5. Alice Krige As The Borg Queen (Star Trek: First Contact)
After the limp Star Trek: Generations, the TNG crew came back in the action packed and much more coherent second outing, Star Trek: First Contact. The film also saw the return of the Borg, the cyborg enemy that was a fan favorite since they appeared in the awesome two-part Next Generation episode, Best Of Both Worlds. The Borg were originally an unsympathetic, dominating race of cyborgs. They didnt conquer, they assimilated. If you had technology they could use, they took it and then assimilated you. Their uncompromising attitude is what made them terrifying, not only were they aggressive and powerful, they were also impossible to negotiate with (until Star Trek: Voyager anyway) In First Contact, the Borg were given a Queen to oversee their plan to take over the Earth. She was seductive, sexy, intelligent and an unfortunate necessity for the Borg to make the transition to the big screen. Alice Krige played her like a creepy cougar as she seduced Data by giving hims skin grafts and bringing him closer to his dream of being fully human. But even though Krige did a decent enough job playing the Queen, she didn't come across like she was Borg. It didn't appear that she was working for what was best for the Borg, instead she was more interested in having sex with Data. It did mark the beginning of the dilution of the Borg, which concluded with them becoming just another enemy in Star Trek:Voyager. What people liked about the Borg was that they were a species that didnt work for the individual; instead each drones job was to work for the benefit of the collective. The Borg Queen got rid of that and instead they worked at her behest. Being a feature film, Im assuming the studio thought that keeping the Borg species as they were on the TV show, it might be too confusing for the casual movie goer if there wasn't a single Borg to identify as the villain. They needed to have a main villain to hate and that was the Queen. She looked impressive, her entrance where her head attached to her body was amazing, Krige put in an OK performance and suffered (she could only wear her Borg contacts for 4 minutes due to the pain) but the film would have played fine without her.