Star Trek Fest - Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Welcome back Midnight View. It was a Star Trek fest. I'm Father Malone with me as always is my co host HP. Hello, HB. Hello, Father Malone.

How are you? This evening. Resistance is feudal? I have to say, yeah, I don't know what. Yeah, we're so jovi.

Oh okay, we've reached the nadir the zenith. As far as Star Trek movies go, obviously, Star Trek two is everyone's favorite. It's the acknowledged best of the series. But if one is bumping up. Against it, it just might be this, this particular flick.

We are, of course talking about Star Trek first contact. In his nightmares. He can see them in his mind, he can hear them, Loo cut it in his soul, he can feel them. I've just received report from leaf Space five long range Centers of Picnics. I know the Borg set a course for Earth maximum warm.

Now in Earth's darkest hour, he must fight them again. The Earth life signs population approximately nine billion Alborg time travel. They went back and assimilated Earth, changed history. I was following them back, rebar whatever damage they've done, But. This time they must travel to the past.

April fourth, twenty sixty. Three to say about future. You're all astronauts on some kind of star drink. Invade our space and we fall back, assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again.

The line must be drawn here. It looks like they control the next twenty six up to eleven. Mister Dang and I are returned to the ship, Captain Curry up. So we must activate the other destruct sequence. You want to destroy the ship by the way you cowered, if.

You or any other man or I would kill you where you stand. Let's watch and roll destroy them. You watch your futures and. What fields and our weapons are gone. Resistance it is futile.

After day, it is a good day to die. We are not going to lose the Enterprise up to the Bourne while i'man collapse. Star Trek First Contact. Star Trek First Contact was directed by Jonathan Franks, story by Rick Berman, Brennan Bragga and Ronald D. Moore, with a screenplay by Brennan Bragga and Ronald D.

Moore, Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Franks, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Cheryl McFadden, Gates McFadden, Marina sirtis Alfred Woodard, James Cromwell and Alice Creese with Neil McDonough as Lieutenant Hawk. I think you're forgetting someone very important here, brom w. You mean Robert Pricardo as the doctor. No, for folks, you mean Adam Adam Scott in his brief appearance on the Bridge of the Defiant. I acknowledge all of those choices, but you're still on the wrong path here.

So maybe maybe folks who are coming here who also listened to Father Malone and myself the other podcast that one of the other podcasts we do, which is called Nightmaster Walter, I'm talking, of course about Michael Horton. Michael Horton, who in this movie plays a security officer, was in a season two episode of Taxi called Wherefore Arthur Bobby. He was playing the young actor that becomes an off Broadway sensation and basically steals Wheeler's thunder and makes him want a quit acting. He's in this Michael Horton has a featured part and we will see him again in Insurrection. So evidently Jonathan Fraakes really like this guy.

He's just a security officer on the enterprise, right. That's his character name. In this an insurrection, we'll see he actually gets an official name. So he survives the bored incursion on the Enterprise E he does. He's like the Wedge Antilles of the Next Generation, if.

You will, almost like a Dwight Schultz. He's in this is. Well as I'm so happy to see him here. The tenant barkay HV. What is the story of Star Trek First Contact?

So the story of First Contact is an interesting one. So folks who maybe know a little bit about the Next Generation or watched the show know that Captain Picard at one point was captured and turned into a Borg by the Board collective. In this movie, there's an attack on Earth by the Borg and they end up going back in time and enslaving the entirety of humanity and ruining the actual first contact that signaled a new dawn for the human race. Warp drive was discovered, so Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew have to go back in time following the Board and undo everything they've done and make it so that humanity can have their first contact moment. I don't really have much on the Star Trek First Contact behind the scenes, behind the scenes like production the leading up to except one of the series better directors finally gets his due and they put him in the director's chair.

Heir, mister Jonathan Fraakes. We always used to call him Commander Cheese back in the day. But William t Reiker is at the helm of the entirety of the of the project. And this is one of the best directed Star Trek episodes, our best best directed Star Trek films I've ever seen. Totally agree, and I thought about this, and I think part of the reason not only is it visually one of the better Star Trek films next Gen or otherwise, but it's anyone who watches interviews or who has been nerding out about the next generation, like we have interviews of these guys, and you know that the whole cast, unlike the original series, this cast really cares for each other and they were and still are a very tight knit group.

I think that informs his direction. He knows these actors very well, and he's able to get very good performances out of each and every one of them, particularly Patrick Stewart. This is a season high for him as far as the acting. Patrick Stewart, I don't think he has ever been better in a Star Trek movie. O Star Trek movies.

There are only a few poor that is true. But then when you say you've never seen him better, my mind goes to how many seasons of Next Generation? And I think that there are four lights? And I think that might be a better performance than what he gives here. But that's television and movies.

We're doing theatrics here. Yah, correct, So I concede. My logic has defeated you, fatherm alone. Indeed it has. Okay, the Borg I'm gonna just put on my doctor who scarf for a moment and just say they're the cybermen.

Okay, they're just a ripoff of the cybermen. That's exactly the way the cybermen operate. They grab human beings, they encase them in metal, they hook them up to a cybernetic system. They're all one. Collective resistance is futile.

Okay. Now, Having said that, I love the Boorg because they're basically zombies or techno zombies, and they love green, which is a favorite color of mine. And I like blinking lights and that sort of nineties, late eighties, nineties esthetic. As far as junk futurism. And for this movie also Freaks really leans into the body horror very much for a movie that isn't like a very it's not an R rated movie, but he comes right up to that, to that barrier between R and PG.

Thirteen. There's some The Borg are really horrific and the things how they integrate you into the collective is there's they're amputating arms or putting weird claws and armatures and things, and we see a lot of quite a few Federation officers and members get taken by the Borg and turned into becoming part of the board collective and it's very horrifying. In this movie, I have to say. Yeah, the Borg are definitely a scary villain because when you go against them, you're fallen become them, thus doubling their numbers. They're implacable.

They just don't seem to be able to be stopped. There are several times in the movie where they try to use phasers against them, and I think Warf each time says these are on a modulating frequency, but they will adapt, so you get maybe ten or twelve shots and then they're useless against these because they're so adaptable. That's their whole ethos. I have some thoughts on the combat in this movie. It used to be one of my favorite parts of the movie.

This time I was a little more, not off put, but not as engaged. Let's engage HP. When did you first see the movie? I saw the movie in the theater. I probably saw this movie maybe I think I saw it twice in the theater and then many times on home video.

This I was already a big Next Generation fan, but I think that the trailers in the advance word on it was so positive. I got really excited, and then I saw it for that first time, and I was hooked. This is I can't say it. This is definitely top three of all Star Trek movies, Next Generation or otherwise. But it's been a dogfight for with Star Trek two for my favorite of all time.

This might be the one that I rewatched the most. I will say, Yeah, there's something so formative about Star Trek two seeing it as young as we did, and at that time, that was Star Trek. There was no other means of there was no other avenue to go down. It was Kirk and Spock and Bones and that's where we were. And so now I don't know.

Over the years. I first saw the movie by the Way Santa Monic at the Man's Criterion, which was my favorite other Cinta Monica theater than my own, and I saw it there many times because I got to see movies for free because they used to projectionists used to let each other into other theaters, other theater shanks and stuff. So I saw this sucking movie a lot. Before we continue there, I just want to bubble back for Jonathan Frakes. Talking about Jonathan Frakes because you mentioned him getting performances out of the actors, and yeah, I agree with that.

I think this is the best acted of any of the films. But I also think it was important for him to be the director of this film because the director, as the script is being shaped, is important as part of the person shaping that story, or if not the story, at least the character beats. So I'm sure he gave tons of notes saying we need more of this, We need more, Jordy, we need more. Whereas with the previous cast, we had two movies directed by Nimoy and one directed by Shatner, and all they did was give themselves shit to do. Look Nimoy leaned a little more democratically and spread the wealth around a little bit, but that was only for that movie.

For part four, he effectively gave one that was just him and Bones and McCoy, and then so did Shatner. Shatner would have Gennis in the entire cast if he could have. And that's one of the things I love about this that we're touching on here, is that in the past there's always this kind of cloak and dagger aspect to who's getting the most lines. I'm gonna take some of Chekhov's lines for my own, or None of that appears to be going on here. There's no sense that any of these actors or their characters are getting short changed in any way.

They all have a part to play, so to speak, in this movie, and I think they're all I think Fras is all too happy to give every character their moment and let them shine as those characters. I think it's That's one of the things I think is great about this. It really is an ensemble effort, as opposed to Zulu has a few lines and whoever. It's a group effort. As collaborative as any of the previous casts.

Movies had been. This one is the first time where it feels like it where it doesn't feel like we've got to get something. We have to figure out something for them to do. Everyone is part of a plot here. This is the most heavily plotted of any of the Star Trek movies to date, including Star Trek two.

Star Trek two is a very simple story. They go here, they do this, they run into that bang that's over. Is three to four separate plots going on at once, where all of the characters are essential parts of putting this puzzle back together in order to get back to Earth in their own timeline. And not to mention, this movie almost unfolds in real time because once they reach Earth, they make it clear they only have fifteen hours for Zephyrim Cochrane, the man who is credited with inventing warp drive. They got to get him up into space in fifteen hours or humanity will miss that opportunity for first contact.

So it's like you said, it's so tightly plotted, and everybody has a piece of the puzzle, and it's also unfolding on two different planes. On Earth, you have Reiker and Troy and Jordie and they're working on getting Cochrane his ship prepared and taking off, while Picard and Wharf and Data are on the Enterprise still trying to deal with the Boorg who infiltrated the Enterprise, and they're steadily taking over deck by deck, they're assimilating the Enterprise in this sort of this larger scheme to take over the world. It's great, it's clockwork, it's fantastic. And then the Earth story is pretty self contained, but as well, even for having all of the characters featured down there, but up on the Enterprise, they're effectively three separate plots going on because we have Data in the Boorg Queen, we have Percard and Lily and dealing with Picard's plot line here that's the most forward momentum for his story going on, is specifically with her.

And then we've got Wharf and doctor Crusher and everyone just trying to fucking survive as the borg onslought continues. Meanwhile, the borg are also plotting other fucking things that they're gonna go have to deal with as well. That's crazy. We probably should also mention. We probably should also mention that in this movie, Wharf is actually a captain.

We didn't mention that at the beginning, when the board are attacking Earth in the present day, let's call it, his ship is moments from getting destroyed and he is beamed onto the Enterprise comes to save the day, and he's beamed onto the Enterprise, And at that point he becomes a de facto member of the crew, even though to give him his due, he's Captain Wharf. He's no longer Lieutenant Wharf. If you remember, morph was aboard DS nine during this time period. He's on the Defiant, which is DS nine's runabout, and I was shocked to see it there. It was a clever way to get him involved.

But it's such a tiny little craft, and like, really they sent that from Deep Space nine to go fight the fucking board Cube. We were saying, I don't know, I just completely lost. We're talking about the different parallel plots that are all happening simultaneously, where you have the card in Lily Dwarf and the rest of the crew, Data has his thing, And it sounds like a lot when you say it out loud, that there's all these different plots going on, but you never feel the way that weighing on the movie. It all moves really quickly, and it's it all goes very smoothly. And it's not an especially long movie either, so there's a lot for them to wrap up, and it's economical in that sense.

This movie could have gone half an hour longer and I would have been okay with it. And I never say that about a. Film, like if they wanted to continue something with the Borg or something down there on Earth. Everything was working in this movie. For me.

The more we're talking about it, the more I'm talking myself into that this is the best Star Trek film, just because it not only balances everything with the cast, it not only embraces all of what Star Trek is meant to be, but it's a fucking great action movie. The script is clockwork tight, and it's like you just said, like there is so much and they dive into so many different parts of Star Trek because we get space battles and we get them on the ground dealing with the moral conundrum of the prime directive, the ultimate prime directive. Here, this is where it all starts. For Christ's sake, not to mention, we get a fucking we get a little bit of the hollow deck and the way it should be presented.

And I don't know, there's intrigue and there's zombies and there's horror for the first time in any Star Trek ever. And the look of it. When I was taking notes on this, I can I compare it to Star Wars, but not in the sense that it has the same feel. Like Star Wars was a revelation and that everything felt very tactile, and it felt like a world that was real because everything had grime and a grit to it, and the technology felt real and you could touch it. Here, it's not that same vibe.

Everything is clean, and you have the l cars, panels and everything, but it all looks it doesn't feel cheap like some of the other Star Trek movies tended to feel because of the budgetary constraints. Here it felt like you see so much of the Enterprise because they're dashing between decks, going to all these different places. The Hollow Deck you already mentioned that, and it just feels solid, real. And then you have all the stuff on Earth with zephyrm Cochrane's ship, which is a repurposed nuclear missile that he's using, and it's all the survivors of World War Three. There, it's not it doesn't get completely gritty and grimy, but there's a it feels real, and it's just the look of the film.

I can't say enough good things about Jonathan Frakes and his vision for this. I think he was on the right person for the job. Just a few years after this movie, it's when we started getting like Men in Black and films where it became this competition to see how far back they could do a zoom out in a shot. Men in Black ended up making it up fucking zoom out from the tiniest bit of Earth all the way to all of the galaxies, and then all of the galaxies turn out to be a marble, a marble, so you can't really tomp that one. But at the time and taking a movie seriously, the opening shot of here, the opening shot of this movie, which is a close up of Picard's eye and then zooming out and out to get to the enormity of the borg, which we had always hinted at on the budget conscious television series Syndicated television series.

But it's one of my one of my favorite shots in sci fi. Honestly, that whole sequence I love because they do the fake out where you have him it's a nightmare that he's having about the Borg, and then Picard wakes up and goes to the mirror and then this weird metal thing hatches out of his face as he's looking in the mirror, and then you realize it's a nightmare within the nightmare. There's something about that puts you off kilter. You're not really sure quite what to expect, and it really gets you into the headspace of Picard too, and how tortured he is having been a part of the Board collective and everything he's dealing with, and that's obviously the main point of his plot line, is he's dealing with the after effects of that and how he lily.

He makes a comparison to Moby Dick because he refuses to leave the Enterprise. Again. We potentially could have had another movie where the Enterprise is blown up at the end of it. I think we've had three or four of those now in the whole history of the series. But Moby Dick, it's obvious, but that really is the touch point for this character, because he refuses to capitulate to the Board because of what they took from him.

They stole his humanity, and Picard, under no uncertain terms, wants to make them pay at the cost of maybe everything that he holds. Dear. It's not often we get such a flawed character in one of our Star Trek movies. In that He's when you get a character and he's our lead, and we've liked the character and we need to take them too far and give them a villainous trait. I don't feel like that's ever really successful unless they do something completely heinous, in which case we're not going to come back to them.

I think this movie actually accomplished it because for a long time, we're on his side. We know what he went through, and we know what the Borger are capable of. But it's funny. I was with him as he was digging into a lieutenant's body in order to retrieve a piece of Borg technology, and he wasn't being emotional about it, and he wasn't being in any way reverential to that crew member at that moment, because this is a situation where they need to be moving without emotion at all if they're gonna if they're gonna even survive a Borg onslaught. But when he called Wharf a coward.

I was like, Okay, he's gone too far. I can no longer side with Jean Luke Picard. If you're standing toe to toe with Wharf and believing it, he wasn't just saying it to fuck with him. That's what Picard believes at that moment. You're a fucking coward.

And that leads to that wonderful scene where Lily confronts him about this all consuming hatred of the borg and what it's going to lead him down this path. And I can't say enough good things, by the way, about Alfred Woodard in this. To me, she's a not so secret weapon because she effectively becomes the audience proxy. Because the board come to Earth, they start firing on ZEPHYRM. Cochrane's position effectively to prevent first the first contact flight from happening.

The crew being down, they find Lily. She's been She has radiation sickness from ship being this missile being shot at, so they beam her to the Enterprise to be treated by doctor Crusher. So that's how she ends up on the Enterprise. But she doesn't know what the hell's going on, and like any of us would react, how do you react when you're on this from you like, She doesn't even notice the starship at that point, so she leaves as the board are taking over deck after deck. She effectively escapes from Doctor Crusher's gaze just for a moment, and she runs into Picard and she holds him at phaser point essentially and says, get me out of here.

I don't know why what's going on here, but get me out of here. And they start this. They start that way, but they eventually become much more understanding of each other. He shows her the ship, She understands what's happening. She becomes the audience proxy at that point, looking at Picard and what he's been driven to.

And she's really the one who talks him out of it by using this moby Dick analogy, which, by the way, I love that he quotes Melville back to her and she goes, well, actually I never read it, which I think is such a relatable thing. How many times have you been in a conversation where you fake knowing what the topic is just to keep the conversation going. That's exactly what she does. I don't know. Alfred Woodard is so grounded, and her interplay with Picard is a highlight.

It's and it's rare that you have the captain with a female counterpart when it doesn't become romantic. There's nothing romantic about their relationship. Their survive on this ship and they're helping each other through it. It's fantastic Alfred Woodard. If you haven't seen the movie Passionfish, I want to encourage everyone to go check out John Sales Southern drama.

But she's fucking fantastic and that Alfred Wood was friends with Jonathan Frakes and he was only too eager to sign her up and she was only too eager to join, and thank god she did. I love her. I think she's great. She lends a lot of that grit to the film that you're talking about. That Star Wars comparison, I think is completely apt because the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek has always been that the clean factor.

Star Trek is supposed to be streak and rather sleek and streamlined, whereas Star Trek wanted Star Wars wanted to be a used ump world. Basically, Star Wars is filthy and Star Trek is clean. And while I don't think this movie ends up being filthy. It does feel real as compared to what we were seeing on the series. The series is very sterile.

Putting aside the fact that it was not filmed on a sound stage and it was television production value, it still felt very hands off. Like this one feels like this is a ship that these people work on and they man that station where they actually have to turn dials and push buttons and stuff. But okay, I just wanted to double back for a second on the the cards losing his shit. First of all, I agree that seems magnificent. I do feel like the entire speech could have been summed up with the line you broke your little ships.

I don't think she needed to say more than anything more than that to him to get him back to Earth as far as where he was. But it is saved at the end because I just thought actually bringing up Ahab when this is clearly an Ahab situation, felt a little like text to subtext. But I do think it gets saved at the end because she says, I don't I have never even read that book, because who among us has right? That's exactly it. But she's important because she's the only person that's willing to stand up to Picard.

They all are used to taking orders from him, and as Lily says, they're used to his orders making sense. So she's the only one that can get through to him in that moment, and by God, she does, and you believe it. It reminds me that Alfre Wordard ended up showing up in the MCU in Civil War. She's the one who turns Tony Stark's mind around about the Avengers participation on the world stage, which reinforces what I'm saying about Picard and his sort of dissent in this film, because they made overtures toward where Tony Stark as a character in the comics went, where he became so disillusioned and it became a drunk. For a long time.

They give us one scene in Iron Man two where he's just drunk at a party, and that's supposed to approximate his entire battle with alcoholism, and I just thought that was so silly and short strift, and it reminded me HP, because HP and I went to high school together, and I'm pretty sure HP was pretty much a Marvel guy in high school and I was a d C. And anytime you. Would bring up Iron Man, I would just say dismissively. I mean Tony Stark that drunk. That's You're right to a degree, but obviously you and I both.

I think one of the things that bonded as father in alone, not to get too off topic, was two things. Number one, the Dark Knight returns, and number two and more importantly, Watchmen. The Watchman series probably was the like the thing, the central thing that got us first talking together as friends because we were both so in love with that comic book series. So yeah, and I still think I am much more of a Marvel guy. Not to get too wrapped up in this, but I have an appreciation for DC.

Oh yeah, no, and yeah no, I like every I'm not brand specific when it comes to comics like I was when I was an idiot teenager. I want to talk about one thing that I don't like about this movie. And I'm curious. I have one thing that I don't like. I want to see all lines with one.

I actually have two. One is superficial and one is the thing that I think kept me from saying this is a better film than Star Trek two. Okay, the more superficial one is that they continued to employ Michael Westmore as their makeup guy from the television series. Now the wes Moore family are Hollywood royalty and they've been in every facet of the industry and blah blah blah. Okay, I think his makeup work is bad in this film.

Other than the boorg queen, the boy Queen is perfect. She looks great at all times, but all the other borg feel slap dash, and when you get close up to them, it just looks like makeup to me. And I don't disagree with you at all. I didn't process it as something I really didn't like. I didn't because I belong for the ride, and I guess I didn't nitpick to that.

I agree, but you're absolutely right. When you get close it just looks like a bunch of white makeup with black streakiness, and some of the cybernetics look a little dodgy. But I again, I'm in the full willing suspension of disbelief mode here because I the movie so strong. Otherwise, my least favorite part of the borg in the movie is the one borg who lifts up a gigantic attachment that they've placed over his regular hand and out pops a tiny mechanical hand. Now, clearly somebody in the props department went, look, I made this little mechanical hand, and they went, oh, that's cool, let's put it in the movie.

And it just looks ridiculous. All I'm thinking, is like all that technology over a regular human hand to put that like Swiss army knife fingers. Yeah, it's like Edward scissorhands in reverse. Right, So I'll just give you a little like the snippers from a Swiss army knife. That's exactly what I'll give you.

But now you're saying that's the thing you hated the most about the movie, that's. The superficial thing. The problem for me overall with the film is the bullshit, cliched nonsense that the Borg Queen is just out looking for a fucking boyfriend? Are you kidding me? What does she need with anyone ever, anywhere?

I don't have I agree with you there, but for different reasons, my least favorite part of this movie, and I've realized this having watched it recently, is the Borg Queen period, because the thing of it is paatemon. Do you and I have talked about a number of these Star Trek movies right now, and Star Trek has a real predilection for the operatic sort of noble villain who is prone to flowery speeches about their objectives and their aims and what they're gonna do and what have typical. It's like Bond villain bullshit. It doesn't work for me here, it's and it's not the actress. I think Alice Kreese is fine.

And I think I think you heard me talking about Alex Creeze over on my other show, and you're qualifying right now. I'm just I'm I do remember you talking about it. You and I are about to rumble by the way. I I just I don't to me, the board is so mindless and single orientation of purpose. I just don't get the they have this queen at the center of it all.

Who's this model? Who's I don't know that it didn't work for me as well as it did when I first saw the movie. Let's say I've had more time to think about what the board really represents, and I just feel like they need to have something snazzy at the center of this villain to make it more interesting and cooler as an audience member. But I'm just not buying it. That's just my opinion.

It sounds like you have a difference of opinion. I could not disagree with you more. I think the Board Queen is one of the best Star Trek villains ever, and I don't need her to be operatic. I like how quiet she is. I like how sexy she is.

She this character has humor and is willing to seduce you into doing what she wants, which is not contrary to what the Board is. I think that's what it started out as. And I think having a voice of the color ative is exactly what needs to happen at this stage of having dealt with the Borg as much as we did on the TV series, just you get to a second alien movie and you got to say, Okay, where are all the eggs coming from? Who? What are these just this random race that are just out fucking colonizing, like or is there a central intelligence to it?

And it had to start somewhere. Yeah, but you don't have the Alien Queen, didn't have a voice, and wasn't sexy and didn't talk to Ripley about her plan and all of this. That's my problem with this. The Alien Queen is still an alien and is recognizable as such. Are you telling me the Borg haven't spoken before or you just wanted her to be like, I am the Borg, Hello, Data, I need those codes.

Resistance is futile. I wanted her to be a dollc basically just clambering around. And no, I don't have a good answer for you, because I haven't thought it through to that degree alone. I'm just saying it felt a little bit showy to have this very accomplished actress, by the way, and this part I just thought it was to me. For me, it was a little bit too much.

I get it. She there have to be this war of wills between her and Data, and she's playing Data. She's trying to play Data on his desire to become human. That's all fine, and it gives a face to fucking Picard's trauma, like he's there to deal with the fucking Borg. Here it is, and it's a seductive thing.

It's not even a it's if this were fucking Aliens were any if this were the fucking TV series, even it would be him running in and fucking blasting her. There would be no conversation. But this is Star Trek. I don't know you're way off man. In fact, every Trice is going to agree with me on this one, Buddy, Everyone's going to agree with me on this one.

I would like everyone who listens to this show please write in the show notes, just click my link on my email and let me know who's right about the borg Queen. I'm gonna to quote my dad. Okay, my dad would always say, it's like a horse race. You know, you have to people have to bet on different horses. It would be a boring life if everyone bet on the same nag.

This is what I'm saying. I don't have to. There's right and wrong, and you're wrong. No, that's this is a difference of opinion, my friend. This is no different than all the yellow lights we've discussed on night.

Mister Walters, don't plug your show. Don't plug your show here when you're being this incorrect. I'm gonna quote the juror in twelve Angry Men. I'm entitled to buy opinion fa them alone. You are entitled to an informed opinion, which clearly you don't have.

HP. Are you familiar with the concept of the mirror universe? We have this conversation. This is the groundhog Day yes, I'm familiar because you brought up the last Starship. I think is that the thing you talked about?

Oh no, now I brought up the Mirror universe because we talked about Seeker, who was the mirror version of Feature right, and then I told you about the mirror version of George and Gracie the Whales. I feel like you're making this up Protham alone. I'm not. I'm not. This one isn't even based.

Most of those are like comics like what if type comics then, but this one is from a novella entitled The Worst of Both Worlds, which is a play on the finale of Star Trek The Best of Both Worlds Part one and two, in which Picard and Noonian sing part of the iss the the Tarran Empire, or have to go face the Borg. In this version of the Borg, they all speak and they're all very fast. It's like the difference between Dawn of the Dead zombies and Return of the Living Dead zombies basically, and they somehow managed to defeat them. It was not very good. They didn't come up with some bizarre version of their name, like the Bjorn or something, so it's ultimately superfluous and who cares.

But it does exist and it's out there. There is a mirror version. Oh there's a king, that's the big innovation. There's a borg caing. Ah okay, But are the rest of the Borg all female in this case because they tend to be male.

They do tend to be male. Maybe that's just because they're grabbing males for their extra roundup they do, I'm speaking, I'm just speaking from extras. Sure, but you do see a couple of the women get taken. Oh yeah, oh seven of nine for christ aeg is one of the more famous Borg. But I guess the whole point is that when you're absorbed, you become sexless effectively.

Maybe they're drones. Yeah, they're drones. They're drones actually speaking, Which can I talk about one of the things I like the best one of this couple of scenes that I really love the first one we already touched on, which is you talked about some of the dog fighting. There's a brief scene when the Enterprise saves the day and intercepts the Borg as it's attacking Earth. It's a very brief dog fight, but there's it's the kind of thing we don't see very often in star Trek where you have the Borg Cube and there's dozens of Federation starships all circling it at it, trying in vain to destroy it.

We very rarely see these kinds of large scale bits of starship combat, and I love that, and I love Picard puts out an order to all the ships that are attacking it to fire on one little innocuous corner of the board ship. And they even say they don't really seem to be any real vital systems there, and he says, trust me, I know I've been a Boorg. Do it. And they all do that, and it creates this chain reaction that actually does blow up the board ship. It's so brief, but there's so much about it.

I love. That's the first thing that I wanted to mention, and you touched on it. The second thing I wanted to talk about is they so after Picard takes out that piece of board tech as you described from one of the officers from the Holidayck, he plugs it into some do hickey and he realizes he's able to see the orders coming down from the Board Queen, and he knows what they're trying to do. They're trying to use this radar dish as a beacon to bring the board from that time to Earth to aid in this conversion of Earth. So he and wharf Hawk Lieutenant Hawk you talked about, Neil mcdunno, they have to walk using mag boots, which we've talked about in the past through with relation to Star Trek six.

They can't take a shuttle because the Enterprise has been taken over effectively, so they have to walk along the hull with these mag boots and get to this this radar relay, and each of them has to like release these maglocks. First of all, everything looks very tactile and it takes forever. But as they're doing this, the board. Speaking of alien it's very much like arming Mother to explode, a. Very good point.

But as they're doing this, the board or in the center like plugging these these bits of tech, these sort of beacon pieces to the overlaying over the radar dish, and it's making these humming sounds and it's satisfying click when it goes in. I love that because it's tactile, but it's such a tense sequence because the board will ignore you unless they see that you're a threat. And once they realize that, hey, these humans are getting in the way or they're trying to stop us from what they're doing, one of them will stop and just walk towards one of them working on this. And it's just such a wonderfully kind of scary, intense situation because they're just in the vacuum of space with these spacesuits.

They're vulnerable in the way that the board are not. And inexplicably, by the way Wharf has brought his whatever that that bladed weapon that it's the Klingon weapon. I can't recall the. Name of it. It's a mockcleft.

I don't know why he decided to take this ultra sharp thing and kind of tuck it into his spacesuit, which is vulnerable to sharp instruments, and he actually gets cut at one point, But the whole putting that aside, the silliness of him having a sword effectively in the vacuum of space, I love the sequence because it's effectively taking place in sort of relative silence. There's not a lot of music happening in the background. It's just a vacuum of space there working on these maglocks. They're fending off the board. It's a great The effects are great.

I think ILM did the effects for this movie. Did they not? Yeah? Probably why it's maybe one maybe the best in the series effects wise. I think it is the best effects wise for the entire series the ILM.

We're involved from beginning to end. This is I like. This Enterprise the Enterprise E. I like it more than the Enterprise D. Sorry purists.

I think the effects beginning to end are fucking great, including still stands up when we meet the board queen and they lower her down into her body shell with that's fucking fantastic. I love the look of even the that proto Enterprise the zephyrm Cochrum's warp ship when the Nassells pop out there. That all looks fucking fantastic. But the scene you're talking about the emitter array, the emitter array sequence are where there are no portholes closer to the emitter right. Maybe not?

Maybe we're led to believe that the board or all over the ship. I would assume that they just couldn't get. The control decks. Yeah, okay, now that's a quibble, But I want to address the mock cleth actually because, for the first time ever while watching this movie, during the hollow Deck sequence the Dixon Hill Long Goodbye type sequence, when he shoots them with a Thompson submachine gun, those borg die, which means they are susceptible to projectile weapons and bladed weapons. What are they doing with phases at all?

Why isn't Wharf toting his bot leth down the hallway? He could fuck all of them up. When he pulled out the mock cleth, I went, oh my god, why hasn't he doing this? He should have walked up with the mockleth and just started taking them out. He could just start Can you just be decapitating them left and right?

Yes, man ramble or something? Yeah, Wharf, who are the people you spar with on the enterprise? Please call them and give them these weapons. Let's go take care of the borg. How about let's lure all the Borg one by one onto the hollow Deck and just use the fucking Thompson submachine guns that you know.

How about have a replicator make you a fucking machine gun or a blunderbuss or any projectile things spears, bows and arrows. I guess how do they adapt to them. That's true. I guess there wouldn't be much of a movie if they all just started replicating swords. You just packed away.

Here's a crazy idea, vent plasma through the entire ship while you're all hold up in one particular compartment. Apparently that can do it, that is. And that is how they kill the board queen. Right, they punch a hole in the plasma whatever coolant. It's plasma coolant or something, right, I'm getting all the terminology wrong here.

No, but this is completely off topic everybody. But if you love Star Trek like hBN I love Star Trek, and you have a computer at home and you're looking for a screen saver system forty seven, that's the of it. Go there. It's a free fucking download, and it's goddamned incredible. It's amazing, and it hasn't been updated in four years.

I'm starting to worry that it won't be compatible with my computer in a few years or something, because it's really good. There's a you can have effectively the cross section of the enterprise d and see all of the they he points out, all of the different rooms and Thingsphy point out. It's yeah, it's all schematics, but it's all on the l CAR system, so you're constantly seeing numbers and the buttons flashing and ticking away, and little schematics coming up and stuff. But then it'll do a cross section of the Enterprise and then zoom in on a section and then starts highlighting which each of the rooms are, like, oh, that's transporter room three. Got it.

It's amazing, and even stuff like where the Captain's yacht is, where robotics is, where, like I said, seller photography shuttle craft. You can see them moving around in the shuttlecraft bay, the only thing and you can see the turbo lips moving. Through, and you can see the power like you can see the warp corps is generating this, it's going up to the nacelle. This is going through the cells those are pushing out. It's really incredible.

Bottom Alone tipped me off to this week, and of course I had to go and find it and put it on my computer too, And I made the comment to him that this is probably better quality than they had on set for those computer graphics on the Enterprise, and I stand by that this is I guess whoever developed this has the luxury of nerding out and doing this and making it granular in a way that you wouldn't have to for a movie. But it's fantastic and it's got the ambient sound. It sounds like you're on the Enterprise. It's geek Heaven. It really is, speaking of geek Heaven.

Jordie's got eyes and I couldn't be happier. I loved the visor. I thought the visor was totally appropriate for New Star Trek when it came out, and now that we've actually made the jump two cinemas officially, because Generations was just a warm up, and I love seeing them working and we get some of his visions. It's wonderful because, look, he LeVar Burton is a great actor, and to now have him not have that advisor, which again i'd loved it too, and it was very much appropriate for, like you said, for that show at that time. It allows him to express himself and be a motive in a way that he couldn't before.

And he's really a delight in this because he is on Earth trying to help Cochrane get this ship off the ground with Riker, and he's the only one who doesn't really have any sort of comedic bits or his whole thing is he's what do we have to do to get this ship going? And he pokes in every once in a while, but he's LeVar Burton is. He just seems like such a lovely person, and he plays the character as such. I guess he can't help doing that because he just is such a nice guy. He's someone that you'd want to go up to him and give him a hug.

He just seemed with Reading Rainbow, we've all kind of grown up with them a little bit. LeVar Burton is fantastic and he's so good in this He's effortless. And he's part of my favorite moment in the entire movie, which is during zeph from Cochrane's first flight. He says engage and and Riker and Lafore share that look and that look says everything you need to know, And I don't know, it's just it made me smile so much. There's little moments like that, and I also like there's a so they have no choice but to disclose to Cochrane who they are and why they're there.

And while Riker's trying to convince him that you have to go on this flight and this is all this is going to happen. Jordis is using Cochrane's telescope to show him the Enterprise that's currently orbiting the Earth. There's just something so funny about that, because because Cochrane looks into it and he's what is this Is there some kind of trick? Jordie says, it's your telescope, man, And that's another point for the effects. It's a subtle thing.

But they show you what Cochran's seeing in the telescope and you see the Enterprise, and god damn it, it looks exactly like I would expect the Enterprise to look if I saw it in the night sky. There's like heat ripples. It looks We all can make out what it is because we know what the Enterprise is. But to Cochrane, it just it's just it's a spaceship in the sky. It's a wonderful moment.

Yeah, But all the stuff with Conchrane, they got James Cromwell, who had just got nominated for an Academy Award for Babe. The world finally woke up to what a fucking great actor he was. But he had already been on a couple of Next Generation episodes, so he was already family basically with Star Treks. Thank god they got him. I can't imagine anyone else's Zephron Conchrane now, even though we met Zephron Cochrane back in the original series.

And he Cromwell really was having a moment because between Babe and this, and then he went on to do La Confidential, which to me might be his definitive role. I think he is so good, and he's so good in everything anyway, but La Confidential really took him to another level. But I adore him in this. He's funny you relate to him because through the whole bit of them trying to get him ready for his flight, everybody is telling him about how important a person he is and how there are schools named after him and there's a giant statue in his honor, and he's just he's Look, I didn't do any of this to be a great person. I just I wanted to make money so I could go to some island and augle naked women.

Like I don't this guy that you're talking about, this visionary, I'd never met him. And you, because it's James Cromwell, you believe that he's agonized by all this adulation. Do you think it's possible that had he not made the flight, that Riker and LaForge would have just gone and done it anyway? And could they have done that? And would that have been a fun thing to have done in this Star Trek First Contact movie?

They could have. But the problem there is and that then you're rewriting history, because then it's not Zephyrm Cochrane doing that. Now it's these, now, these two figures that all of you know, history would have been changed. It would have been probably similar because it's still the Vulcans coming down for first contact. But they wanted to leave the Earth as it should be in the proper timeline, and that wouldn't have been achieved the next.

Oh, I'm saying that they did the right thing. I'm just saying that it was a potentiality there that they would have to go do it in his stead, and then when the Vulcans arrived, they go, this was the guy who had the ship. It was him? Was that guy? What else?

I don't know. We talked about Schiltz. Lieutenant Barclay. That was even in the theater as I'm watching it, I was so delighted because he doesn't get introduced in a very showy way. It's Cochrane who's still dealing with all this stuff in his head, and Barkley is going through hero worship and he just keeps trying to go up to Zephyrim and shake his hand, but he keeps getting showed away by Cochrane.

It's subtle and it's They do a great job of throwing in little bits of what I would call calling it fan service. I think it's a very dismissive term. But that's what we're getting here, because we get, like you said, we get Robert Piccardo as the auto doctor whatever, the hologram doctor. We get someone in the audience in my audience went yeah when the Doctor showed up with Jesus Christ, got some voyager fans we have. I had a lot of laughter because people are like, oh okay, because it was a popular show at the time.

But there's little bits and Pete the hollow Deck is a huge piece of fan service because there were entire episodes of Next Generation devoted to the Holidack, in particular Dixon Hill in Picard's obsession with this hard boiled detective, so I love that, but they also don't call undue attention to them. If you know it, great, But if you don't know what the Halo deck is, you immediately understand what it's all about because you know that they go in there, he's programming some kind of story. They're dressed in costumes. It becomes like a forties hard detective story. That's how that's against That's how you do quote unquote fan service, right.

I think, oh, yeah, I don't it is let's call them easter eggs here, because which is what you're saying is true, But people say fan service. It's just and then this character. Walks on unmotivated, and then we never see him again just so people get an applause break or something, Whereas this is all stuff that fans on the show will recognize immediately and appreciate. But if you never watched the series, it wouldn't make a difference. And I think this movie is one of the most accessible of the Star Trek films.

Like that opening shot I talked about, Yeah, it's breathtaking, and it's great science fiction and it's beautiful special effects, but it tells you what you need to know about Jean Luke Picard. He was part of this fucking collective and it's a problem now for him. That's all. Yep, No, I'm with you. Look, I we said at the top that this obviously is in the pantheon of the best Star Trek movies.

But in the course of our conversation here for the moment, I'm going to say this might I don't know. Maybe it's tied for me Star Trek two in First Content, but First Contact in a lot of ways. Look, you we had to have Star Trek two. It was an important film in the whole franchise. But they man, they got it so right with First Contact.

I think it's the most Maybe you said this at the beginning. I think you did. It's the most fun of all of the Star Trek movies. I totally agree with you there, and maybe that's why it is battling to be my favorite over time. I think it plows through every potential genre that Star Trek has alighted on over the years.

I think it's the most democratic when it comes to everyone getting. Their due as far as characters. Really, Honestly, in this one, more than others, Picard is the lead here, but everyone gets a plot and unlike you. I think this is one of Star Trek's best villains, and I think I think for the and this is not just a character thing, but I've been complaining about the use of Data throughout the entire series, which is just this. I just want under stand humans, and I want to be a human, and I want.

To be Pinocchio's little boy. This time where they've grafted the human skin onto his body so that he can feel that as a sensation, and they're using his emotional chip against him. I thought that was all fucking great, man Like, they take Data and effectively just strap him to a table for a good portion of this movie, and it's I thought, riveting, all the stuff between them, the back and forth between the board Queen and Data, and I think this is Brent Speiner's best performance too. By the way, maybe that's owing to Jonathan Fraakes or to the writing, or I don't know. It just all coalesced for me with that guy in this movie.

I will agree with you there completely that I think this is Brent Speiner's best performances Data in a movie. He's funny without going over the top. You don't have any silly sequences like him singing Gilbert and Sullivan or just being I'm just Pinocchio. I want to understand what it is to be human. That whole notion of him wanting to be human is, like you said, it's weaponized against him.

And there's this great moment at the end where, like you said, they've been grafting skin on his body, and by the time the movie concludes, they've put this swatch on his face, so you see it's one quarter Brent Spiner and three quarters Data. It's like it's a neat effect. I like that. I think, yeah, it is, because at that moment as the movie's ending, Picard has He's now in the clutches of the Boorg queen, and you believe that Data has been converted over to the borg's side because of what they're doing to his the skin and all this. Business flans will do you make you do crazy shit.

It feels like a heel turn. But then there's this yes moment where he he it's data. He's just been playing possible until the right opportunity, and then he grapples. He makes it possible for them to save the enterprise. Effectively.

It's great when he's firing on all cylinders. He's fantastic. He is a great character, and it's easy to forget that amidst all of the Pinocchio's type of stuff in the original In that series, original TV series, he had some great moments. Remember Law they were going to bring Actually, at some point they were gonna make a movie with Lore. They're gonna have lare in Insurrection the next movie we're gonna talk about but.

I and they should have and they should have. We'll get there, all right. I think that's gonna wrap it up here on the first contact situation HP. Next time we're gonna be talking about Star Trek Insurrection because we're gonna have. To in our way.

I don't feel good, HB. Until next time. Where can people find you? If they're looking for you here and there and everywhere? All right, if you're looking for me, you can find me.

I co host The Night Mister Walters the Taxi podcast alongside my erstwhile co host Father Alone Here. I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast, and I have a bandit hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. As for me, you're listening to the show midnight viewing. It's on twice a week. We've changed things around a little bit.

In case you hadn't noticed, all the fests and the horror anthology television shows are on Mondays now or Sundays or Mondays, and Father Malone's weekly round up is now Thursdays or Fridays, one or the other. Check us out there. Go to the Patreon channel please Patreon dot com slash follow them alone and subscribe. You'll get all these episodes early. You'll get them commercial free.

Actually, I take that back that I don't put commercials on my show other than at the beginning and the end. Strike that, but go to patreon dot com, go to all the links, go to the show notes, and oh, by the way, I want to reiterate, go to email me and let me know that I'm right about the board queen, and that h more importantly, that HP is wrong. Until next time, everybody, I don't know. Resistance is feudal or something or livelong and prosper extemin eight