Star Trek: First Contact

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Picard, Worf and Hawk are outside the ship and want to separate the transmitter dish from the hull, Picard must move a kind of tube out of an console and must turn it from a low to a high position. In one shot the tube is in the high position, in the next shot it is in the low position and then Picard pulls it out and turns it in the high position. (01:06:40 - 01:10:35)

Star Trek: First Contact mistake picture

Factual error: In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing. (00:42:45)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Actually when you look at Australia and New Zealand from orbit, New Zealand is a lot further away from Australia then shown on a map, also a lot more south of Australia. A map is a 2D image of a sphere, causing proportions to be off (its well known Africa is a lot smaller on maps than it is in real life). Especially the further south or north you go distances are way off. The depiction shown in the movie is actually correct, in that angle New Zealand is just outside of the frame. There are plenty of pictures from orbit to compare.

lionhead

Character mistake: When Picard is explaining the Enterprise to Lily he states that it has 24 decks. Yet earlier on, a crewman had reported to Worf that the Borg had taken over "decks 26 up to 11".

Continuity mistake: When Lilly and Jean Luc are arguing in the captain's ready room Jean Luc breaks the glass cabinet holding the gold models of the previous enterprises with one of the Phaser rifles. It only causes the gold model of the Enterprise D to spin 90 degrees on its hook. The next shot both the gold models of the Enterprise C and D are broken in half. (01:20:05 - 01:21:05)

Continuity mistake: When patrolling through the Borg-infested corridors, the type of Phaser rifle that Picard as well as other crew members carry changes back and forth from square shaped to curved shaped barrels. (00:31:10 - 00:32:10)

Continuity mistake: When Worf's spacesuit is cut, a close-up shows it venting from a cut just above the knee. But a wide-shot shows the cut is just below the knee.

johnrosa

Factual error: In the scene after Zefram's ship goes to warp, when the ship is being turned around to return home, Cochrane remarks "Is that the Earth? It's so...small." He wouldn't have been able to see it, provided the distance the ship just flew. Warp 1 is the speed of light and in a 1 minute flight, the Phoenix would have travelled over 10 million miles - at that distance the earth would just appear like a bright star.

Continuity mistake: As the Enterprise crew walk towards Engineering for the first time, Worf senses the Borg awakening and yells "Ready phasers" before killing a Borg. As that particular drone awakens, we can see it has a needle-like tool coming out of its eye sensor. But when Worf smashes it with his rifle, it has a blue lit-up eye sensor. Furthermore, this drone is seen many times during the following fight sequence after Worf has apparently killed it. (00:35:00)

Revealing mistake: In the deflector dish scene when Worf chops the Borg's arm off with his mek'leth, the blade obviously doesn't even touch the Borg. (01:09:45)

Continuity mistake: When Cochrane runs beside a shack to have a nip and get away from the adoring Enterprise crew, he is clean shaven. However, around the time he gets zapped by a stun ray, he now has a significant five o'clock shadow.

Revealing mistake: Outside Engineering when Data twists the neck of one of the Borg, one of his sleeves comes up and you can see where the make-up on Brent Spiner's arm ends.

Factual error: In the scene where Troi is drunk and Riker asks if Cochrane can accept the truth, it is night. Then the scene switches to the Enterprise orbiting Earth over north America and it is apparently daytime because the sun is shining over north America, where the movie takes place. (00:31:05)

Metalligod666

Factual error: When Zephram Cochrane, Riker and LaForge activate the warp drive of the prototype starship Phoenix, the prismatic starscape is seen streaking past (same effect as in the Star Trek: TNG series). However, the Phoenix never leaves the solar system or even the vicinity of Earth, achieving only Warp One (the max velocity of the Phoenix) for a few seconds. Even at lightspeed, the Phoenix did not enter interstellar space nor pass any other stars; therefore, the starscape should have remained almost motionless.

Charles Austin Miller

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: What happens when a ship goes to warp it essentially creates a subspace distortion. This causes the starscape to change and move, as they exit regular space and enter subspace.

lionhead

At Warp One, there should be zero prismatic distortions. It takes a full 24-hour DAY for light to cross the solar system. In a few seconds, a vessel traveling at Warp One, within a solar system, would see no distortions.

Charles Austin Miller

A ship slips out of regular space when going to warp, it creates a bubble around the ship, that bubble causes the starscape for the people inside it to appear moving or at least distort. That's what you see. That's what you always see when a ship goes to warp.

lionhead

The prismatic effect was created for the TNG series to depict the ship passing stars at hundreds of times the speed of light. The Phoenix only achieved Warp One, one time the speed of light (lightspeed). As fast as that sounds, it wouldn't be fast enough to create any visual distortion.

Charles Austin Miller

Even at hundreds of times the speed of light you would only pass a star every few seconds, they didn't make that effect for TNG as in TOS they were going that fast too (as high as warp 9) and the same distortion is seen. You also keep saying its the speed that causes the visual distortion whilst I specifically mention its the fact the ship exiting regular space and into subspace is whats causing the distortion.

lionhead

Continuity mistake: During the Dixon Hill holodeck scene, the room was full of "people" running around while Picard fired the machine gun at the Borg. Yet a few seconds later the room was totally empty. There wasn't enough time for everybody to have abandoned the room. And if it had been a security feature, the entire simulation should have ended, instead of just disabling all the people. (00:54:15)

Teru_Kage

Continuity mistake: When Lily points out the unknown object, she lowers her arm. After looking at the falling energy shots, she's lowering her arm again.

Movie Nut

Star Trek: First Contact mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Picard, Worf, and Hawk step onto the saucer's hull, the camera pans up from the edge showing the path to the deflector (the point at which Picard says "Let's go"). At this point all of the window lights are illuminated on the angled part of the saucer. When it cuts to the wide shot of the hull and the trio having taken half a dozen steps toward the deflector, only the nearest two window lights are illuminated on the angled part of the saucer. Clearly a different model as the aztecing is different, shapes of the hull are different and there is a recess around the yellow RCS thruster in the latter shot. (01:01:10)

Plot hole: When Picard, Hawk and Worf are out on the particle transmitter, they each have one gun. However, when Picard is attacked by Hawk, the gun that Hawk used is being stepped on by him. Picard left his gun over at the other mag lock, and Worf threw his away, but when the captain was in trouble, Worf had a gun. He would not have had time to run around to Picard's side before he was attacked by Hawk, so where did Worf get the other gun from?

Cynthia Gurski

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: As you can see in a wide shot after Worf's suit is cut, his gun is still hanging close by. So after he closed the gap in his suit he just grabbed his own gun. Of course, he did throw it away and it should have kept on moving all the way out of reach but something stopped it. But you do see it still in reach of Worf.

lionhead

Continuity mistake: When Picard climbs down the ladder next to the broken plasma tube, the break is visible, but there is still glass from top to bottom of the opening. Then, as he walks toward the left of the screen, the break is much larger. (01:37:50)

Tin Man

Continuity mistake: The number of Borg working on the transmitter dish changes and they move with the speed of light. While Picard explains how they should disable the dish, a shot show that 6 Borg are working on it. They disable 3 in various ways and 1 walks off with Hawk, leaving 2. However, as the disk is being released from the ship there are 3 Borg on it. When Picard disabled his "maglock servo" he avoids capture by a Borg by demagnetizing his boots and flying over it. When he lands at Hawk's earlier position, the Borg is still standing where he left, however a shot seconds later shows the Borg back on the dish.

Data: Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind.

More quotes from Star Trek: First Contact

Trivia: I was reading through some of the entries concerning the Borg in the Star Trek Encyclopedia, and came upon a comment they had about Wolf 359 - it's the name of an actual star in space, it makes up part of the Constellation Leo. It's also the site of the first major fleet battle between StarFleet and the Borg. Take your mind back to the scene where Zef and Lily first walk out of that bar, and Lily sees a speck of light that is actually the Borg Sphere, and asks Zef what it is. He replies "That, my dear, is the Constellation Leo". Now, obviously he didn't see what she was pointing out the first time around, but we could probably assume that from their point of view the sphere was in the general area that the constellation occupies in the night sky. Nice coincidence that the first attack on Earth by the Borg came from the same direction as the major battle between Starfleet and the Borg.

More trivia for Star Trek: First Contact

Question: One of the crew members tells Worf that the Borg control decks 26 to 11, and stopped when they reached deck 11. Picard says, "We can't get to deflector control or a shuttle craft." I did some research, and the main shuttle bay is on deck 6. So why can't they get to a shuttlecraft? Would this be a plot hole?

Answer: The borg took control of specific areas of the ship as part of their plan. This included deflector control and the shuttle bay.

My mistake. The main shuttle bay is around decks 5 and 6. The Borg didn't take control of those decks until after the beacon was destroyed.

More questions & answers from Star Trek: First Contact

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.