Reflections on "Star Trek: First Contact"

[trevanian]

Unless, of course, he was moved there after the initial nuclear bombardment when it was believed the enemy's ability to bomb further sites with any chance of success had been negated.

good point ... but that's already more thought than the screenwriters ever put into this scenario.

Perhaps, but what makes you so sure of that?

Because it is backstory, and unless backstory is going to be explained via mindmeld in the middle of an epic, it ain't important to this kind of storytelling.

These guys worked pretty fast, and had major plot switches to address in a finite amount of time, plus if you look at the record of the guy who did the uncredited FC rewrite, the guy who wrote RUSH HOUR, it is a case of somebody who isn't all that interested in dotting Is and crossing Ts either.

 

[Praetor]

...But, fortunately, I'd argue there is enough of a resonance of logic behind trying to protect an experimental engine in a well-shielded nuclear bunker in a post-apocalyptic world for it to ring true with the audience. And we're clearly able to find logical extrapolations that explain it. So even if these writers didn't care about filling in all the gaps, at least we can. Indeed, there are a few things in the movie that seem to make less sense.

Incidentally, as far as rationalizations go, it occurred to me that perhaps this particular bunker in Bozeman had been decommissioned before the war, and this was known by 'our' side to be well-known by the enemy, and therefore an unlikely target. So Cochrane and his team had indeed been moved there before the nuclear exchange occurred because it was felt certain that this bunker was not a likely target, and that the bunker's shielding would offer this important project a good chance at survival.