By Steve Krutzler / 04:42, 16 June 2004 / TrekWeb Features

Dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down, Brannon Braga told fans Tuesday night that the original idea for STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT was “the Borg and the Bubonic plague” in medieval times. Drones of the roundtable didn’t pan out, however, when “Patrick Stewart didn’t want to wear tights,” Braga joked while introducing the film to fans and movie aficionados gathered at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood to celebrate the eighth STAR TREK movie with a special screening and Q&A session sponsored by Hollywood’s Master Storytellers.

Grossing $92 million domestically, FIRST CONTACT was the most successful of the four TNG films, second only to ST4’s $109 million. FC owns the record for the largest opening weekend take for any STAR TREK film, raking in over $30 million dollars in 1996, and quickly becoming a fan favorite. In fact, having been able to catch the last act of NEMESIS on HBO Monday night, it’s difficult to deny FIRST CONTACT’s place as a great STAR TREK film.

Although co-writer Ronald D. Moore and producer Rick Berman agreed with Braga on putting the Borg front and center in the big screen follow-up to GENERATIONS, that’s about all they knew early on.

“When we started we knew we wanted to do something with the Borg,” he recalled. “We knew the Borg were really, really popular on TNG. We really wanted to incorporate time travel. We were really fortunate that this idea came along to set it in the near future because what’s at stake in the movie really is STAR TREK. If the Vulcans don’t land, the universe the audience has come to know and love will not exist. And then the third element to the film to come along was the idea of the great Zephram Cochran, who I think was depicted in TOS. We thought it would be interesting to have this crew meet Zephram Cochran, but he is not anything like anybody thinks--he’s a drunk. Kind of the antithesis of Gene Roddenberry’s ideals, and show how he got to be by the end of the film thanks in part to these heroes.”

At the heart of the success of FIRST CONTACT was its ability to connect with general audiences, Braga says, people who weren’t necessarily familiar with the entire STAR TREK mythos.

“Just to set it in a post-apocalyptic future was sort of more relatable to a general audience and the people who weren’t familiar with STAR TREK could appreciate what STAR TREK was all about,” Braga explained. “We created this character of Lily, played by Alfre Woodard, who knew nothing about STAR TREK because she knows nothing of the future. So this was a character to sort of introduce to the audience what STAR TREK was all about, and the philosophy of STAR TREK and what it means.”

Contemplating anecdotes to share with the audience, Braga admitted in his best deadpan, “I’ve got none,” to an uproarious crowd. “The only one...” he said, reaching for a tidbit. “The movie has a nice sweep to it and it feels like an epic Borg battle. But, in fact, creating an individual drone was very expensive. And we could only afford eight Borg, So really though it looks like there are a lot of Borg running around, there are only eight dudes! The rest are dummies that our makeup artist Michael Westmore created. We used that template for years to come on VOYAGER where we really expanded on the Borg mythos. It’s one of the reasons people like to watch this movie--we exploited the Borg ad nauseum years later, but they never looked better than they looked here.”

Getting them to look that way wasn’t easy, moderator Dennis Michael Revealed. Speaking of director Jonathan Frakes’s challenges during the shoot, he explained how Frakes was concerned with getting the immobile drones to register some movement in the frame.

“My feeling was if you get caught by the Borg you deserved to be caught because they’re like the Mummy,” Braga joked. “They don’t have weapons; they just sort of swing their arms at you, how threatening can they be? But to [Jonathan’s] credit he did a great job with them.”

Alice Krige added a lot of vivaciousness to the previously steely Collective. Braga says the studio really wanted a “voice” for the villains of the piece, and the ringing cacophony of the drones speaking at once--good enough for television--wasn’t going to cut it.

“We had the Borg for a while and I remember Jonathan Dolgen, chairman of Viacom at the time, said we ‘need a voice for the Borg.’ ‘These Borg are just automatons, and that worked for the series.’ ‘No, this is a movie, you need something [more].’,” he recounted. “So we came up with the idea of the Borg Queen, which really brought a lot to the movie--then the Data becoming more human arc was born.”

“I really liked [Krige] from the movie GHOST STORY because she had a creepy sexiness, which I thought was perfect for the Borg Queen, who was sort of a kinky, weird lady,” Braga continued. “We thought the Borg Queen should be a sensual character, tantalizing Data with the prospect of flesh. One of my favorite moments in the film is that little patch of skin that she blows on--the blow job scene [laughter]--and the little goosebumps that came up, I thought that was really cool. There has always been an element of sensuality to some degree in ST, like the moment in the film when Data says he’s fully functional, that was in the first season of TNG. There’s always a playful sensuality.”

The inspiration for the torso-separated Queen came from an unlikely place.

“There was this movie called CAPTAIN EO at Disneyland, and that was still running around the time of this movie, and Angelica Houston played this scary lady that came down on cables from the ceiling. We liked that,” he says with an eerie fascination. “And I remember discussing that that was a cool image for the Borg Queen, and we did a version of it.”

Michael went so far as to suggest that Krige’s turn as the Queen makes FIRST CONTACT the “kinkiest” of all the STAR TREK movies. Braga quickly retorted, “Well yes, but I thought in INSURRECTION when Data and the boy come out of the haystack, that was pretty sexy!”

The opportunity to see the film on the big screen is rare and FIRST CONTACT plays great to the audience. Just about all the funny lines get a collective laugh and it’s amazing just how many memorable scenes the film contains. From Counselor Troi’s drunken haze to Cochran’s antiheroic ramblings, Dixon Hill, and the EMH and Barclay’s cameos, FIRST CONTACT has an engaging story and plenty of meat to keep the eyes and mind happy. As successful as Marina Sirtis’ bar hijinks play out, Braga revealed he thought the scene should’ve been cut.

“It’s interesting and I only speak for myself, but I didn’t like that scene, I thought it should’ve been cut,” he says. “The reason is that the film is bouncing along, Data and Picard have their guns and they’re ready to ‘go fight the Borg,’ and then you have this sort of long scene, and I didn’t really think it was very funny.” He turns to the audience, “But did you guys like that scene?” [cue applause] “That’s good to hear, but I obviously didn’t win that battle.”

After so many episodes and so many movies, Braga told the audience it’s hard to come up with completely original stories. Even still, he said Gene Roddenberry’s universe and its underlying rules foster good storytelling.

“This is just my opinion but I think constrictions are good when you’re trying to write drama,” he said. “You want parameters and I personally love Gene’s universe and I don’t want to write for a show where people are at each other’s throats, it’s more interesting to do it metaphorically through the aliens that they meet and so forth. Although we did find times to have the characters in conflict, for instance here with Picard and Worf.”

The franchise itself keeps on trekking, with a fourth season of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE on the way and a new feature project--with which Brannon says he has no involvement--in the very early developmental stages.

“Will it take a rest? Frankly I think it probably should at some point. I just don’t know,” he offered as an assessment of the overall health of the franchise. He does know UPN’s decision to move ENTERPRISE to a new night could be good news for the series. “I think it’s good. Right now we’re up against AMERICAN IDOL for god sakes! You might as well not air the episodes! Now we’re on Friday nights and I think people will seek it out. We had a great season. In part due to a writer named Manny Coto, who’s right there in the audience,” as Braga pointed him out. “He wrote some great shows. We’re very happy to have been picked up.”

Some fans want to know whether ‘Q’, at the top of his game in Braga and Moore’s Hugo Award-winning TNG finale “All Good Things...,” will pop up in the prequel.

“We always talk about it. Q kind of got de-fanged over the years. He was so great at the end of the finale of TNG and then he came back on DS9 and VOY and he was fairly soft. So if we bring Q back we want to bring him back with an edge to him.”

That episode, regarded by many fans as one of the greatest TREK episodes ever, remains a high point in Braga’s career.

“Ron Moore and myself wrote for days while we were writing GENERATIONS�"and we joke [now] that ‘All Good Things...’ should’ve been the movie because it would’ve made a better movie. But it was really a blur and we were worried that we did not do that great series justice, but it really came out so well. The fan response over the years has been so enthusiastic and embracing that I think overall that has been one of the great moments.”

Another is appearing briefly in FIRST CONTACT’s Holodeck sequence.

“For a millisecond I’m actually in the far right side of the frame, which is a real drag because on cable they don’t run the letterbox so I’m not in it at all!”

Paramount is expected to release a new DVD of STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT next year. The next collector's edition on the way is STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, dropping September 7th.

Check out ROBOCOP Tuesday, June 29th as the Hollywood's Master Storytellers summer series continues with actor Peter Weller at the ArcLight in Hollywood.

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