With a history that spans nearly half a century, 11 feature films and a combined total of over 700 hour long episodes of television—not all of the Star Trek stories are going to be stellar. In fact some of them are downright bad (“Spock’s Brain”?). Still, they are all loved in their own way by fans far and wide, including this writer—but that can’t make the worst of them better, nor can it make the plot holes, inconsistencies and changed premises easier to swallow.
One of the worst offenders in Star Trek’s history is the eighth feature film (second for the crew of the Next Generation) Star Trek: First Contact. A film that, while I enjoyed it, nearly ruined the series’ most enticing villain.
Here I’ll recap ten reasons First Contact ruined the Borg.
1. Alien 5?
Everything about the Borg in First Contact was a departure from what was established previously—we’ll get to other details of this later on—one of the most ridiculous of these however, was the shift of the Borg from a Collective intent on assimilating entire cultures in order to gain their technology in service to themselves; into something akin to Ridley Scott’s Xenomorph designed by H.R. Giger.
One of the most menacing aspects of the Borg has always been their cold, calculating methodology. Even in their debut story, Q points out that the Borg aren’t interested in Picard’s attempt at peaceful contact and they care nothing for humanity, only their technology and how it may best serve them. In this way the Borg were sort of presented as a type of intergalactic Zombie, undead drones interested only in the technology they can use to perfect their condition.
By the time First Contact comes around the Borg’s motivation of soulless assimilation is gone, replaced by an enemy that resembles the Borg but has elements of the Alien hive from James Cameron’s sequel to 1979’s Alien. In fact whenever we are meant to see something from the view of the Borg it is almost like we’ve been taken out of a Star Trek film and landed on LV-426 with Ripley and a troop of Space Marines on a bug hunt. With this in mind, it’s not really a surprise to learn that among the first choices to direct the film were both Ridley Scott and James Cameron. The film was given to Jonathan Frakes when the two senior directors proved unavailable.
8 Actresses Who Tricked You Into Thinking You Saw Them Nude
11 Irresistible Movie Moments That Wore Out Your Pause Button
100 Things Wrong With The Dark Knight Rises [Video]
10 Scenes You Won't Believe You Missed in 2012
10 Most Infuriating Movie Cliffhangers
10 Major Plot Holes You Probably Missed
10 Happy Movie Endings That Probably Had Horrific Consequences
12 Ruthless Movie Villains Who Were Defeated By Complete Fools
Want to write about the stuff you're passionate about and have your work read by an audience of over 10 million a month? Click here to become a contributor.
13 Comments
Had to laugh at your comment about the Defiant – “she crashes and is rebuilt more times than Red Dwarf’s Starbug”. So so so true.
Agreed with all your points. I really enjoy it when I watch it but there are so many inconsistencies once you start scratching the surface. But the intent was to make an action packed Star Trek movie and to do that they took liberties with what had been established. It also suffered from the same thing Star Trek Generations suffered from and that’s bad
I recently attended a Star Trek marathon at a cinema where they played every movie back to back and the drop in quality is so obvious after Star Trek 6 when you watch all the movies in a row. But it’s still a fun film to watch.
I do disagree however that Total Recall is a bad film! There is nothing wrong with that film. It’s superb.
*Star Trek Generations suffered from bad acting.
*sorry, bad writing, not bad acting! My iPad is making me sound retarded.
Though I agree with most everything Adam points out in this article there is something to be considered. The Borg cannot have been ruined by Star Trek 8. The reason I say this is that these are not the same Borg. I don’t mean by location or group I mean that this is an entirely different timeline and therefore an alternate reality. I don’t mention this to be cute its just a strongly held belief (with regard to a fictional television show / movie franchise that is.
Here’s my point. In regard to traveling backward in time the very act of time travel creates an alternate time line splitting off from the original to create two distinct variants. A nice example is found in the TOS episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday” in which the Enterprise is accidentally hurtled back to 1966. The events of that shift in time makes it possible for “Space Seed” to include a Khan that ruled a large part of the Earth in 1996 but we have no recollection of it in reality. (I’m obviously still playing in the fictional sandbox here.)We continue on in the original timeline but the alternate which gave birth to Khan suffered through the Eugenics wars and resulted in the events of the episodes we are familiar with.
In my mind the same is true with Star Trek 8 in regard to the Borg. On numerous occasions the crew of the Enterprise-D traveled back in time creating new alternate realities with every trip. In one such instance the Borg were affected and altered fundamentally giving rise to the Borg Queen we see in First Contact. I realize I’ve left some rather large holes in my reasoning however I’m confident I could explain further if I had the time.
This is a very long way of saying that though First Contact plays fast and loose with the aspects of established canon I tend to think of it as just another branch on timeline tree that Star Trek has created over the course of its existence which means I can enjoy the film for what it is, just a bit of fun.
tom, your alternate timeline theory is an interesting idea that certainly explains alot!
I agree, Amarpal, about Generations. It did suffer from bad writing. I have always believed that as a story, “All Good Things” is actually superior, it is feature length and when watched on DVD sans commercials it really plays out like I always felt a Next Generation feature film should. The only other film that comes close to this is Insurrection, though that film was so mired in the Hollywood sickness (which is to say that they took a perfectly good premise and tried to “beef it up” to make it attractive to a large audience) that it isn’t really good either. Maybe one day we’ll get a Next Generation film we really deserve and is worthy of what they did in seven years of television.
You can blame it all on brannon braga for his bad writing.
Interesting article. Very good. I disagree with almost all of it, but I really like it. First off, LOL at the Defiant bit. I’ve always thought it was so bad at the very thing it was designed for (And I suspect Sisko and crew know this. Why else did ALL the other senior DS9 staff find excuses not to turn up?) BUT does it ruin the borg that they can easily defeat the anti-borg ship or does it make them more awesomely powerful? Similarly the fact that the borg can beam on board Enterprise undetected, proves not that the new Enterprise’s sensors don’t work but that the borg are awesome.
Picards A-habness I think is justified by the fact that the borg are after Earth this time, that’s gotta hurt. Plus they’re on his ship, killing his crew (which he is as well, hypocrite!) And I’m willing to believe Picard still has some implants in his head, since Seven of Nine still has tonnes of them, and she was rescued years later.
Still disagree but love the article. One thing we can all agree on, Voyager ruined the borg. “Oh, let’s adopt some Borg children and then get rid of them coz we have no plot lines for them.”
This is exactly why I refuse to be a hardcore fan of anything “Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien or whatever.” —- ‘Over reacting, exagerated and obsecive’ quite don’t say it. Just let it go.
Well Considering the Defiant fought the borg cube all the way to Earth as well as the fact the enterprise was a fair few hours away at maximum warp (Data mentions this in dialogue in the film) to get to the battle. All this proves to me that the defiant was indeed one tough little ship to last that long lets afce it at the front of the battle as that was what she was DESIGNED for. Then the enterpirse waltzed in and stole the show but your criticism of the Defiant is slightly off the mark even though i do agree with alot of what your saying about the borg themselves! :)
Thank you. I’ve always been the outcast since I’ve always felt that, until the astonishing wretchedness of Star Trek: Nemesis, First Contact was the dullest and worst-written film in the entire Star Trek film series.
You should feel like an outcast, while I respect that it is your opinionm How anyone can feel that Generations or Insurrection is better than Firt Contact is unfathomable to me or anyone else I know that follows this franchise.