Premiered: 1996
Producers: Rick Berman
Director: Jonathan
Frakes
Writers: Rick Berman, Brannon Braga,
Ronald D.
Moore
Music: Jerry Goldsmith
The cast:
The film opens with Picard's nightmarish memories of being assimilated by the Borg and made into Locutus. He awakens in his quarters, aboard the Enterprise-E, to an incoming hail from Starfleet command. Picard is aboutto be told about a report of an incoming Borg ship from DS12, but Picard knows. He can feel it. He still maintains a slight connection with the Borg, a connection that frightens Starfleet enough to send the Enterprise to patrol the neutral zone, to take part in the massive fleet being assembled, and make sure no Romulan ship tries to take advantage of this invasion.
Picard follows his orders grimly, much to the dismay of his crew (Riker,
Data, Beverly, Troi, and Geordi (who is now VISOR-less). For the past 6 months,
the new Enterprise-Class cruiser has been on a shakedown cruise, testing her
newsystems. At the border, Picard and company listen on Starfleet channels as
the battle wages on. One Borg ship, tetragonal inshape, attacks and breaks
through to Earth. Picard decides to hell with orders, he sends the Enterprise to
Earth, maximum warp.
At Earth, dozens of Starfleet ships, led by the
Defiant under Worf's command, try and hold the ship back, but to no avail. The
Defiant is about to be destroyed as the Enterprise arrives, opening fire on the
Borg and beaming the Defiant crew off before it explodes. Picard takes command
of the fleet and using his knowledge of the Borg, has the entire fleet target a
specific area of the ship. All weapons fire and the Borg ship explodes. The
Federation has won.
Or so they think. From the wreckage, a spherical ship
shoots out, headed straight for Earth. Enterprise follows her in as the Borg
sphere creates a temporal vortex and disappears. The Enterprise is caught in the
backwash and spared the changes in the time-line. The fleet disappears. Earth
changes into a Borg world, supporting 35 billion Borg drones. The Enterprise
barely makes it into the collapsing vortex before five Borg cube ships can
destroy her.
The Enterprise arrives in the mid-21st century; March 6th,
2063 to be exact -- the day before the first warp flight and subsequent first
contact with the Vulcans by Zephram Cochrane. The Borg sphere appears over
Resurrection, Montana and attacks. The Enterprise is barely able to stop it with
her phasers. With the Borg threat extinguished, Picard sends down officers to
make sure history wasn't entirely screwed up.
On the surface, Picard,
Data, Troi, and Crusher find the launch site of Cochrane's ship, the Phoenix.
They beam up an injured woman, Lily Sloane, who is Zephram's assistant and
mustn't die. The Phoenix took damage so Picard has Riker and Geordi beam down to
repair it. Unfortunately, to get Zephram to cooperate, they must reveal
themselves to him and they find such arevered historical figure can act quite
differently (in a negative sense) than what their history books taught
them.
Picard, Crusher, and Data return to the Enterprise with Sloane.
Aberrations in the environmental system lead to the discoveryof a new threat
within the Enterprise. The Borg weren't killed in the sphere explosion. They
beamed into the Enterprise's lowerdecks and are beginning the process of
assimilating the Enterprise and her crew, from the inside out.
Everything
below Deck 22 is taken and power is shut down. Crusher and Sloane are trapped
behind enemy lines and are feared to be assimilated. Crewmembers trapped there
are immediately assimilated, turned into drones who attack their former
crewmates. Data is able to encrypt the computer system to prevent access by the
Borg, but they are quickly gaining the upperhand. Picard leads an attack force
comprised of Data, Worf, and several security guards into the bowels of the
ship, which now resemble more of a Borg ship instead of the Enterprise. A battle
in engineering claims the lives of many of the security force, Data is captured,
Picard is trapped below decks. Only Worf and the rescued Beverly
escape.
Picard finds Sloane and has to work with her to get to the
bridge. Data is strapped to an assimilation table and is worked on by Borg
drones. It is here that Data comes face to face with the driving force behind
the Borg, the Borg Queen. Data, who can now turn his emotion chip on and off, is
able to fight back, but finds it difficult when the Borg Queen beings to make
his dreamof becoming human a reality.
While using a Dixon Hill holodeck
program to escape the Borg, Picard and Lily get to the bridge, just as Worf and
Crusher learn that several Borg drones have left the ship and have begun to
alter the deflector dish to send a message to the Borg of this time period,
"Attack Earth". Picard leads another security force outside the Enterprise to
destroy the deflector.
On Earth, overwhelmed by all that he has learned
of his future life, Zephram escapes the crew and tries to commit suicide. Only
Troi is able to talk him down using a very unorthodox method. On the Enterprise,
Worf and Picard are able to destroy the deflector after a zero-G firefight with
the Borg. But, the Borg still possess a threat. The only solution is to evacuate
the Enterprise and scuttle her.
Picard begrudgingly accepts this and with
Worf and Beverly, arms the self destruct system. The ship is evacuated, but
Picard stays behind, intent on confronting the terror that has dominated his
life for so long.
On Earth, Riker and Geordi assist Cochrane with the
launch of the Phoenix. Upon seeing the stars in Earth orbit, Cochrane realizes
his loft and greedy goals of capitalizing his warp engine are futile to the
possibilities the engine could hold for reshaping Earth, just as Riker, Geordi,
and Troi have said. Things are made a little difficult to accomplish this as the
Enterprise starts looming closer and closer.
In the engine room, Picard
confronts the Borg Queen, an entity Picard encountered before, when he was known
as Locutus. We learn here that Locutus was made to be an equal to the Queen. The
Queen is the only individual, the oldest Borg in the collective. The drones are
her inner workings, the cube ships, her grasping hands. Picard trades himself
for Data, now fully human, now able to feel true physical pain and pleasure. But
Data has submitted to the Queen. He deactivates the self destruct, takes out the
encryption lockouts on the computer, and locks phasers on the Phoenix.
It
appears all hope is lost, when Data fights back, ending the ruse. Picard and
Data blow out the coolant feeds, belching a out substance that melts away the
biological components of the Borg. Data takes the Queen and holds her in the
stream. Data loses his human flesh, revealing his endoskeleton, but kills the
Borg Queen, ending this newest Borg menace.
The Phoenix successfully
makes the warp jump. On Earth, Picard and crew watch from a safe distance as
Cochrane and Sloane make the first contact with the Vulcans, essentially the
birth of the Federation. They return to the Enterprise and warp back to the 24th
century.
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