It's a good thing the Enterprise corridors are circular. The waiting line can spiral around outside Noel's office. I just go to the back of the line as soon as my session is finished.
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NOMAD Refit
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Makes you wonder how Nomad became so powerful even with the repairs and merging with Tan-Ru? Even if the other had the ability to sterilize soil samples I doubt it would have had the power to attack akin to ninety photon torpedoes!!!So just how did the combining of their circuitry give it that energy?
JB
There seem to be some very powerful probes out there, strong enough to disable several ships and ionize a planet's oceans.
Why don't you just ask him? It's 2019, so Jackson Roykirk should still be kicking around somewhere.
We recently covered this: [URL="https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/production-order-group-viewing-2018.294100/page-53#post-12770630"]Production Order Group Viewing 2018[/URL]
Born in 1959. My old college roommate. Lives in Houston, now.
Born in 1959. My old college roommate. Lives in Houston, now.
I've since found out over the weekend strangely enough that Roykirk was director Marc Daniels! But somehow it doesn't look like the Daniels that I've seen pics of before?
JB
But maybe they were created that way? Nomad was designed to think for itself and seek out new life forms and had no offensive capabilities! The machine it evolved into did of course, just ask the survivors of the Malurian system, if there were any?
JB
Since no physical bit of Nomad looks like the picture of the original Nomad, we might well argue that nothing but the soul of the onboard AI survived the merger. What we see might well be Tan Ru and nothing but Tan Ru, packing its original alien weapons and shields.
It's just a bit odd that we never ran into the makers of Tan Ru. If it collided with (rammed? otherwise intercepted?) a primitive Earth probe, this probably happened fairly close to Earth. Did Tan Ru come from afar? But even this then suggests it had significant propulsive capabilities, and its makers might be flying around in ships likewise propelled, posing a major threat.
Then again, the very idea of berserkers that sterilize whole solar systems is that the makers don't need to leave home in order to make the galaxy a safer place for themselves.
Then again again, Nomad only seems to have scored one proper kill that we know of. Even the Doomsday Machine did much better in the time allotted. Is this because Tan Ru is in fact incredibly slow? Or is it picky with what it kills? Not proper berserker behavior, that latter one - the idea is to waste no time fighting dangerous adversaries when it's so much easier to just kill everybody wholesale before they manage to become dangerous. And then we have to decide why Tan Ru chose Maluria...
Timo Saloniemi
It's just a bit odd that we never ran into the makers of Tan Ru. If it collided with (rammed? otherwise intercepted?) a primitive Earth probe, this probably happened fairly close to Earth. Did Tan Ru come from afar? But even this then suggests it had significant propulsive capabilities, and its makers might be flying around in ships likewise propelled, posing a major threat.
Then again, the very idea of berserkers that sterilize whole solar systems is that the makers don't need to leave home in order to make the galaxy a safer place for themselves.
Then again again, Nomad only seems to have scored one proper kill that we know of. Even the Doomsday Machine did much better in the time allotted. Is this because Tan Ru is in fact incredibly slow? Or is it picky with what it kills? Not proper berserker behavior, that latter one - the idea is to waste no time fighting dangerous adversaries when it's so much easier to just kill everybody wholesale before they manage to become dangerous. And then we have to decide why Tan Ru chose Maluria...
Timo Saloniemi
It's Marc Daniels age 55; I am surprised that photos of him on the web and in my Star Trek books are near non-existent. The photo of him on the monitor is flipped to show a mirror version, so, that might contribute to his slightly "off" appearance. Fitting since he next directed "Mirror, Mirror"; was he foreshadowing? Also, don't let Scotty's dress uniform throw you off.I've since found out over the weekend strangely enough that Roykirk was director Marc Daniels! But somehow it doesn't look like the Daniels that I've seen pics of before?
JB
The Nomad cam was brilliant; makes Nomad feel very threatening. He directed 15 great episodes over all three seasons. A++
Either Nomad had been destroying planets outside of Federation space so the crew never got to hear of them or Nomad and Tan-Ru had only recently completed repairs! We don't know how long ago the two probes encountered each other after Nomad's damages in the meteor storm!
JB
JB
Thank you everyone for your input and observations!
"The Changeling" is one of my all time favorite episodes. I just can't stop laughing at the sheer glee Kirk expresses when he figures out how to finally get rid of the murderous beastie, NOMAD. Continually goading NOMAD until the poor thing is shaking uncontrollably with dissonance, its voice pitch rising ever higher in panicked realization that there is just no way out of its logical impasse. And the Captain's perfect timing in dispatching it to its doom, with a hand gesture to Scotty following a final reminder to go frack itself in consequence of its errors. He cut it close, but Kirk's instincts were more precise than any logical computation.
I suspect NOMAD didn't really wipe all of Uhura's memory, but merely disrupted it. McCoy and Chapel's training helped restore her neural pathways. It's interesting she showed high mathematical aptitude when her shipboard specialty seems to be the ship's switchboard and linguistics. It would make sense of her occasionally taking the Navigator's chair, however.
Security is just too trigger happy. Of course phasers aren't going to work! And it did provide some extra cash to the optical effects department. They must love vaporization episodes! More work, more money!
Considering its demonstration of deadly power, I wonder why they just didn't purge the pattern buffer when they first took NOMAD on board. It did allow itself to be transported, lowering whatever shields it used.
I really love Nimoy's professionalism. "TAN RU!!! TAN RU!!! TAN RU!!!"
As a kid I used to go overboard when it came to mimicking NOMAD's catchprase on the playground. "STERILIZE!!!!!" But then, who didn't?
"The Changeling" is one of my all time favorite episodes. I just can't stop laughing at the sheer glee Kirk expresses when he figures out how to finally get rid of the murderous beastie, NOMAD. Continually goading NOMAD until the poor thing is shaking uncontrollably with dissonance, its voice pitch rising ever higher in panicked realization that there is just no way out of its logical impasse. And the Captain's perfect timing in dispatching it to its doom, with a hand gesture to Scotty following a final reminder to go frack itself in consequence of its errors. He cut it close, but Kirk's instincts were more precise than any logical computation.
I suspect NOMAD didn't really wipe all of Uhura's memory, but merely disrupted it. McCoy and Chapel's training helped restore her neural pathways. It's interesting she showed high mathematical aptitude when her shipboard specialty seems to be the ship's switchboard and linguistics. It would make sense of her occasionally taking the Navigator's chair, however.
Security is just too trigger happy. Of course phasers aren't going to work! And it did provide some extra cash to the optical effects department. They must love vaporization episodes! More work, more money!
Considering its demonstration of deadly power, I wonder why they just didn't purge the pattern buffer when they first took NOMAD on board. It did allow itself to be transported, lowering whatever shields it used.
I really love Nimoy's professionalism. "TAN RU!!! TAN RU!!! TAN RU!!!"
As a kid I used to go overboard when it came to mimicking NOMAD's catchprase on the playground. "STERILIZE!!!!!" But then, who didn't?
Probably the kids in Great Britain mimicking the Daleks' catchphrase "EXTERMINATE!!!"
It was, after all the height of "Dalekmania" at that time. 
Probably the kids in Great Britain mimicking the Daleks' catchphrase "EXTERMINATE!!!"
That made me wonder if the sound of the voice when Nomad says "STERILIZE!!!!!" was intentionally meant to sound like a certain space menace from across the pond.
Seriously did anyone in the States watch Dr Who back then?
We in the colonies did of course. Probably it was far more popular than Star Trek.
As much as I would like that to be the case, more likely it was just random coincidence, no more intentional than the silver "android" from "Lost in Space" repeatedly shouting, "Crush! Kill! Destroy!" As Christopher noted when this was pondered a while ago, it's just a trope or cliche to have a robot loudly announcing its lethal intent. I suspect examples can be found within the matinee serials of the 30s, 40s and 50s like "Flash Gordon" and "Commando Cody".
I just love how NOMAD goes all Chipmunk with "STERILIZE!!!"
And "ERROR!!!"
And "ERROR!!!"
My first viewing of Doctor Who was reruns of Tom Baker, maybe in the 1990's, could be the 1980's? According to Wiki:
"For audiences in the United States, who saw the show only in syndication (mostly on PBS), Tom Baker was the incarnation of the Doctor who is the best known, since his episodes were the ones most frequently broadcast stateside."
That fits me perfectly, every weekday afternoon on WVIA Doctor Who was on. Mostly Tom Baker but the eventually showed Peter Davidson and then went back to Jon Pertwee. I never got the first 2 or 6 and 7.
Gary Seven didn't have a sonic screwdriver, either. Transmats, Transporters. Space travel. It's hard not to overlap.
Spock had some good lines, "Your logic was impeccable, Captain. We are in grave danger. "
It is possible that the original makers of Tan Ru were not life as we known it but life as we definitely don't know it. Possibly they lived in temperatures much higher or lower than Earth lifeforms & thus had completely different biochemestries than Earth lifeforms.
They might live on rogue planets in interstellar space and Nomad/Tan Ru might have only visited such planets and judged their lifeforms perfect or not until some strange quirk of fate led it to investigate the planets huddling close to a star, the one in the Malurian system. Thus the makers of Tan Ru might not interact much with lifeforms that live at our temperatures.
I have speculated that Tholians might live at temperatures much lower than Earth lifeforms, while other fans have speculated that Tholians live at temperatures much higher than Earth lifeforms. A Tholian representative was apparently in a room with humans and others according to "Homefront", but might have been wearing an environmental suit like Nadrek of Palain Seven. And "In a Mirror Darkly" described Tholians as living in very hot environments.
So possibly makers of Tan Ru might be Tholians or similar beings.
Possibly the makers of Tan Ru were cybernetic beings who had moved away from the planets full of organic lifeforms who had originally created them to regions more suitable for machines. Perhaps Nomad/Tan Ru only investigated such astronomical bodies, or space stations, or whatever, where machines lived but there were no organic lifeforms, and so judged all the beings it encountered to be perfect. Until chance circumstances led it to the Malurian system.
Thus the makers of Tan Ru might have been beings of the Machine Planet in TMP, or Borg, though since those are small universe type speculations perhaps the makers of Tan Ru might be merely similar to beings of the Machine Planet in TMP, or Borg.
If Tan Ru was built to be a doomsday weapon, perhaps the first beings it judged to be imperfect and sterilized were its creators, explaining why they were never encountered in any episode. Creating a doomsday weapon could be considered to be a very illogical and imperfect decision. Could they have been the creators of the Planet Eater in "The Doomsday machine" or maybe their opponents in the same war? Maybe, but that is also a small universe type idea.
Good idea.
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Their voices are similar...hmmm.
I doubt the makers of Tan-Ru were hostile beings. Only that their instructions for Tan and those of Nomad became mixed up in the repair job out in space!
JB
JB
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