Has it already been 25 years since Star Trek First Contact, the best of the movies featuring the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, beamed onto the silver screen?
I first saw the film during my Thanksgiving 1996 celebrations. I’d been salivating for it ever since I saw the first teaser trailer (your mileage may vary, but the fan-created modern trailer leaves me cold):
The movie did not disappoint.
I went back to grad school after the holidays telling all my classmates how great the movie was… and that I would
gladly
go see it again with them!
Star Trek First Contact boasts so many memorable moments, from the humorous (the EMH’s unexpected and hilarious cameo, offering the Borg a nice analgesic) to the dramatic (Lily, played by the incomparable Alfre Woodard, calling Picard out on his Ahab complex), to the downright disturbing (Data experiencing “pleasures of the flesh” courtesy of the Borg Queen).
But when asked to name my top three Star Trek First Contact moments, I can do no better than gush about the moments I gushed about 25 years ago.
These are the moments that made me want to see this movie as many times as I could—and, frankly, still do!
The fight on the Enterprise‘s main deflector dish
Worf’s defiant “Assimilate this!” is the line I remember repeating with relish as I left the theater. But the Klingon’s crowd-pleasing comment is only the capper to an altogether thrilling sequence.
Picard, Worf, and conn officer Hawk (played by a pre-Band of Brothers, pre-Arrowverse Neal McDonough) undertake a zero-g EVA to stop the Borg from building a beacon atop the Enterprise deflector dish and contact the Collective.
What could go wrong?
These seven minutes are a mini-masterclass in high stakes. Our heroes must deal with setback after setback.
They attract the drones’ attention. The drones adapt to the phaser fire. Worf’s successful slaying of a Borg punctures his pressure suit. Hawk can’t move his maglock before he’s “thrown overboard”—only to return and attack Picard as an assimilated drone himself.
Maestro Jerry Goldsmith’s music gives the events even more impact. The mysterious four-note motif Sha Ka Ree motif he wrote for Star Trek V sounds whenever the characters narrowly avoid catastrophe, before modulating into a hopeful major key once victory is secure. (Well, Picard’s and Worf’s victory, at any rate.)
Not every aspect of the sequence has aged gracefully. When Picard flies across the soundstage on admittedly well hidden or digitally erased wires, I cringe a little, as director Jonathan Frakes apparently does too.
But the battle for the deflector dish remains the tensest set piece in any Star Trek movie, and a gem of an action sequence.
Zefram Cochrane and the Phoenix rock and roll into history
I’ve always been up for watching a good rocket launch. The launch of the Phoenix, humanity’s first warp-capable vessel, is fictional, but it has a similar ability to capture my attention and my imagination.
You can’t overstate this moment’s importance in the Star Trek timeline.
As our “astronauts on some kind of star trek” told Zefram Cochrane earlier in the film, it’s the first step on the way to a future without poverty, disease, and war.
But this moment also embodies the movie’s interest in puncturing historical pretension.
Cochrane, played amusingly and endearingly by James Cromwell, knows what’s riding on his successful launch, but panics at the thought of blasting off without his Steppenwolf soundtrack. And his first sight of Earth from above leaves him gobsmacked with gee-whiz wonder we don’t often see in Star Trek, but that any of us would feel rocketing into outer space.
Five years after Star Trek First Contact, the franchise itself acknowledged this moment’s iconic status.
Every week, as I watched the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise chronicle the human race’s “long road” to the stars, the make-believe milestone I looked forward to most was the clip of the Phoenix from this movie, shedding its missile casing and extending its nacelles as it readied to warp its way into a brighter future.
Live long and prosper—and “ooby dooby,” too
How could the moment to which the whole movie builds—the moment the Borg try in vain to sabotage, the 21st-century moment that saves the 24th and beyond—not end up on a list of favorite Star Trek First Contact moments?
One of my clearest memories of seeing this film for the first time was muttering under my breath as the alien scout ship descended, “They’d better get this right!”
Now, no canonical source, no previous TV episode or feature film, had ever established Vulcans were the first alien species humanity met (knowingly and officially, at least).
But I’d read Margaret Wander Bonnano’s 1987 novel Strangers from the Sky and desperately hoped the movie wouldn’t contradict its core concept, that the meeting of humans and Vulcans birthed the whole Star Trek future.
Besides, what other alien visitors would have felt so right? The Klingons? The Romulans? Some extraterrestrials Star Trek fans had never seen or heard of before?
So when the alien ship’s commander descended that ramp, threw back his hood to reveal those pointed ears, and lifted his hand in that iconic salute, I was one ecstatic Trekkie!
Jerry Goldsmith’s score helps the thrill. His lush, romantic main theme swells as the historic moment approaches, and the cymbal crash accompanying our first sight of those Vulcan ears is a perfect musical payoff.
I have always wondered, though, if one reason the Vulcans were so “down” on humanity by the time of Star Trek: Enterprise was because Zefram Cochrane kicked off interplanetary relations by trying to drink them under the table while dancing to Roy Orbison’s warbled take on the hokey pokey!
What are your top moments from Star Trek First Contact?
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