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Alice Krige - First Contact's Borg Queen

I was a Star Trek virgin
  Alice Krige didn’t know what a Star Trek was

I must be one of the small number of people in the world, comparatively speaking, who actually grew up without Star Trek.

Because I grew up in South Africa and, at that time, there was no television in South Africa. It arrived the year after I left. So I was a Star Trek virgin.

When I was asked to come in and read for the Borg queen, I realised, obviously, that I knew nothing about the universe that I was entering into, so I called a friend who had written for Star Trek in the past and, of course, he has every episode ... So I rushed over there and I watched all the Borg footage and then went in and read for Jonathan [Frakes] and Mr Berman.

By the time I’d finished the audition I understood how interested I was by her. It was something about the power of her that I hadn’t understood until I had actually acted out the scene.

The Character of the Borg Queen
  Alice talks about the mystery of the evil queen

I think what’s interesting about her is that she has an odd resonance in that she means something different to almost everyone who’s encountered her.

Some people have felt that the character was symbolic of the modern world, of the way that mechanisation and technology has possibly eclipsed some of our humanity and some of our spirituality.

What was fascinating to me was the be allowed to explore an area that is so far from me as a human being, which is the use of power - or the pursuit of power – for its own sake. I mean I know she believes that everyone that’s assimilated is actually being given a gift. That’s it’s a privilege to be assimilated, that her particular pursuit of perfection is a blessing that she gives to whoever she assimilates. But that use of power and also the way she uses sexuality as a hook … she uses whatever she needs in any given moment, to extend herself.

Everyone is both attracted and repelled by the character and excited by her and fearful of her. She somehow is the bogeyman that one was frightened of as a child. She somehow just slots into people’s area of vulnerability. As a dark shadow.

The Costume
  The Borg Queen can do many things, but she can’t pee

The first whole day that I spent in the Borg suit, started very early. I guess I left home at two o’clock in the morning and got to my little trailer where Scott Wheeler was waiting for me at about quarter to three. And rather foolishly I drank coffee, water, juice. Oh, eight hours later, we glued me into the suit and at three o’clock that afternoon, I had continued to drink coffee, water, juice … I was desperate to go to the loo.

And I said to the first assistant director, Jerry, a dear soul. I have to go to the bathroom. And he said all right. Forty five minutes later, they got me back into my suit, which was the most expensive pee in the history of Star Trek. An entire crew had been waiting for me.

Later in the day Mike Westmore said to me you know, I once made a bright pink, skin-tight, latex suit for an actress that we had to roll onto her. And we solved the bathroom problem by making slits in the soles of her suit and she stood on a drain and peed in the suit. We could do the same for you. And I said no thank you, I just won’t drink anything. And so I didn’t. I would stop drinking about half way through the make up process and then not drink again until an hour before we were due to wrap.

When I went back to work in Voyager, in the last episode of Voyager, they had adapted the suit for television. I.e. it was infinitely faster. So I actually was taken out of the suit at lunchtime. So I was able to, you know, put away the water and coffee and tea and whatever. It was much, much easier to wear the second time round.

The suit that I wore ultimately was not the first suit. The first suit that I wore was constructed in pieces. I spent the whole show kind of working against the tension of the suit. But it was very useful. It was an inadvertent gift because it created a kind of muscularity for the character that I might never have come across had it not been that the suit was too tight and skewed.

They made me a new suit and this was soft foam, so it was like being wrapped in marshmallow. I had a blissful, comparatively speaking, rest of the shoot because my poor Borg, the rest of my Borg were in the hard suits. And they spent the shoot with blisters around their necks, under their armpits, round their wrists, at their ankles. In agony. They had a really hard time.

To sort of add insult to injury, I became aware, one day on the set, that whenever a Borg moved up to the coffee table, whoever was there would sort of slowly retreat. So the Borg were not only in pain, but they were kind of ostracised. Everyone just uncomfortable in their presence. Which was terribly interesting for me, but I did feel heartbroken for my minions.

The first time
  How did she feel the first time she tried the costume?

On the very first day that we put her together, it had taken eight, nine hours, however long, and we all gathered in a great big, mirrored trailer and called Rick Berman and said come down and take a look at her, she’s ready. And while I waited for him to come down I put in the lenses. And I put in the right and I put in the left and I looked up into the mirror and the whole crew of body and head were behind me. And I saw everyone go ah. And I thought they’re scared. And they created her. And it just felt the most astonishing rush of power which was wildly exciting and very, very useful. But it was extraordinary, the transformation.

So no, it didn’t matter that it hurt and it didn’t matter that it took so long.

The Borg Queen’s entrance
  Alice describes the special effects necessary to make a bodiless head.

When the Borg Queen first appears, we see her snake-like independent head lowered from the ceiling. It’s very cool - but how was it done?

What they did was that they used a motor control camera head. I was put in a little cradle that was lashed to a crane and I was horizontal and they had stuck the prosthetic neck and that metallic spine to me here. So I was horizontal and the neck hung down.

They took me thirty feet up in the air and they brought me down slowly on a path that we had arrived at in rehearsal and deposited me on a little X. And then, having filmed that with the motion control camera head, they removed the crane. Then they married those two images together in the computer. And likewise for the moment where her head locks into her torso and she walks over to Data.

Do you think she’s sexy?
  How the Borg Queen uses her sexuality.

It just emerged from me, I suppose, out of the costume. The physicality of her. I was obviously fully dressed, but I felt sort of naked. I felt as if I had no clothes on. The physicality of her just emerged as sexual. No-one had asked me to do it. But it was who she was.

When I took on Voyager it dawned on me, as I was getting ready, in a moment of absolute panic that I was going to be playing with two female characters, not with two male characters. Not Data and Picard. And I thought oh, that area of her energy, that aspect of the way she related to people the last time I was doing her is going to be changed.

I spoke to Ken Biller, the producer in charge of the episode, and he said, bless him, think of her as omnisexual. I realised that her manipulation of energy often, in a sexual way, was just her way of disarming and disturbing people that she was manipulating. So that in the scene with Seven of Nine … there was a very potent sexual energy. Well, she was going back and forth, she was treating Seven of Nine as if she were her child and then flipping to a sexual energy and then flipping back. What she was doing was never letting Seven of Nine be sure of where she stood.

The differences between TV and film
  How different was it playing the part in Voyager?

In the first place, on film, you do, indeed, have more time. And that’s reflected just in, for example, the costume was streamlined.

I had to re-voice all of Star Tek – Star Trek: First Contact, and I had a great deal of time, I went back twice. For fewer scenes. And we just went on and on until we got it perfect. Until we thought we could do no better.

Unfortunately for the television, again I had to re-voice it. I had shot the two days of work I did on Voyager and left the next day to work in Ireland and four weeks later I did the re-voicing in England in the studio at Pinewood and we had a telephone link to LA and we had five hours to do it in. And I feel that I didn’t do at least the scene with Seven of Nine justice. And that was because of the time pressure.

The Power of the Borg Queen (spoiler)
  Just what are the Borg?

I don’t think they’re a race. I think she’s it. I think when she says I am the Borg, she is the Borg. Everything that she assimilates simply becomes an extension of her. Her minions, her tools.

I came to the conclusion that she’s always been there. Rather as energy cannot be created or destroyed, I just think the Borg queen has always been there and in First Contact she chose to manifest.

She was just pure energy, like a force of nature and has always been here. We encountered her for the first time in Star Trek: First Contact, but that was just because she chose to assume a material form. So I know they’ve killed her off twice, but don’t believe it. She may not ever come back, but she’s still there. She’s not to be disposed of.