Jonathan Frakes says there is one shot in Star Trek: First Contact he would still change: the Borg Queen blowing on Data's arm hair. The 1996 film turns 30 on November 22, 2026, and the comment lands in a movie that still sits near the top of many Star Trek lists while streaming on Paramount+.
Data's arm hair shot
Jonathan Frakes singled out the effect as the only frame he would revisit, calling it sh*tty compared with the rest of the shot. Brent Spiner, who played Data, said the arm in that moment was his own, which makes the complaint more specific than a generic hindsight regret.
Rick Berman joined Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner on Dropping Names... And Other Things, where the conversation moved from the film's visual effects to the mechanics of the scene itself. Alice Krige's Borg Queen was meant to pull Data toward her side by seduction while replacing parts of his android skin with organic tissue, so the shot depended on a small visual cue carrying a large amount of story.
Frakes and Spiner on pronunciation
Brent Spiner said he still wishes Data had said “Resistance is futile!” with a different pronunciation, preferring “few-TILE” over “few-till.” Jonathan Frakes agreed, which gives the discussion a narrower point than nostalgia: even the people who made the film can still hear one line or see one effect and think it should have played differently.
That friction is what makes the remark useful now. Star Trek: First Contact is described as the most popular and successful movie starring the cast of The Next Generation, and it regularly ranks among the best Star Trek films, yet Frakes is still willing to name one visual choice he thinks aged poorly. For viewers on Paramount+, the movie now carries that extra layer of craft history: the version on screen is the one that survived the cut, not the one Frakes would have left alone.
Borg Queen and Data
The scene also fits the film's larger logic. The Borg Queen had captured Data and tried to win him over, Captain Picard had read that as a bid to make Data the counterpart she once wanted Jean-Luc to be when he became Locutus of Borg, and Data later revealed he had been playing along all along. Frakes's complaint lands inside that setup, because the shot is supposed to sell a calculated seduction, not draw attention to the mechanics of the effect.
Thirty years later, that is the practical takeaway for anyone revisiting Star Trek: First Contact: the film still works as a piece of studio-scale spectacle, but its director can still isolate one image and say he would fix it if he could. The anniversary only sharpens the point.
