According to Star Trek future history, today is First Contact Day. As established in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact, humans will be visited by a team of Vulcans on April 5th, 2063. This first contact with aliens ushers in a new era leading eventually to the United Federation of Planets and the rest of Star Trek history.You can watch that fateful moment below.
And the day of that visit became honored as a holiday, but we here at TrekMovie see no reason to wait until 2063 to celebrate it.
Braga honors holiday he helped create
As the co-writer of Star Trek: First Contact, Brannon Braga could be seen as one of the fathers of the holiday. And so as the day dawned Braga took a moment on Twitter to honor it.
Happy #FirstContactDay! #April5
May we all be on some kind of star trek. #LLAP#BoldlyGo @StarTrek #Trekkies #Engage @startrekeire pic.twitter.com/QEkXKE0bZy— Brannon Braga (@BrannonBraga) April 5, 2017
Build your own Phoenix in Star Trek Online
Today (and through to tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. Pacific) gamers playing the online MMORPG Star Trek Oline can visit the Zefram Cochrane Memorial and Historical Museum and participate in a “special re-enactment event.” Gamers are invited to visit “Bozeman, Montana and “engage in the construction of their own replica Phoenix!”
Captains search the area to scavenge parts and build their own Phoenix model. With the variety of available parts, each ship can be customized. Whoever’s model reaches the highest altitude will be declared the “winner of that launch and the honorary student of Cochrane.” More info at arcgames.com.
STO celebrates First Contact Day
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TrekMovie Shuttlepod First Contact Podcast
Last year, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: First Contact, the TrekMovie Shuttle Pod crew dedicated an episode to talk about the film. You can listen to that podcast below
And from more from TrekMovie, you can listen to founder Anthony Pascale’s views on the film as he is joined with Damon Lindelof for an alternative audio commentary on the First Contact Blu-ray, released in 2009. (See TrekMovie review of the TNG movies box set)
Shopping First Contact Day
Just like any holiday, First Contact Day has gone commercial. The official Star Trek Shop is having an all day sale with 20% off everything to celebrate the day.
How will you celebrate First Contact Day?
What are some of your personal reflections on Star Trek: First Contact? Share them in the comments section below.
“I gotta take a leak.”
-Zefram Cochrane
Happy First Contact Day! Had no idea the statue was an actual thing til I saw it in Archer’s quarters while re-watching Broken Bow, yesterday :)
https://giphy.com/gifs/bad-first-contact-FVenShVFvKSVW
Wait, is this the First Contact from FIRST CONTACT, or the one from ENTERPRISE after Trump was elected and the timeline split? 😏
I’m looking forward to the Terran Empire, actually. Bow, Vulcan dogs!
That would be such a brilliant idea. What was the in-canon point of split for the Mirror universe? Wasnt it Nazi’s winning the war? Trump as President would be a great one!
Nobody complained about the youtube clip being from the wrong universe, so I guess we’re all still on this side of the mirror
It is days like this that I am proud to be a Bozeman-ite.
I don’t expect to be alive in 2063 (since I’d be 105 then), but I hope when we DO make first contact with aliens, that they turn out to be as peaceful and interesting as the Vulcans.
Of course, any actual aliens are unlikely to be as similar to us as the Vulcans are, and we might have great difficulty actually communicating with them. One of the many reasons why Star Trek is so compelling is because it populates the interstellar neighborhood with people we can talk to. :-)
And, generally, look like us, too. I’ll be 99, and probably on life support…
Ill only be 87. But Im hoping by then technology has advanced to make it routine to download consciousness and memory into a computer so we can all live forever.
Hate to break it to ya, but it doesn’t work that way… You’d only be making a copy of yourself if anything. However, I do think that medical technology at that point will make being ‘old’ a much different experience, and our lifespans will be longer… at least if you have the monies for it…
Ashley,
Re: it doesn’t work that way
Hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t work quite the way you think it does either. For example, we are NOT the same idenitcal clump of cells that we were when we were seven. That which we regarded as ourself exists to debate this now because information is being copied incessantly through DNA replication and that which we regarded as us has been copied to somewhat different conglomeration of DNA copied cells than existed back than.
If I recall my Computer Science studies from decades ago correctly, I believe the philosophical implications have been debated about this since the time of Turing. Logic dictates that a difference that makes no difference is no difference.
To help CS students see this, the instructor asks the students to consider a thought experiment with an axiom that a medical nanobot has been developed that can accurately and correctly identify malfunctioning human cells, and by reading the cell’s DNA replace a malfunctioning cell with an identical in function but correctly performing it nanobot.
Stephen Hawking is injected with the medical nanobot and wakes up the next morning cured. The instructor asks at what ratio of nanobots to human cells does Hawking wakeup and stop being himself but a copy? The point being with all the copying going on in the human being DNA machine to begin with, labeling 100% nanobot Hawking a copy is as irrelevant, especially in STAR TREK, as the fact that EVERYONE that comes out of the transporter at their destination is a copy.
Damn that Quantum Entanglement. I’ll leave it to others to speculate if the Second Law of Thermodynamics will cause some degrading of those copies.
Phil,
Re: Second Law of Thermodynamics
Well, there’s enough hints sprinkled about in the aired episodes that error-correcting algorithms and redundancies are employed so it’s likely as good as all the copying going on in our use of the internet even as we read this. Probably better than anything evolved to repair DNA? Whic gives me pause to ponder if the transporter’s data compression and error correction could good enough to possibly leave one better off than when they entered?
@ Dininvited
Well, Picard was still bald, and Geordi still blind at the end of TNG’s run, so it’s safe to guess that transporter code writers hadn’t put cosmetic surgeons out of business yet. I’m thinking the Frist Law of Thermodynamics would probably prevent the transporter from being the immortality machine, but then, tomorrows copy of me might disagree.
Phil,
Re: Bald faced errors
Well, I never thought of baldness as a DNA error, per se. I always thought of it as a genetic adaptation. It seems some females find it attractive. I suppose it all boils down to at which point in maturity does the transporter DNA AI determine that the organism expressed its most potential with the least degradation of DNA?
But it is interesting to ponder the transporter as a preventer of evolution.
Geordi’s blindness? Hmmm…I’ll have to check. I always thought it was the result of an accident which technology couldn’t fix because his body rejected standard neural implants?
Lots of booze, a cattle prod, and a couple of naked Vulcan women. What’s it to ya?
cool, i just hope it comes sooner and i get to see it
happy first contact day
Careful what you wish for….
For all we know, aliens might see humans on Earth as food, in the same way we see chickens or sheep as food…
To Serve Man
…….it’s a cookbook!!!
Happy First Contact day Star Trek fans! We may not always agree on everything but its days like this we have to remind ourselves we are all fans of this great franchise and how important it is to all of us.
It’s First Contact Day! Let’s Party! Woo!!! Woo. Woo… woo? Anyone? Is this thing on?
Well, I’m going to party.
I’m writing an honourary one-shot lol
Actually my cat died and I got drunk afterwards. So for me it was kind of ‘last contact’ day.