Why is First Contact actually so beloved by the fandom?

Not a saint, no. But perhaps he just wasn't into the fancy stuff. He could have been satisfied with what he had.

 

Exactly! Cochrane seemed like the kind of guy who'd be happy as long as his jukebox was in working order and that he had a generous supply of hard liquor.

 

Heard of the company town, have we?

 

You know I bet Cochrane made them write that in his contract: "Jukebox+Booze"

 

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.

 

He hadn't met the Companion yet.

 

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.

 

And when he did, he would never toss her into an incinerator.

Whoops, wrong Companion.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Also: fig trees.

 

I think that's the other Cochrane.

 

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.

 

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?

Kor

 

What does a scientist act like, exactly?

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

All the Trek films are dependent upon massive contrivances. This isn’t a unique characteristic of FC.

 

He's more like a game show host?

 

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.

 

And you won... a NEW warp-capable STARSHIP!!!