Alice Krige's Borg Queen Transformation For Star Trek: First Contact Was A Nightmare

She's one of the best Star Trek villains to have crossed our scanners, but the real nightmare for Alice Krige when she took on the role of the Borg Queen was literally stepping into the character. Debuting in the second best Star Trek movie ever, "Star Trek: First Contact," Krige's incredible portrayal came with a time-consuming transformation involving questionable materials. She revealed in "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The Next 25 Years From The Next Generation To J.J. Abrams," "When they were designing me as the Borg Queen, they used something on my head that I hope to never encounter again called Gafquat. It's a concentrated hair spray and they put it on with a spoon and it gets so hard that it's like you've got a saucepan on your head."

The substance kept Krige's hair away from the glue being applied through prosthetics to create her character, which took a lot of time. "I'd say from the neck up it took about six hours a day to make me up, and then it took about an hour to get into the suit. Then it took another two hours to get out." Thankfully, the artists tasked with the job lightened the mood. "I have enough dirty jokes to last me a lifetime; they told me so many jokes sitting there."

Director and "Star Trek: First Contact" cast member Jonathan Frakes revealed a great effort was made to ensure that Alice Krige was still present. "We attached some stuff on her neck, so we wouldn't cover up her beautiful mouth and eyes, which were mesmerizing. It would have been a shame to lose that behind a mask." Frakes explained that his lengthy Star Trek tenure came with one massive takeaway regarding otherworldly lifeforms. "I've worked a lot with aliens over the years, and one of the problems is that the actor sometimes gets buried behind the prosthetic. We didn't want that to happen with Alice."

The end result is a Borg leader that looks more human than her counterparts but still not human at all. She became a character worthy to be in the same conversation as Khan or Q, but the journey to find her was a long one. "We saw almost a hundred actresses for the Borg Queen, but nobody was able to nail it, because the language was very difficult, stilted, metaphoric, and not very conversational." Thankfully, Krige had the perfect combination to face off against Picard (Patrick Stewart). "Alice brought all of that into the room. When she walked in, [producer] Rick Berman and I both breathed a collective sigh of relief that we had found an actress who could play the part." You might say, resistance was futile.

Get the Looper exclusive on what it's like to play the Borg here.