Written by: | Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore | | | Directed by: | Jonathan Frakes | | | Release Date: | 1996 |
This week on
Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to go through the 8th
Star Trek film:
First Contact, aka
The One with the Borg in it. Not to be confused with the episode
First Contact, which doesn't have even the slightest bit of Borg in it. The movie was nearly called
Star Trek: Resurrection, but
Alien: Resurrection went and stole that title. Someone was apparently fond of the sound of it though, as the next Trek film was called
Insurrection.
Here's another fact for you:
First Contact just turned twenty today, as it was released in November 1996, during
Trek's 30th anniversary.
Deep Space Nine celebrated by compositing its crew into
The Trouble with Tribbles,
Voyager celebrated by putting Janeway into the 25th anniversary film
The Undiscovered Country, and here
Next Gen is celebrating by... sending the Enterprise back in time to meet a boring guest star from one of the most forgettable episodes of the
Original Series. Seems like now would've been the time to have the epic crossover with Kirk's crew, but they tried that already and blew it.
1996 was when
Star Trek began to reach its peak as a Marvel-style shared universe with
Voyager reaching its third season,
DS9 hitting season 5, and
Next Gen shedding its TV sets to become a true movie series. It didn't shed its TV creators though, as writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore returned to provide the script. Also Riker actor Jonathan Frakes took the helm, beginning the
Star Trek tradition of the ship's first officer getting to direct two of the movies.
Anyway my writing will contain
SPOILERS for
First Contact and the episodes and movies preceding it, including
DS9 up to season 5
and a certain episode of the
Original Series. I might even mention that this film led to the Borg showing up in
Voyager, the uniform switch-over in
DS9, and the premise of
Enterprise, but other than that I'll keep quiet about what came after. This far, no further.