the_emu

This was actually from last year, I watched First Contact for the first time in a long time while being slightly tipsy. Came across it, half-typed and half-scribbled notes, and realized I never finished up to post. So yay! 'Cuz I've got 13 still to go and only 6 weeks left in the year. Oops.
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So yes, I’m a wee bit tipsy, and I keep seeing things that today in the future (4/5/2063) will be First Contact, and I decided to rewatch the movie. It’s been ages!

And wow, the credits just being credits all the actors names and the director and scriptwriters, etc., seems so incredibly old-fashioned, how old is this movie?

The establishing shot, pulling out from Picard to be a whole Borg ship, and then pulling in to the screw about to drill into Picard's eye is amazing and creepy. And the waking up and then waking up again is also creepy.

The Borg are attacking and the Enterprise are sent off to the Neutral Zone, I don’t remember this at all.

Picard does sarcasm well.

I like the black and grey uniforms with the different colored shirts. And also omg, Neal McDonough as Lieutenant Hawk! He was so young and pretty! And now I want Howling Commandoes/Star Trek crossover.

I’d forgotten that Worf was on the Defiance, glad he got the chance to say it was a good day to die.

I love Riker. He is so good at snarkiness.

The Borg know how to time travel! We’re not thinking about whether that fits with anything else we’ve ever known about them.

It is 2063 and Alfre Woodward and James Cromwell are best buds, I’d forgotten that too.

Seriously, Neal McDonough was young and pretty.

The Borg know all about Earth history! We’re also not thinking about whether that fits with anything else we’ve known about them. (Sober reflection: they've assimilated a lot of Earth people, I guess they would have all their Earth knowledge, even if they thought it irrelevant?)

Data gets a chance to be bad ass android. I can understand why they didn’t overuse that in the TV show but also sometimes I’d think: why doesn’t Data be bad ass android?

LaForge without a visor. I can sympathize why people with visual problems liked him having the visor but also the blue eyes are cool.

And now Troi has been snarky. Snarkiness rules!

The Borg has invaded the Enterprise and now I need to do some stretching. I may edit and make more comments later. In summation, First Contact is still a cool movie.

Okay, continuing on sober this morning using the handwritten notes I found... Hmm, on different sheets, now I'm not sure if I've got them in order or not. I need to watch this movie again.

The Doctor from Voyager! "I'm a doctor, not a doorstop." I like pulling in actors from other Trek shows.

Picard willing to kill Enterprise members is a wee bit creepy.

Riker and Troi meet a hero and he is a drunk. I feel that could be a metaphor for life.

Deanna gets drunk, a downfall of only drinking synthehol.

"If you're looking for my professional opinion as ship's counselor, he's nuts."

Data deactivates emotion chip. Must be nice. (Especially reading the news these days!)

And this isn't the movie where Picard's brother and nephew are killed. I thought it was. That must be Generations? I need to rewatch it too.

Data has that glowy bulb behind his head, I have forgotten that! People had it and it was so cool.

Riker explains the truth to Cochrane, omg!

First Contact unites humanity, that is so cool. What would it take really to unite people? I feel this question I drunkenly scrawled over a year and a half ago is even more poignant now.

Omg, Jessica Fletcher's nephew Grady is on the bridge. Grady! I always liked them.

"It's my first raygun," is a great quote.

Re: Borg Queen head connecting to her body, we wouldn't think that was a big deal any more but that was massive, are we spoiled by tech?

"Bionic zombies." Ha ha ha!

"Borg sounds Swedish." Like I feel it is?

"Acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives, we work to better ourselves." We need more of this philosophy! Down with the oligarchic class!

Neelix? In the holodeck! Borg on the holodeck is pretty funny... until Picard guns them down. There is some intensity in this movie.

Barclay fangirling Cochrane! Pretty funny. Cochrane takes a runner, no surprise.

Picard and Worf take a walk on the hull, another thing I'd totally forgot.

Aw! Hawk gets borged and killed, pretty no more.

Borg plans re: deflector dish spoiled. "Assimilate this!" say Worf, pandering to fannish love of Klingons.

It takes 3 command officers to set auto destruct?!? I feel it usually only takes two?

Alfre Woodward calls Picard on his BS very well.

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Anyway who made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my tipsy rambling. I really need to rewatch all the Trek movies. Maybe even the bad ones. After I finish the TNG rewatch and attempting Discovery again. But now I'm gonna continue clearing up this random pile of papers by my desk. Go me, productivity!

I had read at some point that he played Billy Elliot in the stage musical, but I hadn't seen any of it. Came across this today. Tom Holland always looks young to me, but omg, such a baby! But so talented! It's no wonder he's so amazing with the physicality of Spider-Man, considering this was his big break.

So once again, I have let it get to November, still having 15 FFs to go... oops!

I'm still slowly rewatching Star Trek, now on ST:TNG season 7. And it's making me think of Trek's wokeness, and whether it's the characters or the audience learning the lesson, and when to my mind, Trek fails.

Like TOS episode The Cloud Minders, and Kirk physically makes the prime minister mine rocks, releasing the toxins, and making the PM realize the damage being caused, leading to an overhaul of the social system and social equality. Ultimate wokeness, the characters realize the bad that's happening and fix it. Yay!

Whereas TOS Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, the characters never accept that the racial division in their society is stupid and destructive, and the Enterprise leaves them to have their last fight. But IIRC, there's a certain amount of Kirk and the crew going, "OMG what?!? People used to believe this sort of stupid ideology but we've outgrown it!" Clearly the lesson is meant for the 1960's audience struggling with racial issues and telling them to do better. Yay wokeness!

So I watched ST:TNG Thine Own Self, which I didn't even remember. Data goes to a planet to retrieve radioactive rocks but loses his memory. The pre-space technology villagers take him in, but get sick from the rocks. Data recovers enough of himself to fix them, but they fear him and the illness he has caused and 'kill' him (he gets better). And it's... the characters don't learn anything. The villagers are satisfied that they've killed the scary visitor and that cured the illness he brought. One young girl is bummed. Crusher and Riker retrieve Data's body and learn two sentences about what's happened. Once restored, Data has forgotten his entire visit.

People can get scared and be shitty to strangers. I guess the audience learns that? I was in my 20s when ST:TNG aired, I was already plenty old enough to have that learned that lesson.

At this point I'm not going to go back and review all the ST:TNG eps, I need to move on to trying Discovery again, but I feel there were too many episodes that were just... yeah, people can be shitty but the Enterprise crew does what they need to do and then they leave. Yes, TOS can be overly simplistic and obvious, but ST:TNG can make me feel blank, not like I've seen something deep and meaningful.

Anyway, I got no final conclusion, just a ... I think it's interesting when a show is trying to get a message across and how that is communicated and who learns it.