What's so special about Cochrane and his engine?

[Tallguy]

I think something that needs to be recognized in this discussion is that none of this "history" was written in order. So if the later material seems to put Cochrane in the back seat, that's a problem with the later material. TOS said he was The Guy. Fan material, the Spaceflight Chronology, and everything else (canon or otherwise) said he was The Guy. Even TNG said it.

There are folks that know post-TNG Trek way better than I do, but when was it first stated that Vulcans had warp-drive before Earth? Back in the day it was assumed that their exploratory ships were sublight and the Ears were just really long lived. Even First Contact is arguably vague on this point. Troi states that humans have discovered warp drive (or faster than light, I don't recall which.) Not that they have ALSO discovered it. I would think that if you just took forty years puttering around the local star systems and you saw something go FTL, it would get your attention.

As for the "Earth-centric" argument: First off, in Metamorphosis Spock is IMPRESSED. Cochrane is a big deal. Spock has no trouble in any other episode deflating Earth's opinion of itself. So why is it a big deal here? He doesn't say EARTH'S discoverer of the space warp (not warp drive, btw). He say's THE discoverer of the space warp.

Also, IIRC, even Picard (in TNG, not First Contact) thinks Cochrane is a big deal, and again refers to Cochrane's flight as first. (Someone's going to have to fill in the blanks here. I don't even know the episode name. The one where they try to create a sustainable warp without a ship? You guys know what I'm talking about, right?) If warp drive wasn't a human achievment, Picard would be the first to point it out.

Obviously the Old Ones and the like had their own advanced tech. Yes, the Borg's warp travel had nothing to do with ZC. But from the POV of the Federation and it's immediate neighbors Cochrane was it. At least until 1996 or so.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ In ENT it's implied that Vulcan warp engines are far superior to Earth technologies, and Archer et al seem really annoyed with them for "holding back" vital technologies (one of the various inanities of Archer's personality, since strictly speaking there's no reason why the Vulcans should have helped them at all). The Klingons are directly implied to have warp drive hundreds of years prior to Broken Bow, and the Andorians apparently have had interstellar conflicts with the Vulcans--using warp driven starships--before Cochrane was even born.

 

[Tallguy]

^ In ENT it's implied that Vulcan warp engines are far superior to Earth technologies, and Archer et al seem really annoyed with them for "holding back" vital technologies (one of the various inanities of Archer's personality, since strictly speaking there's no reason why the Vulcans should have helped them at all). The Klingons are directly implied to have warp drive hundreds of years prior to Broken Bow, and the Andorians apparently have had interstellar conflicts with the Vulcans--using warp driven starships--before Cochrane was even born.

Sure. I'm not ENT bashing (seriously!) - but before ENT (certainly before FC) it was accepted that ZC was a Big Deal because, duh, he discovered the space warp. After ENT, we're left scratching our heads and, well, starting threads like these. It's an area that ENT could have handled more smoothly. I'm all for that "challenging people's expectations" thing. But it's still got to make sense after the fact.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't see any contradiction, really. The only other way they could have handled it was to stop assuming that warp drive was THE way to travel the stars and introduce the Vulcans and Andorians as both using some other different yet highly effective FTL design. Say, if the Andorians traveled by folding space and the Vulcans used some kind of highfalutin tachyon drive thing. Warp drive might just be the HUMAN way of going FTL: if it somehow proved more efficient than all the competing methods, it would go a long way to explaining why the Federation seems to have congealed around Earth in particular.

But TNG already screwed that pooch in "First Contact" by implying that Warp drive is THE only way to travel and that many races discover it independently. ENT could retcon it, but the writers just weren't creative enough to try it at the time.

 

[Timo]

^ In ENT it's implied that Vulcan warp engines are far superior to Earth technologies

Yup - but the argument that all this was invented in the late 1990s is still valid. Then again, I don't much care for that aspect of Trek; the fictional universe is more interesting than its backstage elements.

However, clearly TOS already features adversary species who know how to warp. The Romulans may be pitiful losers who stole warp from Earth, but the Klingons seem to be Earthlings-with-an-evil-twist, independently inventing all the same stuff and then using it for evil. It wouldn't make sense to assume the writers wanted Klingon warp to be Earth warp originally. And if Klingons can come up with warp by themselves, then at the very best Cochrane is the inventor of warp for the UFP but not its neighbors. And even that is somewhat implausible: if Klingons can do it, why not Vulcans?

Of course, nothing in TOS precludes the idea that Vulcans were ignorant planetbound savages (albeit with good brains and fancy mental disciplines) until humans found them and taught them the secret of digital watches and warp drives. But nothing really supports that, either.

First off, in Metamorphosis Spock is IMPRESSED. Cochrane is a big deal.

Really, all Spock does is spell out why others might be impressed.

He say's THE discoverer of the space warp.

No, Kirk says that, and in the form of a question to boot. When the man claiming to be Zeppy C says yes, Spock expresses mild incredulity with this sentence:

"The name of Zefram Cochrane is revered throughout the known galaxy. Planets were named after him. Great universities, cities."

He's not the one doing the revering or the naming.

If warp drive wasn't a human achievement, Picard would be the first to point it out.

Picard, the French chauvinist? I doubt he would undermine Cochrane's contribution to mankind, within his earsight or without, just to make some altruistic point.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Nothing canonical, but I thought a novel had the Klingons getting warp drive from another race.
Again Humans seem to be the driving force in the Federation al least up to the 23d century. What percentage of the worlds at that time where colonized mostly by humans, who came using Cochrane warp driven vessels.

 

[Anticitizen]

Unless the ancestors of the Romulans left in sublight multi-generational ships, the Vulcans have had warp drive for hundreds or thousands of years. According to the series Enterprise, everyone had warp before us.

Due to time dialation at sublight, with good enough sci-fi engines, they might not even need a generational ship.

See this thread: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=95241

Assuming inertial dampeners allow ships to accelerate at 10g without flattening the crew, Voyager could've gotten home in only 1.38 subjective years - unfortunately, 70,000 years would've passed by on Earth

 

[urbandk]

Timo, didn't the Ferengi buy the warp drive... thinking about that DS9 episode with Quark in the 40s/50s.

Common sense: Cochrane invented Warp for humans. Pretty big f'ing deal since it helped us join the interstellar community, a big step; remember that TNG episode in which they don't make first contact because the aliens are too chauvinistic, Riker in the hospital and all.

Our historical figures are important to use, irrespective of whether they are important to others. After all, no race could claim to have invented anything in particular if we held everyone to some universal standard.

 

[Ronald Held]

I thought that the Ferengi did buy warp drive technology.
Non canonical, but the proto Romulans has sublight ships but accelerated and decelerated to gather resources and make repairs.

 

[Tyberius]

...Unless the UT makes the whole "indoctrination" issue moot, and the Academy never even bothers teaching its students English. Q knows they have plenty of learning to do in those four years even without language studies.

Right, and I'm sure this omnipresent universal translator also somehow translates written text... Or recognises when Picard actually wants to insert untranslated French words in his speech...

Nah, that's just a function of the holodeck simulator from which we watch this particular history.

 

[Timo]

The Ferengi buying their warp is indeed confirmed in "Little Green Men":

Nog: "But think about it, uncle. That means [hoo-mans] went from being savages with a simple barter system to leaders of a vast interstellar Federation in only five thousand years. It took us twice as long to establish the Ferengi Alliance, and we had to buy warp technology from the ????."

Doesn't say when they bought warp, but they did. (Anybody remember which species they bought the tech from? The Chakoteya transcripts fail me on this...)

Right, and I'm sure this omnipresent universal translator also somehow translates written text...

Why wouldn't it? It should be easier than translating spoken text: better signal/noise ratio and all. Certainly our heroes in the TNG era fluently operate alien consoles, including completely alien ones they encounter in the Delta Quadrant for the first time... Scotty having difficulty with Klingon text in ST3 may be an indication of less advanced UT technology in the TOS era. (Note, though, that in the same movie, Spock takes a test in what looks like English, even though he's a Vulcan on Vulcan. The UT at work again, as installed in our receivers? Or proof that English has replaced all local languages as the only allowed written language?)

And it's of course automatically omnipresent if it travels with you inside your skull.

Or recognises when Picard actually wants to insert untranslated French words in his speech...

Only four-letter words, mind you (although the French, perhaps typically for them, go for five letters there). It's pretty simple to assume that the UT refuses to translate cusswords, or has trouble recognizing the more innovative of them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

And it's of course automatically omnipresent if it travels with you inside your skull.

UT as a cybernetic implant for everyone? I don't think so. That is clear transhumanish, and the Federation shuns that.

As for the Spock's test. It is a movie, it was in English so that the audience could read it. I may or may not been in English in "reality." It doesn't matter.

 

[Timo]

UT as a cybernetic implant for everyone? I don't think so. That is clear transhumanish, and the Federation shuns that.

Yet Picard has a cybernetic heart. And Bashir was quite capable of doing brain prosthetics in DS9 "Life Support", without any implication that it was a dark art only practiced by fugitive Augments.

The Feds shunning transhumanics is a completely offscreen idea. They fear the Borg, and they like antiques as much as the next guy, but that's it.

As for the Spock's test. It is a movie, it was in English so that the audience could read it. I may or may not been in English in "reality." It doesn't matter.

None of Trek does. But in case you still choose to care, why not care about this little detail, too?

Incidentally, it's not only "for the benefit of the audience" in the sense that it is English. It is also printed in reverse so that only the audience can read it correctly!

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tvhhd/tvhhd0153.jpg



Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

Yet Picard has a cybernetic heart. And Bashir was quite capable of doing brain prosthetics in DS9 "Life Support", without any implication that it was a dark art only practiced by fugitive Augments.

That's different. It is corrective surgery, not improving perfectly good human beings. They have means to vastly enhance humans, yet they don't do it. As the lack of ability is not the reason, it has to be the lack of will.

None of Trek does. But in case you still choose to care, why not care about this little detail, too?

Exactly because it is a little detail, with obvious reasons related to film making. I do not try to come up with an convoluted theory why Russians in "the Hunt for Red October" speak English either.

Incidentally, it's not only "for the benefit of the audience" in the sense that it is English. It is also printed in reverse so that only the audience can read it correctly!

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tvhhd/tvhhd0153.jpg

I know, I know! Obviously Spock has accidentally installed his UT upside down!

 

[Timo]

They have means to vastly enhance humans, yet they don't do it. As the lack of ability is not the reason, it has to be the lack of will.

How does one jump from "they don't vastly enhance" to "they don't install UTs"? There's no onscreen support for the idea that any of our heroes, sidekicks or villains would actually feel apprehensive about impanted improvements. OTOH, there is clear support that they can decipher foreign and alien languages while wearing nothing but their standard clothes. Or even some sort of prison rags at times. The implication is that they carry a language device internally. Whether it's their brain, or a piece of technology, or a combination, is not explicated - but if the Ferengi can have UTs in their ears, why couldn't the humans? They are not technophobic by any stretch of the word.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

^ I'm sure that's how the Borg got started.

 

[Timo]

...Who knows, perhaps there's a temporal loop there and humans become the original Borg at some point.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

'Course, could be neither of them had any ideas. It just so happened that the PR Chief to High Energy Physics Lab and the Assistant Vehicle Manager were the only ones to survive the nuking of Caltech and abscond with key blueprints and prototypes to Montana...

The fictional truth is probably somewhere in between. Cochrane might have been a relatively important person in a relatively important team that almost made warp work before WWIII killed most of them and, more importantly, put a stop to government funding. Ten years of garage-level work then put part of the team back on track. And nobody would bellow down from his or her (mushroom) cloud that Cochrane was in breach of their patents...

Timo Saloniemi

This raises an issue that I always thought was weird. Cochrane's all about the benjamins, yes? Well, who in God's name is he going to sell the warp drive to? What market is there going to be for an expensive, exotic and still rather slow spacecraft in a world still struggling recover to 20th century levels of economic development?

I always thought it'd have worked better if he was building the Warp One machine just to get him and his the hell out... maybe to Alpha Centauri. Still makes him an asshole, but an asshole whose goals aren't unrealistic.

Also, in response to some earlier question about who had warp first... if anyone in local space did have warp drive for any longer than a few hundred years before Cochrane, it kind of paints them as idiots, doesn't it? I mean, it's bad enough that until the humans got involved, everyone in the Federation was a petty interstellar principality. Do we also have to swallow the notion that humans went from barely having agriculture to warp 5 in about the same amount of time that Vulcans and Romulans went from having warp to inventing absolutely nothing else of note (except, God bless the Romulans, a crappy proto-cloaking device)?

 

[Mytran]

...I do not try to come up with an convoluted theory why Russians in "the Hunt for Red October" speak English either....

The film already does that for you - it goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the Russians (who start off speaking russian) continue to speak russian, even if it represented by english.

I don't remember the exact timing, but it's a scene about 10 minutes in - the camera moves into a closeup of a character's mouth and he goes from speaking russian to english mid-sentence. The implication is clear.

It is by far the best way I've seen of getting round the foreign language issue in a movie (other than subtitles, of course!)

 

[Longinus]

The film already does that for you - it goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the Russians (who start off speaking russian) continue to speak russian, even if it represented by english.

I don't remember the exact timing, but it's a scene about 10 minutes in - the camera moves into a closeup of a character's mouth and he goes from speaking russian to english mid-sentence. The implication is clear.

It is by far the best way I've seen of getting round the foreign language issue in a movie (other than subtitles, of course!)

Exactly. And the same thing happens with Klingons in the Undiscovered Country. And still I have seen people on these very forums complaining about Klingons speaking English amongst themselves...