The Companion's Plan

[T'Girl]

Is it possible that it was the Companion's plan from the start to join with Commissioner Hedford at the moment of death?

Zefram Cochrane wanted to be freed, so he told the Companion that he would die of loneliness, hoping that she would release him. Instead she brought four people, one of whom was a dying female.

Kirk and the super-friends discovered that the Companion is female and they believed that the Companion loves Cochrane.

The Companion was able to rejuvenate a 87 year old dying Cochrane and make him a healthy young man in his (apparent) mid-thirties, but when ask to save Commissioner Hedford, the Companion couldn't (or wouldn't).

However, after the Companion joins with Hedford, Hedford's body is perfectly health, the Sakuro's disease was gone. This suggests that the Companion was capable of removing the Sakuro's disease before, without join with her, but didn't want too.

Was the intent always that the Companion would join with the dying female, whoever that was?

.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I never thought of that. The Companion took Hedford's independent existence away in exchange for letting her live at all. What the Companion did for Cochrane clearly shows the power to undo bodily problems without merging into a single entity.

And the companion lost its immortality, so it was kind of a bad deal all around, except for the romance angle.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I never got the impression that the Companion was bringing specific people to the planet. Getting Hedford was just luck of the draw.

I could possibly buy that the Companion devised that plan after she became aware of Hedford's condition, though.

 

[FormerLurker]

The Companion may well have developed that plan due to Hedford's illness. Indeed, nothing of the real Hedford may even remain in the combined form, just the memories and emotional responses the Companion found once the Companion inhabited the body.Telling our heroes that Hedford and the Companion were combined might have been just a ruse to get them to leave her and Cochrane alone.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The Companion may well have developed that plan due to Hedford's illness. Indeed, nothing of the real Hedford may even remain in the combined form, just the memories and emotional responses the Companion found once the Companion inhabited the body.Telling our heroes that Hedford and the Companion were combined might have been just a ruse to get them to leave her and Cochrane alone.

You're re-framing it as a horror story, which is just what the more recent Treks would tend to do with the episode. If "Metamorphosis" were an episode of DS9, VOY, or ENT, I'll bet it wouldn't be such a gentle story of subtle pleasures. It would go for the jugular with a demonic possession angle, the better to craft an exciting, promotable episode trailer.

And that's not all bad, but something would be lost.

One spinoff episode I can think of that was on the gentle, subtle side was TNG "The Inner Light." But I don't recall that kind of tone showing up too much in the later spinoffs. Then again, they did 726 episodes, and I've basically forgotten 550 of them.

 

[Anwar]

Heck, DS9 basically retold "The Inner Light" as a darker horror story with "Hard Time".

 

[Timo]

It is quite a horror story as shot already. As discussed above, the Companion is a lying and scheming bastard who uses humans as toys. Taking its word for Hedford's "continuing survival" is folly.

I don't think the episode suffers from having that angle, though, but it does make for one of the darkest chapters in the careers of our protagonists. Hedford's lot is an unhappy one, with the "heroes" having no sympathy for her suffering and impending death, and no concern for her eventual fate in the hands of this perverse "fairy godmother".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Poltargyst]

Taking its word for Hedford's "continuing survival" is folly.

Except that that's clearly what the writers intended for us to know is the truth.

 

[Anwar]

Really, if you stop to question things in this episode it falls apart as a happy tale.

- This Companion can sustain Cochrane, but it can't heal the Commissioner (more likely, it just didn't want to).

- Kirk assumes that this entity MUST be in love with Cochrane merely because it is female. What would he have thought if it had a male voice?

- The Companion won't let them leave even though Kirk says the Commissioner will die, because it wants them to keep Cochrane company. More likely she'd already concocted her plan to possess her instead.

- Cochrane's been with the companion for over 100 years and yet was never able to pick up on how "she" was in love with him. Most likely, he knew but just wasn't interested in glowing light females.

- The Companion says she and the Commissioner have become one. But there are no signs of anything but the Companion's mind, at all. NOW Cochrane is fine with her when before he was so upset at the idea he stomped off.(?!)

- The Companion gave up her immortality and all her powers (as well as all the good she was doing for Cochrane!). This is really lose-lose for both seeing how Cochrane apparently wasn't interested in her personality, only difference is now she has an attractive exterior. Doesn't make Cochrane look that good.

And then it's all capped off with Kirk's somewhat sexist remark at the end.

 

[telerites]

Really, if you stop to question things in this episode it falls apart as a happy tale.

- This Companion can sustain Cochrane, but it can't heal the Commissioner (more likely, it just didn't want to).

- Kirk assumes that this entity MUST be in love with Cochrane merely because it is female. What would he have thought if it had a male voice?

- The Companion won't let them leave even though Kirk says the Commissioner will die, because it wants them to keep Cochrane company. More likely she'd already concocted her plan to possess her instead.

- Cochrane's been with the companion for over 100 years and yet was never able to pick up on how "she" was in love with him. Most likely, he knew but just wasn't interested in glowing light females.

- The Companion says she and the Commissioner have become one. But there are no signs of anything but the Companion's mind, at all. NOW Cochrane is fine with her when before he was so upset at the idea he stomped off.(?!)

- The Companion gave up her immortality and all her powers (as well as all the good she was doing for Cochrane!). This is really lose-lose for both seeing how Cochrane apparently wasn't interested in her personality, only difference is now she has an attractive exterior. Doesn't make Cochrane look that good.

And then it's all capped off with Kirk's somewhat sexist remark at the end.

Without looking at the script to refresh my memory but wasn't it Spock deduced the Companion was in love with Zephram?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Without looking at the script to refresh my memory but wasn't it Spock deduced the Companion was in love with Zephram?

IIRC Spock subtly planted the idea in Kirk's mind, but Kirk was the one who verbalized it.

TOS used this formula a lot. In The Voyage Home, Spock makes the point that humpback whales only existed in the Earth of the past, but it's Kirk who makes the final decision, and orders them to begin calculations for time warp.

 

[telerites]

Without looking at the script to refresh my memory but wasn't it Spock deduced the Companion was in love with Zephram?

IIRC Spock subtly planted the idea in Kirk's mind, but Kirk was the one who verbalized it.

TOS used this formula a lot. In The Voyage Home, Spock makes the point that humpback whales only existed in the Earth of the past, but it's Kirk who makes the final decision, and orders them to begin calculations for time warp.

Thanks. I looked at the script and it is Kirk in a conversation with McCoy. Spock does stats it along with McCoy in a conversation with Cochrane. And Kirk directly confronts the Companion about it.

My error and yy poor memory.

 

[Push The Button]

I still can't see Cromwell's "rock-n-roll drunk" Cochrane becoming Corbett's reserved and serene version.

But anyway, it always seemed to me that The Companion got away with stealing Hedford's body, plain and simple.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Without looking at the script to refresh my memory but wasn't it Spock deduced the Companion was in love with Zephram?

IIRC Spock subtly planted the idea in Kirk's mind, but Kirk was the one who verbalized it.

TOS used this formula a lot. In The Voyage Home, Spock makes the point that humpback whales only existed in the Earth of the past, but it's Kirk who makes the final decision, and orders them to begin calculations for time warp.

Spock does it in TWOK as well, when he prods Kirk to realize that Khan is flying through the nebula in a two-dimensional pattern.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Spock does it in TWOK as well, when he prods Kirk to realize that Khan is flying through the nebula in a two-dimensional pattern.

Another great example!

 

[Wingsley]

There's plenty that can be assumed and extrapolated from "Metamorphosis". If one looks for evil, one will likely find it. But one can consider other possibilities... One can simply take the episode at face value:

Cochrane and the Companion had some kind of intimate relationship before the Enterprise's shuttlecraft was captured. But this was an inter-species, non-verbal relationship.

If we take the Companion's word that "she" was able to rejuvenate and immortalize Cochrane, DOCTOR WHO-style, and that she had the ability to travel at warp speed, and that she obviously detected the shuttlecraft in deep space, intercepted it, captured it, and disabled it, then she must have formidable powers indeed. It raises the question: how much did she do to provide for Cochrane all those years? Was she responsible for providing a pro-human climate on that planetoid? Was she responsible for making the planetoid Class M in the first place?

If we are assuming that the Companion is a ghastly liar and manipulator, why wouldn't we assume that everything she said (or said through Cochrane) was also a lie? We assume that by possessing Commissioner Hedford, both Cochrane and the Companion/Hedford are surrendering their immortality. But could this also be a lie? She tells Cochrane that she cannot leave the planetoid or she will die. But if she is now a "normal" mortal anyway, why should her interaction with the planet matter? Would it not be logical to assume that the Companion offered Hedford immortality and youth for her and Cochrane in exchange for being cured? If Hedford were approaching the end of her life, she might choose to accept the offer.

When Cochrane left Alpha Centauri in the late 21st or early 22nd century, he was elderly, probably his partying days long behind him, and he may have been either divorced or may have lost his wife. The Companion probably discovered his spacecraft, understood his frame of mind and what he wanted, and, in a sense, gave it to him without a full verbal explanation. Cochrane didn't fully understand, but he got to live a new life (a little like what he was doing in Montana in the early 2060's, but without the post-war horror or the need to find a way to make money) so he likely said "WTF" and went along with it. It wasn't necessarily evil, it was a relationship that he didn't fully understand. Certainly wouldn't be the first time in history that happened.)

The Companion may have seen Hedford as a potential rival to start with. This would explain why she didn't just kill Kirk and company and take over her body from the get-go.

Think about it: what happened after Kirk and company left Cochrane and Hedford behind. Kirk reported to Starfleet Command that Hedford died at the crash site. End of story for Hedford. Then what happened to Cochrane and his newly human Companion? They probably lived happily ever after... forever... and why should Hedford object? She gets to live in a kind of secluded paradise, with no more worries, forever. She knows Kirk will never tell anyone.

Even if Cochrane and his Companion were not guaranteed immortality right away, there's no telling what she might be able to arrange given a human lifetime. Even if she lost her powers in the short-term, she likely has several decades to find a way to get them back. (And note she did not want to leave her home planet; clearly the source of her power.)

Why assume there some evil conspiracy at work here? Why assume that Hedford was somehow overruled? The episode is, at its heart, a kind of love story-meets-first contact story. The Companion's life is threatened whenever she leaves that planetoid. So she risked her life to abduct Kirk's shuttlecraft when Cochrane asked for human companionship. She brought it to him, and when the Federation crew tried to attack her, she retaliated (but did not kill anyone) and then relented. There was never any clear indication that the Companion was ever trying to kill anyone, except possibly in self-defense.

The Companion did not meddle in Hedford's life until after Kirk brought up that Hedford's life was in danger. This indicates that the Companion was unwilling to save Hedford's life as an unjoined individual because the Companion saw Hedford as a rival, not as a potential host.

The Companion behaved aggressively, but never out of apparent cruelty or malice. It acted on basic sentiments: love and survival. That is clearly how "Metamorphosis" was presented to its viewers.

 

[scotpens]

It is quite a horror story as shot already. As discussed above, the Companion is a lying and scheming bastard who uses humans as toys.

You mean she's a lying and scheming bitch.

 

[T'Girl]

The Companion said that if she left the planet (planetoid?) for more than a small number of days she would die. But would Hedford and her new healthy body also die, or just the Companion?

.

 

[Wingsley]

That's an interesting question.

Is "Hedford" still alive at the end of the story, or did she expire and wind up being "replaced" by the Companion?

NANCY: (standing in the doorway) Zefram Cochrane?

KIRK: Bones?

MCCOY: I don't understand it! She's not sick at all!

NANCY: We understand.

COCHRANE: It's her.

KIRK: What?

COCHRANE: Don't you understand? It's the Companion.

KIRK: Bones?

MCCOY: She's perfectly healthy! Heart like a hammer, respiration normal, blood pressure normal! This is medically impossible!

NANCY: We are here.

KIRK: We?

NANCY: Both of us. Those you knew as the Commissioner and the Companion. We are both here.

SPOCK: Companion, you do not have the power to create life.

NANCY: That is for the Maker of all things.

SPOCK: Commissioner Hedford was dying.

NANCY: That part of us was too weak to hold on. In a moment, there would have been no continuing. Now we're together.

SPOCK: Then you are both here, in the one body?

NANCY: We are one.

I say that Spock's line was purposefully inserted by either the writer or the show's personnel to avoid a religious furor.

Essentially, Companion seems incredibly powerful, powerful enough to make this planetoid pleasant for Cochrane, powerful enough to give him endless life, and powerful enough to do the same for Hedford, Kirk, Spock and McCoy if necessary. But that power has to come from somewhere, and it must be the planetoid. How the Companion taps in on this source is never clear. If we assume it is a natural phenomenon, that perhaps Companion naturally evolved in the planetoid's environment and is a product of it. Whatever she taps in on, it can allow her to bring down a space vessel at warp speed, and make a man live forever.

Now, if she left that planetoid, she would be isolated from her power source, natural or otherwise. Would Hedford's ailment return? Or would Hedford/Companion be especially vulnerable without access to the power source?

Either Hedford is dead and Companion possesses her body alone now, or Hedford chose to share her body with Companion in exchange for endless youth, health, life and dual companionship.

I say the romantic tone of the story makes it clear: both Hedford and Companion voluntarily share the body of "the woman" and will likely live forever (or a very, very, very long time) with Cochrane on that planetoid.

Following their lives in isolation would make an interesting spin-off story...

 

[Tracy Trek]

Was there not one of the novels (Federation, maybe?) that revisited these characters? I know, I know, the novels are not canon.