Star Trek: First Contact Trivia
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49 free Star Trek: First Contact trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Star Trek: First Contact trivia quiz covers the 1996 film in which Picard and the crew of the new Enterprise-E chase the Borg back to April 2063 to protect Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight. It was Jonathan Frakes's directorial debut, the first Star Trek film with no Original Series characters, and the movie that introduced the Borg Queen. The questions range from the plot — the Phoenix, Lily Sloane, Data's grafted skin, the deflector-dish spacewalk, the Vulcan landing in Montana — to the making of the film: the abandoned Renaissance Italy draft, the title that had to change because of Alien Resurrection, the four days shooting inside a real Titan missile silo, Jerry Goldsmith's score, the Voyager cameos, and the box office. There are easy questions for casual viewers and hard ones for people who know the film shot for shot. BrainPickle also has quizzes on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the wider Star Trek universe. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question carries a citation to the page it came from.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Star Trek: First Contact, in his feature film debut?
Jonathan Frakes
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.
Q 02First Contact is the first Star Trek film without which crew?
Original Series
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.
Q 03What is the name of Zefram Cochrane's warp ship?
Phoenix
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.
Q 04In which US state is Cochrane's launch site?
Montana
Montana was played by California: the launch-site village was built in the Angeles National Forest and filmed over two weeks of night shoots.
Q 05Who plays Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact?
James Cromwell
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.
Q 06Zefram Cochrane first appeared in which 1967 Star Trek episode, played by Glenn Corbett?
Metamorphosis
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.
Q 07Who plays Lily Sloane, Cochrane's assistant, in Star Trek: First Contact?
Alfre Woodard
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.
Q 08Who plays the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact?
Alice Krige
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.
Q 09Who plays Data, the android the Borg Queen tries to win over in Star Trek: First Contact?
Brent Spiner
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'.
Q 10What does the Borg Queen graft onto Data to tempt him?
Human skin
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.
Q 11Which Enterprise crew member is assimilated during First Contact's spacewalk on the deflector dish?
Lieutenant Hawk
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.
Q 12Picard angrily calls which officer a coward for suggesting the Enterprise be destroyed?
Worf
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.
Q 13Scholars compare Picard's obsession with the Borg to which literary character?
Captain Ahab
Q 21The new Enterprise-E belongs to which starship class?
Sovereign
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.
Q 22First Contact filmed its Enterprise as what, a technique the next film dropped?
Physical model
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.
Q 23Which of these starship classes was newly designed for First Contact's opening battle with the Borg?
Akira class
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.
Q 14Which alien species makes first contact with humanity at the end of Star Trek: First Contact?
Vulcans
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'.
Q 15Where did First Contact's writers first set the Borg's attack on history, before dropping the idea as too campy?
Renaissance Italy
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.
Q 16Star Trek: First Contact's working title was dropped in 1996 because it clashed with which other sequel?
Alien Resurrection
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.
Q 17Who wrote the screenplay for First Contact?
Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore
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.
Q 18What shape is the smaller Borg ship that escapes the exploding cube and flies back in time?
A sphere
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.
Q 19Why did Zefram Cochrane really build his warp ship, to the dismay of the crew who revere him?
To get rich
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.
Q 20Which film knocked First Contact off the top of the US box office in its second week?
101 Dalmatians
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.
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.
Q 24Which actor's breathing trouble inside his spacesuit helmet halted filming of First Contact's hull sequence?
Patrick Stewart
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.
Q 25In First Contact, Picard lures two Borg into a holodeck story about which fictional detective?
Dixon Hill
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.
Q 26Which Voyager actor cameos as the Enterprise's EMH, quipping 'I'm a doctor, not a door stop'?
Robert Picardo
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.
Q 27Which two Enterprise officers ride along with Cochrane on humanity's first warp flight?
Riker and La Forge
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.
Q 28How did Geordi La Forge's look change in First Contact?
His VISOR was replaced with ocular implants
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.
Q 29Who composed the score for First Contact?
Jerry Goldsmith
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.
Q 30Which two rock songs does Cochrane play in First Contact?
'Ooby Dooby' and 'Magic Carpet Ride'
'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'.