YMMV / Star Trek: First Contact

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Can Picard really hear the Borg despite having no implants, or is he just imagining it and his actions are based on his knowledge of them, not a direct connection? This makes him hearing Data unintentionally funny, since it's as if Picard just remembered that he had been captured after setting the ship to self destruct with him on board.
  • The third season of Star Trek: Picard finally provides an explanation for why Picard is able to hear the Collective.
• Award Snub: This movie lost the 1996 Academy Award for Best Makeup to The Nutty Professor. It also wasn't nominated for Sound, Costume Design or Visual Effects.
• Awesome Music:
  • Jerry Goldsmith (and his son Joel Goldsmith, scoring alongside Jerry for the only time) firing on all cylinders. Particularly the film's unforgettable "First Contact" theme, which is a reworking of the theme the last Trek film he worked for (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier).
  • Plus Cochrane blasting Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" across the base as the Phoenix lifts off.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Borg Queen, also goes for her appearances on Star Trek: Voyager. Some find her an interesting addition to the Borg. Others believe her creation was a huge mistake, going against everything the Borg embody.
  • There is a debate about the portrayal of Picard in the TV show versus the films, generally regarding that the films seemed to turn the calm, diplomatic, and professional officer into a reckless action star who can't control his emotions. While there is a consensus for Insurrection and Nemesis, the debate here is whether Picard's personal history with the Borg justifies this change in characterization.
• Catharsis Factor: Not only is Data defying the Borg Queen and throwing her signature line back in her face an insanely cheer-worthy moment, when he pulls her into the fog and kills her is also very therapeutic too.
• Complete Monster: The Borg Queen makes her debut. See here.
• Continuity Lockout: Worf's presence on the Defiant at the beginning of the film is not explained and doesn't make sense unless you're aware Michael Dorn had joined the cast of DS9.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lily. Roger Ebert even wished she was more of a focus in the film and/or that they integrated her into the rest of series and fims.
  • The battle against the Borg Cube showcased a large number of brand new Federation starship designs, almost more than the entirety of TNG. This includes the Akira-class, Steamrunner-class, Saber-class, and Norway-class. That made them rather special to fans. The Akira-class especially went on to become a major presence in Treklore.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Of a sort - while the introduction of the Borg Queen and the general streamlining of the Borg was blisteringly effective within the movie itself, there's no denying that a lot of it radically alters the entire concept of the Borg and nullifies or modifies some of the ways in which they were previously intimidating and effective on TNG, namely how they spoke with a Voice of the Legion and there was no sense of negotiating with them. Many later Trek writers, particularly on Voyager, would struggle with the legacy of this movie's changes in ways that ultimately made the Borg suffer from severe Villain Decay.
  • This film codified the "movie Picard" interpretation of the character, where instead of being the calm and collected logical thinker who tries to find a peaceful solution, Picard came across as much more aggressive, reckless, and unwilling to compromise, partaking in several action scenes. Much of what made it work in First Contact, though, was that it suggested his sudden bouts of violent rage were meant to be out-of-character for him, and he seemed to be having a psychotic break due to unresolved trauma from his time as Locutus, ultimately realizing that he’s letting his emotions cloud his judgement. While it contradicted the series somewhat (Picard seemed to have moved on in post-Locutus episodes), it made enough sense on its face for casual audiences to roll with it and it’s plausible enough that, despite his past insistence to the contrary, he hasn’t fully overcome his past trauma. By the time of Nemesis, you have Picard taking part in offroad dune buggy chases and gunning down a bunch of guys like he's John McClain, and without the wider context, it just became his apparent standard mode of behavior. Not helping was that his feats became a whole lot more over-the-top (and at times sillier), which showed even further that a now-in-his-60s Patrick Stewart didn't exactly make for a credible action hero.
  • In their recap of Star Trek: Enterprise's "A Night in Sickbay", The Agony Booth thought this film hurt the series overall by depicting Humans as Naive Newcomers and Vulcans as their "big brothers".
    "TOS showed humans and alien races venturing into the unknown as equals, while Enterprise, on the other hand, was less about 'where no man has gone before' and more about 'where everybody besides mankind has gone before'."
• Genius Bonus:
  • The opera that Picard is listening to is Hector Berlioz' Les Troyens. The song is "Hylas' Song" from the beginning of Act V. Hylas is a homesick young sailor being rocked to sleep by the sea as he dreams of the homeland he will never see again.
  • When Zeph and Lily are looking at the stars right before the Borg attack, Cochrane points out the constellation Leo. One of the stars that make up Leo is the infamous Wolf 359.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Picard spends the movie struggling with his PTSD from being assimilated by the Borg, lashing out at his officers. Years later, Patrick Stewart discovered that his father suffered from PTSD after his service in World War II, which wasn't understood at the time and went untreated, causing him to become abusive towards his family.
  • Despite having been de-borgified, Picard can still hear the Collective. Star Trek: Picard eventually reveals why: there's still a little bit of Locutus left inside him, and that becomes part of the Collective's plan to assimilate and destroy The Federation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Picard gets accused of acting like Captain Ahab. Guess what role Stewart would play two years later?
  • On the commentary, Moore and Braga talk about how awkward it was to have to Retcon the Borg Queen into "The Best of Both Worlds," which gets them talking about how the decades-long continuity of Star Trek has become such a burden to its latter-day writers, and whoever takes it next would probably be better off just wiping the slate clean. In 2009, that's exactly what happened. Later on though Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy came out and continued from the original timeline.
  • Anyone who has watched Star Trek: First Contact and the X-Men films before Children of Dune will find it amusing that the Borg Queen is the grandmother of Professor X. (James McAvoy plays the younger version of Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier.) By virtue of being a Kwisatz Haderach (a being who can access the genetic memories of its female and male ancestors), Leto Atreides II (McAvoy) has intimate knowledge of the Lady Jessica (Alice Krige) that he finds very uncomfortable, which mirrors Picard's distress that the Borg Queen knows everything about him when he was assimilated into her collective. Stewart also played Gurney Hallock in David Lynch's Dune (1984).
  • The Defiant's helmsman is Adam Scott- who would later play Ben Wyatt on Parks and Recreation, noted in-universe to be a massive Trek fan, even writing TNG fanfic.
  • In the first season of Luke Cage (2016), Alfre Woodard is the one who violently bludgeons someone to death as they lie helpless on the floor. In the second season, she is also the one constantly being told that she is acting irrationally violent and hellbent on revenge at the cost of everything else.
  • Dr. Crusher demanding the EMH do a dance or tell a joke to distract the Borg — we later find out that Voyager's EMH has those kind of artistic aspirations.
• Inferred Holocaust: The Borg's assimilation of the Enterprise must have led to the deaths of hundreds of Enterprise crewmembers, both those who were assimilated and those trying to fight them off, as well as major damage to the ship, especially in Engineering. For context, Sovereign-class ship carries a crew of 700, with a Defiant-class carrying a crew of 40.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Destroying the Enterprise-E. Its predecessor had been destroyed in the previous film and the characters even Lampshaded how short the ship's lifespan had been. Of course, they weren't going to get rid of it right away.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Picard's Big "NO!" (before he breaks his little ships) has also turned into something of a meme, even being referenced in South Park.
  • Cochrane yelling "Sweet Jesus!" when he sees the Enterprise is frequently used to express feelings of surprise or shock.
  • Picard shouting while firing the machine gun has also met a lot of montages.
  • The stardate given in the opening scene puts the film during an episode of Deep Space Nine where Sisko was away in the Gamma Quadrant. This has caused fans of his Memetic Badass status to insist the Borg are actually afraid of him, and deliberately waited until he wouldn't be around to stop them.
• Misaimed Fandom: "The line must be drawn HERE!" is treated as a Badass Boast by many, when it's actually part of Picard's Sanity Slippage in a hopeless fight against the Borg.
• Narm:
  • The scene where the crew depart via the escape pods would have looked more dramatic, if the escape pods didn't look like tiny pianos. Or, to the British audiences, plugs◊
  • The franchise Title Drop that the crew is "on some kind of star trek." In the commentary, Moore and Braga reveal that the studio insisted on it, and they really didn't want to do it. They also considered Worf's "Assimilate this!" one-liner to be the cheesiest line of the movie.
  • A lot of the scenes with the Borg Queen seducing Data. Lines such as "That's because you haven't been adequately... stimulated" and "Was that good for you?" were particularly clunky. Sheeesh.
  • In the European Spanish dub, when the Borg Queen challenges Data to tear the skin from his limb, the word chosen to translate "limb" is "member", which has the same connotations as in English. Unfortunately, this makes the whole line sound like the Queen is daring Data to self-circumcise.
  • Picard's bellowing the Big "NO!" and then smashing his ship models can be particularly hilarious, to the point it became a meme as mentioned above.
• Narm Charm:
  • Picard's "The line must be drawn HERE!" speech is so over-the-top, particularly Picard's pronunciation of "here" as "HEE-YAH!", yet Patrick Stewart still sells it.
  • Cochrane's Title Drop can cross back into this, particularly since he's the "creator" of the Star Trek universe (and an awful lot like a thinly-fictionalized version of the real creator), and probably the only character entitled to do it!
• One-Scene Wonder: Robert Picardo playing the Enterprise's EMH.
• Pop Culture Holiday: This film spawned the unofficial Star Trek holiday "First Contact Day", which is celebrated every April 5.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Neal McDonough as Lt. Hawk.
  • Adam Scott as the USS Defiant helmsman.
• Signature Scene: Two really stand out:
  • One is Picard's breakdown in the Observation Lounge, finally admitting and coming to terms with his true hatred for the Borg for what they've done to him.
  • The other is First Contact between Humans and Vulcans, without a doubt one of the most iconic scenes not just for the movie, but for the Star Trek franchise as a whole.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The Earth that Picard shows to Lily looks rather unconvincing, and it's all the more jarring given how high the standard of the special effects in general is.
  • The lightning/plasma disc/plate on the Borg alcove, essential component of Borg technology related to the Borg's regeneration cycle and connection to the Borg hive mind, or cheap novelty item for your home? (Something of an inversion in that, while the "Luminglas" brand of crackle-tube widget existed prior to the film and the ones used in First Contact were bought off the shelf, it was their exposure in First Contact that made them popular as a novelty item, in sort of a proto-Colbert Bump effect.)
• Strawman Has a Point: Starfleet Command is portrayed as incompetent for not allowing Picard to lead the defense against the Borg invasion and indeed keeping him as far away from the battle as possible. However, considering what we see happen to Picard over the course of the movie, it's hard to say they were wrong. Having your battlefield commander undergo Sanity Slippage in the midst of an enemy blitzkrieg is a pretty good argument for wanting Admiral Hayes to lead instead. Plus the Dominion was still a lingering threat, and the Romulans could have been waiting for an opportunity like this to start trouble. As powerful as the Enterprise is, it's still only one ship to the many already gathered yet it'd be sufficient to provide security on the Federation borders. Given the nature of the galaxy at that time it's likely that Enterprise & Picard were intended to form the command of a battlefleet in the event of any new problem on the Romulan side of the quadrant.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: To the largely underwhelming Star Trek: Generations, the first movie with the Next Generation crew.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The trailers played up the potential for an all-out Borg invasion (while saying nothing of the Cochrane subplot), which some fans might have wanted to see more than the story we got instead.
  • If the writers really wanted to play up the idea of first alien contact, they could have had Romulans, the Vulcans' eternal foil, be the antagonist species, raising the question of what first contact being with a race that wanted to conquer or corrupt us would do to the Federation's history. In fact, a later series actually ran with this very idea.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Many examples, including the battle at the start, the assembly of the Borg Queen, and the spacewalk on the hull of the Enterprise. Unfortunately, the producers ditched ILM starting with the next film, meaning that the visual effects in this film wouldn't be surpassed until they were called back for Star Trek XI.
• Villain Ball: The Borg knew enough to bombard the missile complex from orbit before their ship was destroyed, but teleport to the Enterprise instead of going to Earth to destroy the Phoenix, kill Cochrane and assimilate the planet in the past. They also could have easily assimilated the Enterprise crew and taken the ship intact instead of stopping to build their beacon.
  • Amusingly, an adventure in Star Trek Online ("One Night in Bozeman") reveals that they did try beaming down to the complex to assimilate everyone, only to be foiled by the player character and Seven of Nine on a separate time travel mission to stop them. This partially retcons the villain ball out of their hands.
  • The spin-off novel Engines of Destiny- in which the Enterprise-D ends up in an alternate reality where the Borg invasion of 2063 succeeded- all but explicitly states that the Borg's intention had been to just go back a few days and warn their past selves of the scale of Federation resistance they would encounter, further justifying their mistakes as they hadn't been prepared for their final arrival date.

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