Captain's Blog pt. 35: First Contact

After the receipts of Generations were totaled, Paramount called Rick Berman and told him to start assembling his team for a sequel. Berman ran into Moore and Braga on the studio lot and told them he wanted to do a time travel movie. Moore/ Braga countered with the Borg. Berman said, hey, let's do both. And thus was born:

First Contact

It wasn't so-named right off the bat. At first it was touted as Generations 2. (Ugh.) Then it was briefly Star Trek: Renaissance:

(Moore:) "The story would have found Picard and company searching history for a group of time-traveling Borg. Happening upon a Renaissance village, the crew would hear stories about strange creatures taking over neighboring villages (who of course turn out to be) the Borg. We track them down to a castle near the village where a nobleman runs a feudal society. Data becomes our spy, impersonating an artist's apprentice. He befriends Leonardo Da Vinci, who at the time, was working for the nobleman as a military engineer.

"You would have sword fights and phaser fights, mixed together, in 15th-century Europe. (But) it risked becoming campy and over the top."

Other eras were considered, but the story eventually congealed into the Borg trying to stop first contact between Vulcans and Humans. The idea that the Borg would choose this course of action over just wiping out humanity altogether (say, in its primordial-soup phase) or choose the day before first contact to launch their offensive is a bit wonky. But who cares? First Contact is one of the highest peaks in the whole Trek mountain range. A more succinct version of this blog would simply be "This movie kicks unholy ass. Resistance is futile."

Or, as Spiner pronounces it, "Resistance is feudal." Maybe that was a holdover from the feudal-lord aspect of the original script? I doubt it.

Taking its cues from "Best of Both Worlds" and not from any of the other Borg episodes of TNG, the series most popular villains are re-positioned along the lines of their most obvious genre analog: zombies.

The zombie genre is more popular than ever these days. It was less ubiquitous in the 90s.

One of the best parts about FC is how well it blends a zombie film / monster movie narrative with a more traditional Trek narrative. It's recognizably a Trek film from the very first (and recognizably a TNG-Trek film specifically, something Generations was not.) But the delayed-reveal of the Borg follows the classic "don't show the monster until the second reel" trope, and other bits of genre-fan-service follow suit.

 

 

Some took issue with the addition of a Borg Queen to the hive. I can understand the objection - it alters the organizational structure we've heretofore seen - but it never really bothered me. As the sole representative of unabashed female villainy in the Trek movies, (I'm not counting Valeris) Alice Krige sets a pretty high bar. I'm surprised our reactionary cultural gatekeepers don't claim the movie is misogynistic, come to think of it.

 

Frakes, Moore, and Braga later recalled a sense of "uneasy sexiness" in Krige's portrayal of the Queen. As did Roger Ebert in his review:

"I also admired the peculiar makeup work creating the Borg Queen, who looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of, but inspires me to keep an open mind."

Krige was in agony (though never complained) throughout the shoot, as the tightfitting bodysuit gave her painful blisters. The silver contact lens she had to wear could only be worn for four minutes at a time.

It makes perfect sense for the Borg to target Data. (Almost so much you wonder why he wasn't the target back in "Best of Both Worlds.")

The story cuts back and forth between the goings-on planetside, the fight to re-take the ship, and Data and the Queen's experience in Engineering. The sets in particular for this film are beautiful, the Data/ Queen sequence most of all.

 

This bit always skeeves me out a little... I can't be the only one.

Data is thankfully 1000% less irritating than he was in Generations. And much more pivotal to the story. And while this is a fine use of the whole cast, this is definitely Picard's movie. And this is the "Action Picard" for which Patrick Stewart had been campaigning for years.

 

His drive for vengeance and cold fury are played expertly by Stewart, and more importantly, it all makes total sense. Picard has managed to squelch his sense of violation from becoming Locutus, but it is sublimated here into violent release. (And he seems to rid himself of it by movie's end, something which also makes sense to watch unfold.) Even the more over-the-top moments such as the oft-quoted "The line must be drawn here!" business fit comfortably under the Picard-umbrella previously established, as does this sequence in the holodeck:

 

 

 

 

Patrick Stewart is aided and abetted throughout by Alfre Woodard, always a solid presence on-screen.

Says Woodard: "I’m not a Trekkie, but I had a lot of friends who worked on Star Trek. Jonathan Frakes is my godson. I think he’s a year younger or older than me, but we first got to L.A. years ago and I was talking about my godmother, and he said, “I never had a godmother.” I said, “I’ll be your godmother.” He’s called me “godmommy” since then. LeVar [Burton] is a dear friend. So I knew they all did Star Trek, and they knew I never watched it or anything, but we’re close friends, family friends. So when they were going to do the movie and Jonathan got the chance to direct, he said, “I want you to be in the Star Trek movie.” I said, “Okay, give me the script.” I read the script, and it was an action picture. I couldn’t put it down. And I said, “Oh God, I’m so there.” Plus, I was going to work with all my friends, and he was going to direct me."

She also gets two of the best lines in the movie. "The Borg? Sounds Swedish."

(After seeing them in action.) "Definitely not Swedish!"

Picard and Lily are a pleasure to watch. I love that there's no forced romantic relationship, (which might have happened under a different director) and what we get is an organic relationship and burgeoning trust that never once feels false. As Anij notes in Insurrection, the sense of trust Picard engenders is something to behold.

Add "New Guinea" to the phrases/ nouns I want to hear Patrick Stewart say, looped.

Incidentally, Patrick wanted Picard and Lily to be more than friends and hints that the kiss at the end was supposed to be full-on lip lock and not on-the-cheek. It's unclear whether this was cut for BS-studio concerns about the audience, or that Frakes et al felt it would be out of place in the movie. If the former, two words come to mind and they ain't "Whistlin' Dixie;" if the latter, I tend to agree.

 
 

It's uncommon enough that a non-romantic-interest male/female duo makes its way to the big screen in this (or any other really) day and age, but it's downright rare when the sort of relationship that Picard and Lily bring to life acquits itself so well without it. The friendship and partnership that develops (not to mention Lily's woman-out-of-time-ness) are effectively communicated to the audience.

Bottom line is that Lily and the Borg Queen are strong characters, and Woodard and Krige deliver the goods. FC is commendable for many reasons, but not shoehorning either of these female roles into more sexist/ perceived-blockbuster-audience-bait.

The rest of the cast (unsurprisingly, given Frakes' history with the performers/ characters) also get several nice moments.

Geordi's "Predator-vision."

 

And Worf gets to deliver his signature line in perhaps the greatest circumstances ever contrived to showcase it:

"Then perhaps today IS a good day to die!" I say this every morning.

In a slight reversal of the screen-time/ story purpose afforded Woodard and Krige, Beverly and Troi don't get too much to do.

Drunk Troi gets to do the Katherine Heigl/ Sandra Bullock thing, i.e. play "adorable drunk" and bitch at the guy, in this scene.

And then she gets to do Gwen from Galaxy Quest thing and do the countdown-to-zero, here.

The other most notable guest star is Zefram Cochrane, originally played by Glenn Corbet in TOS and played here by James Cromwell.

Rock and Roll Drunk Zefran is a lot of fun.

I know it'll never happen, but how cool would it be for the new-cast Trek to reboot "Metamorphosis" and get Cromwell to play Cochrane again, with that episode's plot? I say, pretty cool.

Cohran's story arc is important to the proceedings, as well, not just in the "got to get you to warp drive" sense re: first contact with the Vulcans, but in the reluctant hero surrendering to history/ his own hand in making it. There may be one or two extraneous lines concerning this, but it's a mild objection. I understand there were even more, and they were whittled down to what we see here. 

Some cameos worth mentioning:

Adam Scott, well before he was a household name.

Robert Picardo as the EMH, advocating an analgesic for the Borg's skin irritations.

And a non-Neelix-ified Ethan Phillips as the Holodeck host.

The fx team slipped this shot of the Millenium Falcon into the war-against-the-Borg-Cube sequence:

And really, there's not much more left to say. This film hits on all cylinders. It looks and sounds fantastic, and everyone involved delivers.

The scenes on the ship's exterior are great.

 

Worf gets another great action-movie line with "Assimilate this!" Something I also say to myself every morning.

The film ends with our heroes witnessing first contact, then warping back to the future.

 

 

This shot at film's end is one of the more shameless pose-for-posterity moments, but I like how Data's got his Phantom of the Opera look, still. That'll require a little bit of explanation for future posters/ screencaps.

Whether it's zombie films or space-aliens or time travel films you crave, First Contact has something for everyone.

Captain's Blog pt. 34: Generations

When I walked out of the theater after first seeing Generations, I was convinced what I'd just seen was a movie about drugs. "I get it," I told my brother on the way home, "the Nexus was drugs. Soran was the strung-out junkie, Guinan was the ex-user, and Data was the drug freak-out character. It all makes sense." 

 

 

"Picard's family has been destroyed, and he has to figure out why. He has to descend into the madness to make sense of it."

My brother didn't buy it, pointing out (quite rightly) that Picard's family wasn't killed by the Nexus, something my metaphor would need in order to be consistent. But I kept going. "What else could it be but a drug metaphor? Wouldn't make sense otherwise. Even the sets: I mean, it's supposed to be the same ship, but everyone's quarters are different, everything's lit differently, darker, mood mood-lighting-ish, and even Guinan's quarters resemble an opium den."

I was only 20, so it just had never occurred to me (despite my love of the original cast films) that a show leaping from the small-to-big-screen would naturally re-do its visual design, costumes, sets, etc.

In retrospect, had they been trying to make the film I thought I was seeing, they might have been more successful. Generations does indeed resemble the before, middle, and after of a drug binge. And what do you have to show for it in the light of day? Your ship's destroyed, your family's gone, and Captain Kirk lies dead at your feet.

Yep... Time to sober up.

I was onto something, here, just not what I thought. The film was about the dangers of simulated reality/ fake-euphoria vs. hard-won reality; it's just not an especially convincing delivery mechanism for that theme.

Despite everything I'm going to get to, it's still an entertaining enough film, and the TNG-style fx look undeniably cool on the big screen. The spaceship battle and ship destruction - while not particularly logical - and Stellar Cartography scene, and even the big set piece on the Age of Sail boat, everything looks great. 

Let's start at the beginning.

Generations began its journey to the screen when Paramount informed Rick Berman that he'd been greenlit for two films. He asked Moore and Braga (then still writing partners,) Maurice Hurley, and Michael Piller to each come up with some ideas, of which he'd pick the best one. (Piller, still wrapped up in DS9 and not liking the idea of having to compete for the job, declined to submit an idea) Hurley's idea was about having Captain Picard conjure up Captain Kirk in the holodeck, to help him and the Enterprise-D through some kind of crisis, but Berman rejected the idea in favor of Moore's and Braga's. Says Ronald D. Moore:

"It was a movie about mortality. It was a movie about Picard reaching a certain age and realizing there are more days behind him than were in front of him. His brother had died, the Enterprise herself died, and this mythic hero would ultimately have a mortal ending as well. Despite realizing we are mortal, you still move on and you still live your life and you still try and the make the most of it. (Pause) Well, that is what the movie was trying to be about."

I think between the two interpretations offered here, I'll take my own. At least "we were trying to make a drug freakout movie" has a wtf factor that, like it or loathe it, you have to admire.

He continues: "I think-Brannon and I were not ready to write that movie at that point in our careers. Our reach exceeded our grasp. We didn't have the maturity and the seasoning as writers, and probably as human beings, to tackle something that grand and marry it to an action-adventure Star Trek film."

I think it's commendable that both Moore and Braga (who had a funny exchange with Shatner and Damon Lindeloff about Generations on Twitter) recognize the shortcomings of Generations. But beyond the muddled themes of the film and the bad cinematic-realization of the script, as with The Undiscovered Country, the fundamental Trek-ness of the film (ship functionality, internal consistency, character arcs and subplot that support a theme, etc.) is just... off. It's a collection of niggling mistakes from start to finish that undermine the whole. It baffles me to this day that Moore, Braga, and Berman, whose Trek acumen was collectively so spot-on for so many years, threw out so much of what worked over seven seasons and seemingly started from scratch.

Thankfully, there are enough reviews/ sites out there that make a comprehensive list of the film's failings, so I don't have to. Perhaps the most amusing is Red Letter Media's, which makes its usual snarky-but-airtight case against the many "Uhhhhh..." moments from the film. (It's a 30-minute video but totally worth watching if you're so inclined.)

I'll only focus on a few of the more egregious gaffes here and try to cut the film some slack for things that aren't quite gaffes, just very odd choices, such as when Geordi celebrates Worf's promotion by breaking into the high-pitched "hul-li-li-le-lee-li-li..." cheer typically associated with Muslim women (and only Muslim women) saluting their men going off into battle. (At least according to the movie Three Kings.)

In the pre-TNG sequence - where Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov are VIPs aboard the launch of the Enterprise-B - the new crew is rather unbelievably incompetent. They're untested rookies and all/ everyone had a bad day, fine whatever; would Starfleet really staff its flagship vessel with such folks, though? And here is where the problems start: What are we to make of when the Captain (Alan Ruck) tells the press (who seem more 20th century than 23rd) that they're taking the ship on a quick "run around the block," i.e. to Pluto and back, yet, seconds later, when the Nexus appears, they're the only ship in the vicinity? 

Even if you're being pretty forgiving, this one is hard to square.

Next we have the killing off of Picard's family. It's a pretty lazy way of motivating Picard to think about mortality, though the strong presence of Robert and the gang from "Family" certainly lends the scene some power. They're not nameless off-screeners, but folks we got to know a little. And I admire the fact that they wanted to introduce Picard in the movies in an anti-traditional-action-lead way, i.e. showing vulnerability and sobbing grief. Which Patrick Stewart pulls off, no problem. (And I guess Trek has done this sort of thing before, so I can hardly single out Generations. Still.)

Does the film lack a strong director? David Carson directed some of the best episodes of the series, but it's no insult to look at his imdb and see him as a (perfectly competent) director-for-hire. Which is bully for him, career-wise, but would the film have been better-served with someone else? Back to Ronald Moore: (from here)

 
"Leonard Nimoy turned down (directing) the film, and I knew he didn't like the script. It is hard to say at this point he was wrong. I didn't meet with him, but I remember after he met with Rick, Rick conveyed to us his reservations and why he didn't like it. He put his finger on the right problems. The Nexus was a problem. The Nexus was a difficult concept that we were never able to crack and Kirk's death didn't pay off the themes in the way we wanted it to pay off."

Let's talk about The Nexus for a second.

I like the idea of a mysterious energy-ribbon that appears like Halley's Comet every so often and wreaks havoc. But as the bridge between the two eras, it has major problems, not the least of which is what we learn about it from Guinan. i.e. Once you've been in it, you remain as an echo/ ghost, and you can leave whenever you want. 

Wouldn't Soran still be in it, then? (And how does Guinan's ghost even know this? Granted, she has extra-sensory perception, but both the Nexus and Guinan's presence within it to talk to Picard come off a little maguffin-y.) As for the leaving whenever you want aspect, this has been criticized elsewhere and often, but good God, man, why go back to seconds before the sun blows up, then? And why does Picard even need Kirk? To help punch the bad guy? And how is it so easy for Picard and Kirk to break out when everyone else has to be torn kicking-and-screaming from it? (For my drug metaphor, I rationalized this as the way different people are hard-wired for drugs. Soran would be the guy chemically wired to become a full-blown addict after one shot of vodka, while Kirk/ Picard aren't, or something.) 

I'll get back to the Next Gen cast momentarily, but let's talk Kirk/ Shatner.

 

They originally had trouble getting Shatner to come back for his Trek farewell, as Shatner relays in Movie Memories. (Says Moore) "Brannon was explaining why he thought Kirk was integral to the story, and Bill suddenly bursts out, sounding exactly like Kirk, "Well... in fact... he's NOT... in-te-gral... to the story!" Brannon's head snapped back, I flinched, and Rick (Berman) looked startled. But I thought (seeing Shatner channel Kirk spontaneously) was really, really cool."

As undeniably cool as an in-person Shatner Kirk-ism must be, practically nothing in the film, Kirk's arc or otherwise, is integral to the story, because there's really just not much of a story. Sometimes, Trek can pull this off, but does it here? Given Kirk's stature, it is for me the weightiest problem sitting on (and crushing) this script's chest. Whether it's the death of Picard's family, Data's emotional chip, Kirk's death itself, the destruction of the Enterprise, or the Klingons, all of these things seemingly exist only to prop up the conceit of getting the Captains together.

I can understand that's it's cheaper just to introduce someone new, but did anyone else find it weird that there'd be this random love of Kirk's life, "Antoniya?" (Which Shatner's accent distorts into "Antonio" in a couple of scenes.) I'm not saying it's a mistake or a bridge too far, just kind of random. Personally, I'd have chosen to make it Edith Keeler and just never name her; I mean, we only hear her offscreen/ see her in this long shot; wouldn't that have been much, much better?

Much has been made of Kirk's rather-offhanded death, which unravels the "Kirk dies alone" thing from Star Trek V. (Not that anyone really minds. I mean, you could say he died alone on the Enterprise-B, but even that seems not what was meant by this bit in STV.) I was amused by Frank Miller's reaction to this, though: "That's not how James Kirk dies! He dies leading the fragmented remains of Star Fleet into one last battle against the entire Klingon armada. And winning." The original version had Soran shooting Kirk in the back, but the test audience/ Sherry Lansing at Paramount insisted on a re-shoot. So, they had it more of an action/ heroic sacrifice thing. Not the most original/ epic. I mind this the least, though, as I don't even buy that this guy is Kirk. I think it's a transporter double. Unless it's a prequel to the Shatnerverse. In which case, well played.

I have my problems with the whole set-up on Veridian III, but the scenes between Shatner and Stewart are fun. At the time, much was made of the friendship they'd formed on-set, and I thought that was just a bit of marketing. But the years since have demonstrated that the two did indeed become friends, and despite some of the unflattering reviews at the time of the movie's release, I quite enjoy seeing the two actors play off another.

Shatner's ad-libbing and line reading of "Oh My..." is actually pretty cool, and fitting. I approve.

I am baffled why Picard covers the bodies with rocks and leaves it there, though... uhhh... it's not like a shuttlecraft isn't on the way; can't they just bring the body back/ give it a decent burial? I suppose it was a "buried at sea," thing. Like Bin Laden. (Hi, NSA!)

Malcolm McDowell, in Shatner's Movie Memories and almost everywhere else on the web that his involvement in this movie is mentioned, was downright gleeful about his being the guy to kill Kirk. He brags about it. I've never understood his excitement. The only thing memorable about his character is that he gets to kill Kirk, in a very un-Khan like fashion, and with no purpose. This is a guy who wants to slaughter billions so he can get back to his drug zone? Let's not even get into the absurd mechanics of how people enter the Nexus... as with how people exit it, it just falls apart immediately under questioning.

McDowell slags off not just the film but his co-stars, these days, as evidenced here, though I'm not sure how seriously we should take him.

He gets a couple of good lines, but his character is poorly motivated and just not very interesting. For Kirk's death to have the kind of impact it deserves, it needs to be in service of a strong plot and a strong villain. Otherwise, it's a whole different type of film. Take The Wire: Omar getting iced by that mouthy kid from the corner works because of the whole five seasons of context. Soran's entire scheme rests on some nonsensical motivation and wonky science (his rocket takes 8 seconds to reach the sun? a 50 gigawatt force field? The Rube Goldberg-like contraption to re-enter the Nexus?) and it cheapens what should be among the most powerful farewells of the whole Trekverse.

So, okay, Trilithium/ Nexus = Red Matter/ Genesis Device. Big deal. I can hang with some magical technobabble with a passing nod to science. Is that it? Unfortunately, no.

Let's talk about Data.

Data's emotion chip deserves a special mention. Normally, a subplot serves some kind of purpose to the support structure of a film. Does Data's? I realize there is an attempt made in this direction during the admittedly beautiful-looking scenes in Stellar Cartography:

 

But is it enough? I honestly don't think so. Worse, it sets the stage for a retread of Spock's own emotional journey in the films, settled in TMP but resonating through at least TVH. Spiner is not very well-served in Generations. He gets some funny lines (I do quite enjoy his "No problem!" response to Riker's suggestion about the phase coils (rather than just modulating the f**king shields, like they did every other f**king episode of TNG... But I digress.) but both the direction and performance and purpose of his emotional freakouts, here, is just damn odd. (Unless, of course, it was meant to convey the "bad trip / drug freakout"ness. But let's face it, 20-year-old Bryan, it wasn't.) Data seems to just decide to pop in his emotional chip, as if this was an episode in need of a b-story. But big-screen fare doesn't support that kind of stuff; it needs to better serve the a-story.

Some Odds and Ends

Christopher Miller plays Rene Picard in the Nexus sequence, but months earlier, he'd played Shatner's son in the SeaQuest DSV episode "Hide and Seek."

I am not a fan of the whole blowing up the Enterprise-D business in general, (though I am greatly amused by it happening almost immediately after Troi takes the helm) but specifically:

 

Shameless.

I can understand re-using expensive footage, but the explosion of the Klingon ship is the same shot from the end of The Undiscovered Country.

Beverly is fairly ill-served in each of the NextGen movies, unfortunately.

 

 
Says McFadden: “Making Generations was fun, even though I wasn’t very involved. Everyone got on well and was energized by the experience, and I think we all look forward to the next one (...) Speaking for myself, I would like there to be more Crusher in the next film, and I’m hopeful that will be the case.”

Hopes denied.

Though her character gets a pretty sound farewell in "All Good Things," so at least there's that. (And the totally bizarre genre deconstruction madness of "Sub Rosa.")

I don't want to go on too much about this one, but in terms of what it set out to do (be a tale of Picard wrestling with mortality, illuminating the dangers of simulated-reality vs. reality, and send Kirk off as the pantheon deity he is) it fails. 

CODA

"Time is not a predator but a companion on our journey. What we leave behind is not as important as what we live." This isn't a bad line, but it's kind of an anvil dropped on the film. I don't buy this as a reasonable wrap-up for Picard's experience in the story we just saw.

It is a nice wrap-up, though, for some other sentiments, and I'll close this blog with these remarks from the end of Shatner's Movie Memories:

"For years now, Leonard has been telling me about how difficult it was for him to film the death of Spock, and I have to admit, I never really understood what the hell he was talking about. I mean, he'd sit there telling me about how he spent the entire preproduction period on TWOK as well as our early days of production in total denial, blocking the character's death from his mind. Only later, he said, as the actual shooting day approached, did the full depth and consequences of his actions begin to set in. That's when he began having second thoughts, which continued to plague him right up until the cameras were ready to roll, at which point he began looking for any excuse to storm off the set and avoid playing the scene at all." 

"I too spent many months blissfully denying to myself that this simple death scene merited any serious thought, any analysis, any grief, only to later find myself swept under a flood of last-minute anxiety and soul searching in regard to Kirk, Shatner, and both our lives.

"The Kirk I knew is not the standard issue amalgam of fiction, imagination and hype. Instead, the actor's Kirk grew out of memorizing ten pages of dialogue every day and studying scripts in advance, always struggling to come up with the creative ideas that might eventually allow the actor's performance to complement and enhance what already existed on paper. In short, the character was first and foremost a combination of writer's concept and actor's experience.

"The Kirk I knew was bonded to cast and crew by hours of tedium and occasional moments of creative glow.

"What laughs and sorrows had gone into the totality of this fictional character! (...) He's changed my entire life, and he's fulfilled a lot of my boyhood dreams along the way. I owe him a tremendous debt. (...) Every once in awhile, that kind of awareness will sneak up on you and clobber you over the head. For me, filming Kirk's death marked one of those occasions. 

"It was clear now that, for me anyway, Star Trek was coming to an end."

R.I.P. James T. Kirk. Until we meet again.

"Live life like you're gonna die... because you are."