Rating: ***
Director: Jonathan Frakes
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton,
Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis
This film falls into the same pitfall that the original movies did, by having the next generation crew act goofy and out of character in order to get laughs. The Borg are at it again and heading for Earth. The U.S.S. Enterprise-D is ordered to stay behind due to Captain Picard's previous involvement with them, but he disobeys the order and jumps into the fight after the rest of Earth's defense forces are slaughtered by the menacing biomechanical adversary. They somehow manage to succeed in defeating the Borg, but not before they go back in time to attack Earth in the past. Of course, the Enterprise-D goes back in time to stop them, and much silliness ensues. Is it just me, or are the Borg just the lamest, most boring adversary the Federation has? Sure, they were great the first couple of times they showed up in the TV series, but by this time they're just a joke. The effects are good, but many of them are jumbled and messy compositions of what the effects artists "could" do instead of what they "should" have done. The spaceship fighting scenes in particular are extremely poorly choreographed. A mixed bag, but it's still a lot of fun.