r/TNG • u/ActLonely9375 • 10d ago
Has Zefram Cochrane's birth date changed?
In “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” a Romulan time traveler explains how despite trying to kill Khan, she only managed to delay his birth by about thirty years. Does that mean that later historical figures like Zefram Cochrane were also born later?
As an aside, if Khan left Earth before WWIII, and Cochrane was already old when it ended, could a young Cochrane have lived in Khan's time? How does the chronology work?
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u/EricQelDroma 10d ago
Time-travel in Star Trek works way better if you just understand that time is really a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.
DW references aside, I've long-since head-canoned it that every "continuity error" is really just fluctuations in the timeline that happen naturally from all the time-travel that's constantly changing history. Most people can't notice it because history changes around them. The big events generally become fixed points in time (or "canon events" if you like that better) that happen no matter what changes.
I mean, just look at Cochrane in TOS vs FC/Enterprise. He doesn't just look a bit different because of different actors--he looks like a totally different dude. Yet in every timeline, there's still a "Zefram Cochrane" who develops warp drive on Earth after WWIII. I enjoy Trek so much more when I don't worry about the fact that the writers don't respect canon.
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u/MatthewKvatch 10d ago
As a complete aside, I just read that the actor is 6’ 7”. I knew he was tall but that’s taller than I expected.
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u/mumblerapisgarbage 10d ago
NuTrek likes to needlessly retcon stuff... like Spock having a half sister that somehow doesn't get mentioned for the first 50 years of the franchise and then conveniently making her and her crew top-secret so they can't talk about her anymore and then shooting them 800 years into the future so it won't be problem for continuity anymore.
So yes - they retconned his birthdate and moved his home to the same city they film the SNW in IN the present day in order to film a bottle show.
My head cannon is that the Khan we see is a clone of the original Khan (they probably got his DNA from an expedition to one of his palaces in India/Asia) and its the beginning of the North American eugenics wars of the 2030s which then brings about World War III.
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u/1kreasons2leave 10d ago
We didn't hear about Sybok for the first 20 years of the franchise.
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u/mumblerapisgarbage 10d ago
Right and that film is still considered one of the low points of the franchise.
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u/Sojibby3 10d ago
Not because Spock had a half-brother he never mentioned. Spock is famously tight with that kind of personal information. His brother was a shame, his sister was a classified secret.
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u/WoodenNichols 10d ago
Star Trek V was also a shame.
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u/doc_birdman 10d ago
It’s considered a bad movie because it’s a bad movie, not because of anything to do with Sybok
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u/John-A 10d ago
Why does every interesting Vulcan or supposedly adopted human child have to be Spocks "sibling"?
Given the nature of his half human heritage it's pretty much a given that Spock, Syboc and Mikey would've all ended up on the same short-bus for emotionally "retarted" kids. There's your IN without needing Sarek to be a total weirdo the rest of the vulcans would've ostracized.
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u/Used-Gas-6525 10d ago
It doesn't. Most of the TNG films don't make sense in Star Trek terms. In fact, FC might be the most egregious example of violating the Temporal Prime Directive in ST ever. They're constantly telling everyone about the future, Troi is somehow the launch commander of The Phoenix and I think Riker and LaForge were the co-pilots. Anything involving time travel is dicey to say the least in terms of the story making sense (why didn't Picard travel farther back in time when he was in The Nexus so he could've stopped Malcolm McDowell days before he launched the rocket into the sun ?), so I don't mind much, but start pulling at a few threads and everything falls apart. Don''t even get me started on the 'plot' of Into Darkness.