Star
Trek: First Contact is a 1996 American science fiction film released
by Paramount Pictures. It is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek
science fiction franchise and the first film to feature no cast
members from the original Star Trek television series of the 1960s.
The primary cast for First Contact is from the Star Trek: The Next
Generation television series, to which the film's producers added
Alice Krige, Neal McDonough, James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard. In the
film's plot, the crew of the USS Enterprise-E travel from the 24th to
21st century to save their future after the cybernetic Borg conquered
Earth by changing the timeline.
After the release of the
seventh film, Star Trek Generations, in 1994, Paramount tasked
writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore with developing a sequel.
Braga and Moore wanted to feature the Borg in the plot, while
producer Rick Berman wanted a story involving time travel. The
writers combined the two ideas; they initially set the film during
the European Renaissance, but changed the time period the Borg
corrupted to the mid-21st century after fearing the Renaissance idea
would be too kitschy. After two better known directors turned down
the job, cast member Jonathan Frakes was chosen to direct to make
sure the task fell to someone who understood Star Trek. It was
Frakes' first theatrical film.
The script required the
creation of new starship designs, including a new USS Enterprise.
Production designer Herman Zimmerman and illustrator John Eaves
collaborated to make a sleeker ship than its predecessor. Principal
photography began with weeks of location shooting in Arizona and
California before production moved to new sets for the ship-based
scenes. The Borg were redesigned to appear as though they were
converted into machine beings from the inside-out; the new makeup
sessions took four times as long as on the television series. Effects
company Industrial Light & Magic rushed to complete the film's
special effects in less than five months. Traditional optical effects
techniques were supplemented with computer-generated imagery. Jerry
Goldsmith and his son Joel collaborated to produce the film's score.
First Contact was the
highest-grossing film on its opening weekend, making $30.7 million
and the first film in the Star Trek film series in which none of the
Star Trek: The Original Series main characters appear.
Patrick Stewart as
Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of the USS Enterprise-E
Picard is haunted by his
time as a member of the Borg Collective. Stewart was one of the few
cast members who had an important role in developing the script,
offering suggestions and comments. Picard's character was changed
from the "angst-ridden character [viewers have] seen
before", to an action hero type. Stewart noted that Picard was
more physically active in the film compared with his usual depiction.
William Riker, played by
director Jonathan Frakes
Frakes said he did not have
much difficulty directing and acting at the same time, having done so
on the television series.
Brent Spiner as
the android Data
Rumors before the film's
release suggested that since Data's skin had been largely removed at
the end of the story, it would allow another actor to assume the role.
LeVar Burton as
Geordi La Forge
The ship's chief engineer.
La Forge is a blind character, and for the television series and
previous film had worn a special visor to see. Burton lobbied for
many years to have his character's visor replaced so that people
could see his eyes, since the "air filter" he wore
prevented the audience from seeing his eyes and limited his acting
ability. Moore finally agreed, giving the character ocular implants
that were never explained in the film, beyond showing they were artificial.
Gates McFadden as
Dr. Beverly Crusher
The ship's doctor. McFadden
considered Star Trek women finally on par with the men: "We've
come a long way since Majel Barrett was stuck in the sick bay as
Nurse Chapel in the [1960s] and made to dye her hair blond."
Crusher was instrumental in helping Picard set the auto-destruct
sequence, to prevent the Borg from completely assimilating the
Enterprise and Earth.
Marina Sirtis as
Ship's
counselor Deanna Troi
The actress missed working
on the television show, and was acutely aware that expectations and
stakes for First Contact were high; "we were scared that people
thought we couldn't cut it without the original cast", she said.
Michael Dorn as Worf
Former Enterprise chief of
security, and commander of the USS Defiant. The Defiant is badly
damaged in the battle with the Borg but is left salvageable. An early
screenplay draft called for the Defiant to be destroyed, but Deep
Space Nine executive producer Ira Steven Behr objected to the
destruction of his show's ship and so the idea was dropped.
New characters for the film included:
Neal McDonough as
Sean Hawk
The Enterprise helmsman who
aids in the defense of the ship until he is assimilated and killed.
McDonough was cavalier about his role as an expendable
"redshirt", saying that since one of the characters in the
deflector dish battle had to die, "that would be me".
Alfre Woodard as
Lily Sloane, Cochrane's assistant
When Frakes first moved to
Los Angeles, Woodard was one of the very first people he met. During
a conversation at a barbecue Woodard said she would become Frakes'
godmother, as he did not have one. Through this relationship, Frakes
was able to cast Woodard in the film; he considered it a coup to land
an Academy Award-nominated actress. Woodard considered Lily to be the
character most like herself out of all the roles she has played.
James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane
The pilot and creator of
Earth's first warp capable vessel. The character of Zefram Cochrane
had first appeared in the Original Series episode
"Metamorphosis", played by Glenn Corbett. Cromwell's
Cochrane is much older and has no real resemblance to Corbett's,
which did not bother the writers. They wanted to portray Cochrane as
a character going through a major transition; he starts out as a
cynical, selfish drunk who is changed by the characters he meets over
the course of the film. Although the character was written with
Cromwell in mind, Tom Hanks, a big fan of Star Trek, was approached
for the role by Paramount first, but he had already committed to the
film That Thing You Do! and had to reject the part. Frakes commented
that it would have been a mistake to cast Hanks as Cochrane due to
his being so well known. Cromwell had a long previous association
with Star Trek, having played characters in The Next Generation
episodes "The Hunted" and "Birthright", as well
as a role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. "Cromwell actually came
in and read for the part", Frakes said. "He nailed it."
Cromwell described his method of portraying Cochrane as always
playing himself. Part of the actor's interest in the film was his
involvement in Steven M. Greer's Center for the Study of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which offers training for first
contact scenarios.
Alice Krige as
The Borg Queen
Casting for the part took
time as the actress needed to be sexy, dangerous and mysterious.
Frakes cast Krige after finding that she had all of the mentioned
qualities, and being impressed by her performance in Ghost Story; the
director considers her the sexiest Star Trek villain of all time.
Krige suffered a large amount of discomfort filming her role; her
costume was too tight, causing blisters, and the painful silver
contact lenses she wore could only be kept in for four minutes at a
time. Krige would later reprise her role as the Borg Queen in the
Star Trek: Voyager series finale Endgame.
The film features minor
roles for many of The Next Generation's recurring characters; Dwight
Schultz reprised his role of Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, while Patti
Yasutake briefly appeared as Nurse Alyssa Ogawa. Whoopi Goldberg was
not asked to return as Guinan, a wise bartender whose homeworld was
destroyed by the Borg. Goldberg only learned about the decision
through the newspapers. "What can I say? I wanted to do it
because I didn't think you could do anything about the Borg without
[my character]", she said, "but apparently you can, so they
don't need me." Michael Horton appears as a bloodied and stoic
Starfleet defender; his character would be given the name of Daniels
in the next Star Trek film.
The third draft of the
script added cameos by two actors from the sister television series
Star Trek: Voyager. Robert Picardo appears as the Enterprise's
Emergency Medical Hologram; Picardo played the holographic Doctor in
Voyager. His line "I'm a doctor, not a door stop", is an
allusion to the Star Trek original series character Dr. Leonard
McCoy. Picardo's fellow Voyager actor Ethan Phillips, who played
Neelix, cameos as a nightclub Maitre d' in the holodeck scene.
Phillips recalled that the producers wanted the fans to be left
guessing whether he was the person who played Neelix or not, as he
did not appear in the credits; "It was just kind of a goofy
thing to do." During production there were incorrect rumors that
Avery Brooks would reprise his role as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
captain Benjamin Sisko. As with many Star Trek productions, new,
disposable redshirt characters are killed off over the course of the plot.
Untitled
AV
CLUB FEATURETTE DEPARTMENT
Untitled
The Borg have traveled back in time to Earth 2063 in an attempt to alter the future. The Enterprise follows to try to undo the damage to the timeline and ensure that the inventor of warp drive (played by James Cromwell) will successfully carry out his pioneering warp-drive flight and precipitate Earth's "first contact" with an alien race. Meanwhile the seductive Borg queen (Alice Krige) holds Lt. Data (Brent Spiner) hostage in an effort to sabotage their plan. Add
Star Trek First Contact to your DVD collection.
In February 1995, two
months after the release of Star Trek Generations, Paramount decided
to produce another Star Trek feature for a winter holiday 1996
release. Paramount wanted writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore,
who had written the Generations script and a number of Next
Generation episodes, to pen the screenplay. Producer Rick Berman told
Braga and Moore that he wanted them to think about doing a story
involving time travel. Braga and Moore, meanwhile, wanted to use the
Borg. "Right on the spot, we said maybe we can do both, the Borg
and time travel," Moore recalled. The Borg had not been seen in
full force since the fourth season episode of The Next Generation,
"The Best of Both Worlds", and had never been heavily
featured in the series due to budget constraints and the fear that
they would lose their scare factor. "The Borg were really liked
by the fans, and we liked them," Moore said. "They were
fearsome. They were unstoppable. Perfect foils for a feature story."
In deciding to combine the
two story ideas, the writers decided that the time travel element
could play out as the Borg attempt to prevent humanity from ever
reaching space and becoming a threat. "Our goals at that point
were to create a story that was wonderful and a script that was
producible within the budget confines of a Star Trek film", said
Berman. One major question was identifying the time period to which
the Borg would travel. Berman's suggestion was the Renaissance; the
Borg would attempt to prevent the dawn of modern European
civilization. The first story draft, titled Star Trek: Renaissance,
had the crew of the Enterprise track the Borg to their hive in a
castle dungeon. The film would have featured sword fights alongside
phasers in 15th-century Europe, while Data became Leonardo da Vinci's
apprentice. Moore was afraid that it risked becoming campy and
over-the-top, while Stewart refused to wear tights. Braga, meanwhile,
wanted to see the "birth of Star Trek", when the Vulcans
and humans first met; "that, to me, is what made the time travel
story fresh", he said.
With the idea of Star
Trek's genesis in mind, the central story became Cochrane's warp
drive test and humanity's first contact. Drawing on clues from
previous Star Trek episodes, Cochrane was placed in mid-21st century
Montana, where humans recover from a devastating world war. In the
first script with this setting, the Borg attack Cochrane's lab,
leaving the scientist comatose; Picard assumes Cochrane's place to
continue the warp test and restore history. In this draft Picard has
a love interest in the local photographer Ruby, while Riker leads the
fight against the Borg on the Enterprise. Another draft included John
de Lancie's omnipotent character Q. Looking at the early scripts, the
trio knew that serious work was needed. "It just didn't make
sense that Picard, the one guy who has a history with the Borg, never
meets them," Braga recalled. Riker and Picard's roles were
swapped, and the planetside story was shortened and told differently.
Braga and Moore focused the new arc on Cochrane himself, making the
ideal future of Star Trek come from a flawed man. The idea of Borg
fighting among period costumes coalesced into a "Dixon Hill"
holographic novel sequence on the holodeck. The second draft, titled
Star Trek: Resurrection, was judged complete enough that the
production team used it to plan expenses. The film was given a budget
of $45 million, "considerably more" than Generations' $35
million price tag; this allowed the production to plan a larger
amount of action and special effects.
Braga and Moore intended
the film to be easily accessible to any moviegoer and work as a
stand-alone story, yet still satisfy the devoted Star Trek fans.
Since much of Picard's role made a direct reference to his time as a
Borg in The Next Generation episodes "The Best of Both
Worlds", the opening dream sequence was added to explain what
happened to him in the show. The pair discarded an opening which
would have established what the main characters had been doing since
the last film in favor of quickly setting the story. While the
writers tried to preserve the idea of the Borg as a mindless
collective in the original draft, Paramount head Jonathan Dolgen felt
that the script was not dramatic enough. He suggested adding an
individual Borg villain with whom the characters could interact,
which led to the creation of the Borg Queen.
Cast
member Frakes (left) was chosen to direct. Frakes had not been the
first choice for director; Ridley Scott and John McTiernan reportedly
turned down the project. Stewart met a potential candidate and
concluded that "they didn't know Star Trek". It was decided
to stay with someone who understood the "gestalt of Star
Trek", and Frakes was given the job. Frakes reported to work
every day at 6:30 am. A major concern during the production was
security, the script to Generations had been leaked online, and
stronger measures were taken to prevent a similar occurrence. Some
script pages were distributed on red paper to foil attempted
photocopies or faxes; "We had real trouble reading them,"
Frakes noted.
Frakes had directed
multiple episodes of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and
Voyager, but First Contact was his first feature film. Whereas Frakes
had seven days of preparation followed by seven days of shooting for
a given television episode, the director was given a ten-week
preparation period before twelve weeks of filming, and had to get
used to shooting for a 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio instead of the
television standard 1.33:1. In preparation, he watched Jaws, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the works of
James Cameron and Ridley Scott.
Throughout multiple script
revisions a number of titles were considered, including Star Trek:
Borg, Star Trek: Destinies, Star Trek: Future Generations and Star
Trek: Generations II. The planned title of Resurrection was scrapped
when Fox announced the title of the fourth Alien film; the movie was
rebranded First Contact on May 3rd, 1996.
First Contact was the first
Star Trek film to make significant use of computer-generated starship
models, though physical miniatures were still used for the most
important vessels. With the Enterprise-D destroyed during the events
of Generations, the task for creating a new starship fell to veteran
Star Trek production designer Herman Zimmerman. The script's only
guide on the appearance of the vessel was the line "the new
Enterprise sleekly comes out of the nebula". Working with
illustrator John Eaves, the designers conceived the Enterprise-E as
"leaner, sleeker, and mean enough to answer any Borg threat you
can imagine". Braga and Moore intended it to be more muscular
and militaryesque. Eaves looked at the structure of previous
Enterprise iterations, and designed a more streamlined, capable war
vessel than the Enterprise-D, reducing the neck area of the ship and
lengthening the nacelles. Eaves produced 30 to 40 sketches before he
found a final design he liked and began making minor changes. Working
from blueprints created by Paramount's Rick Sternbach, the model shop
at effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) fabricated a
10.5-foot miniature over a five-month period. Hull patterns were
carved out of wood, then cast and assembled over an aluminum
armature. The model's panels were painted in an alternating matte and
gloss scheme to add texture. The crew had multiple difficulties in
prepping the miniature for filming; while the model shop originally
wanted to save time by casting windows using a clear fiberglass, the
material came out tacky. ILM instead cut the windows using a laser.
Slides of the sets were added behind the window frames to make the
interior seem more dimensional when the camera tracked past the ship.
In previous films,
Starfleet's range of capital ships had been predominantly represented
by the Constitution class Enterprise and just five other ship
classes: the Miranda class from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(represented by the USS Reliant), the Excelsior and the Oberth class,
Grissom from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and the Galaxy and
Nebula classes from The Next Generation. ILM supervisor John Knoll
insisted that First Contact's space battle prove the breadth of
Starfleet's ship configurations. "Starfleet would probably throw
everything it could at the Borg, including ships we've never seen
before", he reasoned. (Even the Millenium Falcon pictured above
in the circle). "And since we figured a lot of the background
action in the space battle would need to be done with
computer-generated ships that needed to be built from scratch anyway,
I realized there was no reason not to do some new designs." Alex
Jaeger was appointed visual effects art director to the film and
assigned the task of creating four new starships. Paramount wanted
ships that would look different from a distance, so the director
devised multiple hull profiles. Knoll and Jaeger had decided that the
ships had to obey certain Star Trek ship precedents, with a
saucer-like primary hull and elongated warp nacelles in pairs. The
Akira class featured the traditional saucer section and nacelles
combined with a catamaran-style double hull; the Norway class was
based on the USS Voyager; the Saber class was a smaller ship with
nacelles trailing off the tips of its saucer section; and the
Steamrunner class featured twin nacelles trailing off the saucer and
connected by an engineering section in the rear. Each design was
modeled as a three-dimensional digital wire-frame model for use in
the film.
The
film also required a number of smaller non-Starfleet designs. The
warp ship Phoenix was conceived as fitting inside an old nuclear
missile, meaning that the ship's nacelles had to fold into a space of
less than 10 feet. Eaves made sure to emphasize the mechanical aspect
of the ship, to suggest it was a highly experimental and untested
technology. The Phoenix's cockpit labels came from McDonnell-Douglas
space shuttle manuals.
Eaves considered the Vulcan
ship a "fun" vessel to design. Only two major Vulcan ships
had been previously seen in Star Trek, including a courier vessel
from The Motion Picture. Since the two-engine ship format had been
seen many times, the artists decided to step away from the
traditional ship layout, creating a more artistic than functional
design. The ship incorporated elements of a starfish and a crab.
Because of budget constraints, the full ship was realized as a
computer generated design and only a boomerang shaped landing foot
was fabricated for the actors to interact with.
The Enterprise interior
sets were mostly new designs. The bridge (below) was designed to be
comfortable-looking, with warm colors. Among the new additions was a
larger holographic viewscreen that would operate only when activated,
leaving a plain wall when disabled. New flatscreen computer monitors
were used for displays, using less space and giving the bridge a
cleaner look. The new monitors also allowed for video playback that
could simulate interaction with the actors. The designers created a
larger and less spartan ready room, retaining elements from the
television series; Zimmerman added a set of golden three-dimensional
Enterprise models to a glass case in the corner. The observation
lounge was similar to the design in the Enterprise-D; its windows
were reused from the television show. Engineering was simulated with
a large, three-story set, corridors, a lobby, and the largest warp
core in the franchise to date. For its Borg-corrupted state, the
engineering section was outfitted with Borg drone alcoves, conduits
and Data's "assimilation table" where he is interrogated by
the Queen. Some existing sets were used to save money; sickbay was a
redress of the same location from Voyager, while the USS Defiant
scenes used Deep Space Nine's standing set. Some set designs took
inspiration from the Alien film series, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The spacewalk scene on the
Enterprise exterior was one of the most challenging sets to envision
and construct for the film. The production had to design a space suit
that looked practical rather than exaggerated. Fans were built into
the helmets so that the actors would not get overheated, and neon
lights built into the front so that the occupant's faces could be
seen. When the actors first put the helmets on, the fully enclosed
design made it hard to breathe; after a minute of wearing the suit
Stewart became ill, and shooting was discontinued. The set for the
ship's outer hull and deflector dish were built on gimbals at
Paramount's largest sound stage, surrounded by bluescreen and rigged
with wires for the zero gravity sequences. The stage was not large
enough to accommodate a full-sized replica of the Enterprise dish, so
Zimmerman had to scale down the plans by 15 percent.
The
Starfleet uniforms were redesigned for the film by longtime Star
Trek costumer Bob Blackman. Since Blackman was also handling the
costumes for the television series, non-Starfleet design clothes were
delegated to Deborah Everton, a newcomer to Star Trek who was
responsible for more than 800 costumes during production. Everton was
tasked with updating the Borg's costumes to something new, but
reminiscent of the television series. The bulky suits were made
sleeker and outfitted with fiber optic lights. The time travel aspect
of the story also required period costumes for the mid 21st century
and the 1940s "Dixon Hill" nightclub holodeck recreation.
Everton enjoyed designing Woodard's costumes because the character
went through many changes during the course of the film, switching
from a utilitarian vest and pants in many shots to a glamorous dress
during the holodeck scene.
Everton and makeup
designers Michael Westmore, Scott Wheeler, and Jake Garber wanted to
upgrade the pasty white look the Borg had retained since The Next
Generation's second season, born out of a need for budget-conscious
television design. "I wanted it to look like they were
[assimilated or "Borgified"] from the inside out rather
than the outside in," Everton said. Each Borg had a slightly
different design, and Westmore designed a new one each day to make it
appear that there was an army of Borg; in reality, between eight to
twelve actors filled all the roles as the costumes and makeup were so
expensive to produce. Background Borg were simulated by half-finished
mannequins. Westmore reasoned that since the Borg had traveled the
galaxy, they would have assimilated other races besides humans. In
the television series, much of the Borg's faces had been covered by
helmets, but for First Contact the makeup artist removed the head
coverings and designed assimilated versions of familiar Star Trek
aliens such as Klingons, Bolians, Romulans, Bajorans, and
Cardassians. Each drone received an electronic eyepiece. The blinking
lights in each eye were programmed by Westmore's son to repeat a
production member's name in Morse code.
The
makeup time for the Borg expanded from the single hour needed for
television to five hours, in addition to the 30 minutes necessary to
get into costume and 90 minutes to remove the makeup at the end of
the day. While Westmore estimated a fully staffed production would
have around 50 makeup artists, First Contact had to make do with less
than ten people involved in preparation, and at most 20 artists a
day. Despite the long hours, Westmore's teams began to be more
creative with the prosthetics as they decreased their preparation
times. "They were using two tubes, and then they were using
three tubes, and then they were sticking tubes in the ears and up the
nose," Westmore explained. "And we were using a very gooey
caramel coloring, maybe using a little bit of it, but by the time we
got to the end of the movie we had the stuff dripping down the side
of [the Borg's] faces, it looked like they were leaking oil! So, at
the very end [of the film], they're more ferocious."
The Borg Queen was a
challenge because she had to be unique among Borg but still retain
human qualities; Westmore was conscious of avoiding comparisons to
films like Alien. The final appearance involved pale gray skin and an
elongated, oval head, with coils of wire rather than hair. Krige
recalled the first day she had her makeup applied: "I saw
everyone cringing. I thought, great; they made this, and they've
scared themselves!" Frakes noted that the Queen ended up being
alluring in a disturbing way, despite her evil behavior and
appearance. Zimmerman, Everton and Westmore combined their efforts to
design and create the borgified sections of the Enterprise to build
tension and to make the audience feel that "[they are being fed]
the Borg".
"I became aware,
one day on the set, that whenever a Borg moved up to the coffee
table, whoever was there would sort of slowly retreat. So the Borg
were not only in pain, but they were kind of ostracised. Everyone
just uncomfortable in their presence. Which was terribly interesting
for me, but I did feel heartbroken for my minions.
- Alice Krige, Borg Queen
on people's reaction to the Borg
Principal photography took
a more leisurely pace than on The Next Generation due to a less
hectic schedule; only four pages of script had to be filmed each day,
as opposed to eight on the television series. First Contact saw the
introduction of cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti to the Star Trek
franchise; Frakes hired the director of photography out of admiration
for some of Leonetti's previous work on films such as Poltergeist and
Strange Days. Leonetti was unfamiliar with the Star Trek mythos when
Frakes approached him; to prepare for the assignment, he studied the
previous four films in the franchise, each with a different
cinematographer, The Voyage Home (Donald Peterman), The Final
Frontier (Andrew Laszlo), The Undiscovered Country (Hiro Narita), and
Generations (John Alonzo). The cameraman also spent several days at
the sets of Voyager and Deep Space Nine to observe filming.
Leonetti devised multiple
lighting methods for the Enterprise interiors for ship standard
operations, "Red Alert" status, and emergency power. He
reasoned that since the ship was being taken over by a foreign
entity, it required more dramatic lighting and framing. While much of
the footage was shot at 5070 mm focal lengths using anamorphic
lenses, 14 mm spherical lenses were used for Borg's-eye-view shots.
Handheld cameras were used for battle sequences so that viewers were
brought into the action and the camera could follow the movements of
the actors. The Borg scenes were received positively by test
screening audiences, so once the rest of the film had been completed
a Borg assimilation scene of the Enterprise crew was added in using
some of the money left in the budget to add action.
Since so many new sets had
to be created, the production commenced filming with location
photography. Four days were spent in the Titan Missile Museum, south
of Tucson, Arizona, the disarmed nuclear missile was fitted with a
fiberglass capsule shell to stand in for the Phoenix's booster and
command module. The use of the old missile silo created a large set
the budget would have prohibited building from scratch, but the small
size created difficulties. Each camera move was planned in advance to
work around areas where the lighting would be added, and electricians
and grips donned rock-climbing harnesses to move down the shaft and
attach the lights. To give greater dimension to the rocket and lend
the missile a futuristic appearance, Leonetti chose to offset the
missile's metallic surface with complementary colors. Using
different-colored gels made the rocket appear longer than it actually
was; to complete the effect, shots from the Phoenix's nose downwards
and from the engines up were filmed with a 30 mm lens to lengthen the missile.
After
the completion of the Phoenix shots, the crew moved to two weeks of
nighttime shooting in the Angeles National Forest. Zimmerman created
a village of fourteen huts to stand in for Montana; the cast enjoyed
the scenes as a chance to escape their uniforms and wear
"normal" clothes. The last location shoot was at an art
deco restaurant in Los Angeles' Union Station, which stood in for the
Dixon Hill holonovel; Frakes wanted a sharp contrast with the dark,
mechanical Borg scenes. While the cinematographer wanted to shoot the
scene in black-and-white, Paramount executives deemed the test
footage "too experimental" and the idea was dropped. The
shoot used a ten-piece orchestra, 15 stuntmen, and 120 extras to fill
the seats. Among the nightclub patrons were Braga, Moore, and the
film's stunt coordinator, Ronnie Rondell.
After location shooting was
completed, shooting on the new engineering set began May 3rd. The set
lasted less than a day in its pristine condition before it was
"Borgified". Filming then proceeded to the bridge followed
by the action sequences and the battle for the Enterprise, a phase
the filmmakers dubbed "Borg Hell". Frakes directed the Borg
scenes similar to a horror film, creating as much suspense as
possible. To balance these elements he added more comedic elements to
the Earth scenes, intended to momentarily relieve the audience of
tension before building it up again.
For
the live-action spacewalk scenes, visual effects supervisor Moore
spent two weeks of bluescreen photography at the deflector set.
Frakes considered filming the scene to be the most tedious in the
film due to the amount of preparation it took to start each day's
shoot. Since the rest of the Enterprise-E, as well as the backdrop of
Earth, were to be added later in post-production, coordinating shots
became confusing. Moore used a laptop with digital reproductions of
the set to orient the crew and help Frakes understand what the
finished shot would look like. A one-armed actor portrayed the Borg
whose arm Worf slices off to accurately portray the effect intended,
and the actors' shoes were fitted with lead weights to remind the
actors they were to move slowly as if actually wearing gravity boots.
McDonough recalled that he joined Stewart and Dorn in asking whether
they could do the shots without the 10-to-15-pound weights, as
"they hired us because we are actors", but the production
insisted on using them.
The
last scene filmed was the film's very first, Picard's Borg
nightmare. One shot begins inside the iris of Picard's eyeball and
pulls back to reveal the captain aboard a massive Borg ship. The shot
continues to pull back and reveal the exterior of a Borg ship. The
scene was inspired by a New York City production of Sweeney Todd, the
Demon Barber of Fleet Street in which the stage surrounded the
audience, giving a sense of realism. The shot was filmed as three
separate elements merged with digital effects. Principal photography
finished on July 2nd, 1996, two days over schedule but still under budget.
The majority of First
Contact's effects were handled by Industrial Light and Magic under
the direction of John Knoll. Smaller effects sequences, such as
phaser fire, computer graphics, and transporter effects were
delegated to a team led by visual effects supervisor David Takemura.
Accustomed to directing episodes for the television series, Frakes
was frequently reminded by effects artist Terry Frazee to "think
big, blow everything up". Most of the effects sequences were
planned using low-resolution computer-generated animatics. These
rough animated storyboards established length, action and
composition, allowing the producers and director to ascertain how the
sequences would play out before they were shot.
First Contact was the last
film to feature a physical model of the Enterprise. For the ship's
dramatic introduction, the effects team combined motion control shots
of the Enterprise model with a computer generated background.
Sequence supervisor Dennis Turner, who had created Generations'
energy ribbon and specialized in creating natural phenomena, was
charged with creating the star cluster, modeled after the Eagle
Nebula. The nebular columns and solid areas were modeled with basic
wireframe geometry, with surface shaders applied to make the edges of
the nebula glow. A particle render ILM devised for the earlier
tornado film Twister was used to create a turbulent look within the
nebula. Once the shots of the Enterprise had been captured, Turner
inserted the ship into the computer-generated background and altered
its position until the images matched up.
The opening beauty pass of
the new Enterprise was the responsibility of visual effects
cinematographer Marty Rosenberg, who handled all the other
miniatures, explosions, and some live-action bluescreen elements.
Rosenberg had previously shot some of the Enterprise-D effects for
Generations, but had to adjust his techniques for the new model; the
cinematographer used a 50 mm lens instead of the 35 mm used for
Generations because the smaller lens made the new Enterprise's dish
appear stretched out. Knoll decided to shoot the model from above and
below as much as possible; side views made the ship appear too flat
and elongated. The effects supervisor enjoyed motion control passes
of ships over computer-generated versions, as it was much easier to
capture a high level of detail with physical models rather than
trying to recreate it by computer graphics.
For
the Borg battle, Knoll insisted on closeup shots that were very near
the alien vessel, necessitating a physical model. ILM layered their 30-inch
model with an additional five inches of etched brass over a glowing
neon lightbox for internal illumination. To make the ship appear even
larger than it was, Knoll made sure that an edge of the Borg vessel
was facing the camera like the prow of a ship (the portion of a
ship's bow above water) and that the Cube broke the edges of the
frame. To give the Cube greater depth and texture, Rosenberg shot the
vessel with harsher light. Rosenberg: "I created this really
odd, raking three-quarter backlight coming from the right or left
side, which I balanced out with nets and a couple of little lights. I
wanted it to look scary and mysterious, so it was lit like a point,
and we always had the camera dutched to it; we never just had it
coming straight at us." Small lights attached to the Cube's
surface helped to create visual interest and convey scale; the model
was deliberately shot with a slow, determined pacing to contrast with
the Federation ships engaged in battle with the Borg. The impact of
Federation weaponry on the Borg Cube was simulated using a 60-inch
model of the Cube. The model had specific areas which could be blown
up multiple times without damaging the miniature. For the final
explosion of the Cube, Rosenberg shot ten 30-inch Cube miniatures
with explosive-packed lightweight skins. The Cubes were suspended
from pipes sixty feet above the camera on the ground. Safety glass
was placed over the lens to prevent damage, while the camera was
covered with plywood to protect it from bits of plastic that rained
down after each explosion. The smaller Borg Sphere was a 12-inch
model that was shot separately from the Cube and digitally added in
postproduction. The time travel vortex the Sphere creates was
simulated with a rocket re-entry effect; bowshock forms in front of
the ship, then streams backwards at high speed. Interactive lighting
was played across the computer generated Enterprise model for when
the ship is caught in the time vortex.
The miniature Enterprise
was again used for the spacewalk sequence. Even on the large model,
it was hard to make the miniature appear realistic in extreme
close-up shots. To make the pullback shot work, the camera had to be
within one-eighth of an inch from the model. Painter Kim Smith spent
several days on a tiny area of the model to add enough surface detail
for the close-up, but even then the focus was barely adequate. To
compensate the crew used a wider-angle lens and shot at the highest
f-stop they could. The live-action scenes of the spacewalking crew
were then digitally added. Wide shots used footage of photo doubles
walking across a large bluescreen draped across ILM's parking lot at night.
ILM
was tasked with imagining what the immediate assimilation of an
Enterprise crewmember would look like. Jaeger came up with a set of
cables that sprang from the Borg's knuckles and buried themselves in
the crewmember's neck. Wormlike tubes would course through the
victim's body and mechanical devices break the skin. The entire
transformation was created using computer-generated imagery. The
wormlike geometry was animated over the actor's face, then blended in
with the addition of a skin texture over the animation. The gradual
change in skin tone was simulated with shaders.
Frakes considered the
entrance of the Borg Queen (right), where her head, shoulders, and
steel spine are lowered by cables and attached to her body, as the
"signature visual effect in the film". The scene was
difficult to execute, taking ILM five months to finish. Jaeger
devised a rig that would lower the actress on the set, and applied a
prosthetic spine over a blue suit so that ILM could remove Krige's
lower body. This strategy enabled the filmmakers to incorporate as
many live-action elements without resorting to further digital
effects. To make the prosthetics appear at the proper angle when her
lower body was removed, Krige extended her neck forward so it
appeared in line with the spine. Knoll did not want it to seem that
the Queen was on a hard, mechanical rig; "we wanted her to have
the appropriate 'float'," he explained. Using separate motion
control passes on the set, Knoll shot the lower of the upper torso
and the secondary sequence with Krige's entire body. A digital
version of the Borg body suit was used for the lowering sequence, at
which point the image was morphed back to the real shot of Krige's
body. The animated claws of the suit were created digitally as well
using a very detailed model. As reference to the animators, the shot
required Krige to realistically portray "the strange pain or
satisfaction of being reconnected to her body".
Film
composer Jerry Goldsmith scored First Contact, his third Star Trek
feature. Goldsmith wrote a sweeping main title which begins with
Alexander Courage's classic Star Trek fanfare. Instead of composing a
menacing theme to underscore the Borg, Goldsmith wrote a pastoral
theme linked to humanity's hopeful first contact. The theme uses a four-note
motif used in Goldsmith's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier score,
which is used in First Contact as a friendship theme and general
thematic link. A menacing march with touches of synthesizers were
used to represent the Borg. In addition to composing new music,
Goldsmith utilized music from his previous Star Trek scores,
including his theme from The Motion Picture. The Klingon theme from
the same film is used to represent Worf.
Because of delays with
Paramount's The Ghost and the Darkness, the already short four week
production schedule was cut to just three weeks. While Berman was
concerned about the move, Goldsmith hired his son, Joel, to assist.
The young composer provided additional music for the film, writing
three cues based on his father's motifs and a total of 22 minutes of
music. Joel used variations of his father's Borg music and the
Klingon theme as Worf fights hand-to-hand (Joel said that he and his
father decided to use the theme for Worf separately). While Joel
composed many of the film's action cues, his father contributed to
the spacewalk and Phoenix flight sequences.
In a break with Star Trek
film tradition, the soundtrack incorporated two licensed songs: Roy
Orbison's "Ooby Dooby" and Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet
Ride". GNP Crescendo president Neil Norman explained that the
decision to include the tracks was controversial, but said that
"Frakes did the most amazing job of integrating those songs into
the story that we had to use them".
Frakes believes the main
themes of First Contact, and Star Trek as a whole, are loyalty,
friendship, honesty and mutual respect. This is evident in the film
when Picard chooses to rescue Data rather than evacuate the ship with
the rest of the crew. The film makes a direct comparison between
Picard's hatred of the Borg and refusal to destroy the Enterprise and
that of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick. The moment
marks a turning point in the film as Picard changes his mind,
symbolized by his putting down his gun. A similar Moby Dick reference
was made in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and although Braga and
Moore did not want to repeat it, they decided it worked so well they
could not leave it out.
In
First Contact, the individually inscrutable and faceless Borg
fulfill the role of the equally unreadable titular white whale in
Melville's work. Picard, like Ahab, has been hurt by his nemesis, and
author Elizabeth Hinds said it makes sense that Picard should
"opt for the perverse alternative of remaining on board ship to
fight" the Borg rather than take the only sensible option left,
to destroy the ship. Several lines in the film refer to the 21st
century dwellers being primitive, with the people of the 24th century
having evolved to a more utopian society. In the end it is Lily (the
21st century woman) who shows Picard (the 24th century man) that his
quest for revenge is the very primitive behavior that humans had
evolved to not use. Lily's words cause Picard to reconsider, and he
quotes Ahab's words of vengeance, recognizing the death wish embedded therein.
The nature of the Borg,
specifically as seen in First Contact, has been the subject of
critical discussion. Author Joanna Zylinska notes that while other
alien species are tolerated by humanity in Star Trek, the Borg are
viewed differently due to their cybernetic alterations and the loss
of personal freedom and autonomy. Members of the crew who are
assimilated into the Collective are subsequently viewed as
"polluted by technology" and less than human. The nature of
perilous first contact between species as represented by films such
as Independence Day, Aliens and First Contact is a marriage of
classic fears of national invasion and the loss of personal identity.
1996
marked the 30th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise. First
Contact was heavily marketed, to an extent not seen since the release
of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Several novelizations of
the film were written for different age groups. Playmates Toys
produced six and nine inch action figures in addition to ship models
and a phaser. Two "making of" television specials premiered
on HBO and the Sci-Fi Channel, as well as being promoted during a
30th anniversary television special on UPN. The theatrical trailer to
the film was included on a Best of Star Trek music compilation,
released at the same time as the First Contact soundtrack. Simon &
Schuster Interactive produced a Borg-themed video game for personal
computers (separate Macintosh and Windows95 versions were available).
The game, Star Trek: Borg, functioned as an interactive movie with
scenes filmed at the same time as First Contact's production.
Paramount heavily marketed the film on the internet via a First
Contact web site that averaged 4.4 million hits a week during the
film's opening run, the largest amount of traffic ever on a motion
picture site to date.
The film premiered November
18th, 1996 at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The
main cast save Spiner were in attendance, as were Moore, Braga, Jerry
Goldsmith, and producer Marty Hornstein. Other Star Trek actors
present included DeForest Kelley, René Auberjonois, Avery
Brooks, Colm Meaney, Armin Shimerman, Terry Farrell, Kate Mulgrew,
Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Lien, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips,
Tim Russ, Garrett Wang and Robert Picardo. After the screening 1,500
guests crossed the street to the Hollywood Colonnade, where the
interiors had been dressed to match settings from the film: the
holodeck nightclub, part of the bridge, a "star room", the
Borg hive and the "crash 'n' burn lounge". The film
received a royal premiere in the United Kingdom, with the first
screening attended by Charles, Prince of Wales.
First
Contact opened in 2,812 theaters beginning November 22nd, grossing
$30.7 million its first week and making it the top movie at the US
box office. The film was knocked out of the top place the following
week by 101 Dalmatians, earning $25.5 million. The film went on to
gross $77 million in its first four weeks, remaining in the top ten
box office during that time and was the best-performing Star Trek
film in international markets until 2009's Star Trek reboot.
First Contact garnered
positive reviews on release. Ryan Gilbey of The Independent
considered the film wise to dispense with the cast of The Original
Series; "For the first time, a Star Trek movie actually looks
like something more ambitious than an extended TV show," he
wrote. Conversely, critic Bob Thompson felt that First Contact was
more in the spirit of the 1960s television series than any previous
installment. The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Renzeti said that First
Contact succeeded in improving on the "stilted" previous
entry in the series, and that it featured a renewed interest in
storytelling. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote,
"First Contact does everything you'd want a Star Trek film to
do, and it does it with cheerfulness and style." Roger Ebert
called First Contact one of the best Star Trek films, and James
Berardinelli found the film the most entertaining Star Trek feature
in a decade.
The special effects were
generally praised. Jay Carr of The Boston Globe said that First
Contact successfully updated Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's
concept with more elaborate effects and action. Critics also reacted
favorably to the Borg. The Borg Queen received special attention for
her combination of horror and seduction; Ebert wrote that while the
Queen "looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of",
he was inspired "to keep an open mind".
First Contact earned an
Academy Award-nomination for Best Makeup, losing to The Nutty
Professor. At the Saturn Awards, the film was nominated in ten
categories including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actor for
Patrick Stewart, and Best Director for Jonathan Frakes. It won three,
for Best Costumes, Best Supporting Actor (Brent Spiner), and Best
Supporting Actress (Alice Krige). Jerry Goldsmith won a BMI Film
Music Award for his score, and the film was nominated for the Hugo
Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.