49 Fun Facts About Star Trek: First Contact

Who directed Star Trek: First Contact, in his feature film debut?

Jonathan Frakes got the job after better-known directors passed on it: the producers decided they needed someone who understood Star Trek, and several of the cast had volunteered.

First Contact is the first Star Trek film without which crew?

The Original Series crew had handed over in Generations, so this was the first film to rest on the Next Generation cast alone; one critic joked he had doubted the old crew would ever retire.

What is the name of Zefram Cochrane's warp ship?

Phoenix is nearly shot down at the last moment: Data fires the Enterprise's torpedoes at it for the Borg Queen, and they miss only because he has been deceiving her.

In which US state is Cochrane's launch site?

Montana was played by California: the launch-site village was built in the Angeles National Forest and filmed over two weeks of night shoots.

Who plays Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact?

James Cromwell had already played three other characters in Star Trek's television series before he landed this part, for which Tom Hanks's name had also been put forward.

Zefram Cochrane first appeared in which 1967 Star Trek episode, played by Glenn Corbett?

Metamorphosis shows a Cochrane who vanished 150 years earlier and is kept young by an energy being; the film's older, hard-drinking inventor looks nothing like him, which its writers decided did not matter.

Who plays Lily Sloane, Cochrane's assistant, in Star Trek: First Contact?

Alfre Woodard had jokingly declared herself the director's godmother at a barbecue years earlier, and hers was the first name spoken when the script was read through.

Who plays the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact?

Alice Krige's first costume, in hard rubber, raised blisters, so a softer one was made overnight, and her silver contact lenses could stay in for only four minutes at a time.

Who plays Data, the android the Borg Queen tries to win over in Star Trek: First Contact?

Brent Spiner's Data admits afterwards that he was tempted by her offer for 0.68 seconds, which for an android, he says, 'is nearly an eternity'.

What does the Borg Queen graft onto Data to tempt him?

Human skin gives Data the sense of touch he has always wanted; he pretends to turn, then ruptures a coolant tank whose vapour eats away the Borg's flesh and his own new skin.

Which Enterprise crew member is assimilated during First Contact's spacewalk on the deflector dish?

Lieutenant Hawk, newly assimilated, cracks Picard's helmet before a crewmate shoots him off the hull; the three actors wore lead weights in their boots so they would move as if held down.

Picard angrily calls which officer a coward for suggesting the Enterprise be destroyed?

Worf replies 'If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand', and Picard later apologises, calling him the bravest man he has ever known.

Scholars compare Picard's obsession with the Borg to which literary character?

Captain Ahab is named in the film itself, when Lily tells Picard what he has become; the writers hesitated only because The Wrath of Khan had already leaned on Moby-Dick.

Which alien species makes first contact with humanity at the end of Star Trek: First Contact?

Vulcans stepping out of their ship was the one image a writer says he brought to the table: he wanted the film to show 'the birth of Star Trek'.

Where did First Contact's writers first set the Borg's attack on history, before dropping the idea as too campy?

Renaissance Italy would have had Data posing as an artist's apprentice beside Leonardo da Vinci, with sword fights and phaser fire mixed together in a castle.

Star Trek: First Contact's working title was dropped in 1996 because it clashed with which other sequel?

Alien Resurrection was announced by 20th Century Fox while the film was still called Star Trek: Resurrection, which then cycled through stand-ins such as Star Trek: Borg before becoming First Contact.

Who wrote the screenplay for First Contact?

Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore wanted the Borg while their producer wanted time travel, and standing on the steps outside they decided on the spot to do both.

What shape is the smaller Borg ship that escapes the exploding cube and flies back in time?

A sphere slips out just before the cube explodes and opens a time vortex, and the Enterprise, caught in its wake, follows it back to the twenty-first century.

Why did Zefram Cochrane really build his warp ship, to the dismay of the crew who revere him?

To get rich: he tells Riker his vision was dollar signs and retirement on a tropical island full of naked women, and that he does not even like to fly.

Which film knocked First Contact off the top of the US box office in its second week?

101 Dalmatians opened to almost twice what First Contact took that weekend, pushing the Trek film down to second place, just ahead of Space Jam.

The new Enterprise-E belongs to which starship class?

Sovereign-class lines were drawn to be sleeker and more muscular than the ship lost in Generations: the writers had asked for something close to a warship, fit to face the Borg.

First Contact filmed its Enterprise as what, a technique the next film dropped?

A physical model about ten feet long was built by Industrial Light & Magic in roughly five months; for the next film it was simply scanned, and the ship became computer-generated.

Which of these starship classes was newly designed for First Contact's opening battle with the Borg?

Akira class ships exist because the effects supervisor reasoned that Starfleet would throw everything it had at the Borg, and the background fleet had to be built digitally anyway.

Which actor's breathing trouble inside his spacesuit helmet halted filming of First Contact's hull sequence?

Patrick Stewart became ill after a minute inside the fully enclosed helmet, even though the suits had built-in fans and lights, and the day's shooting was abandoned.

In First Contact, Picard lures two Borg into a holodeck story about which fictional detective?

Dixon Hill's nightclub was a real art deco restaurant inside Los Angeles's Union Station, chosen to contrast with the dark Borg corridors and filled with 120 extras in period dress.

Which Voyager actor cameos as the Enterprise's EMH, quipping 'I'm a doctor, not a door stop'?

Robert Picardo talked his way in: he asked the film's writers why Voyager should have a holographic doctor when the flagship had none, and two weeks later the producer rang to offer him the scene.

Which two Enterprise officers ride along with Cochrane on humanity's first warp flight?

Riker and La Forge fly as his crew, and when Cochrane panics during the countdown that he has forgotten something, it turns out to be the disc of rock music he wants playing at lift-off.

How did Geordi La Forge's look change in First Contact?

His VISOR was replaced with ocular implants because LeVar Burton had lobbied for years to let his eyes be seen; he had asked for the change on Generations and been turned down.

Who composed the score for First Contact?

Jerry Goldsmith had his scoring time cut short, so he brought in his son Joel, who wrote much of the film's action music from his father's themes.

Which two rock songs does Cochrane play in First Contact?

'Ooby Dooby' and 'Magic Carpet Ride' split even the film's makers: the soundtrack label called including them controversial, and the writers later called the Roy Orbison number 'too goofy'.

Which Enterprise officer gets drunk on tequila while trying to win Zefram Cochrane's trust?

Deanna Troi needed three shots of tequila just to learn that the man at the bar was Cochrane, and she defends herself to Riker: 'It's a primitive culture. I'm just trying to blend in.'

So few actors could be made up as First Contact's Borg that what filled out the background of the army?

Mannequins stood in because the Borg suits and make-up cost so much that a handful of performers played every drone, each after five hours in the make-up chair.

The blinking lights on First Contact's Borg drones spell out crew members' names in which code?

Morse code was one hidden touch among many: instead of full helmets, each drone wore separately fitted head pieces, rearranged daily so that a few performers looked like a whole hive.

In the Borg's warning to Starfleet in First Contact, resistance is what?

Futile: the collective's voice belonged to Jeff Coopwood rather than any on-screen drone, and Data throws the line back at the Queen as he floods engineering with coolant.

Which shot did the director call First Contact's 'signature visual effect', one that took five months to finish?

The Borg Queen being assembled, her head and spine lowered on cables into her body, was filmed with the actress hanging from a rig in a blue suit so that everything below her shoulders could be erased.

Which First Contact scene was shot last?

Picard's Borg nightmare that opens the film was kept for the very last day of a shoot that ran two days over schedule, so the story's first image was the last thing its cast worked on.

With the Enterprise-E set to self-destruct, what does Picard say there are 'plenty of' left?

Letters in the alphabet: Crusher sighs 'So much for the Enterprise-E', Picard answers 'We barely knew her', and the joke lands because the ship is brand new in this film.

What name did the Borg give Jean-Luc Picard when they assimilated him, six years before First Contact?

Locutus was the Borg's mouthpiece in the Next Generation two-parter 'The Best of Both Worlds'; the film treats that ordeal as unfinished business, which is why Starfleet first orders Picard to stay away from the fight.

Where did Star Trek: First Contact have its premiere in November 1996?

Mann's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, hosted the first film premiere its director says he had ever attended, and he spent the start of the evening peeking out from the wings.

Why does Dr Crusher beam Lily Sloane up to the Enterprise's sickbay?

Radiation poisoning overcomes her moments after she has opened fire on Picard and Data, whose android body simply shrugs off the bullets.

Which Starfleet ship, commanded by Worf, does the Enterprise rescue during First Contact's opening battle?

USS Defiant has lost its shields and weapons when its commander, declaring that perhaps today is a good day to die, orders it to ram the Borg cube, just as the Enterprise arrives.

In First Contact, the Enterprise is at first ordered to patrol which area, far from the Borg battle?

The Neutral Zone was busywork: Starfleet feared that Picard's history with the Borg made him an unstable element, so the crew could only listen to the battle until he chose to disobey.

Which award did Deborah Everton win for First Contact's costumes, including the redesigned Borg?

A Saturn Award went to Everton, a newcomer to Star Trek who clothed everything outside Starfleet, from 1940s nightclub guests to Borg remade to look assimilated from the inside out.

Which critic wrote that First Contact's Borg Queen 'looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of'?

Roger Ebert added that she nonetheless 'inspires me to keep an open mind', and ranked the film among the best of the eight Star Trek pictures made by then.

What is Zefram Cochrane dismayed to learn will one day stand at his launch site?

A statue of him, in marble and twenty metres tall: told this by an officer who attended Zefram Cochrane High School, the reluctant hero promptly bolts for the woods.

In Star Trek: First Contact, what is Zefram Cochrane's warp ship built from?

An old Titan II nuclear missile was the producers' deliberate irony, a weapon of mass destruction opening an era of peace; the scenes were shot around a real, disarmed Titan in its Arizona silo.

First Contact's visual effects went unnominated at the Oscars, so in which category did it earn its only nomination?

Best Makeup was its only Oscar nomination, and it lost to The Nutty Professor; the film's make-up chief had won the award once before, for Mask.

Which Star Trek regular makes an uncredited cameo as the maître d' in First Contact's holodeck nightclub?

Ethan Phillips, best known as Neelix, went uncredited on purpose, so that fans would be left guessing whether it was really him without his alien make-up.

After the Borg change history, what does the Enterprise crew find has become of everyone on Earth?

They are all Borg, some nine billion of them, so Picard at once orders the Enterprise to follow the enemy into the past and repair the damage.