Star Trek: First Contact is really a meta movie about Trek’s creation

The 25th Anniversary of Star Trek: First ContactThe best! Next GenerationThis movie, the best of all time, has been the subject of many articles, essays and podcast episodes. It is also why Picard’s other films, which were at varying levels of awfulness, worked. The Borg or the Borg? It was the time-travel element. The humor Jonathan Frakes’ direction?

It was the first movie with an excellent script. This is probably the easiest answer. Splitting the crew was a brilliant idea. The pacing is fast and fluid, as well as the creative action sets, set the movie apart from all other TNG films. Star TrekAlso, films.

What has always caught my attention most was the Oscar nominee James Cromwell’s performance as Zefram, an alcoholic inventor and irascible of warp drives. It is kind of the MacGuffin. It is about whether or not he will be able to get his act together in time for the historic warp flight. I’ve always thought of Cochrane as a stand-in for Star Trek’s own inventor, Gene Roddenberry, and that Initial Contact is really a movie about the creation of Star Trek itself — a kind of futuristic roman a clef about a deeply flawed man who changed the world.

Is this a far-fetched theory? Galaxy Brains is open to you, guys. C’mon.

On this week’s show, Jonah Ray and I are joined by comedian, author and long-time Star Trek fan John Hodgman to discuss whether or not Star Trek: First ContactGene Roddenberry is the sneaky character in this biopic.

The conversation is edited, as always to be less bizarre

Dave: When I see this film, I am reminded of Gene Roddenberry’s role in Star Trek’s creation. Zefram Cchrane is Star Trek’s creator, as we see in this meta-movie. He says the words “Star Trek” in the movie. He creates the warp drive. For the first time, he meets a Vulcan. He’s this volatile human being with a lot of flaws, who meets his very logical person, and they have a moment of understanding. Zefram Cchran was always a substitute for Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry has been said by many people, including his assistant Susan Sackett, in her book, and a lot of other people who’ve worked with him that he was kind of a volatile, difficult man. And that’s kind of what Zefram Cochrane’s arc is. He starts off as this guy who’s just trying to make money and make a buck. Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek to help him get his ends. Then it turns into a cultural phenomenon and Roddenberry changes the world many ways. Can you spot any similarities? Or am I totally off base?

John Hodgman Forget about the sport metaphor. You’re on base. You’re safe.

Dave: John, I love your passion for baseball.

John Hodgman Your love and baseball are what I treasure. It was a great home run. It was a great job. Touchdown, indeed. Yeah. I’m not completely familiar with the behind the scenes true life of Gene Roddenberry, but I’m certainly familiar with his deification, you know, and the shadow as a creator that he cast and whether certain storylines would be considered “Gene enough” or “not Gene enough.” Yeah, there’s definitely I mean, whether it’s acknowledged or not, there’s definitely a feeling of, you know, don’t meet your heroes. They’re flawed people. They’re human beings. That’s not even subtext in the movie.

Jonah: It’s text. This text was written more than ten years before this cultural shift. Saturday Night LiveThe sketch shows William Shatner screaming at his fans to live a normal life. This reminded me of the thing about all these nerds going up to Cochrane, and being excited, and then him going, What’s wrong with you?

Dave: He’s a statue, and he’s so horrified to get the statue at some point since he doesn’t see himself as that important. And I think that’s probably true of most people that we deify.

John Hodgman I mean, Gene Roddenberry created a calm, egalitarian socialist utopia of tolerance, probably because that didn’t exist in his own mind. That was a projection of something that he wished for, that he didn’t have peace of mind.

Jonah: Dave and Dave had discussed earlier that money might have made him an angry drunk. He might have really believed that he was thinking, if only money didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff all the time. You can do that if you want to get rid of your money.

John Hodgman Yeah, right? I was just going to say it’s part of our cultural moment now. It’s like, well, after we shut down the economy for a year and people don’t feel like going back to work at those shitty jobs, we’re all of a sudden thinking, like,Do you know of another method?

Dave: Gene Roddenberry created a new world in which sex is completely different from how it’s perceived now. The idea of sexuality was more like “Yeah, we have and can have sex” with many different people, aliens, or whatever. In that sense, it was much more relaxed. That was also something he projected onto the real world.

John Hodgman Yes, he was open to having sex with everyone. He desired that everyone had green skin. He wanted to sex with everyone.