Trivia / Star Trek: First Contact

• Actor-Inspired Element: One of the original drafts had Picard down on Earth while Riker was fighting the Borg back on the Enterprise. Patrick Stewart said it made no sense, because Picard hated the Borg more than anyone, and felt it'd be a missed opportunity to not have him fight them directly. Jonathan Frakes (as the director) wanted more time behind the camera, so they switched roles.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Picard actually misquotes Moby-Dick. The change is obviously to simplify the text for modern audiences by putting it into more modern language, and also just to make a bit more snappy for delivery in the scene itself. There are three possibilities: in the future, someone has revised one of the greatest novels of all time, Picard's exhausted and either misremembering or paraphrasing the quote, or Picard's translator gives it in modern English for Lily rather than the original language.
  • Picard: "And 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."
  • Original: "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."
• California Doubling: The Phoenix launch complex in Boseman, Montana was filmed at the Titan Missile Museum in Tuscon, Arizona, with the surface encampment filmed at the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Adam Scott auditioned for the role of Lieutenant Hawk. Though he lost out to Neal McDonough for the role, he was given the role of the unnamed helm officer of the USS Defiant.
• Deleted Scene:
  • A short scene cut from the film happened on the holodeck, when a drunk named Buster grabbed for Lily Sloane's arm and was pushed back.
  • Zefram Cochrane – reluctant to make the first flight of the Phoenix – was chased by officers from the Enterprise and became trapped at the edge of a cliff. As he was about to jump to his death (thereby committing suicide), Troi had to climb onto the cliff and try to persuade him to come back down. She eventually told him to jump, though, and even pushed him off the ledge. His descent was not fatal, however, as his fall was stopped in mid-air by a force field that Geordi had rigged up. Brannon Braga explained, "That just got cut for time. We felt we had enough Cochrane character bits, so we just cut that out". James Cromwell said, "I was sorry they took that [scene] out, but we discussed it and it didn't make sense." Cromwell believed that, if Cochrane was suicidal, he would have had no problem with agreeing to make the initial warp flight, though his reluctance to do so (and him overcoming this hesitancy) is one of the film's main story points.
• Directed by Cast Member: Jonathan Frakes was already a popular director for TNG and Deep Space Nine, and also did a few episodes for Voyager.
• Executive Meddling: Two positive ones:
  • Ira Steven Behr insisted that the "tough little ship" exchange be added to the opening battle, so it was clear that the Defiant had survived and could still be used on Deep Space 9.
  • When discussing what the next movie should be about, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore wanted to do a movie featuring the Borg while Rick Berman wanted to do a time travel movie. Their solution? Do both!
• On-Set Injury: Alfre Woodard was burned by a pyrotechnic effect that left some mild scarring on her upper arms.
• The Other Darrin: James Cromwell replaces the late Glenn Corbett as Zefram Cochrane, who first appeared in the original series episode "Metamorphosis". However it is now almost a given that more people know Cromwell's performance over Corbett's, making Corbett The Pete Best.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Tom Hanks was never seriously considered to play Zefram Cochrane. It's often claimed that Hanks was nearly cast in the role but had to turn it down at the last minute due to scheduling difficulties. Producer Rick Berman cleared this up during a retrospective interview about the film, saying Hanks was floated in some capacity by the studio, but James Cromwell was always the first choice for the role.
• Real-Life Relative: While Jerry Goldsmith composed most of the score, his son Joel wrote some of his own cues.
• Recycled Set: Aside from exceptions like the Bridge and Engineering, most of the Enterprise-E's sets are actually modified versions of Star Trek: Voyager's sets. It's particularly obvious in Sickbay, whose layout is almost unchanged. (You could argue that's Starfleet design or even budget issues- why make sickbays look different on their larger ships?)
• Referenced by...: The South Park episode "Something You Can Do With Your Finger" samples Picard's Big "NO!" when Randy angrily tells Stan not to join his friends' boy band.
  • In The Big Bang Theory episode "The 21-Second Excitation", Sheldon Cooper quotes Picard's "The line must be drawn here" speech while Wil Wheaton cuts in line at a Raiders of the Lost Ark screening due to the fact that the theater owner is a fan of his.
• Refitted for Sequel: Data's gray burned-off endoskeleton started out as an alternate skin tone early in TNG's production.
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: The original Playmates version◊ of the Enterprise-E takes some cues from an unused design for the ship, most notably the uncovered bussard collectors and the large singular impulse engine.
• Troubled Production: Filming only really had trouble early on, due to Rick Berman's demands that it involve popular recurring villains the Borg, while also being a time-travel comedy in the vein of The Voyage Home. Moore and Braga were re-hired as screenwriters, and initially produced an outright comedic screenplay named Star Trek: Renaissance, showing the Borg taking over a castle in renaissance Italy, and the Enterprise crew foiling them with the help of Leonardo da Vinci; this screenplay was regarded by just about everyone as far too silly, and Patrick Stewart killed it altogether by insisting that he wasn't going to wear tights. Moore and Braga's second attempt, Star Trek: Resurrection was nearer the mark, but relegated the Borg to an action sub-plot aboard the Enterprise and focused mostly on Picard's time-travel shenanigans while impersonating the inventor of warp drive, with Picard never even finding out about the Borg's involvement. Finally, the people involved decided to make the film a proper follow-up to the events of the acclaimed "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter from the series and have Picard confront the Borg head-on, resulting in the film that was released.
• What Could Have Been: See the page.
• Working Title: Star Trek: Resurrection, Star Trek: Borg, Star Trek: Destinies, Star Trek: Future Generations and Star Trek: Generations II.
• You Look Familiar:
  • James Cromwell was previously seen in two roles on Next Generation. He was the Angosian Prime Minister in "The Hunted" and a Yridian information dealer named Jaglom Shrek in both parts of "Birthright". He also played a Karemma merchant in DS9's "Starship Down".
  • And Neelix tries to stop the Borg from entering the Dixon Hill nightclub. Ethan Phillips explains on the DVD that he mainly did the cameo to see if the fans were paying attention.
  • Don Stark, who plays Nicky the Nose, also previously played a Yridian, Ashrock, in the DS9 episode "Melora".
  • Michael Zaslow, who played Star Trek's first ever Red Shirt, Crewman Darnell from TOS' "The Man Trap", appears as Eddie the bartender.

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