Title: The Changeling
Airdate: 9/29/1967
Plot Summary
The Enterprise is investigating a system that was once teeming with life, now dead. Before they can surmise what has happened, they are attacked. Nearing destruction, Kirk hails the attacker who immediately breaks off and offers to speak aboard. They beam on Nomad, a meter-long automated probe that is destroying all that is imperfect. It turns out to be a probe originally launched from Earth and is on its way to the launch point. There it will find another planet full of imperfect biological life and destroy it. Kirk must find a way to stop it, even though its power is beyond all of their technology.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk gets to do my favorite Kirk trope and this episode is probably the most tropey of them all: Kirk talks a computer into committing suicide. He also does a great job of logically arguing Nomad into oblivion but does make nearly a fatal mistake by admitting to Nomad he is a biological being. As for his logic, Spock didn’t think he had it in him.
Kirk also ends the episode on a humorous note which I always found kinda off. I imagined after the camera cut, the conversation would’ve continued:
Kirk: What a doctor he would’ve made. My son. The Doctor. Gets you right there.
Bones: Your son killed 4 billion people, Jim.
Kirk: ….
Logical
Spock speaks up, confirming that Kirk is Nomad’s creator, delaying the inevitable and probably saving the ship. He also gets the best, most misogynistic (but accurate) moment of the series.
Nomad: That unit (Uhura) is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.
Spock: That “unit”… is a woman.
Nomad: A mass of conflicting impulses.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Kirk and Spock don’t even try to argue, just give each other a glance that says “Well, he’s got us there.”
He’s Dead Jim
Bones is accused by Nomad of being irrational. Bones does much to prove him right, reacting and yelling at an obvious threat to the ship that could blow them up without breaking a sweat. Still, gotta love the balls on him.
He also gets a proper “He’s dead, Jim” when Scotty gets killed. Once Scotty is brought back, Bones angrily declares to Nomad, “A man is not just some biological unit you can patch together!” Well, clearly he IS.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu mentions something coming in at ultra-warp speeds which sounds like warp speeds, but ultra.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is absent in this one.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura gets mind wiped. Somehow they are able through organic learning get her back on her feet and working again within a couple of weeks. This is really the most unbelievable part of this episode, I think some more explanations of how she still had the knowledge but couldn’t access it would’ve saved that plot point. As it is though, it makes zero sense. Not that Nomad couldn’t have done that to her, but that it would take so little time to get her to herself again.
I mean really, what does it mean, “her brain was emptied?” As the episode wears on, we see her trying to learn how to read, but she reverts to her native Swahili? Did they take the time to teach her that first? It’s really a mishandled moment that serves only to show how dangerous Nomad is, both killing Scotty and wiping Uhura. But damn, that was clumsy.
Give me a Vulcan mind meld! Something!
My Wee Bairns
Scotty gets to fulfill his redshirt status and dies when he tries to grab Nomad. Nomad fixes him right back up though.
Canon Maker
Nomad is shown that we were sending up probes back in the 21st century still, which is true. But we still have yet to send up “Nomad.” Maybe we’re trying to avoid the 4 billion deaths?
Spock is shown to be able to mind-meld with a computer, something that stretches credibility. However, he sort-of kind-of did the same thing in Star Trek: The Motion Picture so I reluctantly classify it as canon.
Canon Breaker
Couldn’t really find anything to break canon in this one, unless you count the Warp speed issues I discuss down below.
Man It Feels Bad To Be a Red Shirt
Four actual redshirts die in The Changeling, thanks to Nomad. These don’t have names or are recurring characters so they stay dead. This really brings back up the average.
Technobabble
Spock says that Nomad’s first attack was the equivalent of 90 photon torpedoes which reduced the shields by 20%. These seem wildly out of kilter from other encounters and battles they’ve had. Not to mention how chasing Harry Mudd’s shitbox caused them to… All Right! All Right! I’ll let it go!
They also say that the shots Nomad fired are moving at Warp 15. This brings up an interesting point about Warp speeds, which in the TNG era are said to be maxed out at Warp 10. Once you hit Warp 10, you hit a barrier (I’m not going to even acknowledge Voyager’s Threshold.) There are several non-canon explanations for this but in general, it’s agreed that the Warp scale was redone by the TNG era.
So while Warp 1 was the same in both eras (lightspeed), Warp 2 is not 2x but lightspeed squared. Warp 3 is Lightspeed cubed and so on. I’m really oversimplifying the math but you get the idea.
I’m sure there’s a commenter readying his “Ackshullies” and it may have changed again since the last time I read about the discrepancies. But I’m a lazy man and don’t want to look it up. I’m sure there’s tons of other contradicting info on this but that’s become my head canon.
Nomad also increases engine efficiency 57% but it’s reversed. Still, I wonder if those improvements were studied and used later on in the newer ships.
I Know That Guy:
Believe it or not, The Changeling is a bottle episode so there aren’t any notable guest stars. In fact, we don’t even get Chekov. Vic Perrin provides the voice of Nomad, he was the voice of the Metrons back in Arena.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
“I Am Nomad.”
So I imagine when Roddenberry was starting the story for The Motion Picture, he probably thought “Let’s do Nomad again, but instead of real small, we’ll make him SUPER BIG!” Because this episode is basically the same thing. We even have Spock melding with the being. Nomad is an Earth probe and, much like V’ger, got merged with another machine. Both are looking for their creator and point of origin.
But The Motion Picture is a bit more thoughtful, a bit grander in its aspirations. Here, Nomad is basically an intergalactic Roomba, albeit a dangerous one. Just cleaning the garbage.
Funnily enough, the Enterprise episode Civilization mentions the “Malurians” which are the creators of Tan-Ru, the other machine that Nomad merged with. THAT episode was directed by Mike Vejar, very close to V’ger. Weird.
I do like how Kirk has to deal with this thing though, having to be careful how he speaks to it, trying to save lives as Nomad basically can’t be stopped with their technology. I also like he shows his fallibility, he makes mistakes.
I got to also give props to the pacing, there’s hardly a second wasted in this one. But I gotta take away a star how they keep leaving the thing alone to wander the ship, though, unlike the Alternative Factor, there wasn’t much they could do to stop it.
But I’ll also give The Changeling a star for the hilarious woman comment. Ladies, I’ve been married twice. You all are many things, but don’t even TRY to defend that many of you aren’t “a mass of conflicting impulses.”
A simple episode that manages to entertain me every time.
