff Greenwald's book Future Perfect--the writers had to get Star Trek technical guru Michael Okuda to estimate on the fly, after first admitting that he didn't really know. The Enterprise-E was that new.)

Picard also explains to Lily a key Star Trek concept, previously mentioned but fully articulated for the first time here, though according to the movie's commentary by writers Braga and Moore, the words were from something written by Gene Roddenberry. When Lily asks how much the ship cost, Picard replies: "The economics of the future are somewhat different.  Money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century...The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.  We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

This core idea, bizarre to some (including Ron Moore) but increasingly intriguing to others (see my post on Trekanomics) speaks to the destructive distraction of money--the need to use up time in "making a living" instead of living, and especially to the energies it absorbs that could be better employed.

 Apart from economic technicalities, the idea is a dividing line.  On one side are those who believe humans are inevitably lazy and corrupt, captives of the deadly sins of avarice, greed and sloth who wouldn't lift a finger without the enticement of riches or the whip of the necessity to earn money across their backs. On the other side are those that believe creativity and self-fulfillment as well as compassion and idealism would flourish without the self-deadening restrictions, general enslavement and selfish self-fulfilling prophesies of money.

Original crew's unfamiliarity with money is played
for laughs in Star Trek: The Voyage Home

Gene Roddenberry's idea of a future without money was an exciting concept that motivated a number of participants in creating Star Trek. "You don't have to work at something you don't like," noted production designer Herman Zimmerman. "You can find the thing that allows you to contribute and that is what you can do for a living."

"'Where is my next meal coming from?  Am I going to have a job next year?' These concerns have been eliminated, so humans could focus on their own inner growth," said producer Jeri Taylor.  "When you take away the need to make a living, a lot of other things are possible."

But there's another element in Picard's calm evocation of his 24th century reality, that of a self-satisfaction that suggests smugness, that human society has been perfected and human individuals will always act according to what he later calls their "more evolved sensibility."

While Picard's statement to Lily indeed expresses, as Braga calls it in the commentary, "the soul of Star Trek," the human soul is still complex.  According to some ancient philosophers as well as contemporary thinkers, "soul" is the essence that involves a dynamic harmony among human elements that involve the head and heart, the mind, spirit and body.  A further illustration of this is the Data story in this film.

Data has been captured by the Borg on the Enterprise, and he meets the Borg Queen--another new element in this movie. She is meant to be an embodiment of the Borg collective, yet she has a singular personality.

 Data has famously been endeavoring to become more human since the introduction of his character in "Farpoint," and has taken an additional step in that direction in the previous film, "Generations," when he installs and activates his emotion chip, and has a range of human feelings for the first time.  In this film, in order to gain Data's cooperation (and the encryption code to the Enterprise main computer), the Borg Queen links his emotional capabilities to a new physical dimension--she gives him living human skin.   He must deal with the pleasures, dangers and temptations of the flesh.  As played by Alice Krige, the Borg Queen is creepy and sexy simultaneously.

Meanwhile the basic story thread on the ship is Picard's battle with the Borg. These scenes are as dark as TNG ever got.  Picard and Worf lead teams armed with phaser rifles through the dark corridors among Borg drones.  The mood of horror is accented by Jonathan Frakes' directing; in his commentary he talked about using horror movie moves.

This is also where we see another residual effect of Picard's violation by the Borg.  At first it seems that Picard is only proceeding with the focus and serious intent commensurate with the threat they face.  But gradually we see the darkness within him emerge.

When a crewman in the process of being transformed into a drone calls out to Picard for help, and Picard responds by killing him with a phaser blast, it could seem like only a grim necessity.

But when Picard ingenuously traps two Borg drones in a holodeck simulation (of the Dixon Hill detective novel world of 1940s San Francisco in the early TNG episode "The Long Goodbye,") he kills them with a machine-gun--a weapon for which they are unprepared--with undisguised rage, continuing to fire after they have fallen.  Lily is shocked by this, as well as his apparent disregard for the humanity of the Enterprise officer (Ensign Lynch) assimilated into one of the Borg drones he killed.

All of this leads up to climactic scenes on the bridge and in the adjacent observation lounge.  After going out on to the Enterprise hull (a unique scene) to successfully foil the Borg attempt to set up a beacon to alert reinforcements, Picard and Worf return to the bridge to hear his officers report that their weapons are now completely useless against the Borg. Picard now has only one card left to play: the Borg have not yet broken into the main computer.  He can evacuate the crew from the Enterprise and order the ship's self-destruction, destroying the Borg in the process. Both Worf and Beverly Crusher advise that he do this.

When Picard refuses, Worf calls him on it. "With all due respect sir, I believe you are allowing your personal experience with the Borg to influence your judgment." But he doesn't reach Picard--he only inflames him, and Picard calls him a coward.

Then Lily confronts him in a now classic scene.  She repeats what she has heard: his officers have advised a plan that will save the crew and destroy the Borg.  But they don't know the Borg as he does, Picard says, and describes his assimilation, "cybernetic devices implanted throughout my body...every trace of individuality erased."

Now Lily understands: it's personal.  "This is about revenge.  The Borg hurt you and now you're going to hurt them back."

The important thing to remember about the unconscious, Jung said, is that it is really unconscious.  It hides, and it has methods to remain hidden.  One is the defensive instinct of denial.  This is accompanied by rationalization--reasons that may in fact be reasonable, but aren't the real motive, perhaps in part or maybe at all.  (Understanding that the unconscious provides rational explanations was a key insight for me in even accepting the idea of the unconscious.)

So first Picard angrily denies the charge, and here his confident assumptions about his advanced society provide an automatic answer, as a further explanation to this primitive of the 21st century: "In my century, we don't succumb to revenge.  We have a more evolved sensibility."  It is the kind of smug Picardian statement that drove Q crazy.

But Lily is more succinct.  "Bullshit," she calls.  She mentions his disregard of Ensign Lynch, but that troubling memory is too much of a distraction for Picard, who orders her out.  "Didn't mean to interrupt your little quest," Lily says. "Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale."

Now she has Picard's attention.  Throughout the series, Picard's regard for the wisdom embedded in literature was consistent.  He knows the reference and at first rejects it with the reasonable rationalization: "This is about saving the future of humanity!"

"Then blow up the ship!" Lily cries.

"No!" shouts an enraged Picard, who gestures with his phaser rifle with such force that it breaks the glass of his display of ship models.  Yet he maintains his brain's emphasis on the common good, and delivers lines well remembered from this movie, though often for the wrong reasons: "...they assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back!  Not again!  The line must be drawn here--this far and no further!"  But then another truth slips through.  "And I will make them pay for what they've done!"

Now he's said it, and he's heard himself say it. He is after revenge.  As Lily starts to leave, Picard recites from memory lines from Moby Dick.  When Lily admits she hasn't actually read it, he summarizes the story.  "Ahab spent years hunting the white whale that crippled him.  A quest for vengeance.  But in the end, the whale destroyed him, and his ship."

He goes back onto the bridge, and orders the crew to evacuate the Enterprise.

Various writers used the basic Moby Dick story in episodes of one Star Trek series or another, and it was an extended subtext for the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan.  When Starfleet officers first come upon Khan's compound, they find a paperback copy of the novel on a empty bunk.  Later, Khan himself recites entire speeches spoken by Ahab in the novel, though without attribution.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The obsession for revenge is an ancient motivation in stories, and all too common in today's movies and television dramas.  Like Khan's, it is often revenge for the death of a wife or family (as it was again in the J.J. Abrams' Star Trek feature.)  In fact, it is so overused that its appearance as motivation is a kind of signal that the story isn't really about the motive; the motive is just an excuse for the action.

Perhaps even more insidiously, revenge as motive is seen about as often for heroes as villains. As such, it is usually accepted completely and never questioned.  Sometimes it is somewhat masked as "getting justice" but clearly it is "payback" or revenge.

But here in First Contact, it is shown to be irrational and self-destructive, but also wrong, partly through the Moby Dick resemblances.  Picard is angry on behalf of others--especially all the members of Starfleet who were killed by the Borg, as well as all the civilizations that were assimilated.

But rage over his own violation by the Borg, reflected in the opening nightmare, has been awakened, though it seems to have slumbered for a long time, obscuring his ability to see beyond it and judge the situation before him.  This is similar to what Melville says about Captain Ahab in Moby Dick: "…his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad. Then it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him…" 

The power of that rage is expressed in the passage from the novel which Picard slightly misquotes, and which Patrick Stewart selected, who knew the novel well and just a couple of years later played Captain Ahab in a film version of Moby Dick.  (For those who are interested, here is the appropriate passage as Melville wrote it: "He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." 

And here is the passage as Picard recalls it: "He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race…If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it."  )

But most importantly, though Ahab and Picard felt the same obsessive rage for vengeance, Picard was able to consciously see the error his unconscious was making, and correct it.  This is a meta-message of all of Star Trek.  It is possible to take a step back and understand, and to act on that understanding.

This takes a certain intelligence and a certain humility. In this case, it was also because Picard knew the whole story as Melville wrote it.  He had that objectivity, because he knew the literature.  This is a function of literature, from the great tragedies to the cautionary tales of science fiction.  We can learn from it, and change our minds--or more specifically, change our behavior.  Perhaps even more than the Roddenberry quote, this is a crucial example of the soul of Star Trek.  It's not that 24th century people don't feel the rage for vengeance.  It's that they can engage the perspective to understand it and its endless loop of self-corruption and mutual destruction. They can overcome it, because they understand how important it is to do so.

Picard, his humanity reclaimed, stays behind as the crew evacuates, in order to rescue his missing friend, Data, who is a Borg captive in engineering.  He confronts the Borg Queen, and his memory of her is revived--she had wanted him, as Locutus, to be by her side as an equal.  He had refused.

 Now he accepts that offer, if she releases Data.  The Borg Queen admires his nobility, but she has already won Data's loyalty.  Data cancels the Enterprise self-destruction sequence, and she orders him to fire torpedoes to destroy the Zephram Cochrane ship, now in flight but not yet in warp.  He seems about to do so, but the torpedoes go astray and Data punctures a pipe that releases plasma coolant, deadly to flesh and organic life (a plan that Picard has proposed earlier in the story.)

Picard grabs a cable and climbs up beyond the coolant's spread, as the Borg Queen attempts to follow.  But Data--his new flesh seared off-- pulls her down, and Picard later severs what's left of her spinal cord.  Just as Picard has overcome the pain that fueled revenge, Data has overcome the temptation of sensual pleasure that threatened to undermine his integrity.  He'd considered it, he admits to Picard--for "0.68 seconds.  For an android, that is nearly an eternity."

While all this was happening on the Enterprise, Riker and La Forge were in the Phoenix, behind pilot Zephram Cochrane.  As they prepared for launch, Cochrane has finally had enough of the 24th century revisionism about his heroic vision.  He admits that he built the warp drive not for a noble cause but to make money, so he could retire to a tropical island.

When the Phoenix deploys its nacelles, it's a visual connection to
starships to follow.  Theater audiences applauded.

This is the final payoff to the anti-hero portrait of Cochrane, doubly ironic in that it both complicates the hero worship that had become much too larger than life by the 24th century, and it asserts that the future without the degradations of money began with money as the motivating desire.  (Though it is likely that Cochrane is exaggerating a bit.)  The warp flight is accomplished.

The Cochrane scenes are clever, and thanks to actor James Cromwell, they work within the movie, especially as release from the intense Enterprise scenes. And whether intended or not, this portrait of Cochrane inevitably suggests a covert take on another flawed hero with a vision: Gene Roddenberry.  But Cochrane as portrayed--as a fairly clueless drunk with a taste for rock and roll-- lacks credibility as the inventor of warp drive.

However, J.M. Dillard's excellent novelization adds details (which may have been part of earlier scripts) that makes this Cochrane more believable.  As a physicist before the war, he was one of a group of scientists working on practical applications of the theories on hyperspace.  As a university student, Lily heard rumors of an imminent breakthrough.  Then the sudden nuclear attacks and the war ended all of that.

Additionally, Cochrane was diagnosed with a manic-depressive mental illness, for which there was effective treatment--until the war ended that as well.  By the time he made his way to Montana, Cochrane was self-medicating both his manic and depressive episodes with alcohol.

But he still had his notes with him, and he kept working on warp drive ideas. Then he realized that the nuclear warhead of the missile at the Montana complex could be used to fuel his warp experiment.  In a particularly frenzied manic episode, his constant and concentrated work resulted in a workable warp drive.  When Lily showed up at the same complex, with a skill for acquiring materials one way or another, together they could convert the missile to the warp drive rocket, the Phoenix, rising from the ashes of human civilization.

In the movie as well as the novel, Cochrane pilots the Phoenix into orbit, and then on the first warp into space.  By the time he is back at the Montana colony (by means not explained, although it's likely the Phoenix crew were beamed back by the Enterprise), he is--according to the novel--permanently cured of his mental illness, thanks to Dr. Crusher's hypospray.  He is now ready to become the first human to greet a being from another world.

Recall that First Contact made its first contact with theater audiences in 1996--in the earliest days of the World Wide Web, well before the social media universe. As a member of such an audience, I can testify to the experience--especially this part of it.  When an alien ship slowly landed in the Montana night, and its door opened and walkway extended, we in the audience did not know who we were going to see emerge from that ship.  The identity of the species to make first contact had been a secret, and it was kept.

So when the tall alien lowered the hood from his head and we saw the Vulcan ears, there was an audible gasp all around me.  A quiet thrill ran through the rows of us, bathed in the same light of wonder, joy and hope.  A Star Trek circle was joined, from Spock and Kirk to the 24th century and back to the beginning (including the 22nd century to be explored in the series Enterprise), and even further back--to us.

So much came together in First Contact--the Star Trek TV and movie universe at its most popular point, the continued creativity at a high level of Star Trek veterans like designer Herman Zimmerman and composer Jerry Goldsmith, the story and script that came from Moore and Braga, but also Rick Berman, Patrick Stewart and others.

That a narrative with so many moving parts appeared seamless was partly miraculous but largely due to Jonathan Frakes' direction.  It combined the extra juice and creativity inspired by a first feature with Frakes' familiarity with the Star Trek universe, and his great working relationship with his fellow actors, friends and Enterprise crew members.

I re-watched the Special Collectors Edition DVD with Frakes' commentary that is also included with the Blu-Ray.  Frakes takes what has become an unusual approach to commentaries: he responds to the scenes he's actually watching rather than talking about whatever comes into his head (Braga and Moore mostly do this also, though they wander off on meeting Prince Charles during key scenes.)  Frakes is engaging and interesting, and a perfect companion.

Neal McDonough as Hawk

Frakes credits his prior friendship with 1983 Academy Award Best Supporting Actress nominee Alfre Woodard for helping to get her in the cast.  James Cromwell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar the same year as First Contact was released, for a film he'd made the year before, Babe. Neal McDonough, who played the unfortunate bridge officer Hawk, went on to appear in many movies and TV series, including Minority Report, Captain America, TV's Arrow, Van Helsing and the current series Project Blue Book.

First Contact was made as CGI visual effects were starting to mature (all the ships exteriors were computer generated, with the exception of the huge Enterprise deflector dish set) while traditional sets, models and practical special effects were also employed. According to Frakes' commentary, this was the last Star Trek movie to use visual effects by the Star Wars-associated Industrial Light and Magic.  A lot of the film was shot on actual locations: the Arizona missile museum and Angeles National Forest outside Los Angeles standing in for Montana, and the art deco lobby of the Los Angeles Union Station train depot as the nightclub in the Dixon Hill holodeck scene.

It was so successful as a Star Trek movie that fans mostly overlooked plot holes, and beyond fandom, it was arguably the most successful Star Trek film with general audiences since The Voyage Home.  It remains secure within the Star Trek canon as a high point of The Next Generation and an expression of the soul of Star Trek.