Premiered: 1996Director:
Jonathan Frakes
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 about to
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, not taking part in the massive fleet being
assembled, but to 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
Sovereign-Class cruiser has been on a shakedown cruise,
testing her new systems. At the border, Picard and
company listen on Starfleet channels as the battle wages
on. One Borg ship, tetragonal in shape, 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 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. 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 9
billion Borg drones. The Enterprise barely makes it into
the collapsing vortex.
The Enterprise arrives in the mid-21st century; April 4,
2063 to be exact--the day before the first warp flight
and subsequent first contact with the Vulcans by Zefrane
Cochrane. The Borg sphere appears over Resurrection,
Montana and attacks. The Enterprise is barely able to
stop it with 4 Quantum torpedoes. 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, who is Zefrane's assistant and
mustn't die. The Phoenix took damage so Picard has Geordi
beam down to repair it. Unfortunately, to get Zefrane to
cooperate, they must reveal themselves to him and they
find such a revered historical figure can act quite
differently (in a negative sense) than what their history
books taught them.
Crusher returns to the Enterprise with Lily. Aberrations
in the environmental system lead to the discovery of a
new threat within the Enterprise. The Borg weren't killed
in the sphere explosion. They beamed into the
Enterprise's lower decks and are beginning the process of
assimilating the Enterprise and her crew, from the inside
out.
Everything below Deck 16 is taken and power is shut down.
Crusher and Lily 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 upper hand. 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 and Data is captured. Only Worf, some
security officers and the rescued Beverly escape.
Lily finds Picard in an engeneering tunnel and Picard 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 dream of 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, Zefrane escapes the crew. 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 to try and rescue
Data, because he want to return the favour of he being
saved by Data in a fight with the borg, in witch he was
captured.
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 photon torpedoes on the Phoenix.
It appears all hope is lost, when Data fights back,
ending the ruse. Data blows out the coolant feeds,
belching a out substance that liquifies all organic
matter. Also the biological components of the Borg are
melted. 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 Lily 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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