Episode Trivia

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Technically Goofs, there are several points of this episode that are ignored in the movie First Contact: 1) Glenn Corbett looks nothing like a young James Cromwell; 2) Cochrane here has no knowledge of Vulcans even though in First Contact he makes...well, first contact with them; and here Cochrane is from Alpha Centauri but in the movie he is an Earth Native (there have been various non-canon and fan explanations for why he would no longer consider Earth his "home".
   
At the start of the episode, Kirk states that they will meet the Enterprise in 4 hours, 21 minutes. Assuming they've been in flight for a short while already, that would probably mean about a 5 hour trip to meet the Enterprise. Coupled with a 5 hour trip to pick up the comissioner, that would be a 10 hour shuttle ride. That's an awfully long trip for a shuttle to make. Considering the Miss. Hedford's sickly condition, it would be a lot quicker to use the Enterprise to pick her up. You could argue that maybe the Enterprise was busy doing something else, but then why does Scotty spend all the episode looking for Kirk? Also, in "The Menagerie", Kirk indicates that the shuttle does not have more than a few hours of oxygen in it, so it seems that a 5 hour shuttle ride would be pushing it, and that's assuming that they were able to refuel before they headed back.
   
Toward the end of the episode, Capt. Kirk calls the ship with his communicator. Since they are 57 minutes away from the ship at the time they make contact, that would be an awfully long range for a personal communicator to have.
   
The shuttlecraft that Kirk and company are in is called the Galileo. However, the Galileo was destroyed in the first season episode "The Galileo 7". Later episodes correct for this by showing the shuttle as "Galileo II", but they seemed to have forgotten it for this episode.
   
When Kirk and McCoy first see Cochrane communicating with the companion, they comment about how it looks like love. There is no obvious indication of love whatsoever. All they are seeing is the companion hovering over Cochran, but for some reason they just start rambling about it being love.
   
The Companion says it will let the shuttlecraft operate normally so they can leave. Originally it brought them down with an energy dampening field. However, later it shorted out all the circuits when it attacked Spock - how did it fix those?
   
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy agree to not tell anyone in Starfleet of Cochrane's existance on the planet. Then how do they intend to explain the disappearance of the Commissioner. Also, since the Companion was essentially responsible for the Commissioner's death and then stole her body aftewards, is it not guilty of a crime? However, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy seem pretty content with letting this all go.
   
First appearance of Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive. He would later reappear in "Star Trek: First Contact" as well as the pilot episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise", "Broken Bow", although he'd be played by James Cromwell in both instances.