Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact mistake picture

Factual error: In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing. (00:42:45)

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Suggested correction: Actually when you look at Australia and New Zealand from orbit, New Zealand is a lot further away from Australia then shown on a map, also a lot more south of Australia. A map is a 2D image of a sphere, causing proportions to be off (its well known Africa is a lot smaller on maps than it is in real life). Especially the further south or north you go distances are way off. The depiction shown in the movie is actually correct, in that angle New Zealand is just outside of the frame. There are plenty of pictures from orbit to compare.

lionhead

Factual error: In the scene after Zefram's ship goes to warp, when the ship is being turned around to return home, Cochrane remarks "Is that the Earth? It's so...small." He wouldn't have been able to see it, provided the distance the ship just flew. Warp 1 is the speed of light and in a 1 minute flight, the Phoenix would have travelled over 10 million miles - at that distance the earth would just appear like a bright star.

Factual error: In the scene where Troi is drunk and Riker asks if Cochrane can accept the truth, it is night. Then the scene switches to the Enterprise orbiting Earth over north America and it is apparently daytime because the sun is shining over north America, where the movie takes place. (00:31:05)

Metalligod666

Factual error: When Zephram Cochrane, Riker and LaForge activate the warp drive of the prototype starship Phoenix, the prismatic starscape is seen streaking past (same effect as in the Star Trek: TNG series). However, the Phoenix never leaves the solar system or even the vicinity of Earth, achieving only Warp One (the max velocity of the Phoenix) for a few seconds. Even at lightspeed, the Phoenix did not enter interstellar space nor pass any other stars; therefore, the starscape should have remained almost motionless.

Charles Austin Miller

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Suggested correction: What happens when a ship goes to warp it essentially creates a subspace distortion. This causes the starscape to change and move, as they exit regular space and enter subspace.

lionhead

At Warp One, there should be zero prismatic distortions. It takes a full 24-hour DAY for light to cross the solar system. In a few seconds, a vessel traveling at Warp One, within a solar system, would see no distortions.

Charles Austin Miller

A ship slips out of regular space when going to warp, it creates a bubble around the ship, that bubble causes the starscape for the people inside it to appear moving or at least distort. That's what you see. That's what you always see when a ship goes to warp.

lionhead

The prismatic effect was created for the TNG series to depict the ship passing stars at hundreds of times the speed of light. The Phoenix only achieved Warp One, one time the speed of light (lightspeed). As fast as that sounds, it wouldn't be fast enough to create any visual distortion.

Charles Austin Miller

Even at hundreds of times the speed of light you would only pass a star every few seconds, they didn't make that effect for TNG as in TOS they were going that fast too (as high as warp 9) and the same distortion is seen. You also keep saying its the speed that causes the visual distortion whilst I specifically mention its the fact the ship exiting regular space and into subspace is whats causing the distortion.

lionhead

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Picard, Worf and Hawk are outside the ship and want to separate the transmitter dish from the hull, Picard must move a kind of tube out of an console and must turn it from a low to a high position. In one shot the tube is in the high position, in the next shot it is in the low position and then Picard pulls it out and turns it in the high position. (01:06:40 - 01:10:35)

More mistakes in Star Trek: First Contact

William Riker: Someone once said, "Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment."
Zefram Cochrane: That's rhetorical nonsense! Who said that?
William Riker: You did! Ten years from now.

More quotes from Star Trek: First Contact

Trivia: I was reading through some of the entries concerning the Borg in the Star Trek Encyclopedia, and came upon a comment they had about Wolf 359 - it's the name of an actual star in space, it makes up part of the Constellation Leo. It's also the site of the first major fleet battle between StarFleet and the Borg. Take your mind back to the scene where Zef and Lily first walk out of that bar, and Lily sees a speck of light that is actually the Borg Sphere, and asks Zef what it is. He replies "That, my dear, is the Constellation Leo". Now, obviously he didn't see what she was pointing out the first time around, but we could probably assume that from their point of view the sphere was in the general area that the constellation occupies in the night sky. Nice coincidence that the first attack on Earth by the Borg came from the same direction as the major battle between Starfleet and the Borg.

More trivia for Star Trek: First Contact

Question: Deanna Troi states that they will get rid of poverty, disease, and war within next 50 years. How would they get rid of things like autism, ADHD, or dyslexia? Aren't those medical conditions that cannot be cured?

Answer: Troi says that future medical research is far more advanced and humanity has learned to work together and overcome many social problems without being specific. It's unknown how these conditions will be cured, but possibly through advanced gene therapy, new drugs, new surgical techniques, etc.

raywest

Answer: The things you listed are not diseases, they are conditions. It is more plausible that she was referring to things like cancer, diabetes, stroke, and other similar disorders which, at some point in time, there might be a cure.

Troi said poverty disease war would all be gone within the next 50 years. I thought she meant things like autism ADHD and dyslexia would be gone too not just disease.

No, that's why she said disease.

Well the movie tells us that all bad things on earth would be gone within the next 50 years. I thought that would have included conditions like autism dyslexia or ADHD as well as disease.

The movie doesn't say "all bad things." She specifically says "disease." In other words things that can be cured, get cured. No doubt some things will be curable that we currently can't cure, and some things will never be curable. You're overanalysing a line used simply to explain that humanity advances itself in a short space of time.

Jon Sandys

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