What's so special about Cochrane and his engine?

[Timo]

Also, "Hunt" doesn't feature English text where there should be Russian. Not even when said text would be an important plot point the audience has to understand, such as "this is the launch key" or "uh-oh, this sign means they have two minutes to live".

"K-19" doesn't play tricks with the spoken language, but there, too, the written text remains Russian.

Does Trek ever resort to aliens having things written down in English? Apart from the blatant case in "Blink of an Eye", that is?

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 don't think Earth was really hurt all that bad. None of the big cities seem harmed in any way when we see them again in the 24th century. And they don't look "rebuilt" at all, unless somebody was anal-retentive about getting the worst squalor of 20th century architecture right along with the highlights.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Riker said that "most of the major cities had been destroyed" but also quotes a rather measly death toll of "600 million", which is not a super large amount on the global catastrophe scale.

As far as aliens writing down stuff in english (where there's no need), what about the charter that Kor holds in "Errand of Mercy"?

 

[Search4]

So (sadly) have been thinking about the original question.
Oh and yes, the Red October cut to English was brilliantly done and perhaps the best ever way to represent what they were doing.

Cochrane's engine had one amazing ability: it could cause three quantum torpedoes fired from a much more advanced ship at point blank range to miss. Now THAT's something the Klingons-Romulans-whatnot would love to have.

(I know, i know, but the Klingons would not assume the E-E deliberately missed the Phoneix. AND i do wonder who picked up the torpedoes when they went sailing off into the solar system.)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

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

In-canon, I'd be willing to bet that the Borg got started by playing around with their version of VISOR technology, and having it work so well they decided to make it mandatory for everyone (sorta like the binars).

Out of canon, I think the Borg started out like the Matrix: they created machines to do their work, but their machines eventually took over their society and reduced their population to a component of themselves.

But as for the OP, certainly we have Geordi's visor, the remote control for Spock's brain, Ferengi ear implants, and the uncanny ability of Starfleet officers to accurately aim their phasers without sights that all point to SOME level of enhancement. There's nothing transhumanish or even Borgish about this, hell we already do that today in less sophisticated doses (vaccines, contact lenses, hearing aids, shoes, braces). Having the supplemental device be implantable makes perfect sense if that's the most efficient way of having it work. But I submit that it probably isn't the only one, that there's probably a brainstem device or something that handles alot of these invisible processes that we should--but do not--see. Aiming of phasers, for one thing, could probably be handled by an interface between the phaser's control system and the user's parietal lobe. The LCARS panel would make alot more sense too, since only a portion of the needed information would be on the display and the rest would be in the user's head (hence all those random numbers and labels in all the LCARS diagrams that are not explained or comprehensible). It even works as an explanation for telepathic communicators, the ones that always seem to know who you're calling before you even tap the comm badge.

 

[Longinus]

*headdesk*

I'm sure James Bond has a magnetic field generator installed to his rib cage to make bullets miss him.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ No, not his ribcage. His watch.

 

[Myasishchev]

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 don't think Earth was really hurt all that bad. None of the big cities seem harmed in any way when we see them again in the 24th century

True, but the situation in First Contact seemed rather dire, with no America anymore--although I might be wrong about that. Ever since I first saw the movie as a kid, I've always interpreted "Eastern Coalition" to mean a New England engaged in trying to reconquer breakaway parts of the United States, which is why Lily suspects this very non-Asian white guy is dicking around in Montana, but I understand this may not be the consensus view...

Actually, I went back and watched parts of FC, and Lily wants to know what faction he's with... (tying it back into the previous topic) in a facility (I'll grant she doesn't know it's a spaceship yet) where everything is labeled in English. Unless we fought the British again in World War III, she would have to be a moron unless "faction" refers to the coalitions of states that would have formed following the collapse of the federal government... no other interpretation is possible, except an implausible scenario where not only the European Union is America's nuclear nemesis, but has abandoned signage in Francais and Deutsche.

And they don't look "rebuilt" at all, unless somebody was anal-retentive about getting the worst squalor of 20th century architecture right along with the highlights.

Timo Saloniemi

I dunno, look how puny antimatter weapons are--maybe there's something special about Trek physics so that nuclear weapons produce about the same effect as firing a handgun at a skyscraper.

 

[Longinus]

Actually, I went back and watched parts of FC, and Lily wants to know what faction he's with... (tying it back into the previous topic) in a facility (I'll grant she doesn't know it's a spaceship yet) where everything is labeled in English. Unless we fought the British again in World War III, she would have to be a moron unless "faction" refers to the coalitions of states that would have formed following the collapse of the federal government... no other interpretation is possible, except an implausible scenario where not only the European Union is America's nuclear nemesis, but has abandoned signage in Francais and Deutsche.

Makes sense.

 

[Myasishchev]

Maybe he was going to sell warp as a weapon to the Montanian Empire or to the People's Republic of California.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

All this just reinforces my private theory that Lily actually invented the drive and Cochrane simply took the credit. His motivation, obviously, was simple money and fame, but it was sort of a half-assed motivation considering how he didn't really give a shit about the Phoenix until Riker and crew showed up, which tells me "dollar signs, money" was just something he hoped to get out of the program IF it ever went somewhere (if he didn't, he was perfectly content to hang around in bars, drink himself stupid listening to 60s music).

Lily's motivations are a bit more mysterious, but when it all went down, SHE was the one camped out next to the Phoenix with a machinegun and a headache. I would bet she was probably a career astronaut or something of that nature who developed the Phoenix for no other reason that she really REALLY wanted to get back into space and needed something really extraordinary to attract investors (that would be private as opposed to government funding). Phoenix was her nestegg, hence the machine-gun; to Cochrane, it was just beer money.

 

[Myasishchev]

Speaking of that headache, WTF is "theta radiation"? Because God knows regular ionizing radiation isn't sci-fi enough.

Also, how do you get "inoculated" to "radiation"?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Maybe the theta radiation was generating excess body thetans?

 

[Deks]

Theta radiation was associated in Voyager as a by-product of anti-matter waste.
Taking into consideration it stands to reason Cochrane and Lilly used anti-matter in their missile and a facility that really didn't feature full protection, not to mention recycling technology as in the 22nd, 23rd and 24th centuries ... it's only logical to come to the conclusion they would be irradiated to a degree.

Though, theta radiation in FC was more of a direct result of the Borg sphere assault which managed to damage the Phoenix.

 

[Myasishchev]

^I dunno. If you have any significant quantity of antimatter and it is making radiation, you are probably going to die. Not from ionizing radiation poisoning, except inasmuch as the mass from your body constitutes the ionized cloud where you used to be.

Maybe the theta radiation was generating excess body thetans?

Nice.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

Cochrane's engine had one amazing ability: it could cause three quantum torpedoes fired from a much more advanced ship at point blank range to miss. Now THAT's something the Klingons-Romulans-whatnot would love to have.

I thought that Data had reprogrammed (or programmed them from the get go) to miss as part of his attempts to sabotage the Borg Queen's effort to destroy the Phoenix. Hence when she realizes what Data does, Data looks at her and says something like, "Resistance is futile" to show that she has lost.

 

[Tallguy]

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)?

That's an excellent point. If you're going to dismiss that humans (or Alpha Centaurians) invented warp drive then you're left with that alternative.

 

[Timo]

It doesn't really work that way. Once you invent warp, you get everything at once, because you can go shop at Beta Rigel. Somebody is always willing to sell you the newest new for a suitable price.

Earth probably didn't invent anything of note except warp drive, but then got it all by going to interstellar space. Transporters, polarizable armor, shields, phasers; some sucker of a species developed them first, and then every upstart including Earthlings was able to go and buy them, for the price of just a few thousand virgins plus New Zealand. (They bought it back later, tho.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Search4]

Cochrane's engine had one amazing ability: it could cause three quantum torpedoes fired from a much more advanced ship at point blank range to miss. Now THAT's something the Klingons-Romulans-whatnot would love to have.

I thought that Data had reprogrammed (or programmed them from the get go) to miss as part of his attempts to sabotage the Borg Queen's effort to destroy the Phoenix. Hence when she realizes what Data does, Data looks at her and says something like, "Resistance is futile" to show that she has lost.

Yes, of course he did. Made that point in the original post. However, from the outside (Klingons-Romulans) you would assume the opposite, and Picard wasn't around long enough to dispell the myth.

So who has those three quantums? I'd bet the Vulcans. No fools they.

 

[Tyberius]

Cochrane's engine had one amazing ability: it could cause three quantum torpedoes fired from a much more advanced ship at point blank range to miss. Now THAT's something the Klingons-Romulans-whatnot would love to have.

I thought that Data had reprogrammed (or programmed them from the get go) to miss as part of his attempts to sabotage the Borg Queen's effort to destroy the Phoenix. Hence when she realizes what Data does, Data looks at her and says something like, "Resistance is futile" to show that she has lost.

Yes, of course he did. Made that point in the original post. However, from the outside (Klingons-Romulans) you would assume the opposite, and Picard wasn't around long enough to dispell the myth.

So who has those three quantums? I'd bet the Vulcans. No fools they.

I figured the E picked them up along with all the escape pods. Remember when, in TNG series, Worf's weapons test neccessitated a trip in a shuttlepod to retrieve a stray torpedo?

 

[Anwar]

The real reason for Cochrane being so important was that, back when TOS was written the idea was that the Humans were the ones who invented the Warp Drive first. The Federation was basically a benign Terran Empire who allowed other aliens to be their weaker partners rather than their subjugated slaves.

As time went on they changed the concept so that humans weren't the top dogs anymore so it must be assumed that Cochrane is just held in high regard by humanity alone and the other aliens are impressed at him for being the first human to invent warp, not invent warp for everyone.