Star Trek: First Contact

Last updated on: May 15, 2013 at 11:10 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Star Trek: First Contact 2013-05-15T11:10:20-07:00 Peter T. Chattaway

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I know it came out several weeks ago, but it was only in the last couple days that I finally caught up and saw the new two-disc edition of Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

This film is noteworthy for a number of reasons, both for its own sake and also as a matter of personal significance. First of all, it was the last of the really good Star Trek films; and thus, it was the last of the films that I saw three times in the theatre, which I had done for every single film going back to The Search for Spock (1984), which came out when I was 13 years old. (I knew Star Trek had lost its appeal for me when I saw 1998’s Insurrection only twice, and 2002’s Nemesis only once, and had no urge to see them again.)

Second, of the five films that were scored by Jerry Goldsmith, this is the only one that was actually a good film in its own right; you might say it was the only film that deserved him. Goldsmith’s scores were always excellent — his soundtrack to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) is a superb, lush, mysterious, romantic CD, and one I listen to often — but the films themselves typically were not. (His other scores were for ST:I, ST:N and 1989’s The Final Frontier — the first film to come out after the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which used his ST:TMP theme in its title sequence.) It is fitting, therefore, that the DVD for this film — the only film that deserved his skills, and the only film on which Goldsmith collaborated with his son Joel — includes a special tribute to Goldsmith, who passed away recently.

(Footnote: One of several Goldsmith themes that is especially popular is the “Klingon” theme he wrote for ST:TMP in 1979; he used it again, in a more pumped-up action-movie mode, in ST5:TFF in 1989. In both of those films, the Klingons basically represented “the enemy” — but in ST:FC, he uses the theme again when the film introduces Worf, in the middle of a battle against the Borg. There has been some discussion among soundtrack buffs over the appropriateness of this choice. Does the theme represent “bad guys”? Or is it representative of Klingon culture, which is inherently neither good nor bad? Personally, I think it works just as well for Worf as it did for his villainous forebears.)

Third, this was the second Trek film to come out after I became an editor at a student newspaper, and I wrote an essay for the paper analyzing this film’s approach to gender in light of a book I had just finished reading on the sci-fi and horror films of the 1950s; a slightly revised version of that essay is posted here. I sent a copy of this article to the editor of Books & Culture when I first proposed writing an article for them; that was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with that magazine.

Fourth, this film came out right around the time Star Trek was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the premiere of the original series — and one factoid I had not known, until I watched this DVD, is that the “uncredited saloon keeper” who appears at the 1:14 mark is played by an actor who appeared in that first episode and who was, in fact, the first of many Enterprise crew members to die. It seems the Trek movies tended to turn out better if they came out in anniversary years: The Voyage Home, which remains the top-grossing film of the series even despite inflation, coincided with the show’s 20th anniversary in 1986; and The Undiscovered Country, which did an okay job of tying the old series to the new ones, coincided with the show’s 25th anniversary in 1991.

Fifth, as writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore note in their commentary, this was the first Star Trek film that did not feature any members of the original crew, and what’s more, they were not obliged to go through the “laundry list” of things that they had to incorporate into 1994’s Generations. So there was a definite freedom to this film — a freedom enhanced by the fact that it almost entirely takes place in the 21st century, and thus outside of whatever week-to-week continuity was being established in the TV shows back then — and you can sense it. (Granted, Worf had joined Deep Space Nine by this time, so his appearance needs to be fitted into that show’s continuity, but it ain’t that big a deal.)

And yet, despite this freedom, the show still revolves around a character from the original series! James Cromwell, who had just become quasi-famous for his role in Babe (1995), plays Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive, who was a guest character in an episode of the original series, albeit one who was played by an actor who looked totally different. Ah well, Cromwell’s so good in the role, I don’t care.

Sixth, one thing I have always loved about this film is the way it goes for the scary, horror-movie stuff yet also manages to bring in the optimism of Gene Roddenberry’s original concept — there is a remarkable balancing act in this film between the light and the dark, and it plays out beautifully.

Amazingly, Braga and Moore say they originally conceived the film as a time-travel story set in the medieval era — but then Patrick Stewart said he refused to wear any more tights! And then they imagined going back to Zefram Cochrane’s era, except it was going to be Riker fighting the Borg on the ship and Picard helping Cochrane on the ground. Well that doesn’t make any sense — and Stewart rightly pointed out that Picard ought to be the one defending his ship (and besides, doesn’t Picard have a little bit of personal history with the Borg that might need to be dealt with?).

I learned some fascinating things from this DVD. For example, all the missile silo scenes were actually shot in a real missile silo, with a real Titan missile! So when Picard and Data have what one filmmaker calls their “sensual” scene with the missile, in which Picard explains to Data how physically touching an object from the past can make it seem more real, the actors are actually touching a real part of Cold War history!

FWIW, I know exactly what Picard means. When I was strolling through the British Museum in the summer of ’94, I was stunned to come across the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (which happens to contain the only contemporary portrait of a biblical character), and to see that it was just standing there in the open, albeit behind a rope; so while no one was looking, I touched it. Touching history is a big deal, to me — and it’s one reason why I don’t have any objection at all to the Orthodox practice of venerating relics.

Braga and Moore say they debated whether or not Picard should quote Moby Dick, since Khan had already done that years earlier in 1982’s The Wrath of Khan; perhaps it would seem like too many trips to the well. I’m glad they decided to keep that line, though, because, as the authors of Deep Space and Sacred Time point out, the two uses of Moby Dick in the Star Trek films allow us to see how stories can either confirm us in our lack of self-awareness (as was the case with Khan) or force us to step outside ourselves and reflect on our actions (as is the case with Picard).

Braga and Moore also say they specifically wanted three Vulcans to come out of the ship at the end of the film as an homage to the “three wise men” of Nativity stories — but then one of them jokes that “the corruption of the Vulcans begins on day one,” as Cochrane plays some rockabilly tunes for them. This is very interesting, as Mike Hertenstein, in The Double Vision of Star Trek (my review), had a problem with this aspect of the film:

Technically, First Contact doesn’t suggest that the aliens save humanity, but that, just by learning about the aliens’ existence, humans were finally able to get it together and save themselves.

But that’s not how the scene plays. As the mother ship descends, the people on the ground squint, shielding their eyes. The dust kicks up and becomes a low-hanging fog that swallows the glowing sphere. The crowd of people watch in breathless awe as the door of the ship smoothly — but relentlessly — folds open and becomes a long ramp thrust down into their midst. Bright light beams through the fog from within the vessel. Now a dark figure appears at the top of the ramp, backlit in the doorway, an imposing silhouette. After a brief hesitation, the figure descends — a robed figure, whose face is shadowed in a hood: which he now reaches up to lower! A light dawns in the faces of those watching as the figure is revealed to be — Gene Roddenberry!

Oops. Actually, First Contact‘s literal god-in-the-machine answer to the central problems of human existence would have made Roddenberry apoplectic. A deus ex machina anywhere but here. Think of all the other films where we’ve watched this scene before, in general spirit if not all the details: E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and others. There’s a name for this subgenre of sci-fi movies — the alien-messiah film.

Alien-messiah films combine religious emotions with the trappings of science fiction. There’s no question its [sic] easy to mix the two up; scientists looking for life Out There do it all the time. Depending on which sort of messiah one looks for, the alien messiah can arrive in triumph, full of power and glory, or be vulnerable, an innocent, morally superior but misunderstood, usually killed by earth men and then resurrected. Perhaps it is the quintessential human act: killing the messiah. Here is one more reason First Contact rings false. The arrival of an alien messiah demands that the story move on to the next step: crucifixion.

Personally, I have always thought that Hertenstein makes a little much of the messiah parallels here — especially given that the Vulcans are so familiar to us already, and are immediately subverted or humanized when Cochrane subjects them to the rockabilly jukebox. And indeed, Braga’s reference to the “wise men” suggests not that these characters have come to effect a miracle, but to bear witness to a miracle already effected.

In any case, however, you spin this scene, it was interesting to hear the writers describe it in religiously evocative terms.

On a side note, Hertenstein also makes the point that discovering “we’re not alone in the universe” isn’t necessarily a positive thing — what if it had been the Borg, and not the Vulcans, with which Earth first came into contact? To this, I think it is worth noting that one of the theories bandied about in William Shatner’s Star Trek novels is the idea that the time-travel escapades of ST:FC may have created a parallel timeline . . . a parallel universe . . . perhaps even a Mirror Universe . . . in which the militaristic Federation may have been the consequence of a more pronounced awareness of the Borg threat looming in humanity’s future.

One last point. Braga and Moore also discuss how this film came out at the “high point” for all things Trek — there were two fairly new shows on TV, First Contact was keeping the earlier show’s momentum going, and things were ticking along quite nicely. But all this eventually began to dry up, and indeed, the current series Enterprise, which takes place between the events of ST:FC and the original series, was recently cancelled (probably after the commentary tracks were recorded for this DVD).

I never watched more than the first two episodes of that show, but I heard lots of gripes from fans who objected to the continuity problems on that show, and what’s interesting is how the writers discuss the way continuity has become something of a trap for the writers of Trek. Moore alludes to DC Comics’ 1985 mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths (or, as he dimly recalls the title, “Worlds of Infinity”), and says Star Trek may have to do something similar — jettison all previous continuity, and start afresh. To this, Braga replies that, yes, Star Trek is “going to need a jolt.”

Whatever, dudes. Personally, I’d be quite happy if they just stopped making new stories altogether. It seems to me they’ve made enough good ones already, and their hit-to-miss ratio hasn’t exactly been promising of late. If the future isn’t what it used to be, there’s no need to go ditching the past!

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