Patrick Stewart’s favourite ‘Star Trek’ movie: ‘I think it was outstanding’
If anyone’s opinion is to be respected on the quality of specific entries in the Star Trek franchise, it’s Jean-Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart. After all, the man played everyone’s favourite follicly-challenged starship captain in 179 Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, 30 instalments of Picard, and four big screen outings. He has a definitive take on which of his Trek movies was the best, too—and it’s difficult to disagree with him.
In 2020, Stewart told The Hollywood Reporter In Studio, “I think the second movie—which was the one Jonathan Frakes directed, First Contact—I think was outstanding, and was the best of our four movies.”
Stewart elaborated on this opinion in 2024 when he appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz. The legend of stage and screen revealed, “After we finished recording our seven seasons of Next Generation, we made four Star Trek movies of varying qualities, the best one being [First Contact], directed by Jonathan Frakes. He was one of the people who had the most influence on me on the show because of his experience and his understanding of the complexities and how bringing different qualities onto the stage was very, very important in diversity and change.”
Indeed, it is now generally accepted in the Trekkie fanbase that First Contact is one of the best movies in the franchise. After all, it’s usually challenged only by The Wrath of Khan. At the time of release in 1996, though, it was a bit of a gamble. You see, in that period, The Next Generation’s run had finished, and the franchise’s subsequent shows, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, were struggling in the ratings.
In truth, at that time, Star Trek had begun to seem dated to an audience now watching action-packed sci-fi epics like Independence Day and becoming addicted to shows like The X-Files. The Alienist author Caleb Carr theorised that original series creator Gene Roddenberry’s underlying theme of “overarching patriarchal hierarchy, which promised that the state would take care of all our needs” had become “a ’60s concept that no longer resonates with viewers.”
Therefore, in order to combat this apathy toward the franchise, First Contact did something similar to what JJ Abrams would also do more than 20 years later in his 2009 reboot—it supercharged Trek. In ’96, producer Rick Berman told EW that the budget for the film was considerably bigger than previous pictures, and the filmmakers used that extra cash to increase the action quota. He assured fans, “It’s not quite Rambo, but it’s got major action.” On top of that, the special effects were also state-of-the-art, and the villainous Borg was redesigned to give them a more horrific, menacing look.
The icing on the cake, though, was how the character of Picard was also reimagined slightly. Berman explained, “He’s not the same angst-ridden Picard we’ve seen before. We wanted him to be more of an action hero.”
Stewart confirmed, “I get to be much more physical in this one. There’s a lot of running, jumping, climbing, leaping — and also some ballroom dancing, I might add.”
In the end, maybe Stewart had always wanted to make Picard a running, dancing man of action, and this is why he thinks so fondly of the movie that finally enabled him to scratch that itch.
