Star Trek: First Contact - Special Collector's Edition
Assimilate this (DVD).
Said performer felt this bound the hands of the actors and basically gave them nothing to do, no challenge to overcome. I thought it made the show dull as dirt. No tail-chasing Captain, no sniping from the doctor, and no cases of space madness like Sulu when he went tearing through the ship with his rapier.
One of the things I loved so much aboutStar Trek: First Contact was that they finally broke out of those ridiculous bounds. The always-dignified Captain Picard, whose solution to every situation was a stern lecture, went completely off the rails. Picard machine gunned a Borg and liked it, told off Worf and then went berserk in the face of a woman after he'd lectured her about how people in the 24th century seek to further themselves.
Best of all, it threw cold water on the idolized, mythological Zefram Cochrane. The crew from the 24th century came back to discover the hero who invented warp drive was a drunk and a grade-A jerk.
Finally, Star Trek had some damn blood in it, and I don't mean the red stuff.
This film, the first featuring TNG's cast on their own, also introduced a new Enterprise, a mean war machine built to face the Borg. Remember, this movie was made in 1995 for 1996 release, so it was beforeVoyager completely killed the Borg as a threat. Up to now they had only made a few appearances on TNG episodes and were still considered unstoppable.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is ordered to stay out of the battle, since he was once assimilated by the Borg and Star Fleet has its doubts about him in the situation. When Star Fleet gets its clock cleaned, he does a Captain Kirk and blows off the orders, charging in to destroy the cube. However, a sphere escapes and engages in some time travel with the Enterprise on its tail.
After noting it's one day before First Contact, Picard realizes the Borg came to stop Earth's first contact with an alien species. He and his crew beam down to see if Dr. Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell), who invented the warp drive, is all right. Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) finds him comfortably numb. Then again, so is she, in one of the funniest scenes in the movie.
In his first shot directing a feature film, Jonathan Frakes pulls off a great hat trick. The movie has solid action, especially the opening. More than that, he juggles three storylines without losing focus and spares us the technobabble that so plagued the series. The only real annoyance was early on, when he inserts about eight reaction shots of Troi in a row, all with her sporting the same open-mouthed expression.
The real coup was getting Cromwell and Alfre Woodard. While the franchise has garnered a large number of outstanding cameos over the years (my favorite being David Ogden Stiers as a scientist whose fellow alien species killed themselves once reaching a certain age), it usually wasn't known for attracting Oscar-nominees.
Both actors had done just that, and turned in some of the most memorable performances Trek ever saw. Sure, we saw Zefram Cochrane in the original series, but Cromwell's performance was far more memorable as he swings from drunkenness to the discomfort of the Enterprise crew's hero worship.
Woodard was refreshing for giving Picard a slap of realism in the face, calling him on his hypocrisy and challenging him like no one else, not even Dr. Crusher, had ever done. Patrick Steward, on the other hand, went completely overboard, reaching levels of overacting usually reserved for Avery Brooks. "The line must be drawnHee-yuh! This far, no farther! AndIIIIIIIIIIIIII will make themPAAAYYYYYY for what they've DONE!" Oy…
I'd risk all manner of hysterical responses if I said this were the best of the Trek films. Let's just say it's the best of the TNG crew, which isn't a hard comparison to make, and rejoice in a special edition.
Score: 9 out of 10
The Video
While Paramount's video team pooched the video onGenerations, the DVD producers make up for it here with a beautiful anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 video that's almost reference-quality, but not quite.
It's the same transfer as the original release, with some of the flecks and imperfections from the original scattered around the film. However, the picture is very sharp, with excellent fine detail, especially on close shots.
The Borg Queen's skin was given a strange, glistening sheen, like she was sweating, and it really shines through. The only real negative appears in some outdoor backgrounds, which are a little blurry, but not nearly as bad as what you'll see on many Miramax DVDs
Color saturation is near-perfect, particularly skin tones. If anything, they look a little shiny, although that's mostly the case with Patrick Stewart. Black levels are solid with excellent shadow detail. Whites are solid and free of blooming or noise.
Score: 9 out of 10
Languages and Audio
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio from the original release a few years back was very good, and Paramount has preserved it for this release. Even better, you get a DTS track, the second Trek film with DTS. You also get a French Dolby 2.0 soundtrack, with subtitles in English, French and Spanish.
The DTS soundtrack is definitely the highlight, for its stronger audio, better handling of subtleties and brighter dynamic range. It's really apparent during the Borg cube battle, as you hear a wide range of sounds and lots of positional audio.
The mid-range and low-end are also excellent, as reproduced when Picard, Worf and Hawk try to stop the Borg from using the deflector array. The launch of the Phoenix is also great for shaking the ground, from the rocket ignition to "Magic Carpet Ride."
The one area of weakness is comm links. For some reason, there is a slight distortion. This is the one way the old Dolby Digital is better than DTS. While it's not as strong as the DTS mix in terms of volume, dynamic range, positional audio and overall quality, the distortion isn't as bad with DD, either.
Score: 9 out of 10
Packaging and Extras
Paramount continues to use the fat Amaray case like the previous collector's editions, with no insert. Disc one has two commentaries, a great study in opposites. First up is director/co-star Jonathan Frakes, who sounds like he has a bad cold and is high on cold medicine.
For about the first half hour he just babbles, with random outbursts of "YES!" or "Genius." First rule of modesty is you don't call yourself a genius, Jon, especially afterThunderbirds. Eventually he gets his act together and starts offering something of substance, but it takes a while.
Far more substantive and useful are co-writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga. They discuss the various drafts, how some parts changed quite a bit while others were relatively untouched. The initial plan was to make Picard and Lily more romantic partners but that was scrapped. They also talk about the fun in making Cochrane so flawed.
Toward the end, they talk about the end of the franchise. As in, it's time for it to die, at least for a little while. Moore talks about the 1980s DC Comics series where they wiped the slate clean of all the permutations of their franchises so they could start over fresh, and Trek might need this, too.
Braga offers that the series has run out of gas not due to bad writing but overexposure. He's half-right on the latter but is there any fan left who doesn't think the franchise was killed by limp writing? Hello,Insurrection, Nemesis, most ofEnterprise and the last two seasons ofVoyager?
Anyway, it's clear that even they know Trek's days are numbered and it might be a good idea for it to go away for a while and let fans start to miss it. And if it comes back in a decade or two, keep that fool Braga away from it.
Ok, now that I have that out of my system, the last extra on disc one is your usual text commentary from Michael and Denise Okuda, full of the usual trivia, facts, information and jokes, pointing out inconsistencies and errors. Apparently some joker at ILM slipped the Millennium Falcon into the battle with the Borg cube.
Disc two has tons of goodies, most of which look like they were done when the film was made. Under theProduction menu, we haveMaking First Contact, 20-minutes of ass kissing aimed at Frakes' backside. Clearly this was done beforeInsurrection.
The Story features Braga and Moore talking about the evolution of the story, what it was like being able to go all out with the TNG cast and the changes they made along the way from draft one to shooting. It's somewhat redundant to the commentary.
The Missile Silo talks about the nuclear missile silo in Arizona that served as the launch pod for the Phoenix. Set designer Herman Zimmerman shows what a nuisance it was to film in such tight quarters, and Brent Spiner talks about his stunt in the silo.
The Deflector Dish looks at the scene, which appeared simple but was one of the toughest to shoot, as they built that deflector to full size and had to fake zero gravity.From "A" to "E" covers the designs of the Enterprise over the years. This was the last film to use a scale model at all, and even in this film a lot of the scenes used a CG Enterprise.
Finally,The Art of First Contact looks at all of the concept art, ship models and the numerous halls in the Enterprise. There were a lot of sets and corridors in this film, and they had to be Borg modified for some scenes as well.
Scene Deconstruction examines the special effects for three scenes; the Borg Queen's assembly, the escape pod launch and the Borg Queen's death. The assembly of the Borg Queen was an extremely tough scene to do and required the most work. It's definitely the most intriguing of the three and the longest, because so much work went into it.
The Star Trek Universe kicks off withJerry Goldsmith: A Tribute, a look at the late composer, who came up with so many soundtracks for Trek films, including this one.The Legacy of Zefram Cochrane is an interview with James Cromwell, who had a few appearances on TNG in other roles, as well as his turn as Zefram Cochrane. They address the fact that Cochrane was seen in TOS and the decision to break with continuity. Cromwell also talks about his life work with CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence) as well.
First Contact: The Possibilities is another one of those featurettes where they try to say that this stuff could be real, and once again Andr¿ Bormanis is along to sell the idea. Bormanis and reps from SETI and The Planetary Society talk about the potential for first contact with an alien race. Hey, if nothing else, it's cool to see the SETI @Home get mentioned.
The Borg Collective contains three segments. First up isUnimatrix One, where a number of actors, including Alice Krige (the Queen) and Jeri "7 of 9" Ryan talk about the evolution of the Borg, from TNG to the show at the Las Vegas Hilton (man, they pimp that show hard).
UnderThe Queen, Alice Krige talks in depth about her character, the Queen. The third segment,Design Matrix, talks about making the Borg costumes and how they evolved from the black leotard look fromQ Who throughFirst Contact.
Archives contains storyboards from four scenes, and the photo gallery has 150 stills. Finally, there's a trailer, a teaser and a trailer for the Vegas show.
No deleted scenes? No behind-the-scenes footage on the set? For shame.
Score: 8 out of 10
