Corrected entry: In the 'deflector disc scene', Lt. Hawk is grabbed by a Borg, who carries him off to the side of the ship (moving at a very slow pace, due to being magnetically attached to the hull). Only a few minutes later, Hawk reappears, this time fully assimilated and with Borg attachments on his face and head. None of the other people assimilated in this film got their attachments so quickly, and Hawk could not have gotten to engineering, received implants and then climbed back outside in so short a time. And why did he put his space helmet back on after getting the implants? As a Borg, he would not need it, as seen on the other drones working on the deflector disk.
Corrected entry: The Enterprise crew show Cochrane the Enterprise in a telescope. The size of the enterprise in the telescope field is appropriate to an object in low orbit. However, the speed is way too slow. The Enterprise would zip through even a wide field lens in under a second. (00:40:00)
Correction: Wouldn't it depend on the speed of Enterprise? It is likely that Enterprise was more or less maintaining position over the away team in low orbit is it could beam them out in an emergency, which they couldn't do from the other side of the planet through the all that rock. So it would remain in the telescope's field of view constantly.
Corrected entry: Cochrane asks Geordi "don't you people in the 24th Century ever pee?" This is a reference to the fact that bathrooms are never shown in Enterprise schematics (on the TV series, it was always a running gag that none of the show's fans knew where the bathroom was).
Correction: In STTFF, Kirk pulled out a toilet in the brig to sit on, and on TNG the schematics showed a toilet to the left hand side of the bridge.
Corrected entry: When Picard leaves the bridge with the first landing party, he leaves Riker in charge of the bridge. A few scenes later, he orders down an engineering detail; a few scenes after that, Riker is now on the planet surface (in the missile silo with Picard, Data and Troi). Perhaps there is a scene on the cutting room floor that accounts for this apparent dereliction of duty? (00:17:15 - 00:23:40)
Corrected entry: According to the Star Trek history, Zefram Cochrane is supposed to be in his early 30s during this time, but in this movie he is obviously much older (James Cromwell was 56 at the time).
Correction: He was working near a nuclear weapon, which may have given him radiation poisoning causing him to appear aged. That and having gone through World War 3, there's no telling what kind of chemical agents were used.
Corrected entry: When Picard, Data and Worf are making their way to Engineering, they wake up the Borg that are stacked on top of each other, then they drop down from a second level. How do they get up there in the first place?
Correction: There are shots of the crew trying to escape the Borg by climbing up some ladders, and the Borg subsequently pulling them down and climbing up the ladders themselves. As seen in the series and other films, Borg ships are made up of many levels, so it's likely that the Borg turned the Enterprise's decks into similar multi-leveled areas, using the ladders to climb to the upper levels.
Corrected entry: At the end, when Picard is standing outside of Engineering, it looks perfectly normal. He doesn't even see any Borg on his way or just outside the doors, even though by this point the Borg have taken over pretty much the whole ship. But, at the beginning, when Data is captured, outside of Engineering there are Borg all around and the walls are all torn apart with wires hanging down, etc.
Correction: Federation starships have more than one entrance to Engineering in case something happens to the main doors.
Corrected entry: The steam coming from the hole in the deflector dish scene falls back on the ship hull even though there's no gravity and no air pressure - the steam should just shoot out into space.
Correction: The Enterprise has gravity plating onboard, so it probably also exerts a small force for a certain distance outside the ship, thereby pulling the steam down.
Corrected entry: They establish on the holodeck that traditional projectile weapons (like a tommy gun - hard to adapt to bullets) will kill Borg. Why don't they make these in the replicator instead of making the phaser rifles they know will only work a few times? Nothing to do with the borg adapting (and they'd be made in the replicater, NOT the holodeck) - hard to adapt to solid bullets ripping through your vital systems. Can't be a worry about the hull - simple steel will stop bullets and Starfleet ships are built with "Tritanium", "Duranium" and other futuristic materials mentioned in the series. I doubt a machine gun round would even scratch a bulkhead.
Correction: The Borg had cut the main power so the replicators were probably offline.
Doesn't explain why Starfleet didn't start stocking some projectile weapons in every ship's armoury for engagement with the Borg, given the threat posed.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the Enterprise destroys the Borg sphere the Enterprise's quantum torpedoes exhibit the visible distortion made when they pass through the ship's shields. However it has already been established that the Enterprise's shields are off-line following their trip back through time.
Correction: Every ship has a navigational deflector screen, to block space debris from hitting the ship.
Corrected entry: When Lilly and Jean Luc are arguing in the captain's ready room look carefully at Picard's mouth when Lilly screams "Jean Luc blow up the damn ship!" Even a Shakespearean trained actor like Patrick Stewart sometimes can't stop himself from mouthing the other actor's dialogue. He mouths the same thing. I am not sure if this can be seen on the VHS or Non-letterboxed version, but you cans see it on the DVD Letterboxed version.
Correction: I have checked this on my video copy of the film (as I could not believe that an acting god like Patrick Stewart would make such a slip). He doesn't mouth the lines - I'm certain of it. Patrick Stewart is acting his socks off at this point and the vague movement of his lips comes from the all-over shake that he develops during the argument - Picard is very upset. His lips don't form any words and his next line was just "NO", so I truly don't think this mistake occurs.
Corrected entry: WWIII didn't seem to do much damage. People have clothes, houses and even electricity. Riker states 37 million people are dead and very few governments are left. 37 million is only 10% of the US population and about .6% of the world population (please forgive the callousness of "only" 37 million.) One would think that government would return a year or less after such a small war. Especially since the majority of government leaders would most likely have escaped to shelters. After all, WWII was 6 years long, killed close to 50 million people and the major world governments never came close to falling (by falling I refer to anarchy as opposed to a new government). One would think casualties would be closer to 500 million-1 billion in order to truly cripple society.
Correction: First of all, Riker actually says 600 million dead which is a far cry from 37 million. He also said many major cities were destroyed. You are also forgetting that there would be more Weapons of Mass Destruction used. Also, the "houses" we see are hardly that great, and people can use gas generators for electricity. It's not hard to believe people would have clothes, either. For that matter Data says it is 10 years after WWIII so people had enough time to get themselves together somewhat. It seems WWIII did as much damage as Riker said it did.
Corrected entry: When beaming the Defiant survivors aboard the Enterprise, shields were still activated. Since when can they beam through activated shields? (00:10:00)
Correction: Timing is everything! They could just let the shields down to beam and raise them immediately. Also they don't have to deactivate all the shields, only the one at the side where the Defiant is.
Corrected entry: At one point, several Borg venture out into open space to battle the Enterprise Crew who are in spacesuits trying to disconnect the main dish antenna. The Borg are not wearing any form of protection from the space. Isn't the temperature in open space just about absolute zero? It's at least minus 200-300 degrees F. How could their biological parts survive the hostile environment of open space?
Correction: They have independent shielding protecting them from phaser fire and space.
Corrected entry: During the scene where Picard, Worf and Lt. Hawk are on the outside of the ship, Lt. Hawk becomes assimilated by the Borg. Soon afterwards, Worf blasts him into space. At the end of the scene there is a shot of the deflector dish area. Three officers can be seen walking around the dish, even though only Picard & Worf should remain.
Correction: The third figure is actually the borg that Worf mutilated, not Lt. Hawk.
Corrected entry: Right after Crusher wakes Lili up, the Borg punch the door and make a big dent - Crusher brings the holographic doctor online, she says "20 Borg are about to break through that door." But no one told her that the Borg were on board.
Correction: After fighting the Borg and going through a time warp, Dr. Crusher is probably smart enough to assume Borg are making dents in the door. You could also assume Dr. Crusher and the medical staff have tricorders and could have determined how many Borg were outside the door.
Corrected entry: It's stated that as long as the safety protocol is turned off holographic bullets can kill while on the holodeck. So why not just build a machine gun out of the holographic program? It seems rather pointless and kind of overkill to steal a Tommygun out of a holo-novel.
Correction: Because then Picard would have had to program it into the computer. By going into the program, he knew there was already one there.
Well why not just use the replicator on board the ship instead of the holographic program?
Because the replicator is set up to provide a limited number of things, mainly food. The holodeck was a quicker and more guaranteed way of getting what he needed.
Wouldn't those things have included guns and bullets in case they ever fight the Borg on their ship? After all, the Borg cannot adapt to those things.
Well it's not like he wouldn't have had the time to program in it into the computer.
Corrected entry: When Lili shoots at Data, shouldn't that hurt him? There was an episode where Troi shot an arrow through Data (the one where Q made them re-enact the Robin Hood story). While it didn't damage him, they made it sound like it could have. Even if he was bullet proof, being hit by that many bullets should at least have damaged his clothes.
Correction: In the Q episode, Troi is only worried, but Data never looks hurt. Same thing with the bullets. Also his clothes are damaged when shot.
He talks in that scene about how close the arrow got to his sub-processor and how "fortunately" none of his vital systems were affected. So, had he been less fortunate, they would have been. Which means getting riddled with machine gun bullets across his torso makes Data not only probably the luckiest character in the franchise but also presumably someone who has no qualms about risking death to say hi to a new friend.
Corrected entry: Why, why, why the hell didn't the Borg just travel back a few hundred years earlier to Earth (like the 1600s or something) so they could just take over much more easily?
Correction: They chose that specific time to stop First Contact.
Correction: While the Borg were trying to take over the human race, they were still in it for technology. They would gain nothing by going back into the 1600's. Also, a few hundred years earlier would have meant that their race at the current time was farther away, and harder to contact.
For the original entry - They expected little resistance from Earth populations, no matter how far they went back. In fact, as we saw, they actually completed their goal before the Enterprise went back. There is no reason given int he movie as to why they picked that specific date, so your guess is as good as any. For the corrected entry: The Borg went back in time to assimilate Earth and cripple the federation (or eliminate its founding)...period. There was no technology Earth had in the 21st century that the Borg would need or be able to use of, that they had not already assimilated (they are usually efficient enough in overtaking an enemy that they have access to a functional ship, which means computer access...so they know everything about them). Being further from their race is irrelevant, considering they would have the 24th century knowledge to overtake any enemy in the area with ease, especially with 9 billion drones and 400 years of future knowledge, and no Starfleet to compete with.
Corrected entry: The whole premise for this film is blown if you consider that the Borg are after technology. Why would they want to go back in time to assimilate a race that has almost no 'technological distinctiveness' to add to their own. Earth has a tremendous amount to offer during Picard's time and very little during Cochran's time. The hassle of time traveling to assimilate a pre-warp capable world seems like a waste of effort. Sending a few more cubes to finish the job in Picard's time seems much more advantageous.
Correction: Not really, since Starfleet has proven to be a direct threat to the Borg (and they were right to think so, since the Voyager crew destroyed one of the six trans-warp hubs a few years later), they went back in time with the intent of preventing the Federation from existing.
Okay, there needs to be a consensus here. One person has asked why the Borg didn't travel to an earlier time in order to stop First Contact more easily. The answer given was "they want technology." Another person asked: "why choose the 21st Century? There's no tech to incorporate" And the answer was: "because they want an easy way to stop First Contact." Honestly some of the answers on this page sound like they're bending over backwards to accommodate simple continuity errors but these two are literally the inverted opposites of each other and form a total contradiction. Which is it?
They went back in time to assimilate Earth and cripple the Federation. That is all.
Speaking of stopping first contact, wouldn't the Borg risk erasing their knowledge of earth if they did stop first contact, since they didn't know about earth until the first earthlings were assimilated sometime after first contact?
An entire Borg Sphere went back, including a queen. They were planning to stay, use their advanced technology in the past to conquer the future. Starting with Earth.
Correction: They neither took him back to engineering nor removed his helmet. The devices that appeared on his face are a result of the nanoprobes that he was injected with. They are the first step in assimilation and have a limited ability to generate these devices and the injection tubules can penetrate most any known form of shielding (according to the Doctor on Voyager). We have already seen the early effects of this stage of assimilation. When Picard shoots the crewman who has been injected and is asking for Picard to help him, if you look at his face, you can see the begining stages of this automated assimilation process.
Garlonuss ★