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50 free Star Trek: First Contact trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Star Trek: First Contact trivia quiz covers the 1996 film in which Picard and the crew of the new Enterprise-E chase the Borg back to April 2063 to protect Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight. It was Jonathan Frakes's directorial debut, the first Star Trek film with no Original Series characters, and the movie that introduced the Borg Queen. The questions range from the plot — the Phoenix, Lily Sloane, Data's grafted skin, the deflector-dish spacewalk, the Vulcan landing in Montana — to the making of the film: the abandoned Renaissance Italy draft, the title that had to change because of Alien Resurrection, the four days shooting inside a real Titan missile silo, Jerry Goldsmith's score, the Voyager cameos, and the box office. There are easy questions for casual viewers and hard ones for people who know the film shot for shot. BrainPickle also has quizzes on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the wider Star Trek universe. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question carries a citation to the page it came from.
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Q 01Who directed Star Trek: First Contact, in his feature film debut?
Jonathan Frakes
Ridley Scott and John McTiernan reportedly turned the job down before it went to the man who played Riker.
Q 02First Contact is which number film in the Star Trek series?
Eighth
It followed Generations (1994) and was followed by Insurrection (1998).
Q 03In what year does the Enterprise-E arrive after following the Borg sphere through the temporal vortex?
2063
Earth is still recovering from World War III at the time.
Q 04What is the name of Zefram Cochrane's warp ship?
Phoenix
It was designed to fit inside an old nuclear missile, so its nacelles had to fold into less than ten feet.
Q 05In which US state is Cochrane's launch site?
Montana
The Montana scenes were actually shot in California's Angeles National Forest, in a village of fourteen huts.
Q 06Who plays Zefram Cochrane?
James Cromwell
Paramount floated Tom Hanks for the part, but Berman said it was never serious and Frakes thought a star that famous would be a mistake.
Q 07Zefram Cochrane first appeared in which 1967 Original Series episode, played by Glenn Corbett?
Metamorphosis
Cromwell's older, drunker Cochrane bears no resemblance to Corbett, which the writers were fine with.
Q 08Who plays Lily Sloane, Cochrane's assistant?
Alfre Woodard
Woodard had jokingly declared herself Frakes's godmother at a barbecue years earlier, and he cast her through that friendship.
Q 09Who plays the Borg Queen?
Alice Krige
Her silver contact lenses were so painful they could only stay in for four minutes at a time.
Q 10Whose suggestion led to the creation of the Borg Queen, because the script lacked an individual villain?
Paramount head Jonathan Dolgen
The writers had wanted to keep the Borg a mindless collective, as in the TV series.
Q 11What does the Borg Queen graft onto Data to tempt him?
Human skin
Data pretends to turn, then ruptures a coolant tank whose vapour eats away the Borg's organic parts.
Q 12Which crew member is assimilated during the spacewalk on the deflector dish?
Lieutenant Hawk
Neal McDonough said he knew someone in that scene had to die and 'that would be me'.
Q 13Picard angrily calls which officer a coward for suggesting the ship be destroyed?
Worf
Lily's confrontation makes Picard see he is behaving like Ahab; he apologises and orders the self-destruct.
Q 21Which film knocked First Contact off the top of the US box office in its second week?
101 Dalmatians
In the UK it opened at number two, the first Trek film not to open at number one there since The Wrath of Khan.
Q 22The new Enterprise-E belongs to which starship class?
Sovereign
The Enterprise-D had been destroyed in Generations.
Q 23How long was the physical Enterprise-E miniature built by ILM?
10.5 feet
First Contact was the last film to use a physical model of the Enterprise.
Q 24Which of these was one of Alex Jaeger's four new Starfleet ship classes for the Borg battle?
Q 14Scholars compare Picard's obsession with the Borg to which literary character?
Captain Ahab
The faceless Borg stand in for the whale.
Q 15Which alien species makes first contact with humanity at the end of the film?
Vulcans
Only a boomerang-shaped landing foot of the Vulcan ship was actually built; the rest was CGI.
Q 16Where were the writers originally going to set the Borg's attack on history, before dropping it as too kitschy?
Renaissance Italy
Data would have become Leonardo da Vinci's apprentice, and Patrick Stewart refused to wear tights.
Q 17Star Trek: First Contact's working title was dropped in 1996 because it clashed with which other sequel?
Alien Resurrection
Other titles considered included Star Trek: Borg and Star Trek: Destinies.
Q 18Who wrote the screenplay for First Contact?
Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore
Braga and Moore wanted the Borg; Berman wanted time travel; they combined the two on the spot.
Q 19What was the film's budget?
$45 million
More than a quarter of it went on effects.
Q 20How much did First Contact gross worldwide?
$146 million
It was the top film in the US on its opening weekend, then got knocked off by 101 Dalmatians.
Akira class
John Knoll reasoned Starfleet would throw everything it had at the Borg, including ships never seen before.
Q 25Where were the silo scenes for Cochrane's ship filmed?
The Titan Missile Museum near Tucson
The real silo saved building an expensive set but the cramped space made every camera move a puzzle.
Q 26The Dixon Hill holodeck nightclub was filmed in an art deco restaurant inside which Los Angeles landmark?
Union Station
Ethan Phillips, Voyager's Neelix, has an uncredited cameo as the club's maître d'.
Q 27Which Voyager actor cameos as the Enterprise's EMH, quipping 'I'm a doctor, not a door stop'?
Robert Picardo
The line is a nod to Dr McCoy's catchphrase from the original series.
Q 28Which Next Generation regular was NOT asked back for the film and learned of it from the newspapers?
Whoopi Goldberg
Dwight Schultz did return as Reginald Barclay, and Patti Yasutake as Nurse Ogawa.
Q 29How was Geordi La Forge's look changed for the film?
His VISOR was replaced with ocular implants
LeVar Burton had lobbied to lose the VISOR because it hid his eyes.
Q 30Who composed the score for First Contact?
Jerry Goldsmith
With the schedule cut to three weeks, he brought in his son Joel, who wrote 22 minutes of additional music.