STAR TREK 8: FIRST CONTACT


Release Date: November 22, 1996
Screenplay By Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore
Story By Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore
Music By Jerry Goldsmith
Executive Producer Martin Hornstein
Produced By Rick Berman
Directed By Jonathan Frakes
Domestic Gross (US): $92 Million


Production Notes

Before the release of Star Trek Generations, Paramount had already given the go ahead for a second film featuring 'The Next Generation' crew, with Rick Berman producing. Star Trek: First Contact was given an overwhelming budget of 45 million dollars, far more than any previous Star Trek film.

Rick Berman: "Every good Star Trek film has gone for a balance of science fiction, serious drama, a message of some sort and a lot of fun, comedy and action. I think we're designing this film no differently in terms of trying to strike that balance. The film is going to have a lot of action in it, perhaps a little more than the last film."

Jonathan Frakes, who portrays Commander William Riker on 'The Next Generation,' was selected as director of Star Trek: First Contact. Rick Berman: "I have great faith in Jonathan. I think he has shown extremely impressive abilities in the 13 or 14 episodes that he's directed. That is all going to translate to the big screen beautifully." Like Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, and David Carson before him, Star Trek was Frakes' motion picture directorial debut.

Rick Berman: "This film is going to tie up some loose ends that have existed for 30 years regarding the initial creation of Starfleet and the Star Trek universe as we know it. In Star Trek lore, there is not a whole lot known about what happened in the 21st and 22nd centuries."

James Cromwell, best known for his role as the farmer in Babe, was chosen to portray Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact. Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive, was first introduced in the original series "Star Trek" episode "Metamorphosis," in which he was played by Glenn Corbett. In that episode, Cochrane had been assumed dead for 150 years before being encountered by Captain James T. Kirk on a mysterious planet. "Metamorphosis" also established that Cochrane was from Alpha Centauri, not Earth as portrayed in First Contact.

Jonathan Frakes: "I think it certainly has the best guest cast of any of the Star Trek films. It has the best story as well. We're bringing the fun back to Star Trek."

Rick Berman: "I sensed that, of the various villainous species that we have encountered, the Borg were certainly the most interesting. We've never had the opportunity to exploit the Borg in a film. We never had the opportunity to use the Borg in a way where we could spend the proper amount of money to build them and to create this cyborg race properly, and not be limited to the budget of a television series."

Rick Berman: "The movie will entail a love interest for Picard and, in fact, of the three guest-starring roles that this film will have, two of them will be women." Picard's would-be romance was eventually dropped from the film in the scripting stages.

Rather than create new music, much of composer Jerry Goldsmith's score for this film was either directly taken from his work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier or derived from it. Even the main First Contact theme itself used a melody from Star Trek V in the background.

Rick Berman: "Nobody likes the fact that some of 'The Next Generation' cast didn't have a lot to do in the last film. It's a problem, though, that is always going to exist to some degree. If you look at the first six Star Trek movies, I am sure you will find specific films that had very little of Chekov or Uhura or Sulu or the other actors. We have a very similar problem. On the television show, you know that if you don't use a character on any given week you'll try to use them in a bigger way the next week or the week after that. When you're dealing with these films, it's not quite that easy. You've got your main characters which are mostly Picard, Riker, and Data. The other four characters you try to work in the best you can but you are not always successful. We do have seven stars and I like to think of them that way but you can't have a story that revolves around seven different characters. But we are going to try to alleviate that problem to some degree this time and strike a better balance."

Jonathan Frakes: "This is my first motion picture. What I like is that you have the time to make exciting shots and have better production values. The best part is that you have more time than on a TV show and the quality is just better."


Film Quotes


Troi: "Timeline? This is no time to argue about time. We don't have the time."

Cochrane: "I don't want to be a statue."

Cochrane: "I don't know who writes your history books or where you get your information from, but you
people got some pretty funny ideas about me. You all look at me as if I'm some sort of saint or visionary
or something."
Riker: "I don't think you're a saint, Doc, but you did have a vision, and now we're sitting in it."
Cochrane: "You want to know what my vision is? Dollar signs. Money. I didn't build this ship to usher in
a new era for humanity. You think I want to go to the stars? I don't even like to fly. I take trains. I built
this ship so that I could retire to some tropical island filled with naked women. That's Zefram Cochrane.
That's his vision."

Riker: "Someone once said, 'Don't try to be a great man, just be a man and let history make its own
judgments."
Cochrane: "That's rhetorical nonsense. Who said that?"
Riker: "You did, ten years from now."

Picard: "We have not lost the Enterprise, Mr. Worf. We are not going to lose the Enterprise, not to the
Borg, not while I'm in command."

Picard to Worf: "You're afraid. You want to destroy the ship and run away. You coward."

Picard to Worf: "Get off my bridge."

Picard: "I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We make too many compromises already. Too many retreats.

They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here. This far, no further."