I can't say that any more. Star Trek: First Contact is an exhilarating film. It is perhaps the best of the Star Trek movies, fun, and completely without pretention. The special effects--everything from a giant space battle to a zero-gravity walk--are astouding as well. Wonderfully directed by Jonathan Frakes, in his motion picture directing debut, First Contact is an extremely accessible, tension-filled action pic that still maintains its ties to Star Trek's past.

The enemies in First Contact are the Borg, a race of half-man, half-machine beings who are, as the ads said, "possessed of one mind, driven by one will, intent on one purpose." These are the creatures who "assimilated" the noble Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) during the Next Generation television series, stealing his personality and forcing him to do their bidding. Now, they're intent on doing the same thing to all of Earth, by going back in time and turning every person into a mindless drone.

After chasing the cube-shaped Borg ship to Earth, the newly commissioned Enterprise-E (the Enterprise-D having crashed in the previous movie) leads the attack that destroys the giant Borg ship. However, that's not before some of the Borg escape and travel back in time (just go with it). The Enterprise follows them back.

Time travel is nothing new in Star Trek movies. However, the similarities between First Contact and the rest of the Trek movies stop there. This film is simply remarkable--a wonderfully crafted dark film that could stand up well against any movie, not just against other science fiction.

Star Trek actors (everyone from William Shatner to Christopher Plummer) have been given to overacting. First Contact will forever banish that unfortunate reputation. Led by the versatile and especially powerful Stewart, the cast is uniformly excellent. James Cromwell, playing boozer scientist Zephram Cochrane, is human and funny--and a completely different character from Farmer Hoggett in Babe.

Alfre Woodard, playing 21st century pilot Lily Sloane, is remarkable as well--her no-nonsense character provides an interesting counterpoint to Stewart's Picard. Whereas the captain is used to people following his orders, Sloane forces him to look at the motives behind his increasingly revenge-driven decisions. This kind of questioning is something that has been almost completely absent from the previous Trek movies. Stewart and Woodard are an intriguing team, excellent actors both.

Although the Star Trek movies must inevitably focus on the captain, the best Trek has dealt with the crew as an ensemble. Not since Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the save-the-whales movie) has a Star Trek ensemble been dealt with so effectively. In First Contact, the best of that ensemble is Brent Spiner, as Lt. Commander Data. The extremely talented Spiner finally gets to show some emotion during scenes with his opposite number, the Borg Queen (Alice Krige, in a gleefully nasty role).

One of the problems the Next Generation television series had with the Borg was in making them nasty. In the few episodes in which the Borg appeared, they really weren't that scary. While I respected what they represented--basically, mental rape--the threat was never fully realized. In First Contact, it is. The Borg are damn scary--not since Alien (an admitted influence on this film) has such a threat seemed so palpable. And just like in Alien, the enemy force invade the ship--in this case, the Borg take over the Enterprise. Director Frakes starts with the tension level low, then keeps turning the dial up, turning the ship from a comfortable home into a place filled with paranoia and horrible danger. The Borg have the ability to assimilate humans in a matter of seconds--in other words, a person can be a human one minute, and a mindless drone the next. Once we realize that, the Enterprise is suddenly a ship of horrors, with death or worse possibly waiting around every corner.

As a director, Jonathan Frakes is excellent. Not once does he slip--his skill is evident throughout the movie. He has a particular talent for evoking emotion, not just tension and fear, but also excitement, hope, and humor.

Trek movies have always had one other problem--their accessibility, or lack thereof. Frequently, non-fans feel as though they're not getting the whole picture. Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, the writers of First Contact, not only solved this problem, but they used it to their advantage. If there is any confusion, it's cleared up by the end of the movie, and in such a way that it makes the film more interesting and surprising for non-fans.

In short, this is an excellent film. It is the first truly accessible Star Trek film, melding everything that Trek is and that Trek hasn't yet been; its action and horror juxtaposed with social commentary and well-meaning science fiction. Several times during the show, I asked myself, "Is this really a Star Trek movie?" That was First Contact's most remarkable accomplishment--it's a movie that most Star Trek fans will love . . . and that anyone can enjoy. It's a hell of a lot of fun.

RATING Out of 100

It is possible for just one Borg cube to penetrate the Federation lines, and just Locutus/Picard is able to destroy it. The step into the past, the time travel to the very first contact between Humans and Vulcans gives us some comic relief, which arises from the scenes with warp drive inventor Zephrem Cochrane and the away team. But as almost always within Star Trek, every comic or romantic relief has some very hard scenes following. This has been true since the Classic episode "Balance of Power," and it also counts for latest DS9's "A Call To Arms."

First Contact is the most hard-edged Star Trek film, and some scenes even look like it was meant to create some mixture of horror and sf. This is not anymore Roddenberry-Trek, this is more serious, this is the late nineties. But is it still Star Trek? Yes, definitely! Patrick Stewart's performance is brilliant, he again dominates the whole cast, even Spiner and James Cromwell. Star Trek again alludes to literature, but in the end Ahab/Picard sees the white Borg whale dead while he himself stays alife.

First Contact is Star Trek at its peak, and this might not have been possible without Jerry Goldsmith's beautiful score and Jonathan Frake's directing abilities. With First Contact as well as with DS9 and Voyager's new course of action this may mean salvation for the Star Trek universe which seemed to fade away a bit after TNG's death on the television screen. But with a new style like this, and with integrating traditional Star Trek values, Roddenberry's creation probably will live long and prosper for quite a while again.