Review of Star Trek: First Contact (1996) by Abdullah C — 04 Aug 2016

I'll always have a special fondness for the cast of the original Star Trek TV series and movies, but the Next Generation series was undoubtedly a superior product, and its ensemble cast a real pleasure to watch. So it's no surprise that this first solo film outing of the Next Generation crew (Star Trek: Generations was a handover from Kirk's crew to Picard's) was hugely entertaining for me. I just saw this for the first time (I was a parent of young children when it first came out in 1996 and didn't go to the movies often).

In First Contact, Captain Jean-Luc Picard must face off once again with the Borg, arguably the most tenacious and threatening villains ever concocted on Star Trek. The Borg have gone back in time to the dawn of Earth's interstellar space age. They plan to annihilate the inventor of the warp drive and assimilate Earth. Naturally, Picard and crew are at the right place and in the right time to confront the cybernetic Borg. I found this version of the Enterprise (a brand new Enterprise, the TV version having been destroyed in Star Trek: Generations) much darker than the Enterprise-D. Who would want to work in such a dismal setting? But the cast was as good as ever. Data has an emotion chip. Worf joins in from his assignment on Deep Space Nine. Deanna gets drunk. The Borg infiltrate the Enterprise itself. Lots of action, lots of clever solutions to impossible problems, some violations of the Prime Directive, and a reference to Moby-Dick (which also featured in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan). What more could you ask for?