Episode of the Week : The Changeling

[Vandervecken]

...At least until "Day of the Dove" where the ability to beam people to locations inside the ship is established, prompting the audience to ask whether the reverse process is also possible.

Frankly, it's amazing that NOMAD can be transported at all, as it probably would possess advanced countermeasures and control techniques (at least on par with the abilities of the Cheronites from "Let That Be"). Yet the major dramatic point here is that NOMAD cannot be made to do anything against its will - but by talking it to the brink of suicide and beyond, Kirk also deprives it of an active will and therefore makes it possible to manhandle the machine monster.

It's funny that Archer also had adjustable yield torpedoes. It's only Kirk that doesn't have them.

Well, he must have, as so many other TOS episodes presume that much fewer than 90 of the torps would be sufficient to deal with starship-type opponents.

Hmm. Perhaps our heroes here are saying that NOMAD is shooting at them with "90 percent torps", that is, the extremely rarely used almost-full-yield version, and swallowing the keyword for brevity... Or possibly something that closely resembles the classic "model 90-0-4" or "ninety-oh-four" torpedoes.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo, I just replayed this. Spock says that their shields absorbed energy equivalent to 90 of our photon torpedoes; Sulu gasps out "90!" in pretty big surprise--nothing about this suggests to me that they were discussing some adjustable scale. And Sulu's reaction makes it plain this IS a crazy number, although in fact the Enterprise should have been destroyed. And it gets worse: Spock says they can survive just 3 more of such attacks. Really? Is that all?

The Enterprise with full shields can absorb the equivalent of 360 photon torpedoes. Whoa.

I also agree with Tafkats' assessment and also add 1 myself for sheer overall enjoyment, which I had with this ep, mostly due to Shatner and to a lesser extent Bones. Add in happy childhood/teenage memories of this ep and the Changeling is an 8 for me. The one thing I don't agree with folks on is the mind meld scene. I always thought it was cringeworthy, Nimoy talking in that stock nasal pseudocomputer voice, someone's idea of a robot voice box from a B flick (or maybe even Nimoy's idea). Made even less sensible when compared to NOMAD's actual voice!

Not Nimoy's finest hour for me.

 

[kirkfan]

^Spot on! No adjustable yield torpedoes there.

 

[Timo]

Thats' my point as well: no adjustable yield there, in this episode. But clearly adjustable yield across all of TOS, since torpedoes in other episodes behave very differently.

I wonder what the writer was thinking here. Sure, 90 sounds like an impressive number of hits to take, but what dramatic precedent would there be for a ship or other hero vehicle to taking 90 hits and surviving? It's not consistent with the recent naval wars (where a single torpedo hit would usually be fatal, and three or four hits from big guns would also sink the ship), or with more ancient ones (for a different reason: ninety cannonballs might be too little to really hurt Horatio Hornblower!). The audience would thus justly be confused, and would yearn to learn the all-new rules governing photon torpedo warfare. So the writer should have been thinking in terms of "rules of photorp fighting", and thinking hard. Was his thinking good?

Before "The Changeling", there were two other episodes that suggested rules. In "Arena", all the torpedoes Sulu could fire (an unknown number) did not make a difference against the Gorn. So 90 being too little to kill might be all right. Then there's "Errand of Mercy" where the Klingons in the teaser fire something looking like photon torpedoes, and half a dozen hits only cause "minor buckling". So that's consistent as well.

So it's actually not J.M. Lucas who gets the rules wrong, but the later writers of, say, "Journey to Babel" or "Elaan of Troyius"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kirkfan]

^That shows that TOS is not internally consistent.

 

[tafkats]

A torpedo's yield is defined by a very precise formula.

Y = (plot)/[(plot)x10^plotth]

 

[kirkfan]

A torpedo's yield is defined by a very precise formula.

Y = (plot)/[(plot)x10^plotth]

Sorry, plot?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

A torpedo's yield is defined by a very precise formula.

Y = (plot)/[(plot)x10^plotth]

Sorry, plot?

Plot, as in story. And plotth is the exponent, à la nth power.

He's saying that torpedo yield is a function of the story, in technobabble. [/nerd decoder ring]

 

[kirkfan]

A torpedo's yield is defined by a very precise formula.

Y = (plot)/[(plot)x10^plotth]

Sorry, plot?

Plot, as in story. And plotth is the exponent, à la nth power.

He's saying that torpedo yield is a function of the story, in technobabble. [/nerd decoder ring]

Ok, thanks.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Getting away from torpedoes for a moment, "The Changeling" is one of three episodes where Scotty got flung through the air for trying to help a woman. The first time, he was seriously injured by Apollo. The second time, he was killed.

The third time, in "The Lights of Zetar," he was just shaken up a little, probably due to Nomad having made structural improvements. Anybody else would have been killed.

In first run on NBC, two of those episodes ran back to back.

 

[Marsden]

No wonder he killed those women on Argelius. Uh oh!

 

[kirkfan]

Getting away from torpedoes for a moment, "The Changeling" is one of three episodes where Scotty got flung through the air for trying to help a woman. The first time, he was seriously injured by Apollo. The second time, he was killed.

The third time, in "The Lights of Zetar," he was just shaken up a little, probably due to Nomad having made structural improvements. Anybody else would have been killed.

In first run on NBC, two of those episodes ran back to back.

Scotty's worthy successor is O'Brien who got beat the crap out of more times than I can count...

 

[Grant]

Just a correct another poster..........

Wolf in the fold was "episode 36"

and Changeling was filmed right after as #37........

so the precedent of beaming something into space to kill/destroy it, had been set.

I'm not saying that in the "real world" it would have been interesting to vanquish a foe two weeks in a row the same way...

But "in universe", LOL, Kirk should have been like, "I'm two for two in solving dangerous threats with the transporter ploy!"

 

[kirkfan]

Just a correct another poster..........

Wolf in the fold was "episode 36"

and Changeling was filmed right after as #37........

so the precedent of beaming something into space to kill/destroy it, had been set.

I'm not saying that in the "real world" it would have been interesting to vanquish a foe two weeks in a row the same way...

But "in universe", LOL, Kirk should have been like, "I'm two for two in solving dangerous threats with the transporter ploy!"

People would have cried foul, over this.

 

[Grant]

Just a correct another poster..........

Wolf in the fold was "episode 36"

and Changeling was filmed right after as #37........

so the precedent of beaming something into space to kill/destroy it, had been set.

I'm not saying that in the "real world" it would have been interesting to vanquish a foe two weeks in a row the same way...

But "in universe", LOL, Kirk should have been like, "I'm two for two in solving dangerous threats with the transporter ploy!"

People would have cried foul, over this.

Of course, but they cried foul about Kirk talking computers to death and that was worse--because the idea that a computer would simply explode by Kirk berating is a lot more absurd than using the transporter as a weapon.

 

[kirkfan]

Just a correct another poster..........

Wolf in the fold was "episode 36"

and Changeling was filmed right after as #37........

so the precedent of beaming something into space to kill/destroy it, had been set.

I'm not saying that in the "real world" it would have been interesting to vanquish a foe two weeks in a row the same way...

But "in universe", LOL, Kirk should have been like, "I'm two for two in solving dangerous threats with the transporter ploy!"

People would have cried foul, over this.

Of course, but they cried foul about Kirk talking computers to death and that was worse--because the idea that a computer would simply explode by Kirk berating is a lot more absurd than using the transporter as a weapon.

Plus it would make it too easy. You can transport people hidden behind several meters of solid rock while you need to have someone in sight to hit them with phaser fire.

 

[Grant]

People would have cried foul, over this.

Of course, but they cried foul about Kirk talking computers to death and that was worse--because the idea that a computer would simply explode by Kirk berating is a lot more absurd than using the transporter as a weapon.

Plus it would make it too easy. You can transport people hidden behind several meters of solid rock while you need to have someone in sight to hit them with phaser fire.

Well my original point was that Nomad was at kirk's mercy while he thought kirk was his creator and Kirk had a great opportunity to just beam him into space--not that it become a routine tactic.

To allow Nomad to find who he was not and then having Kirk talk him to death ruins the episode for me.

 

[kirkfan]

Of course, but they cried foul about Kirk talking computers to death and that was worse--because the idea that a computer would simply explode by Kirk berating is a lot more absurd than using the transporter as a weapon.

Plus it would make it too easy. You can transport people hidden behind several meters of solid rock while you need to have someone in sight to hit them with phaser fire.

Well my original point was that Nomad was at kirk's mercy while he thought kirk was his creator and Kirk had a great opportunity to just beam him into space--not that it become a routine tactic.

To allow Nomad to find who he was not and then having Kirk talk him to death ruins the episode for me.

Kirk has always been kind of a show off.

 

[Maurice]

Just a correct another poster..........

Wolf in the fold was "episode 36"

and Changeling was filmed right after as #37........

That "poste" was me. The production order list I consulted was apparently incorrect.

Anyway, as I said, the simpler answer would have been to just have Nomad beam itself in/enter via an airlock, then there'd have been no option for transporter trickery until it went bonkers at the end.

 

[Timo]

The point presumably would be that Kirk might fool Nomad into volunteering to be transported - say, to begin the sterilization of yet another star system that "Roy"Kirk pointed out to it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kirkfan]

^The wide beam, maximum dispersion, "It's the only way to be sure".