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First Contact 🖖🏼 Day 2025
In Star Trek lore, April 5th, 2063 is when Zefram Cochrane’s experimental warp flight spurs the Vulcan survey team to redirect to Earth. Known as First Contact Day, it’s a pivotal point in Trek history even though it’s not really Earth’s first experience with extraterrestrials.
Close Encounters Declassified
Sometime I wish the aliens would abduct me and crown me as their leader. ~George Noory
So, it’s only four more decades until the Vulcans land, so let’s do what we can to make the world a place worth landing on.
The status quo officially sucks, so let’s finally do something different. We’ve seen the release of materials on the JFK assassination and we’ll soon be getting more on what Epstein was up to before he allegedly hung himself (yeah, right).
But when will we see some releases on Roswell, Area 51 and anything else pertaining to UFOs (unidentified flying objects aka flying saucers), UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena aka orbs) and USOs (unidentified submerged objects aka Atlantean flying saucers)? Clinton said he’d release it and I’m pretty sure the current president did, too. Guess we’ll see.
In terms of Star Trek, we’re recovering from WWIII that was started by a collection of hubristic genetically manipulated supermen. The so-called Eugenics War became a hot war between genetically augmented megalomaniacs. Our own Eugenics War is an ideological war between people who profoundly hate humanity and the rest of us who believe in being fertile and multiplying.
Since we never got to the stage of genetically manipulated Napoleons playing real-life Risk, we have (thankfully) never launched nukes or blasted entire civilizations off the planet. Instead, we have decades of more subtle socioeconomic fuckery. This was lampooned and yet tragically highlighted by the introduction to the movie: Idiocracy.
IDIOCRACY Opening Scene (2006) Mike Judge
More than a few comedians have suggested that this may be why actual extraterrestrials elect not to engage with us. It’s awfully hard to argue with that. Maybe if we get some releases of government paperwork on possible alien technology or contact, it could have a positive impact on society.
But then again, if we had aliens stop by and cure every illness, solve every social dilemma and give us sustainable clean energy, there would be some dyed-in-the-wool fucktards who would insist on hating them anyway. Humans are complex creatures and not always quick to adapt.
¿First Contact?
Star Trek: First Contact: The Vulcans arrive on Earth
The official historical turning point is when the Vulcans make “First Contact” with Professor Cochrane in Bozeman, Montana.
Anyone who has watched any Star Trek know this simply isn’t the case. In the Original Series, you’ve got several instances where extraterrestrials have interacted with humans before this date in 2063, albeit clandestinely. You also have a variety of episodes in the subsequent series in which time travel or covert extraterrestrial actions lead to unofficial first contacts.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (6/8) Movie CLIP – Communicating with the Mothership (1977) HD
A classic vision of what first contact might actually look like in the real world was depicted in the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The exchange between normal people and the flying saucers comes in a nuanced, scientific way. The government operatives on top of the Devil’s Tower try to communicate with the spaceship using a mathematical music and the exchange is astonishing. In the movie theater, the spaceship’s initial reply to the humans’ prompt pasted you to your chair and rumbled through your chest. It was a transformative experience.
That’s what we were looking for. That’s what we were expecting. Sure, Star Trek and Star Wars were cool. We imagined worlds of people with funny foreheads or green blood and pointed ears. In reality, we expected something genuinely alien, like what we saw in Close Encounters. It remains to be seen but there are a reputed variety of alien visitors. We’ll see if any government paperwork gets released to confirm or debunk these alleged varieties of aliens. The greys, the nordics, the reptilians and a host of others that have been indicated by UFOlogists since the 50s could be out there waiting for official acknowledgement or final dismissal.
If they buy poison, they’ll buy anything
If extraterrestrial species are actually just people who might have different physiological features such as they are depicted in Sci-Fi franchises, then I’d expect First Contact to go a lot more like the interaction between the technologically advanced Ferengi and the babes in the wilderness humans depicted in the Deep Space Nine episode, Little Green Men.
It’s a hilarious comedy of errors (as are a lot of situations involving Quark and Rom) and predictably goes off the rails pretty quickly.
Star Trek Mirror First Contact
Of course, in Sci-Fi, it sometimes turns out that the aliens aren’t the monsters; we are. Unlike in The Day The Earth Stood Still, without a Gort to stand sentry over their spaceship, the technological advantage taken by the evil version of Dr. Cochrane helps to spur a Terran Empire that tears through the Milky Way galaxy, enslaving or co-opting other species who were traditionally allies in the main timeline.
As much as I think Little Green Men is more representative of how First Contact would to with a relatively comparable sophont species, given the number of free ranging scrotums infesting modern day society, alien interaction could easily go more like the Mirror Universe’s version of the Vulcan landing. Sad but true. How can we prevent this? Stop voting for Democrats.
🖖🏼 Both Are Transformed 🤝🏻
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ~Carl Jung
This is very true. You may think you know somebody, but until you actually meet them, you only know what you think you know.
There is a lasting change in brain chemistry caused by the formation of actual memories based on actual encounters.
I can imagine tons of wild and exciting things, but I only know what falling off of an airplane feels like because I did it.
That’s the nature of a writer’s experience. You can deep dive into your research and be pretty sure you have the right answer.
Very good writers remember that it is not so. Because we know it’s our imagination, we can shape reality to our own purposes.
What we also know is that this transformative experience of actually meeting somebody or having our fictional characters meet each other builds marvelous drama.
Meet and greet, meet-cutes, epic confrontation, inadvertent interaction; all of these types of interactions set up different kinds of relationships from that point of the story forward.
Two samurai facing off at a bridge could lead to flashing steel, a fatal wound, a clan vendetta.
Two Englishmen facing off at a makeshift bridge could lead to a legendary quarterstaff scuffle that results in a lifelong friendship.
A man and woman arriving at a narrow bridge could serve as a meet-cute or an implacable enmity. This could set up a cozy romance or an enemies-to-lovers hot romance.
You never have a second chance to make a first impression unless you have a time machine or you’re stuck in a Groundhog Day causal loop.
First Contact sets the tone between protagonists and antagonists as clearly as it would between two ancillary characters.
As with alien contact, two unfamiliar people could have a positive first interaction or a negative one. Depending on how it goes, the story changes accordingly.
That’s all for today. 🖖🏼 Live Long and Prosper. 🖖🏼 We’ll see you back on Wednesday for a more down-to-🌎 topic.