Picard relives the horror of his assimilation, only now he remembers the Borg queen.
On the ground, the inhabitants of post-World War III Montana are dodging fire. Dr. Zefram Cochrane and his assistant, Lily Sloane, assume the worst, that hostilities have resumed. Lily heads for the warp vessel, the Phoenix. Cochrane, some the worse for drink, is knocked to his feet.
The Enterprise destroys the sphere. Their sensors report that the warp vessel is damaged. Picard heads up a landing party, to do all they can to make sure first contact happens. In the silo, a scared Lily is firing up at the Enterprise landing party, determined to save her ship. Data jumps down to Lily, and after firing several rounds into the android, she collapses. Dr. Crusher tells Picard that Lily must have medical attention aboard the Enterprise; the doctor will make sure that she sees nothing of the ship. The Phoenix will need extensive repairs, so Picard orders an engineering crew down. The captain—seeming to listen to something—asks for a report on the ship, and what he hears convinces him that the Borg have somehow invaded the Enterprise. Leaving Riker in charge, with orders to make sure the warp flight happens, Picard beams back to his ship.
The Borg are aboard. They now plan to use the Enterprise to carry out their mission. Data manages to lock out the main computers before the battle for the ship begins. However, if the crew can get to main engineering, where the collective is gathered, and rupture the plasma coolant tanks, the coolant will destroy all biological matter in the area, stopping the Borg. Several close calls bring Picard, Data, Worf, and a security detail to the engineering door. The detail attempts to access engineering. Behind Data, the door raises slightly, he is knocked down and pulled into the Borg stronghold, and the door slams shut.
Now under a full Borg assault, the detail retreats. They encounter Dr. Crusher and the medical staff, along with several patients who have managed to escape from the Borg, but Lily is lost. As the crew retreats to the bridge, through several cramped Jefferies tubes, the captain is pulled aside, garroted from behind. A very frightened but determined Lily has a phaser pointed at his head. She wants answers and she wants them now. At an outer section of the ship, Picard is able to win the woman’s trust by showing her just where she is. He points out Earth below. Mesmerized, Lily believes him.
On the surface, Riker has managed to find Cochrane and Counselor Troi. They are in a bar and both of them are drunk. Before she passes out, Troi insists that Riker tell Cochrane the truth. Reluctantly, he does so. Cochrane is intrigued and horrified by the adoration of the Enterprise’s crew. But driven by the need to launch his ship—and to make money—Cochrane agrees to work with them and fix his vessel.
Data is being held captive by the Borg. From the recesses of engineering, he hears a voice. She tells him that she brings order from chaos, that she is the Borg. A disembodied head with a metallic spine is lowered down, then nestles in a female humanoid body. Data assures her that she will not get the encryption codes for the computer from him. She offers to fulfill the android’s fondest wish, and begins seducing him by grafting pieces of flesh onto him.
As the captain and Lily walk the Borg-inhabited corridors of the Enterprise, Picard forms a plan. Firing at a Borg drone, the captain pulls Lily into a holodeck. Suddenly, they are in the middle of 1940s Earth: Picard has activated a Dixon Hill program. He pulls Lily into the middle of the dance floor as the drones enter the holodeck. Picard spots what he is looking for: there beside the gangster Nicky the Nose is his henchman’s violin case. The captain pulls out the tommy gun and starts firing at the Borg. With the holodeck safeties off, they are killed. Picard reaches in and pulls out a Borg component, without giving any thought to the fact that this drone was once a member of his crew.
Commander Riker tells Cochrane the truth.
Picard discovers that the Borg are seeking to contact others of their kind by building an interplexing beacon on the deflector dish. The captain knows there is only one way to stop them. Picard, Worf, and conn officer Lt. Hawk don environmental suits and walk across the Enterprise to the dish. The Borg have nearly finished the interplexing beacon. There is a harrowing fight and Hawk is assimilated. Worf barely manages to survive, but Picard is able to disconnect the array and stops the Borg, for now.
Back inside, they learn that the Borg have stepped up their activity. The captain orders his crew to make a final stand. They will not abandon Enterprise, nor will they destroy her. Stoically, the crew carries out Picard’s orders. Lily is shocked. She goes to confront him in the observation lounge, where the captain has retreated. Lily compares him to Ahab in Moby Dick, so bent on vengeance that he cannot see what he is doing. Chastised, Picard follows her onto the bridge and orders the crew to evacuate Enterprise. The self-destruct sequence is started, and the crew heads for the lifepods. The captain, however, is staying behind. Lily has reminded him of his humanity and his debt to Data. He is determined to rescue his friend.
In Montana, Cochrane, Riker, and La Forge prepare to take the Phoenix aloft. Atop the recycled nuclear missile, the Phoenix clears Earth’s atmosphere. In the distance they can see Enterprise, and it looks as if she is escorting them.
The Borg queen has more pieces of organic flesh grafted onto Data in her attempt to obtain the encryption codes. Aware that Picard is coming, the collective waits. Picard meets again the figure from his nightmare, and he realizes that she/it/they want him. The Borg want Picard, who dared to fight them when assimilated. He offers himself in exchange for Data. The android is released from behind a forcefield and told he can go. Data refuses. He then releases the Enterprise’s computer, stops the self-destruct, and—on the Borg queen’s orders—fires on the Phoenix. Not being able to do anything, Picard must watch his future be destroyed. At the last moment, just before the Phoenix jumps to warp, the torpedoes miss. Data has betrayed the Borg. He ruptures the plasma coolant tanks, and engineering is flooded. The captain manages to pull himself up and out of the deadly vapors. The Borg are destroyed.
The next day, Earth’s first contact has extra witnesses. The crew looks on as Earth makes its first contact with extraterrestrials. Dr. Cochrane steps forward and greets a trio of Vulcans. The crew of the Enterprise, secure in the knowledge that they have saved the Federation, return to their own time.
Data assures the Borg that they will not succeed.
The Phoenix launch complex in Montana.
With so many new sets to build, plans called for filming to start with location shooting. Four days were planned at the Titan Missile Museum, south of Tucson, Arizona. The disarmed nuclear missile and subterranean silo would stand in for Cochrane’s recycled Phoenix booster. “That was a challenge,” recalls Frakes of filming in the silo. “It was incredible. It also was a set we couldn’t have afforded to build.” A fiberglass capsule shell—the Phoenix’s command module—was fitted over the top of the rocket.
Two weeks of nighttime shooting in the Angeles National Forest, in the San Gabriel Mountains, followed. Zimmerman had created a village of fourteen huts—including Cochrane’s hangout, dubbed the Crash-n-Burn Bar. With typical Star Trek attention to detail, the bar was decorated with NASA mission emblems. Outside, a sign barely seen reads Montana Air Force Base; it also shows the U.S. Air Force Space Command logo and a fifty-two-star American flag (“The Royale”/138). Cast and crew reported that the most memorable night was shooting the first-contact scene. Fleck recalls, “We were up high on a camera crane, with all the extras walking slowly to the ship. The doors open, the lead Vulcan steps out and does his Vulcan hand sign and says, ‘Live long and prosper.’”
The last location shoot was at an art deco restaurant in downtown L.A.’s Union Station. The shoot included a ten-piece orchestra, 15 stuntmen, and 120 extras. All to bring the Dixon Hill holonovel to life.
On May 3, cameras first rolled on the gleaming new engineering set. It lasted less than a day before it was Borgified. Filming then moved on to the bridge set. “It was as if we had gone back in time,” Frakes recalled with a smile
. “It was the same sort of fantastic, cynical, fearless, take-no-prisoners abuse of your fellow cast member that has kept us together all these long years.” It was during this stretch where the film’s emotional core gelled with the scene between Picard and Lily in the observation lounge. Braga recalls, “I’d have to say that scene was nailed and perfect only about a week before it was filmed.”
But now came the phase of shooting to be dubbed “Borg Hell.” Filled with stunts, explosions, fly rigging, new spacesuits, and the extensive Borg makeup, the shooting days only seemed longer, more grueling. The deflector-dish battle sequence would test everyone’s patience.
Helpless, Picard watches as the torpedoes streak toward the Phoenix.
First, the makeup time for the Borg stretched to five hours over the single hour that had been the norm for television. Added to that was another half hour to get into the costume, and at the end of the day ninety minutes were needed just to remove the makeup. The eight Borg actors were covered in makeup and virtual wetsuits and could look forward only to enduring their day. A day that would start at 2 A.M.
Despite the hours, Westmore’s team of artists became bored. “As they bettered their prep 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. 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 their faces—it looked like they were leaking oil! So, at the very end, they’re more ferocious.”
On the “human” side, the spacesuits, with their complex internal lighting and a fully enclosed design, were an ordeal. Neal McDonough—who played Hawk—remembers, “When we first had the helmets on we couldn’t breathe. After a minute Patrick started turning green and we had to rip the helmet off of him. We had to stop shooting that whole day.”
Hands down, the heroine of “Borg Hell” had to be Alice Krige, who created the shockingly seductive queen. Even the production crew wondered how she survived the ten-day shoot. First, there was the blister-raising, too-tight suit. Then there were the painful silver contact lenses—she could keep them in for only four minutes at the most. “Alice Krige, God love her, a wonderful actress, she never complained,” Fleck recalled in amazement.
Filming wrapped on July 2. “Only two days over schedule and still under budget!” Frakes beamed. Ironically, the last scene of the final day would actually be the film’s very first: the giant nightmare pullback from Picard’s cubicle amid a massive Borg wall.
ILM raced to finish its share of the visual-effects shots—including a “brutal effort,” producer John Knoll said, to create a new ten-foot model of the Enterprise-E, in “half the normal time.” Veteran modelmaker John Goodson led that effort, as well as the creation of the models of the Phoenix, the Borg sphere, and the Borg cube. The massive opening battle would need a swarm of all the ships in Starfleet. But with a new Enterprise in the mix, everyone was concerned about creating confusion. Ships similar in shape to the Enterprise had to be left out.
“It’s implied that Starfleet has a wider spread of different types of ships. We intended for all the background action to be done with computer graphics,” Knoll said. “We needed to build ships, why not build new designs?” The result was not one but four new starship designs. The new vessels would be the biggest single infusion ever, and they would all be digital. It fell to ILM art director Alex Jaeger to satisfy the orders for “radically different” profiles that were still visibly Starfleet. Some sixteen designs were whittled down to four. The number of warp-engine nacelles of the Steamrunner-class, initially meant to be an update of the Stargazer with four warp-engine nacelles (“The Battle”/110), was reduced to two. The Sabre-class was a take on the compact Defiant-class. Least popular and least detailed of the four was the Norway-class. And the Akira- class—everyone’s favorite—was given a close-up pass in the film.
The Enterprise-E was also built in CG. A low-resolution version was used for the warp-jump effect and the temporal Borg vortex. Composing the deflector-dish battle was also on ILM’s list, along with the new rapid skin-mottling assimilation effect and the exterior-view launch of escape pods—another first for Star Trek.
Meanwhile, Takemura saw his share of effects shots double. His team would handle the routine phaser fire, the shields, the Dixon Hill “chapter change” wipe, and the maitre d’ shimmer. The transporter effect would get an update, giving it a more three-dimension feel. And Takemura’s team came up with the low-tech solution for the workings of La Forge’s new ocular implants: a sprocket-shaped shower handle was filmed as the main element and then matted over a black contact lens.
VisionArt built an all-CG version of the Vulcan lander based on the design of Zimmerman and Eaves. The Vulcan ship was never named on-screen, but after the fact screenwriter Moore took Eaves’s suggestion and christened the T’Plana-Hath after the Vulcan philosopher mentioned in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Caught in the temporal wake, the crew of the Enterprise see a Borgified Earth.
Composer Jerry Goldsmith offered another delightful score for the film—he reprised the Klingon theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture for Worf’s entrance. Unlike most Trek features, this one had a pop angle thanks to Cochrane’s musical tastes—Steppenwolf’s classic “Magic Carpet Ride.”
In the role of the doomed conn officer Lt. Hawk, London-trained Neal McDonough was cast. Patti Yasutake was back briefly as Nurse Ogawa. Admiral Hayes—a character named by Braga after his favorite uncle, Jack—is actor Jack Shearer, who had appeared as Admiral Strickler in Voyager’s “Non Sequitur.” Michael Horton, as the bloodied yet heroic security officer, would gain the name of Lt. Daniels in the next feature. (He must have been emotionally drained, because he talks about the twenty-sixth deck when the ship has only twenty-four—the film’s most oft-cited blooper.) Actress Marnie McPhail played the ill-fated engineer Eiger—she was named for the classic film The Eiger Sanction. Longtime extra Scotty Strozier was seen here as Ensign Lynch. The Dixon Hill holoprogram scene had several notables. Don Stark (Nicky the Nose) had already appeared as Ashrock on Deep Space Nine’s “Melora.” His henchman was Ron Rondell, the movie’s stunt coordinator. The sharp-eyed fan may spot yet another familiar face in the background: it is writer Brannon Braga.
Politics edged its way into background names. While identified as “ECON,” for the innocuous “Eastern Coalition,” the former World War III enemy that Lily first suspects was originally going to be simply China. “We just thought that’s a natural extrapolation from where we are now,” Moore revealed, “and then the studio flinched.”
Picard’s opening flashback nightmare to his Locutus agony (“The Best of Both Worlds”/174) handles the need for catching up new viewers. But, the writers knew they had to do a little tinkering for the Borg queen’s appearance. “When we got to the place where Picard has to go face the Borg and face his inner demons … well, he’s gotta face the queen,” Moore said. “But if he hasn’t met the queen before, it’s not gonna have a lot of impact … she had to have escaped Wolf 359 … First Contact was the culmination of that arc. She was wiped from Picard’s memory.”
Budget constraints trimmed one of Picard and Lily’s shipboard moments. They discover—owing to the Borg-induced humidity—a mini-thunderstorm atop a turbolift shaft. “That was either one of the coolest things we ever came up with or one of the most insane we ever came up with,” Moore laughed. “But I remember reading about how the Vertical Assembly Building at NASA is so large that it literally had its own weather systems.”
The bridge set saw a holographic main view-screen that operates only when activated, leaving a plain wall when not on. Denise Okuda noted that the newer flatscreen computer monitors were introduced for the first time, giving the bridge a cleaner look. The new monitors allowed for sophisticated videos that could simulate interaction with the actors. Illustrators Jim Van Over and Doug Drexler, scenic artist Antho
ny Frederickson, and key video operator Benjamin Betts took full advantage of the new media. In the Phoenix cockpit the text and terms came from McDonnell-Douglas space shuttle operator manuals, and the instrumentation was based on designs for the Delta Clipper.
The ship’s dedication plaque lists the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, as launching from the San Francisco Yards (as did the Enterprise on Star Trek) on Stardate 49827.5. The vessel’s look included a revamped cabin ID system, simplifying the old four-digit numbers of the D. The first two numbers signify the deck and the last two designate the room. Lily’s unnerving open docking port is 1324, Deck 13.
While both Captain Picard and Khan (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) cite the same lines from Moby Dick, it was unintentional. “The honest truth is, we were just working on the scene and forgot about it,” admitted Moore. Data’s mention of his last act of sex, “Eight years, seven months, sixteen days, four minutes and twenty-two seconds ago,” refers to Tasha Yar (“The Naked Now”/103). Lily’s reference to Worf as “the turtle-headed guy” is a nod to one of the cast’s earliest nicknames for him. Don’t bother looking up Gravett Island—it’s named for Jacques Gravett, Moore’s assistant.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 60