| Sultry villainess emerges in Star Trek: First Contact: Alice Krige mixes horror, beauty in the Borg Queen by Gary Arnold The Washinghton Times 11/24/1996 |
| "Usually, I'm very low-maintenance," Alice Krige quips as a prelude to explaining her transformation into an exceptionally high-maintenance but also magnificent adornment to the new science-fiction spectacle Star Trek: First Contact. Opening nationally this weekend, First Contact is the eighth feature film in the durable cycle inspired by the original 1967 television series and its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Next Gen logged seven seasons and 178 hours of futuristic adventure starting in 1988, outlasting the prototype by roughly 100 episodes. This installment completes the transition from first-generation to second-generation ensembles that began with feature No. 7, Star Trek: Generations, released in 1994. The key to its melodramatic and pictorial distinction is its showcasing of Miss Krige as the awesome villainess, the Borg Queen. Where has this superlative menace been all these years? Waiting for a feature-length budget to justify her existence, among other things. The Borg Queen is a fresh threat and a lure for Star Trek fans. Her minions have done several encores on television since being introduced in the second season of Next Generation. A nasty surprise lurking in a segment of the Federation-patrolled universe called Delta Quarter, the Borg is composed of cybernetic aliens. Part organic, part mechanical, they are united by an implacable mass consciousness that precludes appeals to reason or emotion. Rick Berman, the burly producer who supervises the perpetuation of Star Trek, recalls that two considerations were uppermost when the plot for First Contact was formulated. "We wanted to get Patrick Stewart as Capt. Picard back into the thick of the action," he says, "because the previous feature had left him in a depressed and brooding condition rather more than we intended. And we thought we needed some really good bad guys. The Borg have been a favorite with fans, but as this voiceless, assimilated collective. They had never emerged with a single voice, a single dominant personification. We needed to create a character like that. Because of the hivelike mentality they displayed, we thought a queen bee was the way to go." Was it ever. Entrusted to makeup supervisor Michael Westmore and his staff from the neck up, to costume designer Deborah Everton and her staff from the neck down and to Miss Krige (pronounced "kree-ga") from the inside out, the Borg Queen emerges as a triumph of spooky sensuality. "A line in the script described the character as hauntingly beautiful," the actress recalls, "but it's easier to suggest the idea of intermingled horror and beauty, isn't it? There was no way to attain it single-handedly. The costume and makeup designs were extraordinary gifts for any actress. When I finally saw the complete ensemble in a mirror, after installing my contact lenses - they were always the last piece of the puzzle - I realized 'Oh, boy, this could be a very disturbing creature!' " A South African who migrated to England to pursue an acting career, Miss Krige was a very promising disturbance in the early 1980s, when she played the delightful fiancee of one of the British sprinters in Chariots of Fire and then a supernatural temptress in Ghost Story. Although her film career cooled while she concentrated on the stage, producer Berman had cast her in one of his non-Star Trek projects, Wallenberg: A Hero's Story, and her sultry fascination seems to have ripened in her late 30s. "We saw about a hundred actresses, some famous, some not so famous," recalls cast member Jonathan Frakes, who also directed First Contact. "None seemed to capture the part, which was clearly tough to cast. The language was so strange: between conversational and Shakespearean, or maybe Chekhovian. Alice was the only one who brought it to life. When she read, we realized she was so sexy and dangerous and scary that we had to rethink the design of the queen herself. "Originally, she was going to be identical to her drones. We decided to let Michael Westmore celebrate Alice in the role, share her witchy virtuosity with the audience to an extent that hadn't been envisioned." The actress who justified these enhancements doesn't seem remotely predatory in person. On the contrary, she's humorously relaxed and delicate. Only the somewhat breathless huskiness in her voice hints at a facility for seduction that acquires impressive despotic magnitude in First Contact, where she suggests a creature who must have debauched numerous species over far-flung galaxies. Miss Krige expects that her costume may prove an overwhelming lure next Halloween. "I hope I don't meet any others," she comments, "but I understand it will be on the market. A handier replica, of course. Mine took about six hours to apply the head and then another hour or so to wriggle into the suit. They would powder me, then powder the suit. Two people helped insert me bit by bit, starting with one of the legs." This ordeal resulted in an initial workday that began at 2 a.m. and ended the following 1 a.m. A more practical schedule had to be worked out for the Borg Queen, permitting Miss Krige something at least close to the union requirement of a 9 1/2-hour break between work shifts. Nevertheless, when finally wriggled into, the Queen's outfit could be pretty inspiring. "The first thing I felt was an overwhelming wave of power," Miss Krige says. But that wasn't all. "I've never felt quite that naked before," she says. "I wasn't really naked, of course. I was covered in inches of rubber. But I felt naked while playing her. That's a weird sensation, but it helped with the whole strand of her aggressive sexuality, which always reflected her power and could never be separated from it." Playing the Borg Queen also made Miss Krige a constant center of attention on the set. Maintaining her regal strangeness required a substantial retinue. "In the past I was never chained to the makeup trailer. It was 20 minutes for the face, 20 minutes for the hair, put on the costume and ready to go. On Star Trek, there was someone touching me or feeling me or gluing a bit on me or putting KY jelly on me or messing with my battery packs from the moment I set foot on the lot. "Whenever the camera wasn't rolling, someone had a hand down my back, since the queen's batteries were always acting up. We were like a little shoal of fish. That was probably the most tiring thing of all: being constantly attended to and fussed over." Brent Spiner, reviving his endearing role as the android officer, Data, derived the most immediate benefit from Miss Krige's imposing sexiness: It amuses the Borg Queen to toy with Lt. Cmdr. Data's "emotion chip," still in a somewhat experimental stage. A promising raconteur with an insatiable curiosity about the lore of stage and screen, Mr. Spiner helps enlarge that lore by musing, "We figure that Data has three speeds and the Borg Queen definitely got him up to high." The original Star Trek television series made its debut on NBC in September 1966 and concluded in September 1969, but popular demand led to an ongoing revival in syndication. Now Star Trek is a thriving, simultaneous television and motion-picture franchise - so much so that star Patrick Stewart anticipates infinity: "I'm now intrigued by what we can do with this franchise," he says. "It could be that we have another 20 years of interesting work ahead of us. My conviction has always been, we make the best possible movies that just so happen to be Star Trek movies." Here's how the phenomenon has developed: * Star Trek: The Next Generation"made its debut in syndication in October 1987 and wrapped up in 1994, joining the original series in presumably eternal reruns. * Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began syndication in January 1993 and Star Trek: Voyager"in January 1995. Both series are still in active production. * Six movies in theatrical release featured the original cast members: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in 1979; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in 1982; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, in 1984; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, in 1986; Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, in 1989; and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, in 1991. * A seventh feature movie, Star Trek: Generations in 1994, combined cast members from the original series and The Next Generation. * The eighth and latest feature, Star Trek: First Contact, is entrusted to the cast of The Next Generation. Copyright 1996 News World Communications, Inc. Back |