How would you rework Star Trek: First Contact?

[technobabbler]

Was there ever a reason given for the time travel plot to begin with, as in, some budget or studio limitation?

Chuck in his "First Contact" review said time travel to the "present" was required by Rick Berman cuz that sells tickets---see Star Trek IV.

Yup, sounds like stereotypical, 1-D Hollywood thinking.

I'd imagine someone's (Ron Moore maybe?) book has a chapter detailing the whole thing.

[Yukaphile]

Wait, where did I say that?

[Nealithi]

Okay I think if we want to describe a rewrite we also need to address each point they had to overcome in the making of the movie.
1) the studio sent down the demand for time travel. Borg in castles is considered, but Patrick Stewart will not wear tights again. Hence choosing right after WW3
2) They wanted multiple cubes but the budget would not support VFX.
3) Patrick Stewart wanted to do more action as he was getting bored with just speeches.
4) Michael Dorn had in his contract that he would be in each Next Generation movie.

Now for adjustments. Nix the 'hearing' the borg thing. Picard had been cleared medically so let it be he has a nightmare and wakes and goes to Deanna's office. "I had another one." She checks a display. "Your dreams are further apart and your stress levels are getting better, Captain. You are making progress."
Then comes the call. Starfleet Command sidelines the Enterprise because they neither want to remove him from command, nor risk his PTSD in a risky battle against no less than four cubes.
As they listen to the broadcast he hears people dying. Flashes to his view as Locutus. "Not again. Not this time." And then tells the crew they are about to defy orders.
Flash to the battle single cube, left. Let there be carcasses of cubes and dozens of ships. The battle has been intense and there are only a handful of ships left and this cube is still too strong. Defiant dodges among debris and unloads a barrage.

"It's no good sir. Phaser banks are drained and we don't have enough ships to bring this one down." Then Worf glares and mutters. "Perhaps today is a good day to die. Prepare to ram. Everyone to the escape pods." And as the Defiant crew jettison he rushes for one last act to save people. Only for the borg cube to blast his engines. Then the Enterprise flys overhead taking the killing blow for Defiant and Worf. Then beams him up and he comes to the bridge. Let him assist the Enterprise's new security chief Hawke to isolate adaptations not used yet. The two find one and Picard glares at the screen. "Not today." Looking to the men. "Fire." and the cube takes the full might of the new Federation flagship. As it is detonating someone comments on having drawn a line in the sand, finally. And the sphere is jettisoned. Enterprise goes into pursuit, but the sphere trying to take the intel home tries to lose them by slingshot around the sun. Enterprise in pursuit they both skip into unplanned time warp. They arrive in the past a week behind the borg sphere. They destroy the sphere. But this is the last of their power reserves. Data finds that this method of time travel exists. But was banned and classified. One of the issues being it always disrupted the vessel that did it. So no rescue is coming. And they need to restore history to its proper path. and remove a borg colony that is still trying to encroach on the launch site.

And so the race against time and most of the movie can continue. But instead of on the ship they are in a borg enclave. No borg queen, and they need Data to remote unlock the ship's computers so they can hijack the Enterprise as it is now the most advance ship in the quadrant. And these people are currently unworthy of assimilation.

Thus Time travel was an accident. Stewart gets to action hero. Dorn is in without making him or his ship seem weak and the multiple cubes died off screen to save budget.

(Edit) or they arrive right with and continue movie as shown, but minus borg queen.

[clearspira]

How is it fanfiction-y? You can handle the backstory elements through quick, effective exposition. And it's not complicated, it's complex, depending on how it's executed. With regards to Sisko and Picard working together, they wanted to do that at the end of Season 1 DS9, you know. Never happened. I feel the action elements for Picard and his lust for revenge... just didn't fit him. It didn't feel like the Picard of TNG. Sisko would be better suited to the action elements, hence why he's there. I mean, First Contact, the best film second to Wrath of Khan? It's literally like cheese. It tastes good, but it's full of holes - plot holes, in this case. It's simple, but also stupid. Even Moore commented on it as a "popcorn film" and said his film like Piller's had "died the death of a thousand cuts." And the Queen is just all-around such a BAD idea. The problem with First Contact is that it doesn't feel like a TNG movie so much as just a MOVIE with the TNG cast in it. And it really set up for the problems that came with Voyager's abuse of the Queen that nerfed the Borg so badly. That moment they stopped being a practically inscrutable, incomprehensible alien culture? Began here. They didn't devolve from cold and unyielding machines of unstoppable death yet, but this is where their original concept died. I just don't support the Queen at ALL.

How is it fanfictiony? Because alongside sex, getting different characters from other shows to meet each other is the number 1 plotline in fanfiction. We had that in the previous film ffs and that was the bit that most people had a problem with. And what film would you say is second to TWOK? Because there is none that I can think of.

[Yukaphile]

That was executed poorly. Can you honestly say my idea is inferior to Generations, which had Kirk die a meaningless death? At least this puts Sisko into the action elements where he belongs, and Action Picard is not a thing - plus his lust for revenge is extremely out of character given the conversations he'd had about and with Borg following his own experience. It also increases tension in the battle, in that it gives a plausible explanation for how the cube goes down - with new anti-Borg tactics that are a result of six years of preparation and study, the Defiant, and the Enterprise-E, which is superior to it, as well as shows off how the Borg are adapting by sending two cubes. It also has time travel that is not purely plot device contrivance and actually adheres to the continuity of the previous movies that by this era in the timeline of the movie should be well known and old hat by now. And instead of the Queen, it's Lal, a reconstruction, Data's own temptations and his past coming back to haunt him. Admittedly, a lot of it depends on the dialogue and execution, but can you honestly say this is somehow worse than what we got on screen, or what happened in Generations? First Contact is a stupid popcorn movie and the Queen was just... ugh. I hate the Queen. I wish the Borg had always been presented as in TNG, not from that point onward. It just took away any elements that made them cool, and stripped them of all that until they were just another alien race on the viewscreen impotently shaking their fist at our heroes. Droll.

[Admiral X]

I would have had them assimilate someone to act as their voice the way they did with Picard back in BoBW. Actually I'd be tempted to do something along the lines of Peter David's "Vendetta."

[Deledrius]

The big logistical issue with the film is "Why would the Borg choose to travel back to invade earth at a time when we have just enough of a fighting chance, rather than say, slam-dunking it when printing presses were cutting-edge technology?"

While it's basically impossible to ascribe "strategy" to Borg actions (at least until they became a boring Tyrant-and-her-Slaves culture in Voyager), I think a decent argument could be made that they had a two-plan strategy here, assuming they had identified the Federation as an existential threat... Plan A: send their best ship to assimilate Earth, and if it fails it means they have already lost, leading to Plan B: assimilate Earth in the past before they can be a threat (but preferably not so early they're utterly useless as a resource -- may as well try to cut your losses in how much tech you get from them). We have no idea how the Sphere's time travel works or how much control they had. It's possible they weren't aiming that far back, or meant to go even further.

Of course, none of this is in the film; it didn't need it. I'm not sure it would have made it a better movie if it had been, but it's interesting to consider.

[Fianna]

If their goal was to eliminate the Federation as a threat, it makes sense to go back to before the first meeting of humans and Vulcans, which is basically the genesis point for what would become the Federation. And they chose literally just a few days before the first meeting of humans and Vulcans because, being Borg, they always take the bare minimum amount of action necessary to accomplish their goals (hence simply ignoring any humans wandering around their ships so long as they're not judged to be a threat).

[Admiral X]

I thought they wanted to assimilate them, not eliminate them as a threat. Seems like they wouldn't get as much out of the deal by traveling back in time and assimilating a less technologically advanced version of humanity.

[Yukaphile]

Ah, that was the original conceit of the Borg. First Contact was just one big retcon to the Borg and their whole nature.