Last week:The nexus of television and cinema.
Next week: “Have you noticed how your boobs have started to firm up?”
Instead, here two creatures who are not quite “creatures” in any biological sense.
Credit: Paramount Pictures
Data is an android, a soy-plastic fauxganism built for maximum strength and cosmic intelligence but zero EQ.
And there is another character.
She “she” represents the Borg, a race of cyborgs who resemble the copulatory midpoint of H.R.
Credit to Frakes, and to writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, for the delicate little touches in the holodeck scene. Forget the nightclub backdrop (although I could watch Patrick Stewart and Alfre Woodard dance all night). Appreciate how this “chapter” of the holo-novel features a baddie named Nicky the Nose, and appreciate how this throwaway character is rendered as a Dick Tracy grotesque. He lights his match on his metallic nostril. And consider how, in this single little moment, here is another character who is part human and part machine, a man with metallic parts, who is himself a creation of hologram technology.
Giger’sAlienxenomorph and James Cameron’sTerminatorendoskeleton.
They haven’t aged well.
We meet her first as a voice, then as body horror.
A head with shoulders descends from the ceiling of the Engine Room.
The skin is plague-corpse gray, her hair a tentacular updo.
A mechanical spinal column hangs underneath her.
She has taken Data captive, and we know that he has information that she wants.
But that seems to be beside the point.
“You are a contradiction,” she tells Data.
“A machine who wishes to be human.”
Data reminds her that he is programmed to evolve.
She has been conducting a bit of trench surgery on her android captive.
The fake plastic skin on Data’s wrist has been pulled off, replaced by recycled human epidermis.
(She has swapped Data’s archetype: Pinocchio is now Frankenstein.)
Much of the action ofFirst Contactis shot in steady medium shots.
Data exhales, dramatically, orgasmically.
“Was that good for you?”
I don’t like the name “Borg Queen.”
Alice Krige only appears in three scenes, plus or minus cutaways and off-screen voiceovers.
The writers neededsomethingthat wasn’t just another Borg drone; they needed a Borg to encapsulatetheBorg.
You could extricate Krige from the film, andFirst Contactwould be a roughly-identical movie about theEnterprisefighting the Borg.
Strangely,First Contactonly just barely commits to the Krige character’s most dramatic character point.
But the Picard seduction is a flashback, inserted via exposition mid-climax.
(“You were there all the time!")
(“Locutus could still be with you, just in the way you wanted.")
Krige was a South African journeyman performer across stage and television, 42 when she incarnated this entity.
She bestows uponFirst Contacta psychotic fascination a sense of horror that is terrifying and inhuman but above alldesirable.
(Speaking of the second horribleThorfilm:Dark Worldhired Alice Krige and barely used her.)
KRIGE:What a cold description for such a beautiful gift.
“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.”
KRIGE:Do you always talk this much?
But you’ve got the option to’t reduce Krige’s performance tojusther wit, orjusther sensuality.
But 20 years later, Krige remains this film’s most convincing prophecy.
Credit to Frakes, and to writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, for the delicate little touches in the holodeck scene. Forget the nightclub backdrop (although I could watch Patrick Stewart and Alfre Woodard dance all night). Appreciate how this “chapter” of the holo-novel features a baddie named Nicky the Nose, and appreciate how this throwaway character is rendered as a Dick Tracy grotesque. He lights his match on his metallic nostril. And consider how, in this single little moment, here is another character who is part human and part machine, a man with metallic parts, who is himself a creation of hologram technology.
Consider that this conceit machine and man becoming one has appeared previously in theStar Trekmovie franchise.
Seventeen years later,First Contactsours that notion completely: Machine and organic,gross gross gross gross.
But there’s a timidity toFirst Contact, a sensation of being closed off and sealed.
I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m not sure complaining about that deletion makes sense.
And anyhow, who’s to say he was thefirst?
Minus a couple brain tentacles, Krige basically looks like a particularly outre club kid.
Krige became an iconic part of theTrekfranchise.
Her spirit rebootedVoyager, with Seven of Nine as a heroic Diet Pepsi variation of the Borg Queen.
And so, for lack of a less dumb way of saying this:First Contactis pretty goddamn judge-y.
There is a lot to enjoy in this film.
(See how the circle-within-a-circle forms a pupil within an iris?)
is a sharp concept for a movie.
TheEnterpriseisn’t a battleship inFirst Contact: It’s the battleground, a multifaceted playing field.
The crew battles the Borg throughout the ship and outside of it.
Why doesn’tFirst Contactwork for me?
Why is this my least favorite of the nominally “great"Trekmovies?
I don’t know, and I certainly don’t hate it.
(“Don’t go criticizing my counseling techniques!”
is an all-time Hall of Fame Troi line.)
But it brings up a minor problem that maybe runs throughout all of theNext Generationmovies.
Whereas you could argue thatFirst Contactand 1996 represent the absolute apex of power forStar Trek.
“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives,” says Picard.
“We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity.”
But the truth is, operating from a position of strength doesn’t necessarily lead to exploration.
Popularity can be a crutch, and fandom can be a trap.
ButFirst Contactcan’t ever commit to the notion of itself as an ensemble.
The “hardcore action” aspect of the film actually hurts, I think.
It’s an act of narrative peacocking: “Look!
All these people havefinallystopped talking and picked up their big guns!”
The Starfleet characters have a nostalgic, heroic vision of Cochrane.
The truth of history is, delightfully, less shiny.
“You people got some pretty funny ideas about me,” he tells the characters.
“You all look at me as if I’m some kind of saint or visionary or something.”
but I find that, forStar Trek, there is stunning resonance.
Cochrane is theStar Trekuniverse’s in-world creator, the man who made everything afterwards possible.
But contrast Cochrane and Krige’s Borg persona, and the problem ofFirst Contactbecomes clear.
He’s dad rock; she’s punk rock.
(Hell, she’skrautrock.)
We aren’t the Borg, but maybe we are the Borg Queen.
All hail the new flesh.
