Star Trek 8. First Contact

This is the first completely TNG movie without any TOS characters involved anymore. In it 2 stories are cleverly intertwined. The first one is the one about how humankind developed the warp drive and made contact with the Vulcans, the First Contact with extra terrestrials. The second one is about the Borg attack on Earth to assimilate humanity. Before being destroyed by the Enterprise the Borg launch a sphere that travels back in time in order to prevent the first warp flight and ET contact resulting from it and by doing so avoid the Federation ever being formed. The opening titles are accompanied by a dramatic music score worthy of events of historic importance such as the making of first contact. The Borg storyline has quite a bit of Alien like suspense in it but by switching regularly between the 2 storylines the movie doesn’t become a 2 hour long tense experience. Compared to the first 6 movies center’d around the TOS crew this movie shows a lot more emotional and ethical ambiguity. The motives of Jean Luc in his fight against the Borg are not always living up to the high standards expected. This makes his character more human and approachable compared to the one of Kirk. In general Where the original series focused more on how a group of individuals approached the unknown the next generation explores the confrontation with the unknown on the larger scale of civilisations. The way the Borg assimilate others to better themselves can be seen as a metaphor of how dominant civilisations have assimilated other cultures in human history. But the main spirit of the movie is still an optimistic one where there is hope for a bright future for humanity reflected by the defeat of the Borg and the successful first contact. A movie worth seeing.