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: 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

Plot hole: When Picard, Hawk and Worf are out on the particle transmitter, they each have one gun. However, when Picard is attacked by Hawk, the gun that Hawk used is being stepped on by him. Picard left his gun over at the other mag lock, and Worf threw his away, but when the captain was in trouble, Worf had a gun. He would not have had time to run around to Picard's side before he was attacked by Hawk, so where did Worf get the other gun from?

Cynthia Gurski

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Suggested correction: As you can see in a wide shot after Worf's suit is cut, his gun is still hanging close by. So after he closed the gap in his suit he just grabbed his own gun. Of course, he did throw it away and it should have kept on moving all the way out of reach but something stopped it. But you do see it still in reach of Worf.

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: The Borg eyepieces don't blink at random - they spell out "Rick Berman" , "Sherry Lansing" , the names of several studio execs , and "Bonnie" , the name of eye programmer Michael Westmore Jr's dog, in Morse code. Additionally , Data's head blinks "Resistance is futile".

More trivia for Star Trek: First Contact

Question: How did the Phoenix land on Earth after the warp display for the Vulcans? It looked like a non-reusable rocket to me.

Answer: It was never shown or explained how they landed, so any answer would be a guess. This is set in the future (mid-21st Century), so there could have been new rocket technology.

raywest

Answer: While the main fuselage was a re-purposed intercontinental ballistic missile, and they separated from the ascent stage of the rocket, the payload section housed two deployable prototype warp nacelles capable of achieving lightspeed. Beyond that, the payload also contained the prototype warp core (which was powered by matter/antimatter annihilation), the warp core coolant, elaborate magnetic-containment systems, and probably even impulse drive and landing thrusters (It kind of goes without saying that thruster and impulse technology would have existed before warp technology). There was no space left over in the payload section for conventional rocket propellant, and Zefram Cochrane's enormously-expensive and one-of-a-kind warp components would not be expendable; so he must have devised a way to safely bring the Phoenix down for re-use. Since the Phoenix's return and landing were never addressed in the film, my assumption is that the payload section was powered entirely by the warp core, including its impulse drive and landing thrusters.

Charles Austin Miller

More questions & answers from Star Trek: First Contact

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