10 More Changes That Star Trek Hoped You Wouldn't Notice

Zefram Cochrane is perhaps the most famous scientist in Trek history. He invented Earth's first warp drive, which was detected by a passing Vulcan ship, leading to the official first contact between Humans and Vulcans.

He's remembered mostly for his appearance in Star Trek: First Contact, but we actually met Cochrane decades earlier, in the Original Series episode Metamorphosis. In this episode, it was revealed that at some point in his life, Cochrane chose to live on one of Earth's first extraterrestrial colonies in the Alpha Centauri system. At the age of 87, he realised that he was close to the end of his life, and chose to die among the stars. However, before he could meet his fate, Cochrane was saved by an energy being known as The Companion, who reversed his aging, made him immortal, and kept him company on the planet Gamma Canaris N, until the Enterprise found him in Metamorphosis, 150 years later.

Given that he was said to be 87 when he arrived on Gamma Canaris N, and waited 150 years before Metamorphosis—which was set in 2267—he must've been born in 2030, and arrived on Gamma Canaris N in 2117. Though, strangely, we saw in the first episode of Enterprise, Broken Bow, that he was still on Earth in the year 2119, suggesting that his 150-year stay on the planet was more of an estimate.

Now, his earliest birth year could be 2032 if we assume that he left Earth in 2119, but this would make him only 31 years old when he flew his first warp flight in 2063. No offence to James Cromwell, but he was 56 when First Contact was being filmed, and obviously appeared older than 31.

It's been suggested in the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the Pocket Books novel Federation, that Cochrane's older appearance was due to radiation poisoning from living in a post-World War III world. In reality, Brannon Braga (a co-writer of First Contact) has stated in a documentary featurette called The Legacy Of Zefram Cochrane, 'we decided to take a lot of liberty with the Original Series character', later adding 'we kind of ignored, to some degree, the Cochrane from The Original Series'. Apparently, this was the case when choosing Cochrane's age, but we still adore James Cromwell's portrayal of the character.