It might be a bit unrealistic for audiences of today, or of most eras, to assume that the man who invented FTL travel would also end up actually doing FTL travel. Tsiolkovsky, Korolev, Goddard or von Braun never flew any rockets themselves, say.
But in the pocket universe that is "Metamorphosis", Cochrane "discovered the space warp". Perhaps he was a daredevil space traveler rather than a visionary researcher, and "merely" stumbled upon a phenomenon that allowed him to go FTL and perhaps end up at Alpha Centauri?
Of course, a lot of things that could be read into "Metamorphosis" are utter nonsense in the wider Trek context. A man mere century and a half from Kirk's past is not a plausible candidate for having opened up FTL travel for anybody but us stupid humans, say - he can't really have been behind the Klingon or Romulan ability to do warp speed, possibly centuries or even millennia before humans. But we need not read such things into the episode when nothing is explicit. Cochrane could be a great researcher who was forced by circumstances to do his own stunt flying - exactly as shown in the eventual movie. And he could still end up being the guy who went to Alpha Centauri. Perhaps first, although that's not a requirement: Lawrence wasn't the first to Arabia, or Scott to the South Pole (indeed, he's remembered exactly for not having been the first...).
But neither "Metamorphosis" nor ST:FC is the end-all of the Cochrane story. His life is taken for granted in the episode, and only a short key moment of it is described in the movie. The rest of his story remains to be told, although there need not be much to it, and the snippets we got in ENT were already entertaining enough!
Timo Saloniemi
Said in my best Spock voice!
