While you were talking about the Borg being the stain on Picard's record and why Enterprise got side lined at the start, I couldn't help but the think of the scene in 'Family' immediately after 'Best of Both Worlds' where he literally breaks down in front of his brother and cries "I wasn't good enough. I wasn't strong enough." It's always been one of my favourite Picard scenes and chokes me up to this day.
This is perhaps the best Trek movie in my opinion, and it was an absolute blast to watch again. Picard's struggle against the Borg, as well as the gradual overcoming of his own trauma, has always been one of my favorite aspects of the show as a whole, not just of TNG. The Borg are arguably at their most terrifying here (with Best of Both Worlds being a very close second, if not a tie), and it's an utter shame that most of DS9 and Voyager's Borg episodes didn't learn from this film and keep that sort of quality going.
I'd argue that some scenes in Q Who would also be in that consideration, especially when Enterprise-D is being chased by the Cube, and there's nothing they can do to slow it down.
41:50 - I imagine they stopped at deck 11 because they only had a limited number of drones. Everyone had been evacuated to other decks. So presumably they couldn't keep risking drone causalities taking other decks. They assessed it was more efficient to focus on deflector control. That's my take on it.
I for one like your digressions. They always seem to add/flesh out what you're talking about, or just give some nice additional info. Also, longer videos are better!
I... don't remember the movie that much, but I was always (even while watching it) under the impression that Geordi "matching chronaton particles with the borg sphere" was to prevent the mass of enterprise collapsing the time tunnel, and just enable it to go through, it was not a timetravel device itself, it just allowed them to piggyback on the borg one. The main issue with timetravel still stays, of course,
This movie was my first exposure to the new generation of Star Trek, I had never before seen Picard, and I thought he was really cool the first time. I loved this movie, though I didn't understand much of it, it was still a fun thing to watch as a kid.
I love this backdrop and how it combines with your voice. Thanks for all the great videos. Very long time video watcher and sometimes jump on your twitch. You've helped me with your videos though alot of tough times in my life.
One cool thing about the time travel plot (for me anyway) was the fact that with the rich backstory of star fleet they were able to do something rather unique. The period they travel to is the past for the characters, but the future for us viewers. Interesting dynamic that I don't remember being explored elsewhere.
So I have to say this: I never new anything much about Roddenberry until you talked about his flaws etc. After that point, I always imagined him looking like Cochrane. Just a thought to the whole 'resemblance to Roddenberry' thing.
With all the talk of cinematic universes nowadays its easy to forget that Star Trek pioneered the idea. TNG, DS9, Voyager and the films are all connected with characters and ships crossing over. It's quite impressive really
They didn't pioneer it. TOHO did that in the 1968 with Destroy All Monsters. And before them, it was Universal Pictures with Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman in 1943.
What I find interesting is that the Queen temps Data at first with information, as you point out, and then sensation. I believe that even though it looks different it is in fact the same. Data is an artificial life form and because of that, even when he experiences sensation...something he has never experienced before, he will still process it as information. It is new "data" to him but is still data or information because of how his physical brain works. The similarity I find is to Martin Cadin's character of Steve Austin (the six million dollar man). In the series, it very rarely deals with the impact that Austin does not actually feel in his arm or legs. When they are damaged he reacts but for the most part, he is "divorced" from his artificial parts. In the book the mentioned that, in the beginning when he starts to get used to the artificial parts, he damages his foot when he loses his temper and wrecks his toes. The Rudy Wells character asks him if he "feels" anything and at first he responds with a negative but then realizes he is "feeling" something which is described as a type of feedback from his mechanical parts. What do you think? Also, I would be interested if you have done any of these ruminations on either the animated Gargoyles or Avatar the last airbender.
I for one enjoy your ramblings. Part of the reason I watch your stuff. Your personality. You don't always finish your thought though, but you tend to finish most of it.
Another great rumination. Amongst other things, I loved how you ended there by mentioning Insurrection - Oh dear :P I thought this was one of Star Trek TNG's finest movies and bringing the Borg in was such a great idea, as well as Picard's dark struggle with them. Call me Ishmael.
What if the desk-rattling music was an attempt to block out the voices? Picard has demonstrated that he can hear the Borg. If he could hear them, it might be that he has no control over it and is hearing the ongoing battles against th e cube!
Re: time travel as plan B and why couldn't cube have just gone back anytime, my understanding was that with the cube's proximity to Earth and access to new knowledge the Borg did not have the knowledge of early earth history to pinpoint the time/place of first contact.
I think the reason Worf had a destruct code is because it needed so many command level officers so Picard issued the codes to wharf so they can distract that or if your command level officer you have the authority for destruct code on any ship
Arch, you mentioned the "line must be drawn here" scene. I watch this recently, and I think that Picard is also experiencing the violating and traumatic aspects of his assimilation. It's very much a gaslighting experience, to put the pieces all together, and have the Borg tell Picard, "You will not ever beat us, and without us you are nothing, but a flawed, weak man that isn't good enough. Here are all the examples: Q Who, and The Best of Both Worlds, and Family, and now your new ship, the Enterprise-E and it's crew, is all but conquered, and we will do the same to snuff out your very existence: Earth. You would do well to join us instead of moping in disgrace." That's a similar experience to what many violations and traumatic experiences portray.
Like many people I thought The Queen was a bad addition to The Borg. My head cannon now reconciles it thus: The Queen is no different than Locutus or even Seven-Of-Nine-Tertiary-Adjunct-To-Unimatrix 01. As we've seen from those two examples The Collective can download a specific individual personality to deal with unique situations, and those personalities are fit to the psychology of the target. So in Data's case The Collective realized it needed to assimilate Data, he was a unique piece of technology so would require a unique assimilation. The Collective searched its files and downloaded a personality named The Queen. This "Queen" is as much a queen, as the android Bishop from Aliens was a clergy man. It's a name not neccesarily a true title of power. When The Borg encountered Voyager in the Delta Quadrant that was also deemed a unique situation. So in order the Collectvie downloaded a human based drone to deal with them. When that drone was defeated and stolen from The Collective it downloaded The Queen because that personality had experience dealing with humans.
this movie is so easily my fave star trek movie. its absolutely perfect to me. also, i thought using the com channel scene to sort of have us do the visual effects in our own mind was both an economical choice and very smart... also the battle of sector 001 has always been my fav sci fi battle by far, theres something about the single monolithic cube and all the little ships flying around it... very cool
The obvious question is why the Borg didn't travel back in time first and then go to Sector 001. They could have assimilated Earth with, essentially, no opposition at all. They wouldn't have had the Enterprise to signal the Collective but that doesn't really matter. There's no threat or urgency for them at that point. They can take their time. Melee combat with the Borg is a terrible idea. They are stronger and tougher than a human. All they have to do is to get a hand on you to inject nanites and then you are screwed. It's only viable at all for someone who is very strong and skilled like Worf and even then it's risky. I interpreted the "no money" thing as meaning that they don't have hard currency. They don't have cash. It's all electronic. For a Trek RPG I ran ages ago, I decided that the Federation had two kinds of currency. The first I call replicator credits. They are used for the replicators and digital data that can be easily replicated like recordings of performances. Everyone gets an allowance of replicator credits that is more than enough to supply all of their needs. Then there are Federation credits. These are what people get as wages. They are used for things that are available in limited supplies like real food, hand-made items or seats at a live performance. This is the only kind of currency races like the Ferengi will accept because it matches their idea of what currency is and it can be exchanged for stuff that can't be replicated like latinum.
One of my all-time favorite movies. I didn't know the title underwent an alteration during production, though I think, given First Contact's thematic significance, its current title is great. I also love this movie's pacing, both cinematically and tonally; it never encroaches upon any uncomfortable territories, but neither is it as light as The Voyage Home. The balance the film achieves is really commendable, in my opinion, which lends itself to just how fun the movie is. I also love the comparison between the experiences of Data, Picard, and Cochran, and how the writers were able to utilize the shoe-horned time travel plot successfully. I was really looking forward to this Rumination, considering my love of this movie, and I think you did it justice.
I personally liked the borg queen, but at the same time, I don't really like either of her interpretations - in the movie nor in the book (as you described, I haven't read the book). I would much more like a queen which was... basically almost just a channeling of the collective into one being, semi-AI with behavioral modifications specifically designed for her to ... "fool" humans into thinking she's an individual, while in reality, it's just the whole collective as always, only with a different face and with the ability to manipulate psychologically. Basically just a(nother) weapon designed by the collective as a result, as an adaptation, of encountering humans and realizing how important psychology and "politics" is for them.
Your analysis is fantastic as always! Patrick Stewart's performance in this film moves me to the core of my being. When you add the context that his father, Alfred Stewart was a World War 2 veteran who suffered from PTSD or, as it was then called, "shellshock" , never received any treatment (this was mid-20th century, remember!) and ended up taking out his rage against his poor wife Gladys ,Patricks mother, through domestic violence, it becomes even more overwhelming, unbearable almost. Support DV victims. Support veterans. Any way you can. Please. Thank you.
Mike Stoklasa said it was well-directed action movie, but the script was dumb and it betrayed characters that were established in the show, most notably Picard.
First off, love these ruminations that you have. They have this feel of both going behind the scenes and speculating about a motive that anyone, in lore or out, could have or might have. Now...to possibly argue a point, beginning at 30:35 about the sphere not doing damage to the shanty town, in an 'in-universe' point of view the case could be made that if the Enterprise-E had sensor problems then The Borg Sphere would have the same problem as well. This is both a theory and a speculation of my own: The time travel 'thingymabob' (because I have no idea how they did it either) caused a overload on the shield systems and sensors. The Borg would have to fire torpedoes manually. Speculation would have, say, enough radiation of a specific type to provide a possible fishbowl effect of distorting the picture of the manual targeting sensor and The Borg, possibly, know that Picard and the Enterprise-E are right behind them making their shots miss simply due to guessing based on trying to compensate for the fishbowl effect. Now this is, again, a guess based on my understanding of how targeting sensors and Borg Weaponry work.
You've mentioned Star Trek: The Return (the one about the ressurection of Kirk) a few times; one interesting juxtaposition for me between First Contact and the Return is how Starfleet treats Picard when the Borg are involved, and yet in both cases, they're wrong. Here, they sideline the best ship with the most experienced anti-Borg crew in the fleet; in Shater's novel, they send Picard, a nearly 70-year-old man, with only Dr. Crusher and a handful of "marines" on a commando raid of a Borg outpost.
In tyranid terms the queen is like a tyranid that acts as a conduit for the synapse even though it's still one of many it helps bind them all together as one mind one purpose
1:17:00 but WHY did she want to do that to Picard? Oh... wait... Because same as for him, he always lost to borg (until now), for her... he always ESCAPED the borg... Hmmm...
I really enjoyed this movie. Plus I do like the new Enterprise. It did look like the kind of ship you'd use for battle. It's a badass new ship. This rumination just reminds me so much I can't wait for those TNG ruminations. I can't wait for it. Such a good series. This movie really had a lot of things I'd love to see in a Star Trek film. The TNG crew and the Borg. Good times. And yeah, I've wondered about not doing more melee against the Borg since it's often worked...but last prime example was Voyager so...yeah. Really it's probably only viable for extremely strong races like Klingons or Androids like Data.
I kind of think that the concept of an "unstable element" is bad writing. I think that Braga and Moore could have explained that better. The idea that Starfleet Command would sideline Picard because he was captured and assimilated into the Collective has a few methods of explaining. In keeping with what you're saying, Picard has this lurking insatiable need for revenge, not just because of what the Borg did to him, but because he has always lost to them. It could lead Starfleet to assume that Picard would view this as a personal vendetta and not a chance to save Earth, and that he could act irrationally and endanger more lives than necessary if allowed to take part in the fighting. Or you could make the argument that the Borg would see Picard as an exploitable weakness or asset, which Starfleet wanted no part of, because of experience at Wolf 359. I may be speculating, but I just want to point that out. Also, I have a theory about the creation of the Borg Queen. If memory serves, the reintroduction of Hugh into the Collective started a civil war, and many were left leaderless. Some of them were shanghaied into the service of Lore, Data's brother. The argument could be made that the concept of a single leader who spoke for the Collective and brought "order to chaos" within the Borg after all of their disarray would be an efficient way to unite the Collective in ways they had once lost. Picard goes even further back than that, so the Borg Queen could have filled a much less important role during Best Of Both Worlds time frame, but still pushed for the idea of having a human counterpart that could build a bridge between humanity and the Borg. Because of the civil war, her role became even more important as the Collective adapted as a species. We also saw that adaptation in Voyager with Seven of Nine, when she was chosen to work with Janeway and Tuvok, as a representative of the Borg. The Queen also directs the Borg strategically, when before they only operated tactically.
First off, I really liked your video. Greatly enjoyed it. I now find myself taking notes on your video for things to post here. First off, I think we all missed out due to the fact that this 'had' to be a time travel movie. A dark movie about enduring, not defeating the borg, would have been amazing. It's still a good film, but it could have been better. As for the reason why they don't immediately ignore orders. I think that stems from the fact that this was not wolf 359, they did not call in every single ship and throw it against the enemy in the hopes that it would be enough. They actually assembled a task force with new ships, new weapons, new tactics, all of them focused against the borg. They might have well felt that the task force was up to the challenge. It'd suck not to be able to take part in it. But if you feel the federation task force will win anyway, and you go there, you're throwing away your career for no reason. Only when they hear the battle on that subspace message are they reminded of what the borg truly are, how outclassed they are by them. And then they realize that careers don't matter, it's a matter of survival here. That's how I see it anyway. I really like your theory about the borg sphere missing on purpose, because it explains so much. Let's look at some things. 1: The borg cube pretty much steamrolls over the entire defense fleet. 2: Picard arrives, and the voices tell him how to destroy the cube. What are the odds of him hearing just the exact information to destroy that cube? Unless he was meant to. 3: The sphere creates a time travel vortex AFTER the enterprise gives pursuit, and as far as we know it was the ONLY ship giving pursuit. 4: The sphere brings them to a time where neither side is capable of calling in reinforcements. Neither picard nor the queen can call in other ships or bring an armada to bear. So i wonder, what if the entire purpose of what she was doing is creating a setting where she could show her superiority over Picard, to defeat him, one on one. To defeat him personally, not as part of a fleet or some larger skirmish, but with him KNOWING he was defeated in a 'fair fight'. To prove that she is indeed the superior form of life. And how wrong he ever was to reject her. Lastly, I wonder if i'm the only one who feels Picard shows signs that he is not as grateful as he might have seemed for being rescued from the borg. Not because he wanted to be Locutus, but because he would have rather died with that cube than live with the pain he's had to live with. When the borg start to take over the enterprise, he leads the team to fight them himself. Something that isn't really appropriate considering what we know about starfleet regulations on these things. His plan is also basically a suicide plan. When that tank is hit the room is filled and everything organic dies. Including the whole team. Nobody seems to think that odd, and obviously they're willing to risk their lives to save the planet, but it's still unusual. Picard says you'll be doing other crewmembers a favor by shooting them. Isn't he then really criticizing Riker and the others for not doing the same to him years ago? They saw him standing there on that cube, mutilated and violated in the most terrible way possible and they left rather than shooting him. Doesn't he in some small measure express a desire for HIM to have been shot and killed rather than endure all the pain he's had to suffer. When he shoots that borg and loses control. What does he see? Failure? Another loss? Perhaps. But isn't it also possible that what he really sees, is Locutus. A starfleet officer, assimilated by the borg against his will, forced to do their bidding. I think it's possible he was really trying to attack Locutus, the monster they forced him to be. Finally, in his last act, he chooses not to flee, not to fight. But to walk in calmly, and to die with the borg, as I think part of him feels he should have died in that first cube way way back. That's just what i see in the movie, I might well be wrong.
Small point, and I'm not sure if someone else has covered it before I posted, but your view on the Enterprise-E's ability to time travel is wrong. There is no time displacement equipment on the Enterprise. The Enterprise-E was caught "in the wake" of the Borg Sphere. Whatever effect they were producing to time travel with, caught the Enterprise as it was in pursuit of the Sphere towards Earth. The Enterprise was then obliged to follow the same course as the Sphere, or it would be spat out some-when else other than it's actual point of origin. It's return journey back to Federation Space was likely accomplished by the fact that much of Engineering had been adapted by the Borg, and Data no doubt had determined how to replicate the effect after being merged with the collective during his captivity.
only issue is, LaForge says he uses to main deflector to create the vortex but the main deflector is out of order due to what happened in an earlier scene.
Keep in mind by the time we see the borg ship its already moved through 2 lines that the feds had set up the borg killing ships were at the last line of def of earth so they learned from the wolf battle to better stagger fed ships in battle weaken the borg cube enough that the final line takes it out which it does, picard being the best to take on the borg you wonder why starfleet told him to stay out of it till he stil lhears them keep in mind just becasue he human again the fear of assimilation never goes away.
one more thing: my idea of what the queen is is shes a specific sort of like... administrative program that is dispatched to oversee specific situations and has like, idk, higher level clearance to employ tactics and stuff the drones do not... and because shes a program she can be altered and updated and modified to fit whatever situation she is sent to oversee?
Picard could have saved the Enterprise-D. He just needed some sort of time travelling nexus to go into and come out wherever he wanted. Then he could have gone back and arrested Soren in Ten Forward... My favourite quote, probably in the whole of Star Trek comes from Troi: “[First Contact] united humanity in a way no one ever thought possible when they realised they’re not alone in the universe”. I can only hope that when our First Contact comes, we as a species will have the strength, courage and intelligence to unite in peace and friendship, rather than in war and hatred. I don’t think that Data was the only one who could lock out the main computer. It was just that when up against the Borg, with only seconds to react, having Data do it was the only option given his speed and ability to set up a “fractal encryption” so quickly. The “worst” parts of this film for me, are the scenes of Borg drones gathering up Enterprise crewmembers, and queuing them up for their turn to be turned into drones. Not sure if those people were already assimilated enough to be part of the collective or had just been captured, but the looks on some of their faces suggests otherwise... then we see people with amputated arms and eyes and having implants fitted. Chilling. I try not to think about what the clean up crews found when the Enterprise got back to Spacedock... Listening to this review, when you mentioned if the Borg Sphere was deliberately being a bad shot, made me think, they could have been. Perhaps, with the Sphere and time travel but being a Plan B, they went back to 2063 to ensure that Earth could be assimilated easily, but with the Enterprise following them, they could assimilate it and have all of Earth’s 24th century tech as well. Losing the Sphere meant they could establish themselves on the Enterprise for a while unhindered. How they could have predicted that the Enterprise (or any Federation starship) would be in a position to follow them back is a slight issue though. I never really understood why Starfleet left Picard out the battle. After Wolf 359, Picard had several dealings with the Borg. He never showed any unstable behaviour then. The worst thing he did was send Hugh back without that invasive program and sure, Admiral Bitchayev was pissed, but she still put him in charge of a task force to find and stop a potential new Borg invasion! So why not now?
I've been listening to your ruminations on Star Trek and Star Wars for a couple of days now. Interesting stuff there and nice to know tidbits , your views , ect. But all the while i knew that this moment was coming. The moment where i would leave some kind of post. And that moment came at around 28:00 or when you started questioning the while time travel thing. Now i have always said that any story that involves time travel , shoots itself in the foot. You might disagree and i accept that , but so far as i've seen they always contradict themselves on some point and that kills it for me. (except Babylon 5 , i think.) Here in First Contact , and let me state that i still love the movie , it happens again. You ask the question , Why don't they do it all the time? and i answer , Because the Borg wants to get their hands on the diversity that is Federation technology. Which leads me to ask the question , why are they using time travel then? Because it was never trully implied that the borg seek numbers. They seek to adapt and evolve technologically by usurping technology of other races. So why assimilate a race that didn't achieve the technological golden age that the Borg hunger for? Looking back on it , it feels as if the story started out contrived. The reason why i say this is , because , they wanted to tell the story of first contact between vulcans and humans. But they also wanted to make the movie that had the Borg and merging the two appears to have been the wrong choice. As a amateur writer , looking at the movie from the perspective of the Borg , i can't find any valid reason as to why this movie takes place at all. Its not like the Federation poses a real threat to the Borg. I mean , if it takes that many ships and that long to actually stop a single cube , the Borg can definately take out the Federation with a small fleet. And seeing as they are not trying to usurp more technology... . (shrug) The only conclusion that i can come up with is the Queen itself. Resentment , hate , some kind of emotion that steers the Queen towards ending Humanity out of sheer spite. Maybe you'll have a answer for me and all i need to do is press the play button. Fun fact. My interest in the processes of writing came from ... The ME3 debacle. And also why i became aware of your works. Obviously.
I offer a counter interpretation to the Queen and how she operates in the Collective: You postulate that she offered Picard something unique to join the Collective as an individual. What if rather than this being unique it is part of the final stage of the assimilation process. In other words the queen appears to everyone at some point and tempts them with her offer. We think that she gave Picard a switcheroo by asking for him to join her and then say make him a drone, what if that's how it ges with everyone? It could still be the case that Picard is the first person to ever refuse her.
They could have easily overcome the "no limits time travel" thing with one or two lines. After following the sphere back, they should have indicated that in order to make the time jump, the Borg had to use nearly all the power in the sphere, leaving them unshielded and with poor targeting. The Borgs' strategy was to simply get them there, that's all they needed.
I must admit I never liked the Borg queen as a concept. But I suppose it makes sense that it was forced on the writers by executive fiat rather than something that would have otherwise entered the lore “organically”. It weakens the collective by relegating it to a status of servants to the queen (kind of like an ant nest or beehive). And its never been clear to me why a queen is necessary. One thing I’m not clear on - how did Picard resist? He was taken out of the collective by the crew of the Enterprise. Unless by “resist” you mean that he didn’t willingly submit already before the events at Wolf 359.
does it not make sense for the Borg sphere to be inaccurate? It was in the "hangar" of the Borg cube. We know that hangars are a likely target for enemy fire due to the risk of secondary explosions. So if the Sphere was in that "hangar" and that portion of the ship got hit big time by Staarfleet it stands to reason the Sphere would also have suffered damage. So when it comes out of the temporal vortex it does not work properly and the Borg have had no time to repair the damage done to them. Or you can argue that the Sphere is nothing but a glorified shuttle to the Borg with limited offensive capability, which most likely is directed against other spacecraft and not against ground based targets. That could be supported by Starfleet destroying the Sphere at the end of Voyager with ease (okay that is a couple of years later so technological advancement and all). Or it is the same for the Borg as it is for the Enterprise: their shields were offline due to the temporal vortex. There is a plethera of possebilities as to why this scene is as it is. I like to think that the Borg Sphere simply was damaged and thus could not hit properly, as well as beeing equipped to deal with other spacecraft and not groundtargets. Groundtargets are sitting ducks for the Borg - why did they not beam down and simply assimilate the entire complex? That would have been also pretty efficient and given them control of the Pheonix. Yeah I know: plot device...
This has probably been said, but I think that the Star Trek fans at Red Letter Media don't like this movie because of what the Borg Queen did to the Borg as a whole, as well as considering Picard to be very different to his show mannerisms.
Ehhh Jerry Goldsmith scored Alien.... and Alien is a package deal between music, artistry and set design... oh and it makes perfect sense to use cromwell because he's been cast in star trek before
I really wish that First Contact would have included Sisko and Worf, etc to beam aboard the Enterprise to help against the Borg. Can you imagine the interplay between two powerful figures such as Sisko and Picard? Both of whom hate the Borg. Imagine the Ahab scene with Sisko telling Picard to blow up the ship. It would have opened up so much more potential for story and conflict. It would also have been a way to tie in DS9 as opposed to an excuse to get Worf on the ship. Just my opinion. =)
+Mariah Sinclair (Mariahsyn) Wow, that could have made this movie even better, and given Worf a lot more material to work with caught between his two captains. It would be a shame to loose Lilly's scenes, but Sisco was established as great foil to Picard, especially with Borg matters. I wonder if Ronald Moore and Bragga tried to work him in there ever.
Given that DS9 apparently was struggling ratings-wise and was lucky to make it to a seventh season I don't know if there were ever any ideas entertained to bring the DS9 crew into feature films. It seemed to me that there was only ever an excuse to bring Word back aboard in each post-generations film. They seemingly ignored the end of DS9 with Worf's appointment as Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire.
I feel like first contact was the most perfect name, anything else would've not been right. This entire movie outside of the borg is about first contact the Borg stopped first contact from happening and the Enterprise is making sure first contact happens then at the end it's all about first contact with the Vulcans. Btw I was watching the episode decent and I feel like the conversation between the female admiral and Picard us the main reason why Picard was told to go play in the neutral zone just my take.
How about the Borg used up their energy on the time travel and were saving energy to transport, and that's why their attack on the surface was so futile?
42:30 Plug for Attack on Titan here. Gender equality is a fact in that setting; not an issue, just an unquestioned fact. Men and women fight and die, and the women even get to wear /pants/ when they're swinging around on gas-powered grappling hooks and wall climbing and riding horses and stuff. 50:00 The "We try to better ourselves!" bit irks me a ton because when Gene went full out insane-prophet, and all humans had to be Perfect, uh. Well. You can't improve perfection. So really, they WEREN'T trying to improve themselves in early TNG and whatnot, because why mess with perfection, baby? Bada bing. Chriiiist.
One of the more common criticisms is that Picard's character arc in this movie does not fit with his calm behavior in TNG. I don't consider that criticism to be completely fair: the show had it's own character arc, and with franchises like this, with effectively a well-contained and properly rounded off tv-series (possible one season to long, TBH) you are basically forced to reset some arcs to be able to hit the common notes for a second time. It's still preferred over finding never existing new character notes (and why it is so tempting to do prequels and or time resets - I am suspecting you will be swinging that way when you are out, SW9! - ).
I remember the trailer for First Contact was pretty bad. The voice over guy says that Picard wants revenge - and, of course, as a view we're supposed to agree with Riker that Starfleet's view that Picard is an 'unstable element' is ridiculous.'
I appreciate your attempt to be more focused but I like the deviations. I think it feels more conversational which is what I prefer. I do understand that is not for everyone so I am good either way.
They don't go back in time all the time (pun intended) because they would need their biological and technological distinctiveness of the advanced species. Remember they don't just want labour but something to use the labour for as well. With humanity however, if humanity ceased to exist because of the Borg, the coincidental Vulcan passerby ship would notice phaser fire and investigate, Vulcans get assimilated, more Vulcans search for lost ship because they don't know about the Borg, eventually Vulcan gets assimilated, federation is never formed, Borg go back to delta from their transwarp conduit 1 light year away from earth, wait for other alpha-beta species to advance in technology and BOOM. the federation cannot protect because there isn't any Borg rise to power in the entire galaxy in this 300 year time period and make a unimatrix out of earth, hence, the brown earth and "population: all Borg".
Jerry Goldsmith has been allowed to make awesome scores. Patton/ Blue Max / Innerspace/ Star Trek the motion Picture is an Awesome score and far more spectacular than first contact.
I should say something off the bat - and this is one movie i've actually been dreading to comment on, because i just can't see it the same way everyone else seems to and i might just come off as the guy who wants to be different, but the one word i associate with this movie is "BOOM". Don't believe me? Picard's having a nightmare about the Borg, very understandable as he's had quite the brutal history with the-- *BOOM The Borg are coming* - well, that's a coincidence. I guess we could assume he's been having these nightmares all the time so i guess we can let it slid-- *BOOM There's a new Enterprise* - Oh, well, lovely ship, but didn't the introduction of a whole new flagship deserve a little more substance than just shoving it our fac-- *BOOM We're not going to fight the Borg, because stupid!* - Uh, that's retarded. I mean, i get they want to create some kind o-- *BOOM we're going anyway, the hell with our orders! Lt. Hawke, you exist!* -- Uh, well that got sorted out pretty fast. Oh hey look, the Defiant! Well, glad they got ONE captain who had a personal history with the Borg out here to--- uh, Sisko? Oh, just Worf? Oh, so this was just a device to get-- *BOOM We're losing!* - *BOOM We win!* - Oh wow, i guess screw technobabble, just let Picard hear some voices all of a sudden and it's all-- *BOOM the Borg are going back in time!* - wait, what? Stop a damn minute! Did i just watch an entire movie's worth of plot get grinded out in under ten-- *BOOM Let's just follow them because i don't know what anymore!* - i... guess? Oh look, Earth looks like it's in bad shape. Well, that looks like a scary but interesting turn of events. Are we gonna see what a Borg infested planet looks li-- *BOOM some people somewhere are getting bombarded! We should care!*-- Yes, i'm sure a Borg invasion of the 21st century would be a big deal. I'm sure no one would do something stupid like not even having them touch the ground even once. Of course not, they're gonna take their dinky little sphere and just beam aboard their enemy's vessel before they're curbstomped, and no one's gonna detect, notice, or even think about it until it's too late, because the new Enterprise - a ship that has apparently only been designed to fight the Borg on the outside, has been brought out to be the movie's damsel in distress. Just what i wanted to see from the flagship as the thrilling start to her career, because we have a plot shove down the throat of the audience, dammit. Well, at least things seem to be slowing down a-- *BOOM Lily!* Who? No really, who the frell is Lily, and why should i care? No, i get her function here, that's not what i'm talking about. I'm talking about why in a movie that has done such a brilliant job utterly disjointing itself in the first 20 minutes alone is now suddenly a great idea to bring in an outsider to play the "i don't know anything about this, so i must be right!" card. I know i'm jumping ahead, but someone please explain to me why i should be impressed by her barging in on Picard and suddenly acting like she knows anything about him and pushing her Moby Dick crap on him and bring him to face himself, when the rest of his crew suddenly magically loses the will to speak to him straight, after he starts going off the deep end. What, was Riker busy? Beverly? Troi? All of a sudden they're not a family anymore, and will just follow orders like they haven't been together for about a decade, because we have to somehow justify that it has to be an outsider, and it has to be the most inconsequential, shoved-in character we could possibly think of, because hey, it's not like we butchered a perfectly solid reason to bring Sisko into the movie or anything. Oh, and the Enterprise is gonna self-destruct. Yawn. No really, that was such a fake crisis with a fake stake, even on first viewing i couldn't bring myself to feel anything about it. Picard even says "We hardly knew her", and from my side, all i'd seen Enterprise do so far was fire a couple of phasers and get invaded for most of the run time. Now, the ship is a beauty, but was i really supposed to get invested in her after _that_? The last time a Federation ship went into destruct mode in a movie, it really gripped me. I remember watching Star Trek 3 as a kid and just being transfixed - even now "Code 000 Destruct-0" gives me goosebumps. Here - and really, tell me if i'm alone here, but it was just so lacking. It was so transparent that it was a dud, i remember feeling the disappointment even as Picard gave the order to evacuate. When he finally has to go save Data, well of course he does because we're not gonna lose the ship! Now, fair's fair. I didn't know Berman had gone in and shoved in the time-travel thing down the writers' throats. I can almost envision the gears of stupidity moving in that head and going _i'm so smart for some reason, i must be right about this!_, and it's disgusting. But honestly, what i would have done would have been to just remove the Borg thing entirely, and THEN properly focus the movie on the time-travel aspect. Bring in Lily and Cochrane, and make a good movie out of it. I know; i know there was no guarantee that there would be another chance to do it, but from my point of view, the Borg deserved a proper treatment or none at all. This halfway crap, of trying to be two movies at once, that have next to nothing to do with one another and just keep detracting from each other was just a horrible disservice, and i don't make many claims as assertive as i'm about to, but i guarantee you that if they had done the exact same movie with anything but the Borg, First Contact would have fallen flat on it's ass. Probably would have made it's money back, because hey, Star Trek, but no way would it ever be as universally acclaimed as it is. Now, you can tell me Jonathan Frakes is a brilliant director and i'll believe you without reservation. I've seen movies that were brilliantly directed and acted but had enough baggage to ruin them before, and i can totally understand that some constraints just ruin your work. There's just a major fracture between me and the rest of the civilized world on this matter, because i really try to see in this movie what most people see in it, and maybe i succeed on some levels, but overall i just do not comprehend the unconditional adulation it gets. It just boggles the mind of me. Oh, and Hawke died somewhere, as insipidly as he lived. Shrug.
So one of the things that seriously bugs me in this movie is a total nit pick. I wonder how many others are bugged by it. They used the wrong sound effects for the Defiant phaser cannons. They had the actual sound from multiple DS9 episodes. It’s kind of like how the Borg voice pre First Contact. In Q Who it just sounds both wrong and not good. They finally nailed it in this movie.
Wait, didn't you already do a video for this a little while ago? I could have sworn I watched this video a while back, did you have it unlisted and have it up for a while or is this a refilmed video?
Your absolutely wrong about Jerry Goldsmith, yes he did great job, and has scored a few Trek films, starting with TMP. But to say he never did a great movie? Come on do some research, what about his Oscar nominated score for the planet of the apes? He also scored a little film called the Omen, he won an Oscar for that effort, he was big before Trek...I understand he was before your time
At 28:00. If the Borg have casual time travel as we see why don't they just do that all the time? I contend, they do. That is why Borg philosophy is "Your assimilation is inevitable." The Borg KNOW, if they loose, they just launch a sphere, go back in time and win. But I contend, even for the Borg, time travel would still be a last resort due to the dangers of the Butterfly Effect.
Hardest star trek movie to judge for me. Final Frontier and Kahn where just good with some mistakes here an there. But not really important. But first contact...it's great on a visual level. The battle of sector 001 was awesome. It looked like you would imagine the battle of 3...32..375...321 whatever...The borg looked awesome. It was pure horror to see their red laser lights in the dark. And i liked Cochrane. He fits into the tired post war world. He has something big not fitting into this. Warpdrive. He is a man not fitting in his own world in a way. Maybe he invented it to leave earth. I would feel like that after seeing a world war. Sad drunk and hoping the warp drive will bring me somewhere better. Then he is scared. He understands that he will create what he always dreamed of. But...the big plothole time travel in front of earth instead of doing it somewhere near where no fleet is waiting and then fly to earth...the perfectly cast Borg queen...who isn't necessary to potray the collective...I mean the actress is pure epicness but she portrays a woman like some cat lady looking for her soulmade. You know just with Drones instead of cats. I pictured the Borg as being the perfect technologial singularity. A form of peace like Cochrane dreamed of in my mind but he would still have to resist like the federation is resisting the collective because their peace is a cheap trick. Cut out the individuality. All you need to have peaceful consense is nobody able to argue. That's the borg way. But he queen...and her line about thinking to third dimensional. I had an Idea once. Show some Enterprise crew member. A female. And let her become the Borg queen after assimilation because they use Queens to create a new collective when needed. They are obviously not connected to the collective of the late 21th century. They lost their ships and everything. Would be nice in my opinion to show hat the queen isn't the collective itself but maybe a solution out of need. In the novels they create queens with the queen protocol. So they aren't the rulers. They are tools too.
I think they missed such a good oportunity. They should put on the battle of sector 001 Sisko and crew on the deviant. Then when picard rescue we have a DS9 TNG movie.. where in the end Sisko sees the human side of Picard and forgive him from the acts of locutus when his wife died
Regarding Borg use of time travel: 1. Borg prefer to assimilate advanced civilizations. It would be counterproductive to assimilate a primitive planet. For the Borg, assimilating 20th century Earth would have been a consolation prize, after failing to assimilate 24th century Earth. 2. Maybe time travel has serious damaging or power draining effects on the ship that uses it. This is supported by the fact that the Borg Sphere could only fire pitifully weak energy blasts at the Phoenix construction site. For this reason, a Borg Ship might be incapable of warp or Transwarp travel after arriving in the past, meaning they would need to be in orbit of a planet before going through time.
Been watching anti-trekkers review who ruins the movie for me lol even though he is right about a lot of stuff, so I have to go actively search for and watch this calmer review :P
+Resurrected Starships I know that feeling, basically stopped following that chain of depression after 8 episodes = first 15 minutes of the movie? You can over-analyse things, I guess.
One point against were you say Lily's character could have just as easily been a man and you wouldn't have to change a thing. A man would have looked odd in that dress on the Holodeck :-)
While you were talking about the Borg being the stain on Picard's record and why Enterprise got side lined at the start, I couldn't help but the think of the scene in 'Family' immediately after 'Best of Both Worlds' where he literally breaks down in front of his brother and cries "I wasn't good enough. I wasn't strong enough." It's always been one of my favourite Picard scenes and chokes me up to this day.
Best reference to money was Bones. "I'd give real money if he'd shut up."
In VI when hotrodding a torpedo. I love star trek.
As if we didn't have a whole lot of sayings even today which reference things which we don't use anymore in our day and age...
I don't think the Queen is needed, but she was acted & portrayed well.
This is perhaps the best Trek movie in my opinion, and it was an absolute blast to watch again. Picard's struggle against the Borg, as well as the gradual overcoming of his own trauma, has always been one of my favorite aspects of the show as a whole, not just of TNG. The Borg are arguably at their most terrifying here (with Best of Both Worlds being a very close second, if not a tie), and it's an utter shame that most of DS9 and Voyager's Borg episodes didn't learn from this film and keep that sort of quality going.
I'd argue that some scenes in Q Who would also be in that consideration, especially when Enterprise-D is being chased by the Cube, and there's nothing they can do to slow it down.
All true, and I love ebrious Deanna in the tavern.
41:50 - I imagine they stopped at deck 11 because they only had a limited number of drones. Everyone had been evacuated to other decks. So presumably they couldn't keep risking drone causalities taking other decks. They assessed it was more efficient to focus on deflector control. That's my take on it.
One additional irony, data kills the organic (flesh) half of the queen. Where as Picard kills the artificial half.
More like poetry, in my opinion. Flesh kills the machine, while the machine kills the flesh.
or flesh destroying amachine after a machine kills flesh?
I for one like your digressions. They always seem to add/flesh out what you're talking about, or just give some nice additional info.
Also, longer videos are better!
I am not a huge Star Trek fan but the one thing I always enjoyed was the very concept of the Borg collective.
I... don't remember the movie that much, but I was always (even while watching it) under the impression that Geordi "matching chronaton particles with the borg sphere" was to prevent the mass of enterprise collapsing the time tunnel, and just enable it to go through, it was not a timetravel device itself, it just allowed them to piggyback on the borg one.
The main issue with timetravel still stays, of course,
This movie was my first exposure to the new generation of Star Trek, I had never before seen Picard, and I thought he was really cool the first time. I loved this movie, though I didn't understand much of it, it was still a fun thing to watch as a kid.
Are you sure about where this lines up with DS9? Sisko mentions the Borg in In Purgatory's Shadow - which is before Blaze of Glory.
Why would it have been called "Resurrection"? That made sense when it was supposed to be a "return of Kirk" story, but, after they started filming?
I love this backdrop and how it combines with your voice. Thanks for all the great videos. Very long time video watcher and sometimes jump on your twitch. You've helped me with your videos though alot of tough times in my life.
One cool thing about the time travel plot (for me anyway) was the fact that with the rich backstory of star fleet they were able to do something rather unique. The period they travel to is the past for the characters, but the future for us viewers. Interesting dynamic that I don't remember being explored elsewhere.
So I have to say this: I never new anything much about Roddenberry until you talked about his flaws etc. After that point, I always imagined him looking like Cochrane. Just a thought to the whole 'resemblance to Roddenberry' thing.
With all the talk of cinematic universes nowadays its easy to forget that Star Trek pioneered the idea. TNG, DS9, Voyager and the films are all connected with characters and ships crossing over. It's quite impressive really
They didn't pioneer it. TOHO did that in the 1968 with Destroy All Monsters. And before them, it was Universal Pictures with Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman in 1943.
What I find interesting is that the Queen temps Data at first with information, as you point out, and then sensation. I believe that even though it looks different it is in fact the same. Data is an artificial life form and because of that, even when he experiences sensation...something he has never experienced before, he will still process it as information. It is new "data" to him but is still data or information because of how his physical brain works. The similarity I find is to Martin Cadin's character of Steve Austin (the six million dollar man). In the series, it very rarely deals with the impact that Austin does not actually feel in his arm or legs. When they are damaged he reacts but for the most part, he is "divorced" from his artificial parts. In the book the mentioned that, in the beginning when he starts to get used to the artificial parts, he damages his foot when he loses his temper and wrecks his toes. The Rudy Wells character asks him if he "feels" anything and at first he responds with a negative but then realizes he is "feeling" something which is described as a type of feedback from his mechanical parts. What do you think? Also, I would be interested if you have done any of these ruminations on either the animated Gargoyles or Avatar the last airbender.
Tom Hanks wanted to portray Zefram Cochrane, but was stuck while directing That Thing You Do.
jerry goldsmith's score on Rambo: First Blood is great!
I for one enjoy your ramblings. Part of the reason I watch your stuff. Your personality. You don't always finish your thought though, but you tend to finish most of it.
Another great rumination. Amongst other things, I loved how you ended there by mentioning Insurrection - Oh dear :P
I thought this was one of Star Trek TNG's finest movies and bringing the Borg in was such a great idea, as well as Picard's dark struggle with them. Call me Ishmael.
What if the desk-rattling music was an attempt to block out the voices? Picard has demonstrated that he can hear the Borg. If he could hear them, it might be that he has no control over it and is hearing the ongoing battles against th e cube!
Re: time travel as plan B and why couldn't cube have just gone back anytime, my understanding was that with the cube's proximity to Earth and access to new knowledge the Borg did not have the knowledge of early earth history to pinpoint the time/place of first contact.
I think the reason Worf had a destruct code is because it needed so many command level officers so Picard issued the codes to wharf so they can distract that or if your command level officer you have the authority for destruct code on any ship
Arch, you mentioned the "line must be drawn here" scene. I watch this recently, and I think that Picard is also experiencing the violating and traumatic aspects of his assimilation. It's very much a gaslighting experience, to put the pieces all together, and have the Borg tell Picard, "You will not ever beat us, and without us you are nothing, but a flawed, weak man that isn't good enough. Here are all the examples: Q Who, and The Best of Both Worlds, and Family, and now your new ship, the Enterprise-E and it's crew, is all but conquered, and we will do the same to snuff out your very existence: Earth. You would do well to join us instead of moping in disgrace." That's a similar experience to what many violations and traumatic experiences portray.
Like many people I thought The Queen was a bad addition to The Borg. My head cannon now reconciles it thus: The Queen is no different than Locutus or even Seven-Of-Nine-Tertiary-Adjunct-To-Unimatrix 01. As we've seen from those two examples The Collective can download a specific individual personality to deal with unique situations, and those personalities are fit to the psychology of the target. So in Data's case The Collective realized it needed to assimilate Data, he was a unique piece of technology so would require a unique assimilation. The Collective searched its files and downloaded a personality named The Queen. This "Queen" is as much a queen, as the android Bishop from Aliens was a clergy man. It's a name not neccesarily a true title of power. When The Borg encountered Voyager in the Delta Quadrant that was also deemed a unique situation. So in order the Collectvie downloaded a human based drone to deal with them. When that drone was defeated and stolen from The Collective it downloaded The Queen because that personality had experience dealing with humans.
this movie is so easily my fave star trek movie. its absolutely perfect to me. also, i thought using the com channel scene to sort of have us do the visual effects in our own mind was both an economical choice and very smart... also the battle of sector 001 has always been my fav sci fi battle by far, theres something about the single monolithic cube and all the little ships flying around it... very cool
Agreed. My only wish is that they had the budget to make it last longer as Lore mentioned.
The obvious question is why the Borg didn't travel back in time first and then go to Sector 001. They could have assimilated Earth with, essentially, no opposition at all. They wouldn't have had the Enterprise to signal the Collective but that doesn't really matter. There's no threat or urgency for them at that point. They can take their time.
Melee combat with the Borg is a terrible idea. They are stronger and tougher than a human. All they have to do is to get a hand on you to inject nanites and then you are screwed. It's only viable at all for someone who is very strong and skilled like Worf and even then it's risky.
I interpreted the "no money" thing as meaning that they don't have hard currency. They don't have cash. It's all electronic. For a Trek RPG I ran ages ago, I decided that the Federation had two kinds of currency. The first I call replicator credits. They are used for the replicators and digital data that can be easily replicated like recordings of performances. Everyone gets an allowance of replicator credits that is more than enough to supply all of their needs. Then there are Federation credits. These are what people get as wages. They are used for things that are available in limited supplies like real food, hand-made items or seats at a live performance. This is the only kind of currency races like the Ferengi will accept because it matches their idea of what currency is and it can be exchanged for stuff that can't be replicated like latinum.
One of my all-time favorite movies. I didn't know the title underwent an alteration during production, though I think, given First Contact's thematic significance, its current title is great. I also love this movie's pacing, both cinematically and tonally; it never encroaches upon any uncomfortable territories, but neither is it as light as The Voyage Home. The balance the film achieves is really commendable, in my opinion, which lends itself to just how fun the movie is. I also love the comparison between the experiences of Data, Picard, and Cochran, and how the writers were able to utilize the shoe-horned time travel plot successfully. I was really looking forward to this Rumination, considering my love of this movie, and I think you did it justice.
I personally liked the borg queen, but at the same time, I don't really like either of her interpretations - in the movie nor in the book (as you described, I haven't read the book). I would much more like a queen which was... basically almost just a channeling of the collective into one being, semi-AI with behavioral modifications specifically designed for her to ... "fool" humans into thinking she's an individual, while in reality, it's just the whole collective as always, only with a different face and with the ability to manipulate psychologically. Basically just a(nother) weapon designed by the collective as a result, as an adaptation, of encountering humans and realizing how important psychology and "politics" is for them.
yep, this was my interpretation as well. a continuation of the Locutus idea.
This is the first ST movie I watched when I was 9, fantastic rumination as always.
Your analysis is fantastic as always!
Patrick Stewart's performance in this film moves me to the core of my being. When you add the context that his father, Alfred Stewart was a World War 2 veteran who suffered from PTSD or, as it was then called, "shellshock" , never received any treatment (this was mid-20th century, remember!) and ended up taking out his rage against his poor wife Gladys ,Patricks mother, through domestic violence, it becomes even more overwhelming, unbearable almost.
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Mike Stoklasa said it was well-directed action movie, but the script was dumb and it betrayed characters that were established in the show, most notably Picard.
And he is spot on with his analysis.
@@abnryacehilm6423 in the odd numbered ones he's pretty close to the TV version
First off, love these ruminations that you have. They have this feel of both going behind the scenes and speculating about a motive that anyone, in lore or out, could have or might have. Now...to possibly argue a point, beginning at 30:35 about the sphere not doing damage to the shanty town, in an 'in-universe' point of view the case could be made that if the Enterprise-E had sensor problems then The Borg Sphere would have the same problem as well. This is both a theory and a speculation of my own: The time travel 'thingymabob' (because I have no idea how they did it either) caused a overload on the shield systems and sensors. The Borg would have to fire torpedoes manually. Speculation would have, say, enough radiation of a specific type to provide a possible fishbowl effect of distorting the picture of the manual targeting sensor and The Borg, possibly, know that Picard and the Enterprise-E are right behind them making their shots miss simply due to guessing based on trying to compensate for the fishbowl effect. Now this is, again, a guess based on my understanding of how targeting sensors and Borg Weaponry work.
You've mentioned Star Trek: The Return (the one about the ressurection of Kirk) a few times; one interesting juxtaposition for me between First Contact and the Return is how Starfleet treats Picard when the Borg are involved, and yet in both cases, they're wrong. Here, they sideline the best ship with the most experienced anti-Borg crew in the fleet; in Shater's novel, they send Picard, a nearly 70-year-old man, with only Dr. Crusher and a handful of "marines" on a commando raid of a Borg outpost.
In tyranid terms the queen is like a tyranid that acts as a conduit for the synapse even though it's still one of many it helps bind them all together as one mind one purpose
1:17:00 but WHY did she want to do that to Picard?
Oh... wait... Because same as for him, he always lost to borg (until now), for her... he always ESCAPED the borg... Hmmm...
I really enjoyed this movie.
Plus I do like the new Enterprise. It did look like the kind of ship you'd use for battle. It's a badass new ship.
This rumination just reminds me so much I can't wait for those TNG ruminations. I can't wait for it. Such a good series.
This movie really had a lot of things I'd love to see in a Star Trek film. The TNG crew and the Borg. Good times.
And yeah, I've wondered about not doing more melee against the Borg since it's often worked...but last prime example was Voyager so...yeah. Really it's probably only viable for extremely strong races like Klingons or Androids like Data.
I kind of think that the concept of an "unstable element" is bad writing. I think that Braga and Moore could have explained that better. The idea that Starfleet Command would sideline Picard because he was captured and assimilated into the Collective has a few methods of explaining. In keeping with what you're saying, Picard has this lurking insatiable need for revenge, not just because of what the Borg did to him, but because he has always lost to them. It could lead Starfleet to assume that Picard would view this as a personal vendetta and not a chance to save Earth, and that he could act irrationally and endanger more lives than necessary if allowed to take part in the fighting. Or you could make the argument that the Borg would see Picard as an exploitable weakness or asset, which Starfleet wanted no part of, because of experience at Wolf 359. I may be speculating, but I just want to point that out. Also, I have a theory about the creation of the Borg Queen. If memory serves, the reintroduction of Hugh into the Collective started a civil war, and many were left leaderless. Some of them were shanghaied into the service of Lore, Data's brother. The argument could be made that the concept of a single leader who spoke for the Collective and brought "order to chaos" within the Borg after all of their disarray would be an efficient way to unite the Collective in ways they had once lost. Picard goes even further back than that, so the Borg Queen could have filled a much less important role during Best Of Both Worlds time frame, but still pushed for the idea of having a human counterpart that could build a bridge between humanity and the Borg. Because of the civil war, her role became even more important as the Collective adapted as a species. We also saw that adaptation in Voyager with Seven of Nine, when she was chosen to work with Janeway and Tuvok, as a representative of the Borg. The Queen also directs the Borg strategically, when before they only operated tactically.
First off, I really liked your video. Greatly enjoyed it. I now find myself taking notes on your video for things to post here.
First off, I think we all missed out due to the fact that this 'had' to be a time travel movie. A dark movie about enduring, not defeating the borg, would have been amazing. It's still a good film, but it could have been better.
As for the reason why they don't immediately ignore orders. I think that stems from the fact that this was not wolf 359, they did not call in every single ship and throw it against the enemy in the hopes that it would be enough. They actually assembled a task force with new ships, new weapons, new tactics, all of them focused against the borg. They might have well felt that the task force was up to the challenge. It'd suck not to be able to take part in it. But if you feel the federation task force will win anyway, and you go there, you're throwing away your career for no reason. Only when they hear the battle on that subspace message are they reminded of what the borg truly are, how outclassed they are by them. And then they realize that careers don't matter, it's a matter of survival here. That's how I see it anyway.
I really like your theory about the borg sphere missing on purpose, because it explains so much. Let's look at some things.
1: The borg cube pretty much steamrolls over the entire defense fleet.
2: Picard arrives, and the voices tell him how to destroy the cube. What are the odds of him hearing just the exact information to destroy that cube? Unless he was meant to.
3: The sphere creates a time travel vortex AFTER the enterprise gives pursuit, and as far as we know it was the ONLY ship giving pursuit.
4: The sphere brings them to a time where neither side is capable of calling in reinforcements. Neither picard nor the queen can call in other ships or bring an armada to bear.
So i wonder, what if the entire purpose of what she was doing is creating a setting where she could show her superiority over Picard, to defeat him, one on one. To defeat him personally, not as part of a fleet or some larger skirmish, but with him KNOWING he was defeated in a 'fair fight'. To prove that she is indeed the superior form of life. And how wrong he ever was to reject her.
Lastly, I wonder if i'm the only one who feels Picard shows signs that he is not as grateful as he might have seemed for being rescued from the borg. Not because he wanted to be Locutus, but because he would have rather died with that cube than live with the pain he's had to live with.
When the borg start to take over the enterprise, he leads the team to fight them himself. Something that isn't really appropriate considering what we know about starfleet regulations on these things. His plan is also basically a suicide plan. When that tank is hit the room is filled and everything organic dies. Including the whole team. Nobody seems to think that odd, and obviously they're willing to risk their lives to save the planet, but it's still unusual.
Picard says you'll be doing other crewmembers a favor by shooting them. Isn't he then really criticizing Riker and the others for not doing the same to him years ago? They saw him standing there on that cube, mutilated and violated in the most terrible way possible and they left rather than shooting him. Doesn't he in some small measure express a desire for HIM to have been shot and killed rather than endure all the pain he's had to suffer.
When he shoots that borg and loses control. What does he see? Failure? Another loss? Perhaps. But isn't it also possible that what he really sees, is Locutus. A starfleet officer, assimilated by the borg against his will, forced to do their bidding. I think it's possible he was really trying to attack Locutus, the monster they forced him to be.
Finally, in his last act, he chooses not to flee, not to fight. But to walk in calmly, and to die with the borg, as I think part of him feels he should have died in that first cube way way back. That's just what i see in the movie, I might well be wrong.
You would literally want something like a Warhammer 40K style chainsword or chain axe if you're going to Maylee the Borg
My favorite Star Trek movie, surpassing even Wrath of Khan. Great rumination.
Oh, and feel free to ramble. That's what we watch you for. :)
Small point, and I'm not sure if someone else has covered it before I posted, but your view on the Enterprise-E's ability to time travel is wrong. There is no time displacement equipment on the Enterprise. The Enterprise-E was caught "in the wake" of the Borg Sphere. Whatever effect they were producing to time travel with, caught the Enterprise as it was in pursuit of the Sphere towards Earth. The Enterprise was then obliged to follow the same course as the Sphere, or it would be spat out some-when else other than it's actual point of origin. It's return journey back to Federation Space was likely accomplished by the fact that much of Engineering had been adapted by the Borg, and Data no doubt had determined how to replicate the effect after being merged with the collective during his captivity.
only issue is, LaForge says he uses to main deflector to create the vortex but the main deflector is out of order due to what happened in an earlier scene.
Keep in mind by the time we see the borg ship its already moved through 2 lines that the feds had set up the borg killing ships were at the last line of def of earth so they learned from the wolf battle to better stagger fed ships in battle weaken the borg cube enough that the final line takes it out which it does, picard being the best to take on the borg you wonder why starfleet told him to stay out of it till he stil lhears them keep in mind just becasue he human again the fear of assimilation never goes away.
one more thing: my idea of what the queen is is shes a specific sort of like... administrative program that is dispatched to oversee specific situations and has like, idk, higher level clearance to employ tactics and stuff the drones do not... and because shes a program she can be altered and updated and modified to fit whatever situation she is sent to oversee?
Quicker Videos? OH HELL NAW! Good video btw.
Picard could have saved the Enterprise-D. He just needed some sort of time travelling nexus to go into and come out wherever he wanted. Then he could have gone back and arrested Soren in Ten Forward...
My favourite quote, probably in the whole of Star Trek comes from Troi:
“[First Contact] united humanity in a way no one ever thought possible when they realised they’re not alone in the universe”. I can only hope that when our First Contact comes, we as a species will have the strength, courage and intelligence to unite in peace and friendship, rather than in war and hatred.
I don’t think that Data was the only one who could lock out the main computer. It was just that when up against the Borg, with only seconds to react, having Data do it was the only option given his speed and ability to set up a “fractal encryption” so quickly.
The “worst” parts of this film for me, are the scenes of Borg drones gathering up Enterprise crewmembers, and queuing them up for their turn to be turned into drones. Not sure if those people were already assimilated enough to be part of the collective or had just been captured, but the looks on some of their faces suggests otherwise... then we see people with amputated arms and eyes and having implants fitted. Chilling. I try not to think about what the clean up crews found when the Enterprise got back to Spacedock...
Listening to this review, when you mentioned if the Borg Sphere was deliberately being a bad shot, made me think, they could have been. Perhaps, with the Sphere and time travel but being a Plan B, they went back to 2063 to ensure that Earth could be assimilated easily, but with the Enterprise following them, they could assimilate it and have all of Earth’s 24th century tech as well. Losing the Sphere meant they could establish themselves on the Enterprise for a while unhindered. How they could have predicted that the Enterprise (or any Federation starship) would be in a position to follow them back is a slight issue though.
I never really understood why Starfleet left Picard out the battle. After Wolf 359, Picard had several dealings with the Borg. He never showed any unstable behaviour then. The worst thing he did was send Hugh back without that invasive program and sure, Admiral Bitchayev was pissed, but she still put him in charge of a task force to find and stop a potential new Borg invasion! So why not now?
I've been listening to your ruminations on Star Trek and Star Wars for a couple of days now.
Interesting stuff there and nice to know tidbits , your views , ect.
But all the while i knew that this moment was coming. The moment where i would leave some kind of post.
And that moment came at around 28:00 or when you started questioning the while time travel thing.
Now i have always said that any story that involves time travel , shoots itself in the foot. You might disagree and i accept that , but so far as i've seen they always contradict themselves on some point and that kills it for me. (except Babylon 5 , i think.)
Here in First Contact , and let me state that i still love the movie , it happens again.
You ask the question , Why don't they do it all the time? and i answer , Because the Borg wants to get their hands on the diversity that is Federation technology.
Which leads me to ask the question , why are they using time travel then?
Because it was never trully implied that the borg seek numbers. They seek to adapt and evolve technologically by usurping technology of other races. So why assimilate a race that didn't achieve the technological golden age that the Borg hunger for?
Looking back on it , it feels as if the story started out contrived. The reason why i say this is , because , they wanted to tell the story of first contact between vulcans and humans. But they also wanted to make the movie that had the Borg and merging the two appears to have been the wrong choice.
As a amateur writer , looking at the movie from the perspective of the Borg , i can't find any valid reason as to why this movie takes place at all. Its not like the Federation poses a real threat to the Borg. I mean , if it takes that many ships and that long to actually stop a single cube , the Borg can definately take out the Federation with a small fleet. And seeing as they are not trying to usurp more technology... . (shrug) The only conclusion that i can come up with is the Queen itself. Resentment , hate , some kind of emotion that steers the Queen towards ending Humanity out of sheer spite.
Maybe you'll have a answer for me and all i need to do is press the play button.
Fun fact. My interest in the processes of writing came from ... The ME3 debacle. And also why i became aware of your works. Obviously.
I offer a counter interpretation to the Queen and how she operates in the Collective: You postulate that she offered Picard something unique to join the Collective as an individual. What if rather than this being unique it is part of the final stage of the assimilation process. In other words the queen appears to everyone at some point and tempts them with her offer. We think that she gave Picard a switcheroo by asking for him to join her and then say make him a drone, what if that's how it ges with everyone? It could still be the case that Picard is the first person to ever refuse her.
From 00:00:00 - 00:00:20, I immediately began imagining the main theme from John Carpenter's THE THING (1982) in my head, because of the backdrop.
They could have easily overcome the "no limits time travel" thing with one or two lines. After following the sphere back, they should have indicated that in order to make the time jump, the Borg had to use nearly all the power in the sphere, leaving them unshielded and with poor targeting. The Borgs' strategy was to simply get them there, that's all they needed.
I must admit I never liked the Borg queen as a concept. But I suppose it makes sense that it was forced on the writers by executive fiat rather than something that would have otherwise entered the lore “organically”. It weakens the collective by relegating it to a status of servants to the queen (kind of like an ant nest or beehive). And its never been clear to me why a queen is necessary.
One thing I’m not clear on - how did Picard resist? He was taken out of the collective by the crew of the Enterprise. Unless by “resist” you mean that he didn’t willingly submit already before the events at Wolf 359.
"Next is Insurrection" that face
This is a great movie great villain lots of action it was Sweet.
does it not make sense for the Borg sphere to be inaccurate? It was in the "hangar" of the Borg cube. We know that hangars are a likely target for enemy fire due to the risk of secondary explosions. So if the Sphere was in that "hangar" and that portion of the ship got hit big time by Staarfleet it stands to reason the Sphere would also have suffered damage. So when it comes out of the temporal vortex it does not work properly and the Borg have had no time to repair the damage done to them. Or you can argue that the Sphere is nothing but a glorified shuttle to the Borg with limited offensive capability, which most likely is directed against other spacecraft and not against ground based targets. That could be supported by Starfleet destroying the Sphere at the end of Voyager with ease (okay that is a couple of years later so technological advancement and all). Or it is the same for the Borg as it is for the Enterprise: their shields were offline due to the temporal vortex. There is a plethera of possebilities as to why this scene is as it is. I like to think that the Borg Sphere simply was damaged and thus could not hit properly, as well as beeing equipped to deal with other spacecraft and not groundtargets. Groundtargets are sitting ducks for the Borg - why did they not beam down and simply assimilate the entire complex? That would have been also pretty efficient and given them control of the Pheonix. Yeah I know: plot device...
This has probably been said, but I think that the Star Trek fans at Red Letter Media don't like this movie because of what the Borg Queen did to the Borg as a whole, as well as considering Picard to be very different to his show mannerisms.
Geordi: Look! We have a time travel McGuffin now!
Starfleet Department of Temporal Investigations, two weeks later: Now look here you little shit
They were close enough to the Borg shop that they were caught in the “temporal wake”
actually, when you ramble on, that's some of my favorite stuff ---- just my two cents.
Are you saying that Alien is not truly amazing?😱
Planet of the Apes and Hoosiers by Jerry Goldsmith are top tier amazing soundtracks (and movies)
Ehhh Jerry Goldsmith scored Alien.... and Alien is a package deal between music, artistry and set design... oh and it makes perfect sense to use cromwell because he's been cast in star trek before
also chinatown
I really wish that First Contact would have included Sisko and Worf, etc to beam aboard the Enterprise to help against the Borg. Can you imagine the interplay between two powerful figures such as Sisko and Picard? Both of whom hate the Borg. Imagine the Ahab scene with Sisko telling Picard to blow up the ship. It would have opened up so much more potential for story and conflict. It would also have been a way to tie in DS9 as opposed to an excuse to get Worf on the ship. Just my opinion. =)
+Mariah Sinclair (Mariahsyn) Wow, that could have made this movie even better, and given Worf a lot more material to work with caught between his two captains. It would be a shame to loose Lilly's scenes, but Sisco was established as great foil to Picard, especially with Borg matters. I wonder if Ronald Moore and Bragga tried to work him in there ever.
Given that DS9 apparently was struggling ratings-wise and was lucky to make it to a seventh season I don't know if there were ever any ideas entertained to bring the DS9 crew into feature films. It seemed to me that there was only ever an excuse to bring Word back aboard in each post-generations film. They seemingly ignored the end of DS9 with Worf's appointment as Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire.
I feel like first contact was the most perfect name, anything else would've not been right. This entire movie outside of the borg is about first contact the Borg stopped first contact from happening and the Enterprise is making sure first contact happens then at the end it's all about first contact with the Vulcans. Btw I was watching the episode decent and I feel like the conversation between the female admiral and Picard us the main reason why Picard was told to go play in the neutral zone just my take.
How about the Borg used up their energy on the time travel and were saving energy to transport, and that's why their attack on the surface was so futile?
Star trek first contact has mostly horror elements
Wow such a great analysis of my favorite star trek film
I thought the music during take off was pretty dumb...I think riker thought so to because he asked for it to be turned down
42:30 Plug for Attack on Titan here. Gender equality is a fact in that setting; not an issue, just an unquestioned fact. Men and women fight and die, and the women even get to wear /pants/ when they're swinging around on gas-powered grappling hooks and wall climbing and riding horses and stuff.
50:00 The "We try to better ourselves!" bit irks me a ton because when Gene went full out insane-prophet, and all humans had to be Perfect, uh. Well. You can't improve perfection. So really, they WEREN'T trying to improve themselves in early TNG and whatnot, because why mess with perfection, baby? Bada bing.
Chriiiist.
My favourite Star Trek movie!
OhManTFE Favorite
One of the more common criticisms is that Picard's character arc in this movie does not fit with his calm behavior in TNG. I don't consider that criticism to be completely fair: the show had it's own character arc, and with franchises like this, with effectively a well-contained and properly rounded off tv-series (possible one season to long, TBH) you are basically forced to reset some arcs to be able to hit the common notes for a second time. It's still preferred over finding never existing new character notes (and why it is so tempting to do prequels and or time resets - I am suspecting you will be swinging that way when you are out, SW9! - ).
ouch i never thought about they could have just gone back into time and traveled from anywhere. that makes me sad. but again, plot armor
I remember the trailer for First Contact was pretty bad. The voice over guy says that Picard wants revenge - and, of course, as a view we're supposed to agree with Riker that Starfleet's view that Picard is an 'unstable element' is ridiculous.'
reminds me of how trailers for Star Trek III spoiled the destruction of the Enterprise, which was supposed to be a surprise.
I appreciate your attempt to be more focused but I like the deviations. I think it feels more conversational which is what I prefer. I do understand that is not for everyone so I am good either way.
also the only thing more powerful than the borg is plot armor
They don't go back in time all the time (pun intended) because they would need their biological and technological distinctiveness of the advanced species. Remember they don't just want labour but something to use the labour for as well.
With humanity however, if humanity ceased to exist because of the Borg, the coincidental Vulcan passerby ship would notice phaser fire and investigate, Vulcans get assimilated, more Vulcans search for lost ship because they don't know about the Borg, eventually Vulcan gets assimilated, federation is never formed, Borg go back to delta from their transwarp conduit 1 light year away from earth, wait for other alpha-beta species to advance in technology and BOOM. the federation cannot protect because there isn't any Borg rise to power in the entire galaxy in this 300 year time period and make a unimatrix out of earth, hence, the brown earth and "population: all Borg".
Best Picard performance.
Jerry Goldsmith has been allowed to make awesome scores. Patton/ Blue Max / Innerspace/ Star Trek the motion Picture is an Awesome score and far more spectacular than first contact.
Shit, even Leviathan's score is amazing.....
We know why Picard and Lily didn't have a relationship. Good ol Hollywood....
I should say something off the bat - and this is one movie i've actually been dreading to comment on, because i just can't see it the same way everyone else seems to and i might just come off as the guy who wants to be different, but the one word i associate with this movie is "BOOM".
Don't believe me? Picard's having a nightmare about the Borg, very understandable as he's had quite the brutal history with the-- *BOOM The Borg are coming* - well, that's a coincidence. I guess we could assume he's been having these nightmares all the time so i guess we can let it slid-- *BOOM There's a new Enterprise* - Oh, well, lovely ship, but didn't the introduction of a whole new flagship deserve a little more substance than just shoving it our fac-- *BOOM We're not going to fight the Borg, because stupid!* - Uh, that's retarded. I mean, i get they want to create some kind o-- *BOOM we're going anyway, the hell with our orders! Lt. Hawke, you exist!* -- Uh, well that got sorted out pretty fast. Oh hey look, the Defiant! Well, glad they got ONE captain who had a personal history with the Borg out here to--- uh, Sisko? Oh, just Worf? Oh, so this was just a device to get-- *BOOM We're losing!* - *BOOM We win!* - Oh wow, i guess screw technobabble, just let Picard hear some voices all of a sudden and it's all-- *BOOM the Borg are going back in time!* - wait, what? Stop a damn minute! Did i just watch an entire movie's worth of plot get grinded out in under ten-- *BOOM Let's just follow them because i don't know what anymore!* - i... guess? Oh look, Earth looks like it's in bad shape. Well, that looks like a scary but interesting turn of events. Are we gonna see what a Borg infested planet looks li-- *BOOM some people somewhere are getting bombarded! We should care!*-- Yes, i'm sure a Borg invasion of the 21st century would be a big deal. I'm sure no one would do something stupid like not even having them touch the ground even once. Of course not, they're gonna take their dinky little sphere and just beam aboard their enemy's vessel before they're curbstomped, and no one's gonna detect, notice, or even think about it until it's too late, because the new Enterprise - a ship that has apparently only been designed to fight the Borg on the outside, has been brought out to be the movie's damsel in distress. Just what i wanted to see from the flagship as the thrilling start to her career, because we have a plot shove down the throat of the audience, dammit. Well, at least things seem to be slowing down a-- *BOOM Lily!* Who?
No really, who the frell is Lily, and why should i care? No, i get her function here, that's not what i'm talking about. I'm talking about why in a movie that has done such a brilliant job utterly disjointing itself in the first 20 minutes alone is now suddenly a great idea to bring in an outsider to play the "i don't know anything about this, so i must be right!" card. I know i'm jumping ahead, but someone please explain to me why i should be impressed by her barging in on Picard and suddenly acting like she knows anything about him and pushing her Moby Dick crap on him and bring him to face himself, when the rest of his crew suddenly magically loses the will to speak to him straight, after he starts going off the deep end. What, was Riker busy? Beverly? Troi? All of a sudden they're not a family anymore, and will just follow orders like they haven't been together for about a decade, because we have to somehow justify that it has to be an outsider, and it has to be the most inconsequential, shoved-in character we could possibly think of, because hey, it's not like we butchered a perfectly solid reason to bring Sisko into the movie or anything.
Oh, and the Enterprise is gonna self-destruct. Yawn.
No really, that was such a fake crisis with a fake stake, even on first viewing i couldn't bring myself to feel anything about it. Picard even says "We hardly knew her", and from my side, all i'd seen Enterprise do so far was fire a couple of phasers and get invaded for most of the run time. Now, the ship is a beauty, but was i really supposed to get invested in her after _that_? The last time a Federation ship went into destruct mode in a movie, it really gripped me. I remember watching Star Trek 3 as a kid and just being transfixed - even now "Code 000 Destruct-0" gives me goosebumps. Here - and really, tell me if i'm alone here, but it was just so lacking. It was so transparent that it was a dud, i remember feeling the disappointment even as Picard gave the order to evacuate. When he finally has to go save Data, well of course he does because we're not gonna lose the ship!
Now, fair's fair. I didn't know Berman had gone in and shoved in the time-travel thing down the writers' throats. I can almost envision the gears of stupidity moving in that head and going _i'm so smart for some reason, i must be right about this!_, and it's disgusting. But honestly, what i would have done would have been to just remove the Borg thing entirely, and THEN properly focus the movie on the time-travel aspect. Bring in Lily and Cochrane, and make a good movie out of it.
I know; i know there was no guarantee that there would be another chance to do it, but from my point of view, the Borg deserved a proper treatment or none at all. This halfway crap, of trying to be two movies at once, that have next to nothing to do with one another and just keep detracting from each other was just a horrible disservice, and i don't make many claims as assertive as i'm about to, but i guarantee you that if they had done the exact same movie with anything but the Borg, First Contact would have fallen flat on it's ass. Probably would have made it's money back, because hey, Star Trek, but no way would it ever be as universally acclaimed as it is.
Now, you can tell me Jonathan Frakes is a brilliant director and i'll believe you without reservation. I've seen movies that were brilliantly directed and acted but had enough baggage to ruin them before, and i can totally understand that some constraints just ruin your work. There's just a major fracture between me and the rest of the civilized world on this matter, because i really try to see in this movie what most people see in it, and maybe i succeed on some levels, but overall i just do not comprehend the unconditional adulation it gets. It just boggles the mind of me.
Oh, and Hawke died somewhere, as insipidly as he lived. Shrug.
So one of the things that seriously bugs me in this movie is a total nit pick. I wonder how many others are bugged by it. They used the wrong sound effects for the Defiant phaser cannons. They had the actual sound from multiple DS9 episodes.
It’s kind of like how the Borg voice pre First Contact. In Q Who it just sounds both wrong and not good. They finally nailed it in this movie.
42:25 Totally a reference to me :D
Wait, didn't you already do a video for this a little while ago? I could have sworn I watched this video a while back, did you have it unlisted and have it up for a while or is this a refilmed video?
ReplacedByDrumbot Technical difficulties. It was never supposed to go up previously (for obvious reasons).
I think I commented at the time about the weird timing since it went up after Motion Picture if I'm not mistaken, makes sense now.
I like Deanna Troi in this movie.
Edington. The name of the traitor is Edington.
Would you say the Borg Queen acted like a spurned lover towards Picard?
Have you seen the Mr. Plinkett (Redlettermedia) review of First Contact?
ua-cam.com/video/R7Lr8cdZwHQ/v-deo.html
Lol your face at Insurrection. If I had to sum up that movie in one word I'd say "forgettable".
Your absolutely wrong about Jerry Goldsmith, yes he did great job, and has scored a few Trek films, starting with TMP. But to say he never did a great movie? Come on do some research, what about his Oscar nominated score for the planet of the apes? He also scored a little film called the Omen, he won an Oscar for that effort, he was big before Trek...I understand he was before your time
At 28:00. If the Borg have casual time travel as we see why don't they just do that all the time? I contend, they do. That is why Borg philosophy is "Your assimilation is inevitable." The Borg KNOW, if they loose, they just launch a sphere, go back in time and win. But I contend, even for the Borg, time travel would still be a last resort due to the dangers of the Butterfly Effect.
But the Romulan are in a movie.
Hardest star trek movie to judge for me. Final Frontier and Kahn where just good with some mistakes here an there. But not really important. But first contact...it's great on a visual level. The battle of sector 001 was awesome. It looked like you would imagine the battle of 3...32..375...321 whatever...The borg looked awesome. It was pure horror to see their red laser lights in the dark. And i liked Cochrane. He fits into the tired post war world. He has something big not fitting into this. Warpdrive. He is a man not fitting in his own world in a way. Maybe he invented it to leave earth. I would feel like that after seeing a world war. Sad drunk and hoping the warp drive will bring me somewhere better. Then he is scared. He understands that he will create what he always dreamed of. But...the big plothole time travel in front of earth instead of doing it somewhere near where no fleet is waiting and then fly to earth...the perfectly cast Borg queen...who isn't necessary to potray the collective...I mean the actress is pure epicness but she portrays a woman like some cat lady looking for her soulmade. You know just with Drones instead of cats. I pictured the Borg as being the perfect technologial singularity. A form of peace like Cochrane dreamed of in my mind but he would still have to resist like the federation is resisting the collective because their peace is a cheap trick. Cut out the individuality. All you need to have peaceful consense is nobody able to argue. That's the borg way. But he queen...and her line about thinking to third dimensional. I had an Idea once. Show some Enterprise crew member. A female. And let her become the Borg queen after assimilation because they use Queens to create a new collective when needed. They are obviously not connected to the collective of the late 21th century. They lost their ships and everything. Would be nice in my opinion to show hat the queen isn't the collective itself but maybe a solution out of need. In the novels they create queens with the queen protocol. So they aren't the rulers. They are tools too.
Thanks for the video :)
I think they missed such a good oportunity.
They should put on the battle of sector 001 Sisko and crew on the deviant. Then when picard rescue we have a DS9 TNG movie.. where in the end Sisko sees the human side of Picard and forgive him from the acts of locutus when his wife died
Captain Sisko was going after the traitor Michael Eddington during the events of First Contact.
2:09 RedLetterMedia
Regarding Borg use of time travel:
1. Borg prefer to assimilate advanced civilizations. It would be counterproductive to assimilate a primitive planet. For the Borg, assimilating 20th century Earth would have been a consolation prize, after failing to assimilate 24th century Earth.
2. Maybe time travel has serious damaging or power draining effects on the ship that uses it. This is supported by the fact that the Borg Sphere could only fire pitifully weak energy blasts at the Phoenix construction site. For this reason, a Borg Ship might be incapable of warp or Transwarp travel after arriving in the past, meaning they would need to be in orbit of a planet before going through time.
Been watching anti-trekkers review who ruins the movie for me lol even though he is right about a lot of stuff, so I have to go actively search for and watch this calmer review :P
+Resurrected Starships
I know that feeling, basically stopped following that chain of depression after 8 episodes = first 15 minutes of the movie? You can over-analyse things, I guess.
One point against were you say Lily's character could have just as easily been a man and you wouldn't have to change a thing. A man would have looked odd in that dress on the Holodeck :-)
He could have entered engineering and blasted the tube containing the flesh eating gas, all dead..ship is safe