As the primary solo movie that includes the crew from Star Trek: The Subsequent Era, First Contact finds the USS Enterprise-E following the Borg again to April 4, 2063. The Borg have gone again in time to forestall “first contact,” the day that Cochrane’s inaugural warp drive flight catches the eye of the Vulcans, making method for Starfleet and the Federation.
Cochrane, Trek followers know, was a legendary determine within the mythos lengthy earlier than he confirmed up within the movie trying just like the jolly farmer from Babe. He initially appeared within the season 2 Unique Sequence episode “Metamorphosis,” performed by Glenn Corbett. There, Kirk and Spock discover Cochrane restored to youth and alive for hundreds of years due to an entity known as “the Companion.” Although lovelorn, this Cochrane has the dignity and optimism that meets Kirk and Spock’s expectations, a real hero who led humanity into the long run.
Not so when the Enterprise-E away staff meet Cochrane in 2063. The ever-awkward Reginald Barclay isn’t the one one whose hero worship freaks out Cochrane. La Forge exacerbates issues when he rhapsodizes about attending Cochrane Excessive College and the spectacular statue that people will later assemble, one 20 meters excessive and that includes the physician seeking to the sky with inspiration. Cochrane realizes the irony at work. Apparently he evokes the world. However he can’t even encourage himself. The extra that La Forge et al. inform Cochrane concerning the man he’ll be come, the extra the person he’s shrinks away. Actually, it takes a part blast from Riker to forestall Cochrane from abandoning the mission altogether and working away.
He sees the huge hole between the long run described by Riker and the world during which he lives. As an alternative of working to bridge it, Cochrane collapses.
A Communal Effort
Cochrane’s response truly makes a whole lot of sense. It’s not simply that the world described by the Starfleets sounds too good to be true. It’s that they make it sound prefer it all got here from him, that he was the one factor that modified all of it. Cochrane’s proper to concern such individualist hero worship. Nobody individual may shoulder such a duty, even one as sensible as him.
But the precise Cochrane plot in First Contact reveals that, actually, he didn’t do it alone. Even when they don’t get traces, background characters within the Earth scenes present a crowd of individuals at work, truly enacting Cochrane’s designs. In a enjoyable little bit of time look paradox shenanigans, La Forge asks Cochrane to verify part of the Phoenix, implying that perhaps La Forge received the concept from one thing he learn sooner or later about what he would truly do prior to now, even when the textbooks credited it to Cochran.
