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Star Trek: First Contact

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About the book, about the author.

J.M. Dillard grew up coddled in the wilds of central Florida. After leaving her mother’s sheltering arms, she left Florida to reside in various locales, including Washington, DC, Vermont, and southern California. She herself now coddles a two-hundred-pound husband and two ninety-pound Labradors, all of whom are well-trained but persist in believing themselves to be lapdogs. She is the author of a plethora of Star Trek ® books; as Jeanne Kalogridis (her evil alter-ego), she is the author of the acclaimed Diaries of the Family Dracul trilogy, and the historical fantasy The Burning Times .

Product Details

• Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek (December 9, 2019)
• Length: 288 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982143640

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Star trek : first contact : a novel

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Star Trek: First Contact

• 4.3 • 10 Ratings

Publisher Description

The official novelization of the widely acclaimed major motion picture based on Star Trek: The Next Generation ! From the deepest, darkest reaches of space came the greatest threat the United Federation of Planets had ever faced: the Borg, a half-organic, half-mechanical species relentlessly bent on conquering and “assimilating” all intelligent life into their collective. Only through the courage and determination of the USS Enterprise crew was Captain Jean-Luc Picard able to be rescued from his own abduction and assimilation by the Borg and this alien menace prevented from destroying Earth itself. Now, several years later, the Borg are back and more dangerous than ever, launching a new attack against the heart of the Federation—one that simultaneously threatens Earth’s past, present, and future. As Captain Picard and the Enterprise crew risk their lives alongside unexpected allies, they must all stand against their greatest foe in a startling confrontation across time, even as the Borg Collective’s deadliest secret and its true face are finally revealed…

Customer Reviews

Interesting to read.

It was interesting to read the story line and remembering watching the tv show

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There’s also a good balance in the content, as most of the important sections of the movie are covered in the book, ranging from the design of the Enterprise -E through to how they completed the Borg Queen introduction sequence (where her disembodied head connects with her body). The book also provides a little detail on the genesis of the movie — and other concepts and time periods that the Borg could have interfered with — that writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga considered before settling on the post-World War III setting.

The book also devotes a decent amount of space to the redesign of the Borg and Alice Krige’s casting as the Borg Queen. I had no idea before reading this book, for example, that the Borg sequences are all accomplished with only eight Borg performers. The book also talks at length about the process of creating the Borg costumes, including for the Queen, and some of the creative decisions that went into getting the Borg ready for the big screen.

But while there are some good sections that focus on important parts of the movie — I learned about how they filmed the Phoenix missile silo sequence — there are some parts of the movie that fans are really interested in that feel under-explored in this book. The fleet of ships in the opening Battle of Sector 001 sequence, for example, and the new Starfleet ship designs created for the movie are not really explored in any detail.

The outside-the- Enterprise battle on the deflector dish also gets only a few paragraphs, where perhaps some more information about the complicated filming and wirework action would have been interesting. It’s possible that Fordham decided not to include more on either of these sequences because they have been covered in more detail in other sources, but I feel like works like this should stand alone — and not require readers to track down some other book or material in order to have the full story about the movie.

The included art, particularly from John Eaves and a number of fun behind the scenes photos, is also great. But the movie stills that make up the largest part of the art in this book are overly-enlarged and rather blurry on many pages. That may be because there was not a higher-resolution source for movie stills to work from, but it detracts from the overall look of the book when some of the spreads that have very little text don’t feel like the best presentation possible for images from the movie.

It is a definite disappointment, and means that this book feels like the least polished of the Titan reference books on Star Trek .

Despite that, though, this book is still an easy, breezy read that will tell you interesting things about a great Star Trek movie, give you some things to look at, and make you want to revisit the film and watch it again — so for me, that counts as a success.

Star Trek: First Contact — The Making of the Classic Film is in stores now.

• Joe Fordham
• Star Trek First Contact - The Making of the Classic Film
• Star Trek: First Contact

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Star Trek: First Contact

The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight ... Read all The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed. The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed.

• Jonathan Frakes
• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Brannon Braga
• Patrick Stewart
• Brent Spiner
• 368 User reviews
• 126 Critic reviews
• 70 Metascore
• 8 wins & 21 nominations total

• (as Levar Burton)

• Zefram Cochrane

• Lt. Daniels

• Holographic Doctor

• Lt. Barclay

• Defiant Conn Officer

• Admiral Hayes

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• Trivia On account of budgetary restrictions, the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) was never quite satisfied with the Borg sets and costumes as used during the series. However, the significantly bigger budget for this film finally allowed them to design the Borg in a way that was much closer to what they had intended. As a result, the suits and sets were reused extensively on Star Trek: Voyager (1995) .
• Goofs When Geordi is asking Cochrane to look at the intermix chamber blueprints, he is wearing sunglasses, even though his artificial eyes don't require protection from the sun. The sunglasses are probably needed in case a local comes looking around. Only Cochrane and Lily knew about time travelers, and Geordi's futuristic implants could blow their cover. Geordi used dark glasses for the same purpose in Time's Arrow, Part II (1992) as well.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : [Quoting "Moby Dick"] And he piled upon the whale's white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.

Lily Sloane : What?

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : "Moby-Dick".

Lily Sloane : Actually, I never read it.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Ahab spent years hunting the white whale that crippled him, a quest for vengeance, but in the end, it destroyed him and his ship.

Lily Sloane : I guess he didn't know when to quit.

• Crazy credits After 'Stunt Players' are listed, the 'Stunt Borg' are listed.
• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Space Jam/The Mirror Has Two Faces/The English Patient/Breaking the Waves (1996)
• Soundtracks Theme from 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Jerry Goldsmith

User reviews 368

• TheLittleSongbird
• Jul 21, 2017
• How long is Star Trek: First Contact? Powered by Alexa
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• What is 'First Contact' about?
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• November 22, 1996 (United States)
• United States
• Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki
• Star Trek 8
• Titan Missile Museum - 1580 W. Duval Mine Road, Green Valley, Arizona, USA
• Paramount Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $45,000,000 (estimated)
• $92,027,888
• $30,716,131
• Nov 24, 1996
• $146,027,888

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1

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First Contact

By: Pocket Books

Type: Novel - Hardcover

Product Line: Star Trek - The Next Generation Novels (Pocket Books)

MSRP old price: $21.00

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08YHMCYX1
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“Star Trek: First Contact” is one of the best of the eight “ Star Trek ” films: Certainly the best in its technical credits, and among the best in the ingenuity of its plot. I would rank it beside “ Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ” (1986), the one where the fate of Earth depended on the song of the humpback whale. This time, in a screenplay that could have been confusing but moves confidently between different levels of the story, the crew of the Enterprise follows the evil Borgs back in time to the day before mankind made its first flight at warp speed.

That flight, in 2063, was monitored by an alien race, the Vulcans, who took it as evidence that man had developed to the point where it deserved to meet another race. But now the Borgs, starting from the 24th century, want to travel back through a temporal vortex (how I love the “Star Trek” jargon!), prevent the flight and rewrite history, this time with Borgs populating the Earth instead of humans.

The latest edition of the starship is the “Enterprise E” (and there are plenty of letters left in the alphabet, Capt. Picard notes ominously). It is patrolling deep space when it learns the Borgs are attacking Earth. The Enterprise is ordered to remain where it is--probably, Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) notes bitterly, because he was a prisoner of the Borgs some six years ago, and “a man who was captured and assimilated by the Borg is an unstable element.” These Borgs are an interesting race. They are part flesh, part computer, and they “assimilate” all the races they conquer into their collective mind, which organizes their society like a hive. There is even a queen ( Alice Krige ), although she is not fat and pampered like an ant or a termite, but lean, mean and a student of seduction. One of the movie's intriguing subplots involves Data ( Brent Spiner ), the Enterprise's android, who is captured and hooked up to a Borg assimilating machine--which fails, because it can't crack his digital defenses. Then the Queen tries some analog methods all her own.

The central plot takes place as the Enterprise follows a Borg ship back through time to Earth, which, the Trekkers are dismayed to learn, is now populated by Borgs. To turn history around again, they need to be sure man's first warp flight succeeds. Earth is recovering from World War III, and a brilliant inventor named Cochrane ( James Cromwell , the tall farmer from “ Babe ”) has adapted a missile for this historic flight.

He leads a commune that seems to be part hippie, part survivalist, and spends much of his time listing to rock 'n' roll and drinking, to the despair of his associate Lily ( Alfre Woodard ). These two do not believe the weird story they get from the starship crew, and at one point Lily nearly fries Picard with a stolen gun. (He: “Maximum setting! If you had fired, you would have vaporized me.” She: “It's my first ray gun.”) The plot moves deftly between preparations for the Earth launch, Data's assimilation tortures on the Borg ship, and a fight against a Borg landing party on the Enterprise, which Picard personally directs, overruling doubts expressed by his second-in-command, William Riker ( Jonathan Frakes ) and their own assimilated Klingon, Worf ( Michael Dorn ).

Some of the earlier “Star Trek” movies have been frankly clunky in the special-effects department; the first of the series came out in 1979 and looked pale in comparison to “Star Wars.” But this one benefits from the latest advances in f/x artistry, starting with its sensational opening shot, which begins so deep inside Picard's eyeball, it looks like a star-speckled spacescape and then pulling back to encompass an unimaginably vast Borg starship. I also admired the interiors of the Borg probe, and the peculiar makeup work creating the Borg Queen, who looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of, but inspires me to keep an open mind.

“Star Trek” movies are not so much about action and effects as they are about ideas and dialogue. I doubted the original Enterprise crew would ever retire because I didn't think they could stop talking long enough. Here the story gives us yet another intriguing test of the differences among humans, aliens and artificial intelligence. And the paradoxes of time travel are handled less murkily than sometimes in the past. (Although explain to me once again how the Earth could be populated with millions of Borgs who are expected to vanish--or never have been--if the Enterprise succeeds. Isn't there some sort of law of conservation of energy that requires their physical bodies to come from, or be disposed of, somewhere, somehow?) “STFC” was directed by Frakes, who did some of the “ST Next Generation” shows for television, and here achieves great energy and clarity. In all of the shuffling of timelines and plotlines, I always knew where we were. He also gets some genial humor out of Cromwell, as the inventor who never wanted fame but simply enough money to go off to a “tropical island with a lot of naked women.” And there is such intriguing chemistry between Picard and the Woodard character that I hope a way is found to bring her onboard in the next film. “Star Trek” movies in the past have occasionally gone where no movie had gone, or wanted to go, before. This one is on the right beam.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Rated PG-13 For Some Sci-Fi Adventure Violence

112 minutes

Brent Spiner as Data

Alfre Woodard as Lily Sloane

LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge

Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi

Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard

James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane

Alice Krige as Borg Queen

Jonathan Frakes as William Riker

Michael Dorn as Worf

Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher

Directed by

• Jonathan Frakes
• Ronald D. Moore
• Brannon Braga

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Star Trek: First Contact (young adult novelization)

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Summary [ ]

See also [ ].

• Star Trek: First Contact
• Star Trek: First Contact - The Borg
• Star Trek: First Contact - Breaking the Barrier
• Star Trek: First Contact - The Movie Storybook
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

How Star Trek: First Contact Found A Replacement For Glenn Corbett's Zefram Cochrane

In Jonathan Frakes' 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact," the U.S.S. Enterprise travels back in time to the year 2063, the year humanity first invented faster-than-light travel and, almost immediately thereafter, made first contact with an alien species. By "Star Trek" lore, the maiden voyage of the Phoenix, the very first warp-capable ship, caught the attention of a passing Vulcan vessel, causing them to change course, land on Earth, and shake hands with humans. It was the franchise's "Welcome to the neighborhood" moment. It also started a massive utopian rebuilding of Earth, as it had just survived several devastating wars. By "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry's estimation, Earth had to almost destroy itself to have a "moment of clarity." After that, the technological, post-war, post-scarcity, post-capitalist utopia could begin.

The inventor of warp drive was Zefram Cochrane, who fashioned his ship out of a disused bomb casing. In "First Contact," Cochrane was portrayed by James Cromwell as an irascible drunk who only aims to invent warp engines as a way of making money and retiring to a remote island filled with naked women. He's a humorous figure who, after talking to the Enterprise crew from the future, appreciates the magnitude of his discovery.

"First Contact" was not the first time Cochrane appeared on "Star Trek." In the original series episode "Metamorphosis" (November 10, 1967), the character was unexpectedly discovered on a distant planet, somehow alive a century after he would have died of old age. It seems he was granted eternal life by an ineffable energy being. In "Metamorphosis," Cochrane was played by Glenn Corbett.

According to a 2021 article by The Hollywood Reporter , the makers of "First Contact" needed someone very unlike the matinee-idol-handsome Corbett, as this Cochrane was going to be unrefined and unenlightened. Cromwell was their man.

Read more: What Went Wrong With Star Trek: Nemesis, According To Jonathan Frakes

Post-Babe Territory

Initially, the casting directors floated some of their dream actors for Cochrane, including Tom Hanks. Hanks had just won Oscars for "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump," so he would have been an expensive name to land for a "Star Trek" movie, but producer Ron D. Moore liked the dream. Sadly, he admitted:

"It never got that far. [...] At that point in the process, there are lots of names on a wishlist for many, many reasons. I'm sure his name was floated in some capacity, but it was never really on the table." 

Hanks would likely have played the part well, but Cromwell made it his own. And while Hanks may have been too "big" at the time, the filmmakers ran into a similar production snag with Cromwell. According to a 1996 episode of "HBO First Look," Cromwell was the preferred actor from the start, as he had already appeared in a few episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (notably "The Hunted" and the two-part episode "Birthright"). When Cromwell suddenly netted an Oscar nomination for the 1995 film "Babe," producer Rick Berman became fearful that their now-even-more-famous actor would drop out. Berman explained: 

"When we were creating the character, we always had Jamie in our head. And then 'Babe' came along and all of a sudden he was nominated for an Academy Award and we thought, 'Oh my God, we're not gonna get him! He's too big for us now.' But because we had worked with him on a number of occasions, we were delighted that he did in fact take the role." 

Cromwell would return to play Cochrane in an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" and as a hologram in "Star Trek: Lower Decks." He was part of the family in perpetuity.

The Arc Of Cochran

According to the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Cromwell was selected specifically because he didn't have the same matinee idol good looks as Glenn Corbett. Berman noted that "Star Trek: First Contact" took place in the past, long before Earth had built its utopia, and felt that Zefram Cochrane should be equally unformed. In his own words:

"We had to go back and find a Cochrane who wasn't much of an admirable character to begin with, and who had lost any of what he had when the Borg started blowing up his ship. We had to get him back on track a little bit and help lead him in the direction we knew that history had meant for him to go."

The plot of "First Contact" also involved a malevolent species of cyborgs called the Borg, who had traveled to 2063 to assimilate humans into their machine collective. When the Borg attacks the un-launched Phoenix, the Enterprise crewmembers from the future have to help Cochrane rebuild the vessel in time for it to launch, and to be seen by passing Vulcans, due in our solar system in only a few more days.

Needless to say, the Enterprise defeats the Borg, the Phoenix launches, and our utopian future is secured. "Star Trek: First Contact," despite skewing toward action shlock , is still often considered the best film to have been based on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Read the original article on SlashFilm