Star Trek: Discovery

^^ I don't pay for TV at all anymore.
I binned my licenses and removed the cables from the back of the telly... I occasionally check the online EPG to see if I've been missing anything decent, and guess what... there's nothing being broadcast that's worth spending the standard £30 a month on...

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Thanks for the info.

I don't watch "The Office" or "The Walking Dead", so I haven't seen either of them in those shows. I guess I'll figure out who they are when I eventually see the new "Star Trek" series.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

Me neither, I don't even have TV service, so I won't be watching the new Star Trek anytime soon. Oh well

I feel the same way. Now that I've found out it's going to be on a special pay-extra channel, I've kind of lost interest.

I knew ST First Contact was a retcon of Roddenberry's continuity - they made Zephram Cochrane an Earthling instead of an Alpha Centurian and made our fist contact with the Vulcans instead of the Alpha Centurians. I knew Enterprise took off with that retconned continuity, but I didn't know that they retconned it even further at that point.

See, I had forgotten Cochrane was supposed to be an Alpha Centurian instead of an Earthling. All I remember is the original series having him be stranded on that planet with "The Companion" who "blended" with the sick Federation diplomat, thereby healing her but also giving Cochrane a human/Companion blended love. I'm not sure but I think he chose to stay on that planet for the diplomat's sake, because if the Companion left her, she would die and he didn't want that. At least that's the way I remember it. I wasn't too bothered that they changed Cochrane or his story in Star Trek: First Contact because the movie, IMO, was so very good. I just went with it. And Star Trek: Enterprise kept up with ST:FC, with Cochrane (James Cromwell) appearing in the very first episode. Star Trek: Enterprise was supposed to have its namesake ship be the first Warp 5 capability. We'll see if they have this new, clunky-looking ship have more than that, thus retconning it even more.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

I hope this show is successful, just so it means I have steady work for the next few years.

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Suspect's Reviews

That's how I remember it too. I don't remember him being an Alpha Centurian either. He might have said something about being on Alpha Centura but it seemed he was presented as a human.

I have a little more back-up on this stuff - a little book called Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology:


It came out around the time that ST-TMP did. It is based on Roddenberry's framework for the future he'd created. And it chronicles from the earliest (real life) NASA & Soviet space satellites to beyond the years of The Motion Picture.

It includes all major alien contacts - such as Earth's first. It was our long-range sub-light-speed ship that reached Alpha Centauri first. Earth's technology helped fill in some missing parts of Chocrane's theories that were based on decades of Centaurian experimentation. Long story short, not long after Alpha Centauri's first contact with humans, Warp Drive was developed and the return trip to Earth with Centauri envoys was much quicker. And Cochrane did appear human as all Centaurians were human looking with the only differences being higher foreheads and smaller pinky fingers.

According to the book, Earth's second contact was in deep space with the Vulcans after we were using the Centaurian-based Warp Drive.

What do you mean, Suspect?

Thanks for posting that, unfortunately dinner is waiting for me, but I will get back to this and read it tomorrow. I also want to look at the original transcript and will post what I can find.

We are supplying the crew with the gear for this show.

Transcript of ST Metamorphosis

So I read the transcript:

KIRK: Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centuri, the discoverer of the space warp?
SPOCK: But you will age, both of you. There will be no immortality. You'll both grow old here and finally die.
COCHRANE: That's been happening to men and women for a long time. I've got the feeling it's one of the pleasanter things about being human, as long as you grow old together.
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I always thought that Cochrane was a human who lived on Alpha Centuri in the same way that humans lived on the Martian colonies. It seemed to me that the show made him out to be human. Well that's my take.

Nope. It was ST First Contact (1996) that officially retconned Star Trek forever.

It was a great movie as far as action & story goes (probably the best of the Next Generation films), but I didn't appreciate that they retconned the ST universe right after Gene Roddenberry died - when he wasn't around to object.

Roddenberry had come up with the somewhat more realistic idea that we gained warp drive from a slightly more advanced alien civilization (the one existing within the stellar system that is our closest neighbor) than inventing it ourselves within just a couple centuries from now.

I never followed Enterprise closely, but I do know they ran with the retcon (that Earthlings developed warp drive and first contact was with the Vulcans) as they even had James Cromwell on the show as the now human version of Zefram Cochran.

We are talking about different things, or more precisely different reference points. I was referencing what was or wasn't said about Cochrane in the original series. The original series (to me) would be the first source of canon, with the movies taking second place in validity.

Understood - according to the transcript they just said "of Alpha Centauri" without going into the details of the history. So, it could be taken a number of ways.

But the way it was intended was based on Roddenberry's rather complex fictional history - that people from Alpha Centauri were humanoid-looking aliens who developed warp drive and who were Earth's first contact - but by us venturing to their home first on a ship named the Icarus that could achieve .75 the speed of light using an "antimatter-spiked deuterium" fusion engine in the year 2048. There, it was the native Cochran who worked with Earth scientists to piece together the missing gaps in warp drive technology which would be brought back and shared with Earth in 2054.
The first contact with Vulcans, btw, was a warp-drive Earth ship responding to a damaged Vulcan vessel sending out an S.O.S. in 2065.

Unfortunately, much of the history Roddenberry created is not documented in detail anywhere on the TV series (as far as I know) but only in a few rare books.

I'm not making a ban pun, when I say I believe in 'death of the author'. I'm sure you know that literary term.

As far I'm concerned, what is said in the Star Trek TV shows, is first source for canon. The movies would be second source, unless they're JJ Abrams, then they count for naught.

Anything Rodenberry might have said or wrote before or after the TV shows and movies is interesting but would not figure as canon to me. Thus the 'death of the author'...In other words his opinion of what he envisioned for his ST universe, takes a back seat to what I gleam from watching the TV series and movies (sans JJ)

Yes, well the TV series was his vision - and Cochran was an Alpha Centurian - an alien to Earth.

Probably due to time constraints they just didn't provide all the details of Roddenberry's history and boiled it down to one sentence, "Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri, the discoverer of the space warp?" I don't think their intention was to leave it open to interpretation so someone could make a movie about Cochrane 28 years later, just that they didn't take time to run down the whole history of warp drive on the TV show.

Then, people like the authors of the ST Spaceflight Chronology (Trekkies, I assume) produced books to fill in the gaps that weren't covered in the TV show. There is an acknowledgement of Roddenberry and various people communicating his ideas in the book's opening. I'm only reporting what this book said - and that it was based on Roddenberry's outlines and the TV series.

Also, the First Contact movie obviously alters the character of Cochrane from the TV show - I don't remember either well enough to go into detail, but I think Cochrane is originally shown as a relatively young man, who we are told is "of Alpha Centauri and the inventor of warp drive" is trapped on a planet with the alien energy being that sustains him, and he remains there with the energy being inhabiting the body of the lady from Father Knows Best?

While in the movie he's an older, alcoholic man from Earth whose story has no mention of Alpha Centauri or of ending up living on a planet with an a alien energy being.

But, I don't believe ST Metamorphosis showed Cochran as an alien from Alpha Centuria. I believe he was being presented as a human. Latter reinforced by Star Trek: First Contact. So that's what I believe and nothing will change my mind.

In the episode "Metamorphosis", when Kirk and the others find out who he is, Kirk asks him if he is Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri, and the inventor of the Warp Drive, and says that Cochrane has been missing for over 150 years. Cochrane tells them that he was 87 years old when The Companion brought him there, and The Companion "regenerated" him. That's why he looks so young in the episode, but older in the movie First Contact.

The episode doesn't specifically say whether he was born on Earth and went to Alpha Centauri, or if he was actually from Alpha Centauri, but he appears to be human in the episode, and if I remember correctly, near the end of the episode, when Cochrane chooses to stay with The Companion, Spock calls him "an irrational human being".