Zefram Cochrane was the man behind Star Trek's revolutionary warp drive technology, but despite being born in 2030, he could still be alive in the far future. Cochrane is best known from his appearance in Star Trek: First Contact, which depicted the Borg Collective's attempts to go back in time and sabotage his first warp flight. Played by James Cromwell, Cochrane was a hard drinking, easy living guy who not only broke the warp barrier, but made First Contact with alien life.
James Cromwell would briefly reprise the role in both Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Lower Decks, but he wasn't the first actor to play the historic figure in canon. Glenn Corbett previously played Cochrane in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Metamorphosis", which was set 204 years after the flight depicted in First Contact. This encounter between Cochrane and Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) created the possibility that the inventor of warp drive is still very much alive in Star Trek canon.
Is Zefram Cochrane Still Alive In Star Trek?
In "Metamorphosis", Cochrane was discovered alive and well on an asteroid in the Gamma Carnis region, watched over by an entity known as the Companion. Rejuvenated and looking "not a day over 35", Cochrane helped the main Star Trek: The Original Series trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy attempt to escape the asteroid to save the life of the terminally ill Commissioner Nancy Hedford (Elinor Donahue). When they were unable to escape the asteroid, Nancy Hedford and the Companion instead merged, curing her terminal illness and providing the entity with a means to fulfill its desire for a physical connection with Cochrane.
After the Companion merged with Hedford, both she and Cochrane were able to live out an ordinary Human lifespan on the asteroid. He also requested that Kirk not disclose the fact that Cochrane had been found alive and well in the Gamma Carnis region. Cut off from Earth and Starfleet, he presumably no longer lived the life of hard boozing that he'd enjoyed in Bozeman, Montana. However, Cochrane would presumably have still passed away at some point after his 87th birthday, which would date the rejuvenated Cochrane's death to some time after the year 2319, three years before Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) first applied to Starfleet Academy.
Zefram Cochrane Has A Strange Star Trek Story
In Star Trek's 24th century, Zefram Cochrane has a First Contact theme park, where he's immortalized as both a holographic guide and a bronze statue. However, the story between the first warp flight and Star Trek: Lower Decks' theme park visit is very strange indeed. After settling into the role that history had chosen for him, Cochrane continued his warp drive experiments, opening the Warp Five Complex which would ultimately lead to the construction of the Enterprise NX-01. Cochrane was also a friend and colleague of Henry Archer (Mark Moses), father to Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) in Star Trek: Enterprise.
Details on what Cochrane did next are hazy, but he was visibly older when briefly seen in the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot. At some point, he moved to the Alpha Centauri colony, where he lived until his decision to embark on his final interstellar voyage. When his shuttle drifted on to the asteroid overseen by the Companion, the entity kept him young and alive for 150 years until the arrival of the Enterprise trio. Although Cochrane is likely dead in Star Trek's 24th and 25th centuries, his time with the Companion and Nancy Hedford was an incredible final interstellar adventure for the man who made it all possible to begin with.