The 25th anniversary of Star Trek: First Contact, simply the best Next Generation Film of All, has sparked many articles, essays, and podcast episodes on why this particular film worked, and the other Picard-directed films have been differently bad. Was it the Borg? The time travel element? The humor? The direction of Jonathan Frakes?
The simplest and most likely answer is that it was the only one with a really excellent script. The brilliant idea of splitting up the crew, the breathless pace and the clever set of action pieces set it apart not only from the other TNG films, but from many others Star Trek Movies too.
But what has always piqued my interest is the performance of Oscar nominee James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane, the irascible, alcoholic inventor of the warp drive who is, so to speak, the MacGuffin of the entire film. The story revolves around whether he can get it together and go on his historic warp plow. I’ve always viewed Cochrane as a replacement for Star Trek’s own inventor, Gene Roddenberry, and that First contact is really a film about the making of Star Trek itself – a futuristic novel of sorts, a clef about a deeply flawed man who changed the world.
A crazy theory? Welcome to Galaxy brains, People. Come on.
On this week’s show, Jonah Ray and I are joined by comedian, writer, and longtime Star Trek fan John Hodgman to discuss whether or not Star Trek: First Contact is a devious biopic by Gene Roddenberry.
As always, this conversation has been edited to make it sound less strange.
Dave: I think a lot of Gene Roddenberry as the creator of Star Trek when I see this movie. Zefram Cochrane is the creator of Star Trek in the context of the meta-movie we’re watching. He says the words “Star Trek” in the film. He invents the warp drive. He meets a Vulcan for the first time. He is that volatile person with many flaws who meets his very logical person and they have a moment of understanding. I’ve always viewed Zefram Cochran as a replacement for Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry has been said by many people, including his assistant Susan Sackett, in her book, and many other people who have worked with him, that he was a changeable, difficult man. And that is exactly the Zefram Cochrane bow. He starts out as that guy who’s just trying to make money and make money. Star Trek was a means to an end for Gene Roddenberry. But then it becomes this cultural phenomenon and it changes the world in many ways. Do you see any of these parallels or am I completely wrong?
John Hodgmann: To continue your sports metaphor, you are on the ground. You are sure.
Dave: I know you love baseball, john.
John Hodgmann: I love you, love baseball, and I love it. You just threw a homebase. I mean you did a good job. Put it on, indeed. Yes. I’m not entirely familiar with the real life of Gene Roddenberry behind the scenes, but I do know his deification, you know, and the shadow he cast as a creator and whether certain storylines would be considered “gene enough”. or “not gene enough”. Yeah, I definitely mean, whether it’s recognized or not, there is definitely a feeling, you know, don’t meet your heroes. They are people with flaws. You are human. That’s not even subtext in the movie.
Jonah: It’s text. More than 10 years ago, I believe the great cultural shift in Star Trek’s culture was that of the Saturday night live sketch with William Shatner yells at fans for a life. It reminded me of this thing about all the nerds that came to Cochrane and you know got excited and he said What’s wrong with you?
Dave: He’s a statue, and he’s so appalled to get the statue at some point since he doesn’t consider himself that important. And I think that probably applies to most of the people we divine.
John Hodgmann: I mean, Gene Roddenberry created a calm, egalitarian socialist utopia of tolerance, probably because it didn’t exist in his own head. It was a projection of something he wished he had no peace of mind.
Jonah: Something Dave and I talked about earlier is that maybe money made him an irritable drunk. Maybe he really thought how if only there was no money, I wouldn’t have to worry about these things all the time. There is something about it like getting rid of money.
John Hodgmann: Yes, exactly? I just wanted to say that it’s part of our cultural moment now. It’s like, well after we shut the economy down for a year and people don’t feel like doing those shitty jobs again, we suddenly think like: is there any other way to do this?
Dave: And Gene Roddenberry also created a world where sex was completely different from how we perceive it today, and the idea of sexuality is more like, yes, we have sex and we can have sex with a lot of different people or aliens or whatever to have. It was cooler in that regard. And that was something that he also projected into the real world.
John Hodgmann: Yes, he wanted to have sex with everyone. He wanted everyone to have green skin. He wanted to have sex with them.
