Weirdhouse Cinema: Star Trek - First Contact - Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to
be talking about 1996's Star Trek First Contact as part
of our This is the second year that we've done
a Star Trek week, lining up with internationally recognized Star
Trek Day. And it's a pretty big anniversary for Star Trek,
60 years of Star Trek. That's a lot of myth-making.

(00:37):
That's a lot of science fiction. And so this year,
we really doubled down on the Borg. We did two
core episodes about the idea of the Borg. science behind
the Borg, cultural analysis of the Borg, questions like, is
the Borg queen a goddess? And if so, what sort
of goddess? We were just chatting beforehand on the question,

(01:00):
did we go overboard on the Borg or over Borg
on the Borg? And I'm arguing on the core Borg lore. No,
I would argue you can't do that. Not during Star
Trek week. It's a holy time.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I don't think we did in our core episodes. I
was just concerned that by the time we're here talking
about the movie today, like if we said the word
Borg too many times this.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Week, it begins to lose all meaning.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah. It's especially that word. And you know, some words are, uh,
you get to semantic satiation faster with some words than others.
I don't know why that is, but Borg is, it's
like high on that list.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. But this one should be
a lot of fun to discuss. We've already discussed it
a little bit in those core episodes to the degree
that we needed to in order to talk about some
of the concepts. But this time we're going to go
all in. It's arguably the most horror-leaning of all the
Star Trek films. It really has a great time depicting

(01:59):
the cybernetic Borg with particularly ghoulish enthusiasm and really leans
into horror beats throughout the whole picture. I agree.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Uh, this is a strong movie. I saw this, I
think before I had ever seen any of the next
generation TV series. So, uh, I saw this with friends
and I really had to have friends explain to me
like what's Picard's deal, you know, who are all these characters,
what do they do? Uh, but then again, it's the
kind of movie that you can just plop in without

(02:29):
really knowing anything about the show and you can still
enjoy it because it's a very, uh, it draws a
lot on things you already know about the characters, and
it does draw on the previous Borg lore, especially the
fact that Picard was assimilated once on the show. That
comes up a lot in the movie. But it works
on its own, too. It's just like a tight space

(02:50):
action movie.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point about your own
history with it, it being kind of your introduction to
Next Generation. Because I imagine that's the case for a
lot of people. This may have been the first Star
Trek they had seen, like maybe they hadn't seen any
of the other films or maybe they were only familiar
with the old school Star Trek. Um, and maybe they
just hadn't seen any next generation. Uh, and it's of course,

(03:13):
for me, it's really hard to sort of put all
that other stuff out of my head and try to
enjoy the movie on that level. Um, but I was
trying to do at least a little of it as
I was watching it, like thinking, okay, they're, they're establishing this,
they're establishing the previous assimilation. They're letting us know, this
is what the board do. This is how they work
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
I also take your point about it being the most
horror-oriented of the Star Trek movies, though I'll admit this
is actually the only next-generation cast movie I have seen.
I think I've seen all of the original series cast movies,
but only this one for the TNG cast. Maybe this
isn't fair, but I've heard that the other TNG cast

(03:54):
movies are not so great.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
That's my understanding as well. I have to admit that
this is also the only next-generation film that I've seen. Um,
and that some of that has to do with what
I'd heard about them. Some of it has to do
with like, you know, where my life was when these
films came out. But this one I definitely saw in
the theater, I think. Um, cause I strongly remember watching
it when it was new. I suspect I saw it

(04:18):
in the theater, but I can't be 100% certain. Uh, but, um,
this was a, you know, it was space horror. So
I was excited for it. I was a next generation fan.
So I was excited for that as well. And space
horror was really firing on all cylinders at the time.
So the same year, 1996, two other films also emerged
from the black cosmic depths. We got Leprechaun 4 in space.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Classic. All-time classic.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, not a good movie, but the logical progression of
the Leprechaun franchise. And then we also got Hellraiser Bloodline.
Share some aesthetics with the Borg-focused movie. Yeah, definitely. And
some of that is, like, original to Hellraiser. Hellraiser did
come first. But this was the film that took Hellraiser

(05:07):
into space and also into, like, what, the Renaissance? It's
been a while since I've seen it.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Well, funny you should mention both Star Trek First Contact
and Hellraiser Bloodline have a young Adam Scott in them.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
That's right. I was really amused by this. Adam Scott,
young Adam Scott, just trying to make a name for himself,
scraping by in Hollywood. In the same year, pops up
in two films that are rather different in overall quality,
but both are known for having a strong space dominatrix character.
I know he was just taking what he could get,

(05:44):
but I also like to think that his agent was like, Like,
don't worry, Adam, I'm trying to get you all the
best space dominatrix pictures we can get. I got two
lined up. And he's like, yes, make it so.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're climbing that ladder. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
So, yeah, so that was just. And then the following year, 97, we'd,
of course, get Event Horizon and Alien Resurrection. So if you,
like me, were a space horror fan, like you were
eating pretty well. Some of it was fast. You weren't
necessarily eating a healthy diet all the time. But there
was a lot to consume. sure so yeah just to

(06:18):
refresh where we are in terms of shows coming out
by the time first contact hits theaters the next generation
had wrapped up it had been ripped it had been
wrapped up for a couple of years it had already
the cast of the next generation had already factored into
the previous trek movie 94's star trek generations that was
the one that had um you know kirk and the

(06:39):
old crew picard and the new crew and then malcolm
mcdowell i believe murdering kirk um That's also one that
I have to admit I've never seen. But that was
the one before this. Deep Space Nine was going pretty strong,
I think, what, like four seasons in? Three or four?
And then Voyager was in its second season. So there
was a lot of Trek out there. And then here

(07:01):
comes this big picture with its focus on the Borg,
its horror vibe. This is the eighth Star Trek feature-length
motion picture. And if you go by the whole even-odd thing,
this would make First Contact one of the good ones.
And I think that's largely the way that it was
received and is remembered with some key caveats that we've

(07:21):
already discussed in our core episodes and we'll rehash here
a little bit as well. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I mean, I remember really liking it the first time
I saw it. I think I was in my late
teens at the time. Though there were some things about
it I didn't love. And this time I was more
forgiving of those things. I don't know, some of the
kind of goofier Star Trek elements that seemed overly hokey
and not fitting with the dark tone of the boy

(07:45):
i think when i was younger i just wanted things
to be more consistently dark and serious and when i
got older i didn't feel that way anymore and so
now like i like the part of this movie where
they go in the holodeck and there's a guy with
a metal nose.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
That's great yeah i'd forgotten all about that i'm so
glad it's.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
In here but when i was like 18 or whatever
i was like what is this silliness i don't know
we don't need.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
That Yeah, I've gotten to the point where, yeah, the
silliness of Star Trek is one of the things I love.
I love it, the intellectual flair of it, but I
love the silliness. I think it's one of the reasons
that I'm enjoying Star Trek Strange New Worlds so much
because as some people criticize it, some people criticize it
for this, but it's like every episode is the silly
episode from a season, or at least that's the way

(08:31):
it's felt of late. But yeah, as I've discussed before,
I was like 17, I think, when this came out,
connected with me as a Star Trek fan. Uh, connected
with me as a horror fan. I was a teenager
with walls covered with like Cenobites and fallen angels and
posters of various like metal and industrial acts. Um, so
I remember having some reservations about the introduction of the

(08:52):
Borg queen, you know, from collective to some sort of
a centralized figure. Uh, but I could not argue with
her overall presentation. Like she was super cool, super creepy,
super hot. Uh, I was 100% on board. And I
remember loving it and, but, but also not loving the
sillier moments as much. Uh, now I can say I can,

(09:13):
I can pretty much take in all of it.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Like another one of the silly aspects that I remember
disliking when I was younger, but now I can kind
of get down with is James Cromwell's portrayal of Zephyrm Cochran. Yeah. Um,
I guess I've just become softer on that kind of
hamminess over the years. But I do remember thinking the
first time that this was like Vanessa Redgrave. I'm going

(09:35):
to haul ass to Lollapalooza. It's just the way he's,
you know, dancing grandpa. Whiskey and rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Dad rock and all.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Something's changed, though. Like, I can party with this now.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, part of it, I think, for me is I'm
closer to his age now than I was back then,
for sure. And then also, like, just thinking about the music. Like,
he's rocking out to, like, Magic Carpet Ride. which at
the time this came out, what was that?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Not the main studio recording of it.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Oh, he didn't have, that was lost in the third
world war.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah. To deal with a cover.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Like a weird alternate take of Magic Carpet Ride.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
But that was, what, a 30-year-old song at the time?
Am I right on that?

Speaker 3 (10:12):
I don't have the date in front of me. Oh,
that sounds about right.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
It was, I don't know, mid-60s, yeah. Yeah, like, so
it's a 30-year-old song. And, like, nowadays, whatever music I
was listening to when this came out, those are all, like,
30-year-old songs as well. Probably more. So it's weird how
the passage of time works.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
All of your industrial Cinnabite music is now, like, that's what...
that's what the hippie stuff was in the 90s.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
I guess I don't know it's similar but it's different
we have to send a Borg sphere back to fix
it groovy baby alright elevator pitch for this one I
didn't really have a fun one I was just thinking
Borgpocalypse now oh yeah it's a film about the Borg
that features a plot element concerning first contact earth earthlings

(10:57):
first contact with the Vulcan civilization and It's an important
part of the plot, but it's not like the driving
force of the plot. So in some ways, it's kind
of a weird title.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Well, I kind of like it as a contrast in
that the Borg are an incredibly... toxic and unredeemed type
of alien civilization. There's nothing good about coming into contact
with them. And so if you just think about the Borg,
you could start to develop a kind of xenophobic view

(11:30):
of the universe. But having the main positive event in
the story be the first contact between humans and Vulcans,
that kind of puts it in perspective. Overall, the vision
of Star Trek is that Uh, the, the bridging of
divides between these species across the galaxy is a good
thing and they eventually all joined forces and, and mutually

(11:51):
benefit from knowing, knowing one another and helping one another
and that the board are sort of the exception to
the rule.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that star Trek resurrection was one
of the working titles, but they had to abandon that
because alien resurrection was coming up. Um, I don't think
star Trek resurrection particularly works as a title either. So
I'm not sure what my perfect headcanon title would be
for this. All right. Obviously, we've already talked about some spoilers,

(12:20):
and there will be more to come. So just blanket
warning there as usual. We're going to spoil the heck
out of this movie. But if you're going to stop
right now and you're like, you know, I need to
see this for the first time. Maybe I should have
done it earlier. Or you're thinking, hey, I haven't actually
watched this film in decades. I should go do that. Well,
you can pretty much watch this everywhere. This is a
major release. And as with last Star Trek week, I

(12:41):
ended up doing a subscription to Paramount +, so I
could just stream all the Star Trek that I would
need for my week's research. There are also some very
nice Paramount Blu-rays of this film, including a very cool-looking
30th anniversary Blu-ray. I included a picture here for you, Joe.
Folks can look this up wherever you get your physical media,
but it folds out and you get the Borg Queen

(13:03):
caressing Picard's face. It looks really cool.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Giving him a little, a little smoochy, a little smoochy finger. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
With that like cold metal and rubber hand.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
All right. Well, let's, uh, let's jump into it. Um,
starting with the director, but also starting with one of
the co-stars because this is also the actor who plays
Riker in the film. It's Jonathan Frakes born 1952. Um, So, uh,
you know, as a director, this was his first feature
film following up TV directing work on the next generation,

(13:45):
six episodes, I think, uh, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine,
three episodes, Voyager, another three episodes. And he'd also done,
I think, some one shots on shows like University Hospital
and Diagnosis Murder. So he'd been working up to it.
And the producers apparently wanted someone who knew Trek and
got Trek. And, uh, Frakes has mentioned that the sci-fi

(14:06):
of James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Kubrick, Spielberg, all of these
served as inspiration for the picture. And you can definitely
see those fingerprints in the finished product, I think.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
I often wonder why it's on Star Trek movies in
particular that you get this tradition of a long-serving cast
member being the director of one of the movies. Like,
you know, you had... Leonard Nimoy and Shatner directing some
of the original series movies. And then you have Jonathan
Frakes directing this one. It's just interesting that that happens

(14:39):
over and over.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, and I mean, it still continues to a certain extent, right?
Because didn't Simon Pegg have something to do behind the scenes,
like on the writing end, the story end of things
with one.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Of the more recent films? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
I seem to remember that's the case. Could be wrong,
because I don't have that information in front of me,
but But yeah, it is kind of an interesting situation
where it's like Trek is kind of a world unto
its own. And the people who like there are creative
forces within it on the acting side, the directing side
and the writing side. And like there's kind of like
a trusted in group. And maybe there's this perception, too,

(15:15):
that sometimes the missteps come from outside of that in group.
But then again, I think also we get some great
ideas from outside of that in group as well. I mean,
I think Rad of Khan is a great example of that.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
I would say no offense to actors as actors generally,
but I'm surprised this doesn't end in disaster more often.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
All right. Well, luckily it does not end in disaster here.
I would say this is a success story for number one. Now,
as an actor, Frakes has been active in TV and
film since 1977. He pops up in the likes of
like the old Fantasy Island series. His first TV movie
was 79's Beach Patrol. And then, of course, The Next

(15:58):
Generation was his big break on television. And then finally
he appeared in his first feature film in 94 in
Star Trek Generations. He would continue to play the Riker
role in related films and TV projects. But he's also
done a lot of voice acting, perhaps most notably on
the animated series Gargoyles, along with some other Next Generation alumni.

(16:20):
And as a director, he's also remained active directing a
great deal of television, including more Trek. as well as
the movie Clockstoppers in 2002, Thunderbirds in 2004, Parks Unknown
in 2010, Truth Be Told in 2011, and then a
couple of sequels to The Librarian.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Now, as we go through mentioning the main cast members,
obviously here, director and cast member, do we want to
have a quick word about each of the characters they
play for people who are less familiar with The Next Generation? Yeah, yeah. Okay.
So what's Riker's deal? He's the first officer on the
ship just under Picard.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah. He's second in command, um, of the vessel. Anytime
something bad.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
First in burliness. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
I mean, he's a tall guy. I got that nice beard.
He didn't have that beard in like the first season,
I think. Uh, but, um, but yeah, he's a, an,
an imposing likable figure, you know, a little bit stern,
but also at least in the TV series also show
his sensitive side. Um, I would say, as is the
case with a number of the cast members here, though,

(17:22):
Riker gets some very nice plot lines on the TV series. Here,
this is not Riker's story. This is primarily a Picard
and Data story. So he's very much relegated to the
B plot, along with other members of the crew. Solid
job here, but solid supporting job.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah. I mean, he spends most of the movie babysitting
James Cromwell. He's trying to make sure as Ephraim Cochran
wakes up on time to, to do his, uh, test flight.
But you're right that this is very much a Picard
and data focused story. In fact, for the elevator pitch
I was going to give for the movie was the
last temptation of data because there is a frequent, I

(18:04):
was going to say almost sexual, but literally sexual temptation
of data temptation of the flesh for data.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Uh, throughout the, I don't know, the, the major secondary
plot here. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
It, it definitely, um, I was going to say it
gets hot and heavy, but it doesn't, it's very cold
because it's, it's robots and cyborgs. Um, but, um, uh, but,
but certainly, yeah, this is definitely more of a data
and Picard story. All right. Um, so that's a, that's
a director and one of our, our, our stars. But
then moving on to the screenplay, this one had a

(18:36):
number of names attached to it. Obviously, the late Gene Roddenberry,
who lived 1921 through 1991, is credited. Trek producer Rick Berman,
born 1945, also has a story credit, as he often
does in some of these Trek pictures he was associated with.
But the main story screenplay credits go to two other gentlemen.
First of all, we have Brandon Braga, born 1965, story

(18:59):
screenplay credit. He was a writer on The Next Generation.
and had worked on Generations as well. He'd go on
to work on 2000's Mission Impossible 2, Voyager, Enterprise, TV's 24,
and The Orville.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Mission Impossible 2 is the one with a lot of
flips in it.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
I think that's the last Mission Impossible film I saw,
and I don't remember much about it. Not Hugh Jackman
is the villain in that, as I recall.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
No, I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, but it's a guy that kind of had a
similar vibe at the time and may have been in
the running for Wolverine.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't remember who the villain is
in that one. I remember that's the one where Ethan
Hunt goes free climbing on these boulders in the middle
of the desert. He just climbs up a butte with
no ropes. And then he throws his sunglasses. He like
gets messages in his sunglasses and throws them into the

(19:51):
air and they explode and he does flips all.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
The time for no that's how he gets the mission
like yeah these classes will self-destruct yeah yeah cool all
right uh the other individual is ronald d moore born 1964,
also a former Next Generation writer who worked on Generations
as well as Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He was
definitely an inside Trek guy who knew the franchise in

(20:15):
and out, a pretty big name in Trek in general.
And he'd go on to also work on 2000's Mission
Impossible 2 and eventually moved on to work as writer
and then at times showrunner on Roswell, Carnival, Battlestar Galactica,
the reboot. That was a big one. Um, Outlander, he
was showrunner on Outlander, at least for a while, certainly
the earlier episodes, uh, maybe some of the later ones too,

(20:37):
but the portion of Outlander I watched, he was, he
was the showrunner on that. And also for all mankind
has been the more recent project that he's been involved
in a highly successful guy. Cool. Now getting into the
cast here, uh, the rest of the cast, as with
all the Trek films, again, we, we have to discuss
the crew. Um, not all the crew members get as

(20:59):
much to do. They don't have as much of a
chance to shine as they would in the long running
Trek series and a long running, um, uh, season. Uh,
but you know, not everybody can get the spotlight. Uh,
still we have a number of crew members to roll through.
Want to make sure we mentioned them all though. We
may go a little bit briefer with each of these
individuals and not, you know, do as much of a
career retrospective.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
All right. Uh, let's start with the captain. It is
captain Picard, Jean-Luc Picard. played by Patrick Stewart, born 1940.
We've talked about Stewart before on Weird House Cinema because
we did a two-part episode on David Lynch's Dune from 1984.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
In which he plays Gurney Halleck. That's right. And famously
gets to charge into battle holding a pug in his arms.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, yep, yep. That's great. So I thought he was
a good Gurney. Obviously, by the time The Next Generation
comes out, already a veteran of stage and screen and
TV with, Let's see, his first theatrical film role was
back in 75. And other prior genre credits included 81's Excalibur,
85's Life Force, 85's The Doctor and The Devils. And then,

(22:05):
of course, he had been in Generations previously. And of note,
he'd go on to play Ahab, Captain Ahab, in the
1998 Moby Dick TV miniseries. And then he would play J.
Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise beginning in the
year 2000. And of course, he'd continue to play Picard
in TV and film.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
It's funny that he would go on to play Ahab
because as we will discuss, this movie makes a direct
comparison between Picard and Ahab, which is strange because that
had that literary illusion had already been used once in
star Trek movies. It was used for the villain in
star Trek to the wrath of con, which.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
We watched last year. And I think we just replayed
in the podcast feed.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah. So con becomes a hab and Kirk is his
white whale, but now the roles are reversed. Now Picard
is a hab and the Borg is his white whale.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
And, uh, there's a, there's some, some fun dialogue discussing this.
All right. And then of course, data, uh, played by
Brent Spiner, born 1949. Old yellow eyes himself. And I'd
say this is his most beloved role. You know, certainly
this is what people love him for. Star Trek's positronic man.

(23:21):
His acting credits, though, go back to 1970 and included
1980's Stardust Memories. He was in an episode of Tales
from the Dark Side. He was in Cheers. He had
a recurring role on Night Court. in which he played
Bob Wheeler, who I do not remember at all from
Night Court, but I think was like a hayseed character.
So he has a lot of range. Like people think
of Data, they maybe think of that role in 96's

(23:44):
Independence Day where he plays a brainy scientist. But he
could play menacing as well. I remember we watched an
episode of the 90s Outer Limits for a past Halloween
episode and stuff to blow your mind. It was called
The Deprogrammers. And he played like a really vicious human
character in that.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
That was the one with Joram.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yes, yes. So yeah, he had a lot of range,
could play other things, but undeniably pretty brilliant as Data. Okay,
so those are going to be really the most important
to members of the crew for our story purpose here.
But the rest of the team is here as well.
We have, of course, LeVar Burton playing Geordi LaForge, born 1957.

(24:23):
Burton always brings heart to anything he's in, no matter
how big or small the role is. You really can't
overstate the importance of 77's Roots or the long-running Reading Rainbow.
As much as Star Trek is a memorable part of
certainly my junior high years, Reading Rainbow is such an
important part of my childhood. And looking back on it,

(24:44):
I don't think I really thought about this much at
the time. I was probably like, oh yeah, he was
also in Reading Rainbow. But it's kind of like the
baton was passed from my early childhood to my junior
high years. going from Reading Rainbow to Star Trek, and,
you know, both have an important place in my memories.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Weirdly, even though I didn't watch The Next Generation when
it was on TV, I was a young child at
the time, I know somehow I had awareness of LeVar Burton,
the guy from Reading Rainbow, as being on Star Trek.
I just knew that culturally somehow.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, I think there was, it's been a while, but
I'm pretty sure there's like a crossover episode where it's
like Reading Rainbow, where he gets to tell you about
Star Trek and show you behind the scenes stuff. So
that's pretty cool. Now, one of the things about Geordi
La Forge, of course, is that he is vision impaired.
And in the series, he has this kind of visor
that he wears over his eyes so that he can see,

(25:39):
that gives him some level of sight and.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
So forth.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
In this movie, I think this is the first time
where he has essentially implants. He has like artificial eyes. And,
you know, he's wearing some sort of contacts that give
his eyes this kind of mechanical appearance, which I'm to
understand this was something that LeVar Burton, you know, wanted
for a while, you know, thinking like he got in

(26:05):
the way.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
He's tired of putting the prosthetic on.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Well, I mean, I don't know that the prosthetic really,
I don't know if it was that difficult to film with,
but I think the idea was like he got in
the way of his acting. Like if you have eyes
and you can't act with your eyes, that's, you know,
you have one less tool on the table. And he's like,
you know, this is, the future. Why can't he just
have some sort of implant? I guess you could also say, like,
why can't they just, like, implant new eyes, grow him

(26:30):
some new eyes? But, you know, that's not the direction
they went in.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
It's always curious what problems they can and cannot solve
on Star Trek. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
All right, we also have Michael Dorn playing Worf, the
Klingon warrior. Born 1952, Dorn does a great job as usual.
This is another, you know, iconic character from the next
generation and also from deep space nine. Uh, and you know,
even though he's not the primary focus, he gets to
get some, some solid action and he gets to, to
mess up some Borg. Uh, so this is, this is

(27:03):
pretty fun. Doran's credits go back to 65 and, uh,
I don't remember this at all, but he has an
uncredited role as a bodyguard. I think he's one of
Apollo Creed's bodyguards in 1976 is Rocky.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Oh, I didn't know that. Uh, but yeah, he, he
does get some good parts in this movie. He, he,
A common thing in the Star Trek movies is that
a member of the crew, a former member of the
Enterprise crew, now has their own command. They have their
own ship. And always, somehow, they get reunited. So in
Wrath of Khan, I think it's Commander Chekov is now

(27:38):
on a different ship. And then eventually, he gets reunited
with the Enterprise crew. And so in this movie, Worf
has his own starship. He's off battling the Borg. With
Adam Scott. With Adam Scott and then reunites with the
Enterprise crew.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Got to get the band back together one way or another. Yeah.
All right. We also have Dr. Beverly Crusher aboard the ship,
played by Gates McFadden, born 1949. Not only an important
part of the Next Generation cast, but she also worked
with the Jim Henson Company and was the director of
choreography and puppet movement for the films Labyrinth and The
Muppets Take Manhattan.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah. So she's, she's got, um, got hands in, in different, um,
you know, film worlds that are, um, you know, much beloved.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Now I noticed a difference between the next generation episodes
I'd seen and the movie, uh, no Wesley Crusher in
this movie. Did they explain, does he go off somewhere?

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I don't know where Wesley's at. Like, I don't know
if Wesley was in generations off the top of my head.
So I'm not sure what his current status is.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I mean, likewise, there are other, of course, pivotal characters
from Next Generation that are not here. For instance, Guinan's
not aboard the ship, apparently. And she played a major
role in the first episode where we encounter the Borg. But,
you know, again, I guess part of it comes down,
you can only fit so many characters into the narrative.
What are you going to do? All right. Let's see.

(29:04):
Counselor Troi is on board, played by Marina Sirtis, born 1955,
a British-American actress who plays... provided an often pivotal moral
and emotional voice on the next generation. You have a
lot of scenes where different characters are weighing in on
a difficult problem and providing different viewpoints. I'll say, though,

(29:25):
this is not a particularly strong outing for Counselor Troi.
I think her most memorable moment is when she gets
really drunk planetside in the B-plot, and it's respectfully maybe
not her best work as an actress. um but uh
yeah again what are you going to do i guess
it's just not not the sort of film where we

(29:45):
get we're going to really focus on this particular character
um but anyway her acting credits go back to the
70s include death wish 3 let's see she was on
an episode of the granada jeremy brett sherlock holmes uh
series i think it was the six napoleons She pops
up in 92's Waxwork 2, Lost in Time, and 2004's Crash.

(30:05):
I think she was also a voice on Gargoyles, as
was Dorn at some point. All right, so that's the
returning Enterprise crew, but we also have some notable red shirts.
We already mentioned Adam Scott, who plays Defiant Con Officer.
That's C-O-N-N, not K-H-A-N. Born 1973.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
And that's, he's on the defiant, not he is defiant.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, he's, yeah, he's not defiant. He's, you know, he's
doing a good job. He's, he's putting in the work,
but then I guess dies. We don't, we never see
him again. So I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Unclear. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Um, possibly assimilated by the Borg. We don't know. Um,
but then we also have Neil McDonough playing Lieutenant Hawk, uh,
born 1966. We talked about McDonough in our episode on
the historical horror movie Ravenous, uh, Uh, and, uh, in this,
he's really good as well. You know, great tough guy actor, uh,
you know, doomed by the color of his uniform in

(30:58):
this movie. Uh, but he does get some moments to shine.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
You just know early on when you see the closeups
on him, it's like, oh, they're, they're doing those closeups.
So it matters more later when this guy dies, but
they won't have to kill any of the main crew. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
All right. So. most of these characters, these characters all
at least originate in the 24th century of Star Trek. Uh,
but as we've been discussing, or I don't know if
we've really established this so much, but this is a
time travel movie. We're going to be doing some time
traveling and we're actually going to time travel, um, back
to the year 2063, uh, in the aftermath of world

(31:37):
war three here on earth. Uh, terrifying fact in the,
in the, the timeline of Star Trek is that, um,
is that the third world war begins in the year
2026 and ends in the year 2053. It seems like
it goes on for a while. Um, and eugenics war,
this was already over. That went 92 through 96.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Okay. Glad we got that behind us.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
And then, uh, yeah, so this is where we get
to Zephrym Cochran, uh, played by James Cromwell, born 1940,
Oscar nominated American actor who, you know, still at it,
still going strong, often brings either quiet, looming dignity, because
he's a very tall man, looming menace, maybe looming grumpiness.

(32:23):
And here he gets to be a bit sillier. But
I tend to enjoy James Cromwell in anything he's in,
whether he's playing a dad-rocking hippie who turns an intercontinental
ballistic missile into Earth's first warp-enabled spaceship, or if he's
playing a mad scientist on American Horror Story. He's always good.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Because he seems so benign, I think he makes a
great villain. He's a villain in, uh, LA confidential. That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Really good role there for him.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah. Retro detective movie from the nineties. Uh, and he's, uh, yeah. Uh,
devious there. Excellent.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
That came at 97. So that was the following year.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Um, yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
So he, yeah, he's really good. Uh, this I've read
that he has signaled, singled out this role as being
one of his roles. That's closest to his own personality.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Um, What?

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, I mean, he's a little bit of a wild card.
He's been involved in activism over the years. He's the
kind of guy who will glue his hand to a
Starbucks counter in protest, that sort of thing. So it
is interesting to see this character and think, oh, this
is more James Cromwell than any of these other films.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Rock and roll grandpa. In this movie, he dances like
a skeleton from a 1920s cartoon. Multiple times. Yeah. It's
not just once.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
All right. Cochran also has an assistant named Lily, played
by Alfre Woodard, born 1952. This is a vital supporting character.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
The soul of the movie.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah. Her role is probably not a role that
everyone's going to really remember all that much. And it's
not like everyone's favorite character in the film. But if
you take her out Like, the movie suffers greatly. Like,
this is an essential character for explanations, for learning. I mean,

(34:18):
you can't take her out of the film and have
the same structure maintained.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
This character plays multiple important functions. One is that she
is the fish-out-of-water character. So we can see the situation
on the Enterprise through her eyes because she doesn't know
what any of this stuff is.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, and going back to what you said earlier, like, yeah,
a lot of people were coming into this foggy on
Star Trek or knowing nothing about Star Trek. So even
though most of us may not feel like we need
anybody to hold our hand about how any of this works, like,
the intended moviegoer probably does. Like, you need to factor
that into the equation.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, so totally. She's important in that regard. But then
I said sort of the soul of the movie because
she is the character there who provides pivotal moral perspective
to Picard when he is going on the wrong track.
And it's even more interesting because it's not any of
his close confidants and longtime friends and associates who provide

(35:17):
that perspective. It's this total outsider, like somebody who's from
even a different century than the rest of the crew.
who is just like, you are wrong, you are doing
the wrong thing, and she's right.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Woodard is good in this role.
She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 84
for Cross Creek, and her other credits include 96's Primal Fear,
2013's 12 Years a Slave, and 2016's Captain America Civil War.
And then finally we have our Borg Queen, played by

(35:50):
Alice Krieger, born 1954, South African-American, born actress who found
success on the stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the
small screen BBC in the UK, before making the transition
into really an eclectic mix of films, a lot of
which are very arthouse. There's some stop-motion animation in there,

(36:13):
I believe. But in 1981, she appeared in a couple
of films of others, Chariots of Fire and then Ghost Story,
based on the novel by Peter Straub. which I've not seen,
but apparently that performance was one of the things that
got her hired for First Contact. I don't know if
she's a ghost in that or not. Maybe she's just

(36:33):
haunted by ghosts. But at any rate, it was supposedly
a pretty phenomenal performance. Her other credits include 1985's King David.
This is the George Eastman Bible epic. No one else
probably thinks of it as such, but I do. Wait,
George Eastman, not as King David. No, no, no. He
plays Goliath, of course. But he's in there somewhere. She

(36:56):
was in 87's Barfly, and of course she was in
92's Stephen King's Sleepwalkers, which we previously covered.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
On Weird House. In which she's really good.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I want to remind everybody that she gives that role
her all. No matter what you feel about Stephen King's Sleepwalkers,
and it has some really goofy moments in it that
I that I love, Alice Krieger just gives a commanding
performance as this weirdly conceived character.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
She stabs Ron Perlman to death with a corncob.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah. And then afterwards you're like, you're still saying to yourself, man,
she was really good in that role.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Very convincing.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah. Yeah. So she would reprise her role as the
Borg Queen on, at least physically on Star Trek Voyager.
And I think continued to do voice work for the character.
as it was resurrected on Picard, Lower Decks, the animated series,
and then, of course, various Star Trek games. Her other
genre credits of note include Reign of Fire in 2002,

(37:57):
Silent Hill in 2006, Solomon Cain in 2009, and Thor
The Dark World in 2013.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
So we already did a big discussion on the Borg
Queen and what she means in part two of our
core series this week. Uh, I guess we'll try not
to rehash too much here though. I guess it is
worth talking once more about to what degree the Borg
queen as a character makes sense in this movie. It

(38:26):
is a little strange because the whole idea of the
Borg is that they are a decentralized collective species and
that they, um, you know, they're this union of flesh
and technology really. just mingling to the ultimate extent, and
there does not seem to be any ruler or any

(38:47):
top-down command structure. It's just a hive mind that functions
by consensus. And this movie fundamentally changes that by introducing
this face character, the Borg Queen, who seems to speak
for the Borg. Last time we talked a lot about
whether she is supposed to be an authority among the

(39:09):
Borg or not. Like, does she command the Borg? At
one point, she explicitly denies that. Like, they ask her, like,
are you the boss of the Borg? And, well, I
don't know if she denies it. She just kind of, like,
doesn't really answer the question. She says, like, I am
the Alpha and Omega, that sort of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
And Data's like, but but seriously though i'm just wondering
uh are you in command here and then like more
villain so she never the film's intentionally cagey like yeah
i think the writers here they knew they were shaking
things up a little bit and trying very hard not
to break anything in the process.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
But in the last discussion we ended up saying if
you really are trying to find a consistent interpretation of
this character, like what makes the most sense of it
while still seeming to be in line with everything else.
It's maybe that she is a spokesperson character, like that
the Borg have realized they need a kind of face

(40:02):
character that can express a relatable human type personality and
can articulate the messages of the Borg. And so they
instantiate that in this more uh, in sold seeming and,
and personality possessing speaking character, unlike the rest of their collective.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Now, obviously, uh, this is a very, very
makeup in effects dependent role. Uh, I think it's, it's
all the more impressive that Krieger, uh, gives such a
commanding performance as the board queen, because I've read that
it was like very physically uncomfortable to perform like the
costume physically uncomfortable. She's wearing all this makeup. You know,

(40:42):
some head apparatus to make it look like there are
tubes coming out of the back of her skull. She's
wearing like really thick contacts that were apparently so uncomfortable
that she could only wear them for short periods of time.
They had to like pop them in and out. And then,
of course, there's the famous sequence where like her basically
the bust of the Borg Queen with this metal spinal

(41:03):
column emerging from it is lowered into a presumably robotic
body of the Borg Queen. Very impressive sequence, but that
too involved like all sorts of like a mix of
practical and digital effects to pull it off.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah. So like the shoulders and the head just get
fixed onto the rest of the body.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Great sequence. I didn't watch this with the rest of
my family, but my kiddo was walking through the house
and I was like, okay, you got to come watch this.
You're going to love this one scene. And they got
to see the descent of the Bored Queen and they're like,
oh yeah, that's really cool. All right. There are a
couple of cameos. We'll come back to those as those occur.
Quick note on the special effects, since we're already talking

(41:44):
about them. This was an industrial light and magic picture,
so tons of credits here. John Knoll was, I believe,
the effects supervisor. Overall, I'd say everything looks really good here.
There are some digital effects in there, a lot of
practical effects, I think a little bit of CGI, but
I think it all integrates nicely. I think the stuff
where they used computer-generated effects more was the space battle stuff.

(42:08):
which even at the time period that we're dealing with,
you know, like mid-90s, that was, if you, certainly if
you had the budget and the expertise, that was a
more forgiving area to roll out your computer-based special effects.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah. And, you know, I think all that stuff looks
pretty good here. Like I didn't, nothing smelled off to me.
I just went with it. You know, it blends into
the narrative and it functions so that you don't really
think about them as effects. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
So a bunch of people worked on this. Practical effects
guy Todd Masters was one of the people working on this.
I follow him on Instagram. He has a great Instagram account.
He's always showcasing past and present practical work, a lot
of behind-the-scenes images from things like Demon Knight or episodes
of Tales from the Crypt. And he frequently shares behind-the-scenes

(42:57):
photos of the Borg Queen and how they did some
of these effects. So go check that out if you
want to see more of that. And then finally, the music.
This is a Jerry Goldsmith score. He lived 1929 through 2004. Obviously,
there are some inclusions of the previous Trek, you know,
the Star Trek theme song. But, you know, being a

(43:18):
Jerry Goldsmith score, it's going to be rousing. It's going
to be a classic affair. And, you know, I think
it's a totally awesome score. You know, no notes, really.
It's what you'd expect it to be. I believe he
scored five Trek films, including the first one in 79.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Does what it should. Really gets the blood pumping.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Fills the empty space with brass.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Like he should. Well, are you ready to talk about
the plot?

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
So the opening image of the film is that we
zoom out through an extreme close-up of Captain Picard's eye
to see Picard on a Borg ship. So he's parked
in one of those charging stations, you know, like the
Roomba charging stations, along with thousands of other Borg drones.
And our perspective keeps flying back farther and farther to

(44:16):
reveal this vast city-sized interior with metallic black machine parts
and ductwork everywhere. and these small emanations of sickly green light.
So the dominant colors are kind of black and green. Uh,
I think of that really as, as being the palette
of space horror in the nineties. Yeah. Black and green. Yeah. Uh, and,

(44:40):
This is some kind of flashback, I think, to Picard's
assimilation in the double episode Best of Both Worlds, though
it looks different here. Do you notice that the scale
of the Borg ship depicted is much grander and more
frightening than anything they could realize for the TV episodes?
And I think it's just because they got a bigger

(45:02):
budget for it.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, I've read that in general, they feel like the
filmmakers and the people that were involved in the Trek
series Felt like this was the first time they really
got to depict the Borg and their technology in a
way that felt appropriate. There were always budgetary constraints previously.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
So we zoom around the catwalks of the ship, weaving
in and out between Borg drones as they go about
their work. And then we hear a woman's voice saying, Locutus.
And then Picard all modded up with these cyborg enhancements.
He shines his laser beam pointer, his laser pointer, directly
into the camera lens. And he says, I am Locutus

(45:44):
of Borg. Resistance is futile. And then we see a
drill bit descending straight into Picard's eye. What is this, Fulci?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
I know. Yeah, it feels like we're doing another Fulci
film here. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
And then suddenly Picard seems to wake up. He is
sitting in a chair in his quarters on the Enterprise.
So it was all a dream. but it's a double
dream jump scare. He, he goes to the mirror and
looks in it and then something's moving around under his
cheek and it pops out and it's this weird nano
machine under his skin. Uh, and he starts to scream,

(46:17):
but Oh, wakes up again. That was just a dream too. Uh,
so it's like, it's like in, um, what movie was it?
We did recently. It was a John Carpenter movie that
had a double dream jump scare. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah. I mean, he, he was the master.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
It was in the mouth of madness.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, there was a really good one in In the
Mouth of Madness, but also Prince of Darkness had one
as well. So this felt like a very Carpenter moment
for sure.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
So this movie jumps right into the plot. There's not
much prologue at all. Picard wakes up and his phone
is ringing and it's a call from the Admiral of Starfleet.
Admiral says, Disturbing report from Deep Space Five. The colony
on Ivor Prime has been totally destroyed. And Picard knows

(47:02):
what's going on even before he's told. It was the Borg.
And we get some opening shots here that make space
very colorful. It's one of those movies where space itself
is beautiful. So we see the Enterprise in the foreground
with a metallic blue sheen, and it's set against a
green and rusty orange nebula. Very nice colors. So we

(47:26):
learn via a captain's log that the Borg, their most
lethal foe, have now begun a full-scale invasion of the Federation,
and Picard fears there may be no stopping them this time.
So our first scene with the rest of the crew...
is a conference in the observation lounge. Rob, is this
the room in the show where they usually retreat from

(47:47):
the bridge to discuss options and talk about plans?

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, yeah. This is where they'll go to have their
moral or strategic discussions about the problem of the episode. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
So everybody's gathered around a table for Picard to explain
their orders, and it turns out they are not being
sent to the front to defend the Federation against the
Borg attack. They are instead being sent to patrol the
neutral zone in case the Romulans decide to try anything
while the Federation is distracted dealing with the Borg. The

(48:18):
crew commanders are obviously not happy with this, but their
orders stand. And then afterwards, there's a scene of Picard
alone in his quarters listening to an opera by Berlioz.
I looked up what piece of music this is, and
it seems this is from the Berlioz opera, The Trojans,
and this particular melody. is sung by a Trojan sailor

(48:41):
out on the sea after the destruction of Troy, and
he's wondering if he will ever get to go home again.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Oh, that's a nice inclusion.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
So Picard gets into a conversation with Riker, his first officer,
and he explains that their assignment to the neutral zone
during the Borg invasion is not because Starfleet has any
doubts about the Enterprise or about its crew. It's because
they have doubts about Picard himself as captain. Because again,
he was once assimilated by the Borg, and though he

(49:12):
now seems to have been cleared of all Borg contamination
and programming, they're just not going to take any chances
in the middle of a war. To do so would
be to introduce an unstable element to a critical situation.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
And this, you know, on the whole sounds pretty reasonable.
I mean, we've already seen that Picard is still traumatized
by the whole incident. And he's having dreams about nanites
emerging from his face. So even if there is zero
chance that there are nanites inside him, like he has
been definitely been impacted by his previous contact with the

(49:49):
enemy here.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Riker, however, disagrees. He thinks that Picard's experience with the
Borg means he's the perfect commander to resist them. we
will see later that Riker is correct. Uh, but in
the middle of this conversation, they get interrupted. News comes
in that the battle has begun. Uh, so Starfleet is
fighting the invading Borg cube. Uh, it seems like the

(50:12):
Borg are invading with just one ship. I feel like
I could offer the Borg some tactical advice. Like you
spread your forces out a little bit.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
I mean, maybe that's the thing. They're way too spread out.
They're covering like an entire quadrant of the galaxy. But, um,
But at any rate, yeah, they just send in the
one ship. But one ship seems to be doing a
pretty good job. We'll see.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah, it's the Borg, so they're always superior. So we're
on the bridge of the Enterprise now, and Picard and
the others listen to the audio transmissions coming from the battle.
At first, it's just all the fleet commanders talking about
their maneuvers, but suddenly a grim, hollow, robotic voice cuts
through everything else. It is the opening and closing of

(50:54):
negotiations by the Borg. So the voice or voices, is
it one voice or many? It's actually, it sounds kind
of somewhere in between. The Borg would say, yes, you're correct.
The one and many voices say, we are the Borg.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add
your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture

(51:14):
will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. And that's it.
That's the Borg line. Unconditional surrender. No terms. In fact,
you already belong to us. It's just a matter of
hoovering you up. By this point, Starfleet knows better than
to bother talking back and trying to establish negotiations. They

(51:35):
just attack at once. But the tide of battle turns
very quickly. We can hear on the transmission that Starfleet
is being massacred by the Borg Cube's superior technology and adaptability.
And Picard is... can't just sit and listen to this.
Something is causing him great pain, and he informs the

(51:55):
bridge crew that he intends to violate their orders and
join in the fight immediately. He gives them the opportunity
to file objections. No one does. We get a close-up on,
I think, Lieutenant Hawk here. It's like, is he going
to say something? And he just clams up, doesn't say anything.
Data gets a cute robot cussing moment and says something like, Sir,

(52:17):
if I may be so bold, to hell with our orders.
And it's reminiscent of the humor that comes from Spock
cussing in Star Trek IV.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, I would have liked to have seen a scene
where Data later apologizes for his profanity here and maybe
blames his emotion chip. That'll become important later on. He
does have the emotion chip installed at this point.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah. There are actually really funny Spock cussing moments in IV.
I can't remember exactly what he says. It's like, Awkwardly phrased.
I think at one point Spock said something like, the
dam it is. So anyway, they plot a course. They
warp to the battlefield. And at this point, the Borg

(52:59):
cube is in orbit around Earth. So they're coming straight
for planet Earth. They also did this in Best of
Both Worlds, I think.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah, and it really does demonstrate the potentially hard to
script power of the Borg. Because if they can just
make a sudden and largely unstoppable approach to Earth, Anytime
they want to, like, how do you mitigate that? Like,
how do you, and then how do you write around
that threat? How do you engage it at all without it? Just,
it has to be the end times right away.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yeah. So, uh, the battle is not going well for Starfleet.
The main ships are damaged and exploding. We learned that
the Admiral's ship has already been destroyed. So there's no
one in charge. Uh, we check in on one ship
commanded by former Enterprise crew member Worf. He is now
captain of his own vessel, the Defiant. And this is

(53:45):
the ship that has Adam Scott as a bridge officer.
It's actually hilarious to imagine Adam Scott as Worf's first
officer if we were to see more of this.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
That would have been great, yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Their interactions. But the shields are gone. Weapons are gone.
Warp core is failing. And Worf, with great defiance himself, says,
perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare for
ramming speed. So he's going to ram the Borg cube.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
I think listeners brought this up when we did our
episodes on ancient triremes and so forth and ramming vessels.
I think we were reminded that there are ramming tactics
to be seen in the Star Trek franchise.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Though that was a standard and survivable attack in the
ancient Mediterranean. Here, I think this means death for the ship.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, this means nothing else to do but destroy your
ship and hopefully your enemy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
But anyway, before they can ram the Borg ship, the
Enterprise appears and beams the survivors of that ship, including Worf, aboard.
The tide of battle turns when the Enterprise arrives. Picard
says he is assuming command of the fleet, and he
orders all remaining ships to concentrate their fire on a
particular point on the Borg cube. Why this point? Data

(55:05):
mentions that he's done analysis, and the coordinates that Picard
gives don't correspond to any vital ship function. But Picard
just knows. Something about his previous experience with the Borg
tells him exactly where they should shoot. And so they
all do. And it works. It's like the Death Star's
exhaust port. The combined fire of the fleet on this

(55:27):
point sets off some kind of chain reaction and it
blows the Borg cube to smithereens. But not before the
cube ejects a smaller vessel. Is this some kind of
escape pod or something? We don't know. It's this spherical...
industrial looking object, like a ball of black pipes that
shoots out and heads directly for earth.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Yeah. We've seen the Borg cube. Now we have Borg ball, uh,
entirely new vessel. As far as, as far as I remember.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Will we ever get to the Borg pyramid? Uh, so
the enterprise sees the sphere and goes into pursuit. And
throughout all of this, uh, Picard keeps hearing whispers in
his head. It's like the distant muttering of many voices, uh,
So even though his Borg modifications are gone, for some reason,
he can still hear the chatter of the collective. Now,

(56:16):
while they're chasing the sphere, Mr. Worf comes onto the bridge.
He comes from medical, and he is recruited to assist
at tactical. So he's just back at his old post.
And there are some funny moments here between Worf and Riker.
Riker says about Worf's vessel, the Defiant, he says, like,
it's a tough little ship. And Worf is like, little?
That's great. Anyway, the chase is on. So what's up

(56:42):
with this spherical Borg ship? Well, as it goes into
lower orbit around Earth, it starts creating a kind of
time tunnel. Data says that chronometric particles are coming off
of it. So they realize the Borg ship is going
back in time to Earth's past. And as this happens,

(57:03):
the Enterprise, also entering the tunnel... sees a vision behind
them of the Earth of their time already changed. It's
an all Borg planet now. So assimilation via time travel.
So the Enterprise crew has to follow the Borg back
in time to stop this from happening. And they give

(57:23):
chase through the time tunnel.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, this is such a neat idea. And I always
wanted to know more about this all Borg planet Earth.
We see, you know, just the orbital view of it.
And we see like There's all sorts of like weird
extensions build out from the continents into the ocean or
what's left of the oceans. We'll never get to visit
this world. As far as I know, maybe maybe in
other episodes of other shows, this is like an alternate

(57:48):
timeline that is visited. But here it just it's it's,
you know, the worst case scenario. The Borg have gone
back in time and colonized the planet in the past,
assimilated the planet in the past. And this has to
be stopped, you know, by any means necessary.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
They mentioned that the atmosphere is really polluted. Only the
Borg would do that. But it's full of like carbon
monoxide and fluorine and stuff.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah. Humans would never. And that's why we end up
realizing that the Borg have taken the time tunnel back
to April 4th, 2063 in the immediate aftermath of the
Third World War.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Right. So this is hundreds of years in the past
for the crew of the Enterprise at this point. And
on the ground, we meet our Earth characters, Lily Sloan
and Zephram Cochran, who are engineers working on a new
type of propulsion system. And Cochran's been out at the
saloon getting drunk. So here I think maybe we should

(58:49):
just pause to summarize in advance what we're going to
learn about the setting and the Borg plan. So in
the Star Trek universe, we will learn that Zefram Cochran
is the historical inventor of Earth's first warp drive. And
in just a couple of days, from this date, he

(59:11):
is going to perform the first test flight for faster-than-light
travel in Earth's history. Again, this takes place while humankind
is still kind of operating on low power. They are
recovering from this brutal Third World War and The war
is over. There's a fragile peace and the survivors are
trying to rebuild amidst the devastation. So accordingly, the setting

(59:37):
on Earth where these scenes take place is it's a
missile base in Montana. And at this missile base, it
does not feel like a gleaming, futuristic Star Trek city.
It is more like a post-apocalyptic Deadwood. It's a kind
of zany frontier town with a saloon and a bunch

(59:57):
of dusty, weirdly dressed, whiskey-guzzling characters about.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of drinking on hard liquors
and rocking out to old music on whatever. I don't
even know what format this is supposed to be. It's
like some sort of jukebox. Jukebox, but we also have
some sort of tapes, right? But they don't look like
cassette tapes. They're like some future tape. Pocket rockers or something.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Oh, yeah. Later at one point, Zephyrm Cochran panics because
they almost start doing the test flight without him knowing
where his rock and roll music is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
See, if the Borg had only known, like if they
wanted to prevent first contact, which is going to be
the aim here, they needed to take out his music.
But that's not the kind of thing that the Borg
would realize. They don't really see things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
That's true. They don't understand the importance of music. They
would never come up with that plan.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Who recorded Magic Carpet Ride?

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Steppenwolf.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
They needed to take out Steppenwolf. They needed to go
back and remove that band from the musical ecology of
our culture. And that could have prevented first contact.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
So anyway, according to the lore, it's going to be
this band. first faster than light test flight that catches
the attention of a Vulcan survey ship and brings the
Vulcans to earth for the first time. Now, I think
the idea is not that the Vulcans didn't know about earth,
but that because we don't have faster than light travel

(01:01:33):
at this time, They assume we are a primitive species
and they don't believe that they should interact with us
at all. It's sort of a proto prime directive. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Yeah. Like they have they have not figured out warp travel.
They are in the middle or at the very end
of destroying themselves with nuclear war. This is, you know,
we'll keep an eye on them, but there's nothing really
to do with them right now. They're just going to
stay out of their way and hope that they make
it through. But we can't help them with that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Right. But the Zefram Cochrane test flight changes the Vulcan calculus,
and this triggers first contact, hence the title, between Earth
and an alien species, which will over the years develop
into the alliance that is the foundation of the United
Federation of Planets, the Borg's main enemy at this point

(01:02:23):
in the future. So the Borg intend to prevent first
contact and alter the course of history. So they're going
to prevent the unification of some of their most powerful enemies,
making them easier to pick off individually.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
And I guess the thing about like a mono culture,
if you can even call it that, like the Borg
is like, they, I guess they don't have to worry
about messing up the time stream because like the, the
Borg ideal, um, you know, some technological developments aside is
the same as it always was. Um, and, uh, and,
and it's revealed later, like at this point in human history,
the Borg are already out there on the other side

(01:03:01):
of the galaxy. Um, so, um, and, and presumably, you know,
less technologically advanced, but still philosophically the same Borg.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
I mean, they probably predate humankind for all we know. Um, yeah.
So they've been out there a long time and they're
eventually gonna, they think they're eventually gonna catch them all.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Uh, but, But you're right. It's a different way of
thinking about time travel because they don't have to worry
about messing up the course of history. No events matter
to them other than just, you know, assimilating.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
So anyway, the Borg, they travel back in time and
they launch an orbital attack on the missile test base
in Montana where the warp drive research is going on,
though the attack fails to kill Cochran and it fails
to destroy the prototype ship, which is called the Phoenix.
So here I think I want to transition to kind
of summarizing at a distance the rest of the plot,

(01:04:04):
and then we can come back and focus on individual
elements of interest as they strike us. So the, uh,
the enterprise manages to destroy the Borg sphere, but only
after it has attacked the Montana base from, from orbit. Uh,
so the crew beam down to the surface disguised as locals.

(01:04:24):
I think they say like, give us 21st century clothing.
And that clothing is pretty funny. Uh, they beam down
in disguise to try to check out what happened and
make sure that the warp drive test can still take
place on schedule. Otherwise, history is going to be fundamentally altered.
Zephram's assistant, Lily Sloan, is exposed to radiation during an

(01:04:47):
incident at the test base. And Dr. Crusher has to
beam her back up to the Enterprise for treatment. And
at this point, the Enterprise crew split up into kind
of the A plot and the B plot of the movie.
So Riker, Geordi LaForge, and Deanna Troi stay down on
Earth with Zephram Cochran. to make sure that the test

(01:05:08):
flight happens on time, and there is a lot of
chaperoning of Cochran. He is not too keen to learn
about his own future reputation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Yeah, and they have some fun with this. He's like,
I was in it for the ladies. I wasn't in
it for the fame. He literally makes a run for
it at one point. So it's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
In fact, maybe we can go ahead and talk about
this for a minute. There's a whole... thing here with
the crew members that are on earth like fanboying out
yeah from cochran they're like this this kind of awkward
guy comes up and wants his autograph i think.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Yeah is it is it jordy is like my high
school was named after.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
You and cochran just seems disgusted by this and there's
a big theme of a gap between the myth of
zephyrm cochran and the reality He's remembered by the crew
of the Enterprise as a selfless scientist driven by curiosity
and goodwill, whose invention ushered in an unprecedented era of peace, discovery,

(01:06:10):
and cooperation. And it did do that. His invention was
important in all those positive ways, but it was an accident.
The real Zephyrm Cochran, at least as he sees himself,
is a greedy, selfish man who hopes to get rich
by inventing a new propulsion system. What he wants is

(01:06:31):
earthly pleasures. He wants sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
quite literally.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
And he described like he's afraid all the time and
drunk half the time. And so he's not like the brave,
selfless explorer that everyone in the future seems to think
he is or remember him as.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Though it's also funny because there's a part where the
crew members quote back some words of wisdom to him,
and he discovers they're his own words, but in the future.
So there is maybe a suggestion that after first contact
happens that Cochran himself kind of matures, even though he's

(01:07:09):
not like a young man at this point. He's already
an older man, but he still, I guess, has space
to change and become a different kind of man, maybe
because of what he did. So that's what's going on
down on Earth. Meanwhile, Picard, Data, Worf, and Crusher return
to the Enterprise where a new menace is going to

(01:07:30):
reveal itself. Four, we discover the Borg were not all
destroyed on the sphere. They are alive on the Enterprise itself.
I like the way they introduce this. They do it slowly,
and I think it's very cool. There are just a
couple of lines here and there about strange temperature readings

(01:07:50):
in the lower decks, and power fluctuations are noted. At first,
this does not attract major attention, but then it becomes clear.
We have a Borg infestation on the ship, and they
are gradually taking over more and more of the ship,
assimilating crew members, turning them into Borg, and commandeering the
ship's technology for their own purposes. Now, what are those purposes?

(01:08:14):
It seems they've got a couple of plans. One I
think is more implicit is they're just trying to take
over the enterprise and there they can use it to
start assimilating the earth. But they've got another plan, which
is to override the function of the ship's navigational deflector
beam to send a message to Borg space in 2063

(01:08:35):
saying like, Hey, There's a really important currently defenseless planet
right here. Come get them before they can technologically mature.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Which is, again, a fascinating plot point because like any
non-Borg civilization, like that sort of call would be highly
suspicious and also would be the kind of thing where
it's like, okay like future say future romulans are meeting
past romulans um avoiding the pitfalls of time travel and
paradox uh like they probably wouldn't see eye to eye

(01:09:06):
on this like the the past romulans would probably view
future romulans as an enemy and perhaps rightfully so And perhaps,
you know, vice versa as well. But for the Borg, again,
this monoculture of the Borg based on this core philosophy of,
you know, the ideal blending of machine and flesh, like
it's as good in the past as it was in
the future, baby. So like they're just going to heed

(01:09:28):
the call and whatever paradoxes and changes take place, they're
just going to roll through those and assume that the
philosophy remains solid and stable. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
So after the Borg colony in the Lower Decks is discovered,
the movie becomes pretty action-packed. I'm not going to detail
all the action scenes beat by beat, but to mention
a few things. Much like we've seen before, there's that
really creepy detail that the Borg usually ignore humans walking
past them until the humans initiate violence. So if you're

(01:10:03):
not causing trouble yet, you're not even worth their attention.
They don't bother with you. Mm-hmm. Uh, so Picard and
data lead an assault on the Borg hive. Uh, and
this doesn't go that well. They're eventually overwhelmed and pushed
back during this assault. There's a moment where data is
expressing fear. And then Picard's like, maybe you should turn

(01:10:24):
off your emotion chip.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
And he's like done.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Yeah. Oh yeah. And then he's just steely, but can
you fill us in on the emotion chip? Where does
that come from in the show?

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
That, um, it's already, we, We touched on this briefly
in our Borg episodes, but this is something that Lore
gives him, I believe. His evil brother, Lore, is like,
I'm going to help you become more human, brother. Here
is an emotion chip that will give you human emotions.
But I believe Data remains, certainly in those episodes, he

(01:10:55):
was uncertain about the promises and dangers of this technology.
Does he really want to become more human? Does he
really want to have emotions? And I think he is
persuaded and sees the value in human emotions and wants
to use them and wants to engage them. But as
we see here, can still turn those off when they

(01:11:15):
get in the way. And I think it's Picard that
has the line, like, I envy you sometimes that you
can do something like this because I can't just turn
it off.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
That's right. Yeah, I can't. But and it connects also
to this. thing that becomes a theme in the episode,
which is that data does at some level really desire
to be human, that that's what he wants more than anything,
I guess, especially when the emotion chip is turned on.
That's his, that's his gut level desire. Yeah. And so, uh, yeah, the,

(01:11:45):
so there's this assault happens, but the crew are pushed back.
Many crew members are assimilated. Data is captured by the Borg.
And then meanwhile, he gets separated from Picard and Picard
crosses paths with Lily Sloan, the engineer from Earth who
was brought up to the Enterprise to cure her radiation poisoning. Again,

(01:12:06):
she is going to be the fish out of water
on the ship. And she takes she takes a lot
of convincing that what's going on is real. I think
initially she thinks it's some kind of elaborate hoax by
their contemporary enemies on Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Yeah, it's a lot to take in. So she is
doubtful at first.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
Yeah. But Picard like shows her, you know, that they're
in orbit and demonstrates a force field and all this
technology they don't have yet. So eventually she starts accepting
the reality of the situation. There's this set piece we
mentioned earlier where Picard and Sloane are chased by Borg
and they evade them using a holodeck virtual novel as

(01:12:45):
a distraction. So Picard goes in, he's like, turn it on,
you know, the name of the novel, chapter 13 or something.
And suddenly we're in a swanky nightclub on Earth in
the 1930s. And it's a gangster detective story involving some
character with a metal nose. He's called Nicky the Nose
or something. And Rob, do you know from the show

(01:13:08):
more about, is there consistency in how the visual novels work?
Is it like a video game that you play fully embodied?

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Yeah. It's just an immersive virtual world that may have
some degree of narrative or might be like kind of
a sandbox world. So yeah, this is the kind of thing,
you'd have whole episodes that of course would involve the holodeck.
So this was fun. I didn't expect this to have
any holodeck in it. And I honestly didn't remember this
scene from when I saw it the first time. So

(01:13:38):
it's pretty fun. They could have easily been lost in
here the whole episode. We get a fun cameo in
here because the maitre d' at the holodeck nightclub is
played by Ethan Phillips, born 1955. Great American actor, character actor,
and comedic actor. But he plays, he played Neelix on
Star Trek Voyager. So we get a little cameo from

(01:13:59):
a Star Trek actor here. There's also a scene earlier
where they end up, the Borg are chasing their characters
through medical. And we get the holographic doctor from Voyager
played by Robert Picardo, born 1953.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
So Neelix, Crusher is trying to buy time to get
everybody out of medical. They're escaping into a duct while
the Borg are breaking down the door. And she turns
on the holographic doctor and is like, you know, buy
us time. The hologram doesn't want to do it. But
when the Borg come in, we don't even see them.
We just hear somebody break through the door and he's like, uh,

(01:14:34):
you appear to be suffering from skin irritation from those implants.
What could I prescribe you a cream?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
It's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
And the nice Voyager cameo here and Picardo is always
a lot of fun, whether he's playing a creepy, um,
werewolf and Joe Dante's the howling or marrying a lady
gremlin in Joe Dante's gremlins too. Uh, so yeah, always
fun to see him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
So anyway, uh, Yeah. So they're on the holodeck for
the scene. Lily Sloan and Picard are, and I think
Picard picked this particular chapter because he knows he can
get a Tommy gun, a hologram Tommy gun, and he
uses it to kill the Borg. And I was like,
what holodeck simulations of weapons would be actually lethal? And

(01:15:21):
Sloan has the same question. And Picard says, if you
disable the safety protocols, yes, a holographic gun will actually kill.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
I like to think that Picard being traumatized by the
Borg and also being perhaps a bit cagey and paranoid
about them just had this written into all of his
holodeck scenarios. Like lethal violence is permitted, but only against Borg. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
Uh, yeah. When does he turn off the safety protocols?
I guess maybe he does say that I didn't know
this earlier. Uh, but also in this sequence, Lily Sloan
observes that Picard is acting obsessed with destroying the Borg
to the exclusion of other concerns. Uh, and I think
familiar audience members will note sort of against his normal

(01:16:11):
humanistic personality. So, for example, she sees Picard coldly digging
modules out of dead Borg, really without showing any honor
to the fact that this was once one of his
crew members. He's just kind of like, ah, this was
Ensign Lynch, and just kind of moves on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Is this the one, too, that gets taken by the Borg,
infected by the Borg? Because in this movie, I think
this movie introduces the idea that the Borg can essentially
touch you. And inject nanobots into your bloodstream that start, like,
assimilating you in real time.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
And so he sees this happening to one of the
crew members. And the crew member's like, help me. And
Picard's like, there's no helping him. And, like, just phasers
him to death. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
That happens also. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
And she corners him on this at some point as well. Like, saying, like,
you didn't even try to help that guy. Like, I
thought you were, you know, the great captain.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
But you didn't try to help him at all. What
does that tell me about you?

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
And this will later come to a head, not quite yet,
but in a minute, when Sloane has to be the
character to talk some sense into Picard to accuse him
of being Captain Ahab. So it's like, who's the con now? Uh, but, uh,
there is another action set piece that I thought was
pretty cool where Picard, Worf and Lieutenant Hawk have to

(01:17:31):
go out and do a spacewalk. I remember this very
much from the first time I saw the movie. So
they go out on the surface of the ship and
then you see like, because you know, perspective doesn't, uh,
up and down matter in space, it inverts and they're
walking on the underside of the ship. And, uh, they
are going out there to stop some Borg from repurpose

(01:17:52):
repurposing one of the ship's components to send that call
for reinforcements. Cause remember they're trying to get in contact
with the Borg of this time to come to earth. Uh,
and this turns into a great action scene. It involves
like it's an unusual action scene because it's in microgravity.
So it involves these big lumbering, slow movements with big windups.

(01:18:15):
but it still, I think it works pretty good. The
tension is high.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Yeah. And of course we get this great scene with
Lieutenant Hawk. You know, he's a red shirt. We know
he's doomed. One of the Borg like takes him out,
like throws him out of view, like sort of over
the side. And we think, oh no, he's dead. But
then he comes back. But then we get this moment
where he turns his head and we see, oh, inside
of the space suit, half of his face has already

(01:18:39):
been assimilated by the Borg. He has like, you know,
nanites running around underneath his skin and his blood vessels,
he has been turned. And it's a nice horror moment
for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
Yeah so he gets assimilated but Worf and Picard succeed
in their mission out here and they survive.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Yeah Worf has to like repair his suit in real
time he's decompressing so he uses like some Borg tubes
attached to a hand of a Borg that he sliced
off uses that to tie things back together.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
Nice So when is Picard's moment of reckoning about being
an Ahab himself? This happens after Worf suggests a plan.
I think it comes from Worf. He says, we can
defeat the Borg if we just evacuate the crew and
set the ship to self-destruct. Let's just destroy the Enterprise

(01:19:28):
and we can wipe them out that way. And at first,
Picard lashes out and says, no, that is running away
from battle. We've got to meet them. And he calls
Worf a coward. Uh, Worf does not take this well.
He says, if you were anyone else, I'd kill you
where you stand. Um, but, uh, Picard goes back to
his quarters and again, it is Lily Sloan, the character

(01:19:50):
from the 21st century who is able to make Picard
see reason. She does so by pointing out that he
is behaving like Captain Ahab.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
It is interesting how, yes, she is outside of the
chain of command. It's even, it's mentioned like everyone else
is used to falling in line with Picard's judgments and
even his crazy plans. But she is not part of
this command structure. And she's from a culture where command
structures have seemingly just they're all gone. Like they're in
the aftermath of a devastating global war. And all the

(01:20:21):
connections that are left are based on sort of cooperation
and friendship.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
That's a good thing to point out about the chain
of command. I didn't really think about it that way.
And how she being an outsider has a kind of
authority that like the actual crew are not really free
to exercise that. So, yeah, there's definitely that aspect. But
I like how it seems like something about the invocation

(01:20:46):
of the literature actually breaks through as well because she
gets Picard quoting Moby Dick. He says, I have the
line written down. He says, and he piled upon the
white whale's hump the sum of all the rage and
health felt by his whole race. If his chest had
been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it. Uh,

(01:21:06):
so he's, he's quoting, you know, the, the hate and
the rage coming from, from Ahab toward this whale. Uh,
but of course he remembers the end of the story,
which is that that rage destroys everyone. It destroys him.
It destroys his crew and his whole ship. Um, and, uh,
Sloane says, I guess he didn't know when to quit.
So Picard realizes he is being unreasonable and his judgment

(01:21:30):
is not clear. It is clouded by emotion. So he
changes his mind. He says, yes, let's go with Worf's plan.
Evacuate the crew, destroy the ship. That makes the most sense.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
Yeah, and I like the little moment where, well, I'm
probably getting ahead of myself here, but he acts like
we're all going to evacuate. But then at the last minute,
it becomes clear, actually, he's not going to evacuate. He's
going to stay behind to try and save Data and
defeat the Borg queen. But he tells the others, he's like,
what you need to do is just go down first. I,

(01:22:01):
you know, I'm going to try and stop this. I
probably can't be prepared to just find a quiet corner
of North America and just settle down there and try
not to like screw up the timeline in a, uh, which, um,
you know, it's, it's, I don't know. It was kind
of like a haunting moment where you're imagining this might
be the case. Like imagine like the crew of the
enterprise just vanishes into, um, into their past and our, um,

(01:22:24):
you know, not too distant.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
Future hiding out in the 21st century for the rest
of their lives.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
So yeah, everybody else gets in the escape pods. Picard
personally stays behind to rescue Data. What's been going on
with Data this whole time? It's been getting weird. Yeah,
it's been getting weird. Just some weird stuff going on
with the Borg Queen. So we meet the Borg Queen
after Data is captured. I think it's in the first
scene where he wakes up after being captured. It lowers

(01:22:59):
her body or her upper body into her lower body.
And she starts talking to him. We've already talked about
some of the villain monologues she gives. He's trying to
understand what she is, what her role is within the Borg.
She's cagey about that. She's like, you know, I bring
order to chaos. I am the Alpha and the Omega.
Not a lot of clear answers. But the Borg Queen

(01:23:23):
has been steadily ratcheting up the tension on Data by
offering him temptations. Because again, what Data really wants more
than anything is to be human, or at least to
be more like a real human. I think this does
tie into a bunch of previous plot lines on The
Next Generation. But of course, he can never really be

(01:23:45):
human as he is until now.

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
There's a great scene earlier when they find the Phoenix,
the historic ICBM-turned-warp spaceship. where he and Picard have a
moment where Picard touches it. I think it's Picard in
this scene. Touches the spaceship with his bare hand, and
Data's like, I don't understand, I'll try it. And Picard explains, like,

(01:24:09):
it's about the sense of touch. Like, I'm touching with
my hand, and it makes the interaction feel more memorable.
And of course, Data has no flesh. He can't actually
have the same experience, apparently.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
Well, and I think it's also a take on the
classic philosophical thought experiment of where... Uh, I don't remember the,
I think it was character named Mary who they say,
you know, she is a scientist who specializes in the
physics of color. And so she understands everything about wavelengths
of light and, you know, the science of, uh, of

(01:24:41):
electromagnetic radiation and how color works and the visual processing
centers on the brain. But she herself is colorblind and
cannot see color. And so one day she suddenly is
able to see color. And so the question is, does
she learn anything by being able to have the sensory
experience of color, even though it doesn't change anything about

(01:25:04):
what she knew about the workings of color? And so
I think there's a similar thing going on in this scene.
Data is like, do you learn something by touching the ship?
And Picard says, yes, I do. And data can't quite
figure out what that is, is the thing that's missing
for him. It's like, he doesn't really know anything else
by touching it that he couldn't figure out otherwise. And

(01:25:27):
that difference is something he wants to rectify. I think
he wants to know what it's like to have the
sensation that you have a new understanding just by, by contact,
by experience.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
So his great desire is this enhanced human comprehension. The
Borg side of this is they just want, they need
his encryption data. They need to get to his encryption
data in order to break, hack the rest of the ship.
But as she says, we're willing to help your dreams
come true to make ours come true. And so that's

(01:25:58):
where a lot of this ends up coming. And that's
one of the reasons, the plot reason why she's like,
let's see what we can do to make you more
human data. Let's see how you respond to it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Exactly. So what the Borg queen presents data with is
the option of a sort of reverse Borg assimilation. Usually
we see organic beings assimilated by getting captured and then
modified with a bunch of inorganic technology grafted onto them.
What the Borg queen does to Data is she starts

(01:26:27):
grafting skin onto him, gradually replacing his machine parts with
organic parts. And there's a great scene where she like
blows on his new skin and gives him goosebumps.

Speaker 2 (01:26:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:40):
This also turns into explicit sexual appeals. The Borg queen
is into Data, and I think she's kissing him, isn't she? Yeah, yeah.
But what she really wants, I think, this seems to
be a manipulation tactic, because what she really wants is
for Data to turn over the encryption codes to the
ship's computer and give full control of the Enterprise to

(01:27:03):
the Borg. And she can give him real incarnate humanity
in exchange for this. So will he do it? This
is the part that's the last temptation of Data.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
It is also interesting from the Borg perspective because when
she first encounters Data, she even mentions that he's essentially
an abomination to them. He's not the ultimate. He's just
a flawed machine made by un-augmented flesh beings. And as
we've been saying, the Borg's ideal is this perfect unity
of machine and flesh. And Data is no flesh. He's

(01:27:35):
all machine. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
Yeah. So she doesn't like it, which is funny because
she's kissing on him and everything. It makes it even
clearer that I think she's trying to manipulate him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
Though at this point, he does have a little bit
of flesh on him. So maybe, you know, meeting him halfway.

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):
So anyway, this process has really moved on by the
time Picard comes to rescue Data at the climax. So
he's got like half of a real Brent Spiner face now.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
Which we're not used to seeing on the show. Like
in The Next Generation, he's always got the synthetic flesh.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
Yeah, yeah, the pale synthetic flesh, the yellow eyes. And yeah,
here he's like a patchwork man already. He's got these
patches of like living flesh through which he can feel.
Like there's that scene where he tries to escape and
he gets slashed on the skin and that's when he stops.
He's like he's felt physical flesh pain for the first
time and it stops his rebellion like in its tracks.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
Now, in this final showdown, for a while, you think
that Data has gone over to the dark side. He
seems to unlock the ship's computer for the board.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
Queen.

Speaker 3 (01:28:41):
Meanwhile, the Phoenix test flight is happening, and as the
craft is launching through space, it's about to activate the
warp core. Data sends torpedoes at the craft, or seemingly
at the craft. I think Riker and Geordi are on board.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
And it looks really dark for a second there, but
it's a double cross. The torpedoes intentionally miss the ship
and then data smashes open this huge vat of coolant
gas that we learn earlier in the story dissolves organic material.
So Picard is able to climb out of the way
to safety. He's like climbing up on some board cables

(01:29:19):
that are hanging from the ceiling. And all the Borg
are destroyed because it melts their fleshly components. Only the
hollow mechanical parts are left.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
So we get a monster villain death scene for Borg
Queen where all of her fleshy parts just melt away
and leaves behind just nothing but twitching mechanisms.

Speaker 3 (01:29:38):
And Data's new skin is gone.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
That's right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:29:41):
So Data saved the day. We always knew we could
count on him. He's so dependable. So history goes off
the way it's supposed to. Cochran makes a warp flight.
And then later back on earth, we see this dramatic
landing of an alien ship where a Vulcan ambassador comes
out to greet the earthlings. And he does the, you know,
he does the hand symbol of long and prosper. He

(01:30:03):
comes to learn their ways. I think pretty quickly Cochran
has the Vulcans in the saloon slamming whiskey and listening
to rock and roll. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
Yeah. Yeah, classic dad rock becomes like the first cultural
gift that Earthlings give to the Vulcans.

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
Yeah, perfect. And then, of course, the Enterprise crew, they
don't have to live out the rest of their days
hiding in the 21st century. They can return to their
own century, which they do. And so they do, and
that's the end of the story.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Yeah, yeah, pretty fun, I have to say. I think
it holds up really well. Great action, great intrigue. You know,
it doesn't dabble with the thought-provoking concepts in the same
way that like a two-part episode of the original Star
Trek series would. But I think those elements are still there.
You know, these questions about some of the anxieties about

(01:30:54):
technology and also about, you know, certainly the last temptation
of data being a prime area for consideration here where
he even admits to Picard that like he was tempted. uh,
for what is however many seconds, which 0.145 seconds. Yeah.
Which he explains that for an Android with his processing speed,

(01:31:14):
that's like an eternity. Like that's a, a long deliberation
on his part. But then of course he decides to
remain true to his friends and to his crew and
ultimately to humanity.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
Which makes him more human.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
Yeah, that's right. He made the most human choice, even
if he gave up the chance to become more flesh, uh, So, yeah, fascinating.
I wonder if anyone has, surely someone has considered doing
some sort of alt timeline where you have, you know,
fully integrated Borg data who is now, now has the appropriate,
the Borg appropriate proportions of flesh and machine.

Speaker 3 (01:31:49):
Some alt Borg lore. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
So, yeah, this is a really fun one. I thought
it held up. I don't know. There's probably a number
of other things to discuss here about the way the
Borg are presented or about the time paradox aspect of it.
I don't know. It kind of, Pays not to go
too far down the time paradox avenue with a film
like this. But, you know, it ends up being pretty fun.
It's a great cyborg movie. It's a great time travel movie.

(01:32:15):
It's a great Star Trek movie.

Speaker 3 (01:32:16):
Five out of five centibites.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
There you go. All right. Well, I guess we're done
with this episode, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there. We'd love to hear from other folks who
encountered this movie in the wild back in the day.
Did you encounter it as a Star Trek fan? Did
you encounter it not knowing anything about Star Trek? We'd
love to hear more about that. And just in general,
your thoughts about the Borg, about some of the concepts

(01:32:40):
that are bound up in this particular movie. All of
it is fair game. And if you haven't listened to
our core episodes about the Borg, dive into those. You're
going to get more into science and culture and even
a little mythology in those. So I highly recommend it.
Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
with core episodes in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But on Fridays, we

(01:33:03):
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you are
on Letterboxd.com, look us up. Our username there is Weird House.
On other social medias, we're just going to be under
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Look us up there. Follow
us on Instagram. It's another good way to keep up
with what we're doing and what sort of topics we're
putting out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:21):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Weirdhouse Cinema: Star Trek - First Contact

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