Summary
- Star Trek: First Contact is widely regarded as the best movie featuring the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast and is filled with memorable quotes.
- The movie follows the TNG crew as they travel back in time to ensure the successful launch of Earth's first warp-capable vessel, facing obstacles from the Borg and Zefram Cochrane's doubts.
- The introduction of the Borg Queen and Lt. Commander Data's iconic lines add depth to the story and contribute to the film's status as a highly quotable action movie.
Widely regarded as the best movie starring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: First Contact is an immensely quotable movie. The TNG cast follows the Borg back in time to the launch of Earth's first warp-capable vessel, the Phoenix, on April 5, 2063. In Bozeman, Montana, Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton), and Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) work with the Phoenix's legendary inventor Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) to ensure that the launch goes off without a hitch, despite interference from the Borg and Cochrane's cold feet in the face of his own legacy.
Meanwhile, on the USS Enterprise-E, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), Lt. Commander Worf (Michael Dorn) — on loan from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — and Cochrane's companion Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) race against the Borg's gradual assimilation of the Enterprise. Star Trek: First Contact is also notable for its introduction of the Borg Queen (Alice Krige), the previously unseen director of the Borg hive mind, who would later return as a critical part of both Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Picard. Here are the ten best quotes from Star Trek: First Contact.
Your browser does not support the video tag. 10 "I believe I speak for everyone here when I say … to hell with our orders." Spoken by Lt. Commander Data Close Starfleet has determined that Captain Picard's previous experiences in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Locutus of Borg make him too close to the looming Borg threat, and for the most part, they're right. Picard insists that they must follow their orders to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone, but it's clear that he feels he needs to be a part of Starfleet's engagement of the Borg, and he eventually makes the decision to go it alone. Data stands up and delivers this great line, which sets the action in motion and adds to the Star Trek swear jar at the same time.
9 "I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many … I am the Borg." Spoken by The Borg Queen Close After Data is taken prisoner by the Borg, he hears a voice echo in the darkness, and asks who it belongs to. The Borg Queen introduces herself this way during her first scene, in an iconic shot of her organic torso being lowered by cables into the rest of her body before it clicks into place so she can walk around freely. She explains that she does not merely speak for them, as Picard did when he was Locutus. She is all of Borg, condensed into one form, and she is everything.
8 “Now is not the time to argue about time! We don’t have the time!” Spoken by Counselor Deanna Troi 
Back on Earth, Counselor Deanna Troi is part of the search for Zefram Cochrane, and she's the lucky crew member who happens to find him. She stalls Cochrane by drinking with him until Riker and the others can arrive, but in doing so, discovers that real alcohol packs way more of a punch than the synthehol she's used to in the 24th century. Troi and Riker discuss whether to tell Zefram Cochrane who they really are, since he doesn't believe their cover story, and this is Troi's drunken argument against the temporal prime directive in this one particular case.
7 “You told him about the statue?” Spoken by Commander Will Riker 
Commander Riker says this to Geordi LaForge after Zefram Cochrane gets spooked by the stories of his own legacy and takes off. In the previous scene, Geordi explains to Cochrane that First Contact turns Bozeman into a historical site, with a statue of Cochrane standing in the very spot he's in right then: a tall, gleaming construction, larger than life, with a hand extended towards the future. Zefram wants no part of that, insists he's no visionary, and doesn't deserve to be remembered to history as something that he isn't. Even with the temporal prime directive on the backburner, Riker questions whether LaForge should have gone into quite that much detail.
