Star Trek: 11 Things You Didn't Know About The Borg Queen
10. Maybe She's Borg With It. Maybe It's Make-Believe
For their appearance in Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg got a significant wardrobe and make-up upgrade, overseen by the incomparable Michael Westmore. Individually moulded body suits and Borg implants were created, and airbrushing was used for the creepier, more intricately technological look on the skin of each drone. In the end, the whole process of 'Borgification' took around five hours for each actor. Electronic make-up artist Michael Westmore Jr, son of above, also "got creative" and made the light on each of the new Borg eyepieces blink the names of members of the cast and crew in Morse code.
The transformation was the most extensive for Alice Krige; it took on average six and a half hours for the actress to get into the Borg Queen make-up and suit. The first body suit that was used caused her blisters, and the silver contact lenses that formed part of the look were so painful Krige could only wear them for a maximum of four minutes at a time.
The floating head sequence in First Contact was done mostly through practical effects. To achieve the scene, Krige was separated into two, a prosthetic Borg neck with animatronic spine fixed to her neck at an angle, and the rest of her body wrapped in blue and placed on a 'slant board' attached to a crane rig to lower the actress down to the set.