STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT

"Assimilate this!"

Picard and the guys, the female crew members are pretty much ignored again, travel back in time to stop the Borg from changing history and assimilating the Earth. Unfortunately the Borg are difficult to kill. Picard blows up their mothership twice in the first ten minutes but Mrs Queen Borg the alien sex siren has "somehow teleported managed to teleport on to the Enterprise." The fight is on to stop her using to stop her and her all male drones from stopping Warp flight from being invented.

Boldly going where no one has gone before? Well, apart from Ripley, ET, and Luke Skywalker, perhaps. First Contact is a mixed back of bits and most of them have been nicked from somewhere else. After achieving the amazing feet of having a title sequence more boring than the TV series Picard has a truly disturbing dream sequence. It was even more disturbing in Blade Runner. The Queen gets to do an Aliens and lurk around jumping on people. Picard gets to be Luke Skywalker versus the deathstar and ET turns up at the end.

Some would say that I am missing the point. These are all little in jokes for sci-fi fans and add to the fun of the movie. They did in Independence Day but First Contact doesnít have enough else to going for it, although itís a lot more fun than Generations, to stop it becoming very dull in places.

There is not too much to say about characterisation. If you've seen some of the TV series then youíll know what the characters are like and most do not develop much in this film. The holographic doctor gets a cameo and a funny one liner and so does Barclay. Of the regular characters, Deanna gets drunk and switches from a Slavic accent to a Cockney accent and Picard gets to deal with lingering inner turmoil concerning his earlier assimilation by the Borg with great Shakespearean relish. Oscar winner James Cromwell guests as the alcoholic, womanising, money mad inventor of Warp drive. In another in joke, it seems like Cromwellís character is modelled on the late Gene Rodenberry who, allegedly, had all of Cromwellís dubious traits and also created something brilliant almost inspite of himself.

It is a shame that the story, meant in the losest sense of the word, is so moronic. If you forget to take your boy scout technobabble deciphering kit at home then a lot of the plot points seem like cop outs. It seems that Dataís ten year struggle to become human wouldíve been solved if someone had thought to stick bits of skin to him and I wonder whether Vulcan guide dogs have pointy ears too and whether they should really be flying the ship.

Someone involved in First Contact clearly feels that the psychoanalytical demographic is one that has been sadly ignored. In order to pack them in there are some nice Freudian guns, tenderills, and bits of dead Borg, as well as the Queen Borg. There also plenty of nice little spaceships and also some big ones courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, but unfortunately the little ones don't fly into the big ones.

One of the best things about the film are the action sequences. This film is bursting with them, there are far more than in any other Star Trek movie. The best moments are when Picard flees to the Holodeck and the crew take a space walk to stop the Borg from doing something to something with something.

This is Johnathan Frakes, alias Commander Riker, first film as a director (he was previously responsible for several episodes of the TV series). He has been praised numerous times by Patrick Stewart and he does seem to know how to get goodperformances from his cast. Visually the film is workman like, with the exception of the opening dream sequence he seems to lack any imagination. He has managed to make the film feel very faithful to the TV series, which Generations didn't, but because of the all round lack of new ideas it seems like a TV episode that is half an hour to long.

To sum up, good special effects and good act with a silly plot. Star Trek is again suffering from tired writing. This film has not proved that Star Trek is as good as ever in it's 30th year. If it is too survive to make 40, and with the cancellation of Deep Space Nine this looks dubious, then there must be an injection of new blood.