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Why is First Contact actually so beloved by the fandom?

Yes, but in that case, he would have used a minuscule part of that money to build more comfortable living facilities. That's only human. Or are we supposed to think that Cochrane was some kind of a saint in spite of hard evidence to the contrary???

Not a saint, no. But perhaps he just wasn't into the fancy stuff. He could have been satisfied with what he had.
 
It's one of the worst aspects of the movie. The way they portray the creation of the warp drive is ridiculous, kinda like your dad fixing the car on the garage of the house. No explanation, no nothing. Are you saying that whole village/town is working on that warp drive? It begs an explanation... Zefram Cochrane doesn't even act like a scientist, it feels forced. He looks the type of person that should be paying someone to do the work for him and get all the credit. At least it would've been more interesting.

What kind of explanation do you want? We know that the ship was created from an old missile and is housed in a missile silo. I always got the picture that multiple people were working on it, even if not the "whole" settlement. We don't know the technical aspects, but I'm not sure we need to know that for the purpose of this movie.

Also, do all scientists have to act a certain way? It's clear Cochrane is eccentric and oftentimes drunk, but that was kind of the point....he wasn't what anyone expected him to be.
 
What kind of explanation do you want? We know that the ship was created from an old missile and is housed in a missile silo. I always got the picture that multiple people were working on it, even if not the "whole" settlement. We don't know the technical aspects, but I'm not sure we need to know that for the purpose of this movie.

Also, do all scientists have to act a certain way? It's clear Cochrane is eccentric and oftentimes drunk, but that was kind of the point....he wasn't what anyone expected him to be.

He wasn't like the Cochrane we saw in TOS that's for sure.
 
I've been wondering for a while... How does the collective actually work together if each cube is separate? It seems that there is only one borg queen who is not limited to her prior physical form. So why was Hugh's impact so limited?

I guess that honestly probably is a pretty big inconsistency. There is one Queen of the Collective but OTOH there are distances that ships can't instantly communicate across vast distances (and "I Borg" implied that Hugh's group was/would be one that was isolated from the rest, one that was uniquely close to Federation space) so it's more like there are multiple queens, at least per region, or the Queen can only be so focused on one region/ship/some ships at a time. The film did seem to claim that the Queen can shift her consciousness across time and space.
 
We know that the Dominion transporters have a range of several light-years, perhaps it is true of Borg transporters as well so maybe the BQ beamed from the borg cube before it exploded which is why she didn't die in TBOBW.
 
What kind of explanation do you want? We know that the ship was created from an old missile and is housed in a missile silo. I always got the picture that multiple people were working on it, even if not the "whole" settlement. We don't know the technical aspects, but I'm not sure we need to know that for the purpose of this movie.

I think the story of how Zefram Cochrane salvaged an old USAF Titan II nuclear missile in its silo and turned it into a SpaceX-style SSTO stack with deployable warp nacelles is a more interesting story than the near-end of that story (the launch) we see in the film. Even the return to Montana would be interesting on its own. No, maybe we don't need to know the whole history of the Phoenix project for the film, but there's clearly an interesting backstory and afterstory to the film that would be interesting in its own right.

It's not impossible -- Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) wrote a short story a few years ago, "Alan Bean Plus Four," about a group of Home Depot employees who build their own rocket for a four-person lunar flyby that struck me as sounding plausible.
 
I think the story of how Zefram Cochrane salvaged an old USAF Titan II nuclear missile in its silo and turned it into a SpaceX-style SSTO stack with deployable warp nacelles is a more interesting story than the near-end of that story (the launch) we see in the film. Even the return to Montana would be interesting on its own. No, maybe we don't need to know the whole history of the Phoenix project for the film, but there's clearly an interesting backstory and afterstory to the film that would be interesting in its own right.

It's not impossible -- Tom Hanks (yes, that Tom Hanks) wrote a short story a few years ago, "Alan Bean Plus Four," about a group of Home Depot employees who build their own rocket for a four-person lunar flyby that struck me as sounding plausible.

I do agree that a story of how Cochrane built his ship would be interesting. It's just that I don't think we need that story for the purposes of the film.
 
Why people love the movie IMO is because not only is it a good movie but it's the only good TNG movie. That gives it a little extra respect. If only the others had been as good. TOS got lucky with a classic in Khan. 2 good ones in 4 and 6 and 3 solid ones with the others and yes Trek 5 is a decent movie.
 
... He looks the type of person that should be paying someone to do the work for him and get all the credit. At least it would've been more interesting.
...

Her name was Lily.

Isn't it fairly commonplace in scientific projects for the head of the project to take credit for stuff that the assistants actually did the majority of the work on? :shifty:

Kor
 
Zephram Cochrane doesn't even act like a scientist,

What does a scientist act like, exactly?

It's the complete opposite of what TNG is supposed to be, thoughtful and introspective.

See also: dreadfully boring and not likely to get green-lit as a major motion picture

Instead we get an extremely contrived story, full of plot holes and Picard acting like an action hero. Like, the Borg randomly decided to travel through time, right when the Enterprise is following them. I can't supend my disbelief when there's so many contrivances.

All the Trek films are dependent upon massive contrivances. This isn’t a unique characteristic of FC.
 
I think that's the problem though. I get the impression that people are way too forgiving. I don't mind plot holes or minor continuity issues honestly, but when the plot holes starts affecting the logic of the characters and the setting, the story gets very preposterous and it gets me out of the movie.

People tend to be forgiving when it's something they like. Wrath of Khan has huge plot holes, at least as bad as First Contact, yet many fans talk it up like it's Citizen Kane.

Hell, TNG was riddled with plot holes and contrivances. The Wounded, as but one example, is utter nonsense, yet it's often cited as a particularly powerful episode.
 
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