First Contact emphasizes how important it was to Humans and was the trigger event that lead to changes that we made over the following half century.
Cochrane deceleration ring a bell?
So, was Cochrane's warp drive concept something special, or wasn't it ?
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There is evidence that Cochrane is considered to be really famous, at least throughout the Federation. This link (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane#Legacy) goes to the character's article on Memory Alpha that describes how the character was viewed by later generations. Suffice to say, he was a very noted figure.
I'm not seeing much about "later generations" there, though. The ENT heroes were basically contemporaries all, as were the folks erecting the statues and inventing the tall tales and whatnot.
What survives till the TOS or TNG eras? Besides warp drive jargon, a few commemorative prizes; the world today is full of those, with few even among the recipients remembering who the heck the prize was named after.
Cochrane's warp drive invention doesn't get a mention there, as far as I can tell. I'm not even sure we can insist that it's the same Cochrane, as supposedly Zep C. never had to do any space combat (whereas there are other Cochranes of fame in naval combat).
Timo Saloniemi
What survives till the TOS or TNG eras? Besides warp drive jargon, a few commemorative prizes; the world today is full of those, with few even among the recipients remembering who the heck the prize was named after.
Cochrane's warp drive invention doesn't get a mention there, as far as I can tell. I'm not even sure we can insist that it's the same Cochrane, as supposedly Zep C. never had to do any space combat (whereas there are other Cochranes of fame in naval combat).
Timo Saloniemi
Other than every time they mention a human built warp drive, just not not needing to directly say his name every time -because it is made clear absolutely every starfleet officer instantly knows who he is and what he did as soon as he is mentioned?
Or the seven mentions he personally got which you listed:
Or the (at least) nineteen instances of his name being used as a unit of warp field strength on screen?
Or his speech actually being shown in Broken Bow, plus mentions in Horizon, TATV, Future Tense and I'm fairly sure many others
Or the fact that there is a statue of him at starfleet academy?
So,neither he nor his invention ever get a mention other than all of the dozens of times they are mentioned?
The statue is actually in Bozeman, Montana near where the missile silo was.
Okay, here's some stuff about Cochrane in the TOS/TNG era:
The First Contact Day celebration shown in “Homestead” (VGR) largely consists of commenting Cochrane, like serving his favorite food and playing his favorite music.
So, yeah, he's a bit of a big deal, even one or two hundred years after he was presumed dead.
duly noted
Sherman's planet was named for David Gerrold's friend Holly Sherman.
It would be difficult to find a US naval officer today who didn't know who Stephen Decatur was. Query the man of the street (or, say, a Malaysian naval officer) and watch him grope for his mobile phone for his only hope for an answer... Cochrane may be a Decatur, or just barely a Chuck Yeager, but he ain't no George Washington, nosir.
Joules are mentioned more often that cochranes in Star Trek - does that mean that Joule would be venerated, celebrated or even remembered? (Quick, what was his first name? And yes, there is a statue of Joule, or several in fact. But there are more statues of Mickey Mouse.)
Cochrane may be a known quantity, but calling him a celebrity would be going past the 21st century reference frame. Arguing that a nonhuman or even a civilian human would be familiar with him would be canonically unsupported, although no doubt the people living on Cochraneland or Cochrania or Zephramston would know more than those living on the other thousand human planets.
Timo Saloniemi
But is he famous for the most part just with Humans, or is it with the hundreds of species that make up the Federation?
Cochane is famous, but it might be like today, where each country has it's celebrated local son, who isn't completely unknown elsewhere.
I did cite this before, but in “Metamorphosis" (TOS), Spock says that: “The name of Zefram Cochrane is revered throughout the known galaxy. Planets were named after him. Great universities, cities." Spock is not known for hyperbole and, even if we assume that Federation enemies don't regard him as a hero, he is clearly as household name.
But as pointed out several times, Spock never specifies who is doing the revering. The preceding dialogue establishes that humans are to be found throughout the galaxy, so they are the likely culprits.
The matter still stands that only humans (or one half-human) from Starfleet, plus alien civilians bottled up with humans from Starfleet aboard USS Voyager for years at an end, ever mention the man. There are no aliens inside or outside the UFP who would independently blurt out the name, and indeed no humans inside or outside the UFP who would do that unless they also happened to be employed by Starfleet. That's pretty poor going given that non-Starfleet, non-human characters have made plenty of appearances in the past fifty years of Trek.
It's a separate issue that both the Vulcans and the Ferengi find it exceptional that humans went from no warp to galactic leadership so quickly. Cochrane's warp drive is not mentioned as relevant to this, after all.
Timo Saloniemi
The matter still stands that only humans (or one half-human) from Starfleet, plus alien civilians bottled up with humans from Starfleet aboard USS Voyager for years at an end, ever mention the man. There are no aliens inside or outside the UFP who would independently blurt out the name, and indeed no humans inside or outside the UFP who would do that unless they also happened to be employed by Starfleet. That's pretty poor going given that non-Starfleet, non-human characters have made plenty of appearances in the past fifty years of Trek.
It's a separate issue that both the Vulcans and the Ferengi find it exceptional that humans went from no warp to galactic leadership so quickly. Cochrane's warp drive is not mentioned as relevant to this, after all.
Timo Saloniemi
Granted and if you saying his fame outside of human/starfleet circles is less, very possibly, but possibly not. After all, starfleet personnel are on our screens proportionately far more than non human civilians, thus biasing the sample from the word go. Try another logical approach, do we ever see a scenario when ZC is on screen or simply mentioned and someone professes NOT to know who he is? I can't think of an example and a TV show following the adventures of SF personnel is unlikely to give much insight into the general knowledge of civilians.
Having said that I'm not an airforce officer, I'm a civilian, but I know who the Wright brothers were, even if I often fly on aeroplanes without mentioning them by name. All we know is that every time he appears or is mentioned on screen, everyone instantly knows exactly who is being discussed without hesitation.
Having said that I'm not an airforce officer, I'm a civilian, but I know who the Wright brothers were, even if I often fly on aeroplanes without mentioning them by name. All we know is that every time he appears or is mentioned on screen, everyone instantly knows exactly who is being discussed without hesitation.
Well, "Metamorphosis".
That is, Kirk doesn't recognize the face, even though it must be the correct one lest Spock later challenge the impostor on that basis...
The one thing this rules out is Kirk or Spock making pilgrimages to Bozeman where they supposedly couldn't fail to see the statue. Having the Wright Brothers "revered" would probably require significant numbers of people making journeys of worship to Kitty Hawk, above the standard levels of local tourism. And I don't think that really happens.
Timo Saloniemi
The Zephram Cochrane face that Kirk was familiar with could have been significantly older than the one of the man he met in "Metamorphosis."
And besides, would you recognize a young Orville or Wilbur Wright if you ran into them on the street?
And besides, would you recognize a young Orville or Wilbur Wright if you ran into them on the street?
It's possible that most UFP non-humans aren't familiar with Cochrane, just those that work in Starfleet. However, that leads to the broader question why Starfleet (at least the parts we see of it) seems so incredibly human-centered when it's supposedly a (semi-)military/exploratory joint project between dozens or even hundreds of member worlds.
And yeah, if I ran into this guy without any preparation or additional information, I probably wouldn't recognise him as a 33-year old Darwin. I might recognise his face after being told so, but that would of course be very different.
EDIT: looked up the script and Cochrane does mention his family name. Still, if the person below would say "I'm Darwin" (and wear more modern clothing), I doubt I'd immediately link him to the famous Charles Darwin of more than a century ago.
And yeah, if I ran into this guy without any preparation or additional information, I probably wouldn't recognise him as a 33-year old Darwin. I might recognise his face after being told so, but that would of course be very different.
EDIT: looked up the script and Cochrane does mention his family name. Still, if the person below would say "I'm Darwin" (and wear more modern clothing), I doubt I'd immediately link him to the famous Charles Darwin of more than a century ago.
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The most straight forward reason could simply be that Starfleet seem so Human dominated .... because it actually is.
Right, and why shouldn't it be, as we saw from ENT that it started out as an Earth organization before the UFP was founded, largely around Earth?
And the emergence of human presence on the galactic scene is portrayed as an important trigger event to the eventual founding of the UFP, with Earth as its capital.
It's clear that Cochrane's exploits were special to Earth, and equally clear that Earth is special to the rest of its galactic neighborhood. So I think the answer to the thread question is yes, Cochrane's warp flight was something special, in that sense and by that extension at least, even if it was far from being a unique achievement in and of itself.
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I've never interpreted the events in Enterprise as implying that Earth's Starfleet is the very same organisation as UFP''s Starfleet, merely that it was one of its predecessors, after which it was named for some reason -- perhaps just because Earth seems to have been instrumental in the founding of the UFP.
And even if Enterprise were to imply this, it would be a very illogical move. Enterprise depicts most races to have their own military (e.g. Andorians, Vulcans), at least some of which ostensibly have ships more advanced and powerful than Earth's Starfleet ships. I'd imagine that on short order, they'd take the very best of their combined resources (probably Vulcan ships), at least before building the first 'true' generation of Starfleet ships -- possibly resembling the old Earth Starfleet ships in design, but crammed full with all kind of updated Vulcan/Andorian/etc technology.
Why would eg. the Vulcans relinquish their military and exploratory tasks to a fleet of (in their eyes) outdated ships, when they could supply superior ships for that task themselves?
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ENT does seem to show that it was Earth primarily that engineered the process that eventually resulted in the Federation. Prior to Earth's "emergence" the other species that joined the Federation had been around for decades and even thousands of years, yet no Federation type alliance came into being.
I doubt the Vulcans (or any species) gave up their own vessels in order to join into the Federation. They would continue to have a large separate existance outside of the Federation, as well as having some activities with the Federation.
Joining the Federation is (hopefully) nothing like joining a cult.
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