Hello all, this is a look into the life and career of Zefram Cochrane, pioneer of warp
drive technology in the Star Trek universe. He doesn’t really have enough on him to
fill a personnel file, plus inconsistencies with the character over time have resulted
in a bit of a discrepancy or two, so this aims to explore those and maybe see if there
is any way they can all fit together. Cochrane was born around 2030, in Montana,
North America. I found references to him possibly dealing with a Bipolar disorder for some of
his life, but it was tempered with an implant for the majority of his life. He was a genius
who studied in almost every science field he could access growing up, however because
of the era he grew up in, The Third World War of 2026 to 2053, it wasn’t exactly smooth
sailing with all the genocides, eco-terrorism and eventual nuclear blasts going off. He,
therefore ended up repressing a lot of his own desires for academic study in favour of
practicality and survival, even leaving MIT without earning his degree.
He actually began his career researching matter-antimatter weaponry for the military, and eventually
coupled this with the idea of space-time warping, eventually mapping out the notion for the
warp drive. These didn’t see fruition during the global conflicts, thankfully, but when
the third world war eventually came to its close, he took his team back to Montana, where
there was a defunct missile base. He had a contact on his team, cover up the base’s
existence, so that he could work in secret, without any governmental interference.
Considering the state of the world, irradiated and suffering through a self-imposed nuclear
winter, the planet’s political powers had more to deal with than losing one missile
base, presumably. It was around 2055, where is bipolar disorder reasserted itself, and
he frequently went on binges of work on his warp drive theories, before slumping into
week long bouts of depression. He eventually turned to the bottle to try to help.
Over the next 10 years, he would work with his team, even as it dwindled in converting
a gutted nuclear missile and a Titan II rocket, and repurposing it into the NX Phoenix, the
famous warp 1 vessel. Earlier stories of Chochrane, pre First Contact film had him travelling
to all sorts of other facilities around the globe, in orbit and even to the moon to test
various parts of the warp drive, which suggests a far more organised and governmentally involved
approach to his research than we later see. This is the largest continuity issue around
Cochrane, as he was originally depicted as a pioneering scientist, then later as far
more troubled individual and effectively building the Phoenix with scraps, with the goal of
becoming rich off his invention. This is when the Events of First Contact happen, and the
Borg attack Bozeman, damaging the Phoenix. They were then stopped by the crew of the
Enterprise, where due to time constraints of allowing the test flight to unfold on time,
they revealed to Cochrane their origin from the future.
The vessel was repaired, launched and on April 4th, 2063, the warp 1 test flight was successful
and alerted the passing Vulcan survey vessel, the T’Plana Hath to the human’s achievement
of FTL travel. When they touched down, they met with the creator of the warp drive, before
eventually being put into contact with the various governments of Earth, which then instigated
the unification of the planet. Over the next few years, Cochrane would continue
to work on developing his war drive, letting the interference from the Borg slip once,
but otherwise maintaining his silence on the matter. Naturally, after First Contact, he
had all the resources he needed to develop his work and soon warp 2 was the next target.
In the following decades, he is known to have been hands on with his engines, taking out
test flights himself and visiting many planets, 9 of which were M class. Presumably one of
these was Alpha Centauri, Sol’s nearest neighbour where mankind established one of
its first extra-solar colonies. Although Cochrane continued to work on Earth, he must have been
one of these colonists as Alpha Centauri was listed as his home planet. Considering it
would take 4.37 years at warp 1 to get there, presumably warp 1 was soon exceeded by the
fledgling Starfleet. In 2119, he commissioned the ambitiously named
Warp 5 Complex, with the goal of attaining that warp factor. It was during the opening
of that complex, the Cochrane gave a speech which included the phrases, to “go boldly”
and to explore “strange new worlds”, something that would go on to be paraphrased into Starfleet’s
mantra. One of his colleagues at the complex was Henry Archer, who would go on to continue
the aging Cochrane’s work. Before that year was out, Cochrane vanished and in 2124, Henry
Archer died from Clarke’s Disease. In 2143, the warp 2 barrier was broken and in 2151,
the First Warp 5 engine launched in the drive of the NX-01 Enterprise.
Back in 2119, Cochrane had vanished while taking his vessel out from Alpha Centauri,
with the intent to die out among the stars. This is where history leaves him for 148 years,
until Captain Kirk and the Enterprise discover his true fate in 2267. He had met a non-corporeal
alien, referred to only as the Companion as he drifted, which used its powers to rejuvenate
him to a younger form and brought him to a secluded home in Gamma Canaris where it saw
to his every need. Here he lived, well beyond his human lifespan, until he began to grow
bored. This is where we get the TOS episode “Metamorphosis”,
and a depiction of Cochrane that is vastly different from his 2063 depiction. This could
be attributed to his age, and the fact that his goals were shifted so radically by his
experiences in that time. He went from a troubled genius, content with winning himself fame
and wealth, to glimpsing the future he would user in, the scale of Earth compared to the
vastness of space and how history would remember him. By the time he vanished in 2119, he very
well may have been closer to the man Kirk eventually met than the guy who tried to run
from Will Riker and got stunned into a stream. I think, even in First Contact, that he is
a genuinely curious individual who ended up embracing his earlier notions of exploration
for explorations sake, I mean he kept a big ass telescope and there was space paraphernalia
all around the bar. There are other references to Cochrane, that
are from sources around before the First Contact film that go on to cite Zefram as being an
actual alien human from Alpha Centauri and such, but these are clearly irrevocable with
canon. From what we see in the shows, I don’t really see much of a contradiction, as he
his 100% a human being, and considering the location of Alpha Centauri, I don’t see
why Cochrane would not have been able to relocate there, becoming a genuine inhabitant of that
system. So that, to me, is not much of a conflict with what we see on screen.
Thanks for watching this video on the life of Cochrane. It’s not explained in canon
what he got up to after the events of Metamorphosis, but presumably he aged and died prior to TNG,
because by then, he was already being referred to in a historical context. Although he did
ask that Kirk not mention his discovery… in 2267… despite the fact Kirk would have
had to explain why he lost the VIP he was carrying and the episode literally ends with
McCoy asking what about the war we were supposed to stop before we got side-tracked and Kirk
being like, YOLO. …there are a lot of issues in that episode outside of lore ones… So
until the next video on Trek or some other sci-fi franchise, I’ve been Ric and I’ll
see you later. Goodbye!