The Changeling (***)
The Enterprise encounters the ancient Earth probe Nomad, which is now a super-powerful death machine on the quest for revenge, or something. It has destroyed entire civilisations, and it would have destroyed Earth too if not for a chance encounter with a man who has a similar surname to its creator. For Nomad is not Nomad any more, it’s a Frankenstein probe, a combination of the peaceful exploratory Earth probe, and a probe built by an unknown alien civilisation who felt that their soil sampling device needed super torpedoes that could travel at ultra-warp speeds. So Kirk decides to beam Nomad on the Enterprise so that hijinks can ensue.
The first of those hijinks is the murder of Scotty. He gets zapped dead by a powerful energy beam, just like Welshy, and Northern Irishy before him. But he gets brought back to life, so no harm done. Uhura’s not so lucky, she loses all her memories and has to endure an entire week of schooling to become a functioning adult again. Still, she was luckier than the redshirts who got vaporised, or that entire civilisation of billions of people who were destroyed by Nomad. But the important thing is that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are unharmed by events, which is why they’re able to make jokes at the end.
The episode has some interesting ideas, the concept of an old Earth probe becoming a powerful threat following an alien encounter is a good one, although not so much that it needed to be redone later. And Nomad is surprisingly believable as a character considering it’s a floating box with blinking lights. That being said, there’s a lot of silliness in this episode that it could do without. But at least it didn’t take over two fucking hours to tell the story, that’s kind of a plus.
The Enterprise encounters the ancient Earth probe Nomad, which is now a super-powerful death machine on the quest for revenge, or something. It has destroyed entire civilisations, and it would have destroyed Earth too if not for a chance encounter with a man who has a similar surname to its creator. For Nomad is not Nomad any more, it’s a Frankenstein probe, a combination of the peaceful exploratory Earth probe, and a probe built by an unknown alien civilisation who felt that their soil sampling device needed super torpedoes that could travel at ultra-warp speeds. So Kirk decides to beam Nomad on the Enterprise so that hijinks can ensue.
The first of those hijinks is the murder of Scotty. He gets zapped dead by a powerful energy beam, just like Welshy, and Northern Irishy before him. But he gets brought back to life, so no harm done. Uhura’s not so lucky, she loses all her memories and has to endure an entire week of schooling to become a functioning adult again. Still, she was luckier than the redshirts who got vaporised, or that entire civilisation of billions of people who were destroyed by Nomad. But the important thing is that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are unharmed by events, which is why they’re able to make jokes at the end.
The episode has some interesting ideas, the concept of an old Earth probe becoming a powerful threat following an alien encounter is a good one, although not so much that it needed to be redone later. And Nomad is surprisingly believable as a character considering it’s a floating box with blinking lights. That being said, there’s a lot of silliness in this episode that it could do without. But at least it didn’t take over two fucking hours to tell the story, that’s kind of a plus.
