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Star Trek: First Contact Movie Review

Star Trek: First Contact is a 1996 science fiction film directed by Jonathan Frakes and starring himself opposite Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart. It’s one of the best entries in the series.

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“Borg?

Sounds Swedish“

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The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth’s first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed. This movie simply has the best storyline of all the Star Trek movies out there. It doesn’t just feel like an extended episode of the show, but a genuine feature movie all on its own, and that was crucial in making it appealing for non-fans, though the characters are still rushed in development.

The major Borg storyline was fantastic as was the time travel setup. Apparently, the crew wanted to make separate movies out of these ideas, but it was a terrific choice to fuse them ultimately into one entity as they go together smoothly for the most part. The time travel worked and the Borg are genuinely formidable foes in this story.

The highlight of the movie is the relationship between the Borg Queen and Data, which was both very well done and quite intriguing. She is cool and visually interesting while Data got serious agency in this storyline. He got the best arc for sure. Others are less memorable, though Riker is his usual bravado self and Stewart’s Picard is this time around the main captain, which was refreshing after the last entry that was needlessly overly traditional.

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Star Trek: First Contact does skim way too much on its characters, especially the supporting players as some main ones are greatly developed as mentioned above. The movie got a lot going for it in terms of plot, so undoubtedly some plot points felt rushed. Thankfully though, most of the story is excellent and thematically quite rich with some effective sporadic literary allusions. The dialogue is strong while the score and especially the VFX are quite competent. More memorable action scenes were needed, but those that we got are still perfectly solid.

Although a bit too heavily plotted and weaker in some supporting characters’ development, Star Trek: First Contact still has a phenomenal time travel storyline with the cool Borg acting as formidable foes. The VFX are terrific while the main characters are stupendous, especially Data and the Borg Queen. This is undoubtedly one of the best entries in the entire series.

My Rating – 4