Tear Jerker / Star Trek: First Contact

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• It's crazy but... the sequence early in the film, with the en masse attack against the Borg cube and Worf's crew ready to commit suicide in a last-ditch attempt to slow it down. And then there's the look of combined disbelief and hope on the crew's faces as they realize which ship just arrived on the battlefield, and suddenly, the whole audience knows it's going to be okay.
  "Sir, there's another starship coming in... it's the Enterprise!"
• "Captain... help..."
  • It's even worse with Picard's agonized look, even as Borg implants overtake the crewman's body ("Please... help...!"). And all he can do is free the poor man.
• Pretty much everyone who gets hit by a Borg is this. The Enterprise crew has always been portrayed as a "family" of sorts, so you know that all these people MEAN something to each other, and every one lost is another blow.
  • Lieutenant Hawk's assimilation is even more of a tearjerker if you've read the Star Trek Titan novels and know that he had a partner who still hasn't fully accepted the reality of his death six years later.
• Picard's epic 'hold the line' speech, and his subsequent realization at how his actions were tainted because of his need to hurt the Borg. Picard, a captain known for both his courtesy and calm manner, lashing out verbally and physically and then realizing what he'd become, is one of the most powerful and emotional sights in any medium of Trek.
• Picard raging at Worf and calling him a coward. A coward. Michael Dorn's acting is good enough to show the Son of Mogh feeling equal parts fury at such disrespect and genuine hurt that his captain, of all people, would question him.
  • Picard, demonstrating why even Kirk fanboys respect him, shows what it means to be a big man and fully swallows his ego and apologizes to Worf.
  • What snaps out of his Sanity Slippage? Accidentally smashing the display featuring the past Enterprises. In essence, he finds himself destroying the Enterprise.
    • It's telling that the model that suffers the most damage is that of the Enterprise-D, the ship that first encountered the Borg, where Picard learned to (however briefly) move past his hatred of the Collective to help Hugh. Seeing that model broken and remembering how that ship represented the best of him... between that sight and Lilly's words it's no wonder Picard finally snaps out of his near-madness.
• While it's Played for Laughs, Zefram Cochrane's feeling overwhelmed by his place in history, to the point of running, is a bit sad.
  • The novelization reveals that Cochrane was a successful physicist before the Third World War disrupted his supply of the medication he needed to treat his mental illness (stated to be bipolar disorder, which includes periods of mania and depression). He self-medicates with alcohol, which many people who have depression and lack access to medication do today as well.
  • The novelisation looks into the head of Lily too, dealing with how her mother died of Cancer prior to the novel. This is tragic enough, but what makes it even more so is that just prior to WW3, treatment for Cancer had become absolutely routine. It could be cured with a shot and treated more easily than a simply infection. Lily isn't even worried at first when her mother says she thinks she has cancer - it's only when they go to hospital after hospital and find themselves unable to get treatment that would've been such an easy fix before the planet went to hell... And then it's too late. The line So mom died of Cancer is even more tragic because it shouldn't have happened. It's the Star Trek Universe's equivalent of dying of Consumption.
  • It gets worse - she also lost a brother to the fighting, her sister and her family to the bombs, and when her mother died, her father became an alcoholic and eventually committed suicide.
• Data's confession at the end of the film. Just "0.68 seconds". He was so close to having what he'd always wanted. He didn't betray his crew and captain, of course he didn't, but when he says that this short a time, for an android "is nearly an eternity", you realise that 0.68 seconds was the equivalent of a guy spending a year or two of their life debating whether or not condemning the future to destruction is worth gaining the one thing they've always longed for.^note It Makes Sense in Context. His positronic brain probably processes trillions of impulses a second. That's a lot to go through.
  • The entire scene with Data and Picard is equal parts Tear Jerker and Heartwarming. That's the kind of storytelling that only a decade worth of acting together in roles that are virtually a part of you, gets you.
• Humanity meeting the Vulcans and the beginning of the Trek Verse. For all the crap humanity has gone through, it is truly a case of Earn Your Happy Ending.

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