#148/190/192 – First Contact/Phoenix Project/Cochrane

For myself, I found the premise of HOW the Phoenix was built to be completely unbelievable.

Also, in the lamentable “Enterprise” series, Commander Tucker says – in effect – that “an American built the Phoenix”.

This is simply not possible.

For Cochrane to have built the Phoenix from scratch in these circumstances is like a drunk Lebanese scientist building the Space Shuttle in bombed-out Beirut.

From where does he get the resources to build it? What about the M/AM? And how would he manage to build it to the level of quality control required – all on his own!?

These questions are just a few of the gaping holes in this part of “First Contact” which leave a bad taste in the mouth.

A clearly more logical scenario would be this…

The Phoenix Project is one of a number of projects being developed by the canon – and historically relevant – “Western bloc”. The “Eastern bloc”, having found out that it’s nearing completion and fearing the strategic advantage it might give the WB, launch a pre-emptive strike – thus starting WWIII.

At the time, Cochrane would have been a young man – perhaps in the first few years of his university education, majoring in Maths/Physics.

The war, with its consequent destruction of society, would have ruined his plans for a future as a scientist – like so many Arabic students in the troubled Middle East whose education has been all but brought to a complete halt. (Please note – I’m not Arabic, I’m Irish.)

As such, would it not be conceivable that Cochrane would have turned to drink to escape the nightmare of a hopeless future life in which he found himself?

After some years, he – or more likely, the group of whom he is a member eking out a existence in the post-war holocaust – discovers the location of the Phoenix Project.

With his intelligence and scientific training, he manages to access the projects’ R&D papers and, over the following decade or more, reads up on it – gaining a complete understanding of what they were doing and where they were in the project.

The Phoenix itself was already built – the only thing they hadn’t completed was to work out the all-important equation.

It is this that Cochrane solves – thus completing the project.

See?

No need to have him do the literally impossible by building anything on his own or with the help of his group – it was all done prior to the war – including the M/AM chamber and material – it’s all been sitting there since the war.

All that was required was to put the “capstone” on the project – solve the equation.

The sub-plot of his hoping to use the ship to escape to a Pacific island would still hold.

The above scenario would have made sense and explained everything without leaving any holes in the plot.

Just a thought!

Kindest regards,

James

The TNG movies unlike the TOS movies never quite gained an epic feel. They felt more like a 2 hour tv episodes. But at least until Nemisis they felt like good episodes and the cast, and audience appeared to be having fun.

With luck this new movie will be epic and make up for far too many years of mediocre stuff with just barely enough substance to keep the cash cow pooing.

At least when Bennett and Meyer came in on Khan was that the first thing they did was sit down and watch all the Trek that came before it, to get a feel for what it was supposed to be and figure out the winning combination of character development, story telling plus this space stuff (which was, as it should be, really the last thing they really thought about).

The thing that Meyer did and what Abrams is doing right now is that they know how Trek has nothing to do with outer space, but it’s all about the characters and telling a great story rich with character development and conflict. Plus, this outer space thing, that’s just a background thing, not as important, but just an added. Something, of course, Baird never learned in his time on Nemesis, and more amazing, Berman had no idea of in almost 20 years in charge.

In the interview with Baird, it’s very clear he didn’t do any of the above. He approached the film as an off the shelf action movie and the turd that came out is pretty much “Generic Action Movie” + “Star Trek”. A better director would’ve wanted some rewrites, wouldn’t have gone gimmicky with an offroad vehicle, wouldn’t have brought in yet another Data relative… Baird dropped the ball, the writing could have used another revision, and in the end… it killed TNG.

Granted, at that point in time, TNG/Trek was on the downswing… but god, with some half decent rewrites and a better director, that film could have been huge.