Episode of the Week : The Changeling
- Thread starter Botany Bay
- Start date
This episode is completely absurd! The very notion that NOMAD was two probes that crashed together in ALL of the VOID of space is bad enough. But that it gained awareness as it repaired itself makes no sense, at all. Everything involving Uhura in this show was cringe-worthy, though I did like how Christine and Uhura's friendship is suggested. And Kirk's lawyer arguments with the probe to get it to burn itself out were laughable. Episode Rank: zero.
This episode is a mixture of good and bad. The mind-meld scene, Spock's explanation that follows, and scene of Kirk delivering the logic bomb are the highlights. Uhura getting re-educated is among the unqualified low points of the whole series. I can't give an episode with the re-education scene a pass, so it tops out at a five, on the nerdy strength of the three scenes I mentioned at top.
I've said this before--the episode works fine for 25 minutes.
Nomad is hugely destructive, has killed whole worlds, easily outmatches the Enterprise, etc.
kirk's one huge advantage is that Nomad thinks he is the creator.
So what does kirk do?---dicks around until, what else, nomad finds out kirk is not his creator--thus imperiling the Earth and pretty much the whole galaxy.
As soon as Kirk has Nomad aboard the ship and that Nomad thinks he is following Kirk's plan for him---
he simply should have said, "You are doing a wonderful job Nomad, you have exceeded my expectations, I want you to continue your mission, we will beam you back into space and you will proceed."
Then simply beam Nomad into a billion particles as they did with Redjac.
I get the whole "the mission is to learn stuff", but learning it's exact history was not more important than making sure he killed no more worlds.
Nomad is hugely destructive, has killed whole worlds, easily outmatches the Enterprise, etc.
kirk's one huge advantage is that Nomad thinks he is the creator.
So what does kirk do?---dicks around until, what else, nomad finds out kirk is not his creator--thus imperiling the Earth and pretty much the whole galaxy.
As soon as Kirk has Nomad aboard the ship and that Nomad thinks he is following Kirk's plan for him---
he simply should have said, "You are doing a wonderful job Nomad, you have exceeded my expectations, I want you to continue your mission, we will beam you back into space and you will proceed."
Then simply beam Nomad into a billion particles as they did with Redjac.
I get the whole "the mission is to learn stuff", but learning it's exact history was not more important than making sure he killed no more worlds.
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I dont believe they crashed into each other. I believe Nomad was damaged in a collision and repaired by the other that merged with it. Fun episode if you dont think about it too much just enjoy the ride ? Maybe the "other" had a biological element to it that would allow a mind meld ?
Funny, this poll is actually showing at the top of a resurrected thread from a few years ago...
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=32744
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=32744
Yeah, unfortunately that could be indicative of a mild case of database corruption.
An interesting thought experiment, and at its core, good science fiction.
Marred primarily by its casual sexism ("That unit is a woman." "A mass of conflicting impulses"), by the silliness of Nomad itself (its shrill panic attack sounds like a Dalek shrieking "Exterminate! Exterminate!"), and by the hamhanded "Kirk logics a computer into killing itself" treatment.
Good idea, interesting plot, sometimes silly execution. I'd say a 6.
Marred primarily by its casual sexism ("That unit is a woman." "A mass of conflicting impulses"), by the silliness of Nomad itself (its shrill panic attack sounds like a Dalek shrieking "Exterminate! Exterminate!"), and by the hamhanded "Kirk logics a computer into killing itself" treatment.
Good idea, interesting plot, sometimes silly execution. I'd say a 6.
Actually, that's rather nicely excused in the dialogue. Nomad (the original probe) was specifically intended to search for intelligence; if we assume Tan Ru possessed and demonstrated it, obviously Nomad would home in on Tan Ru the first chance it got!
We can also assume Tan Ru was less primitive than Nomad. Merging with things it encounters might well have been not merely within its capabilities, but part of its very agenda (of which "sterilizing rock samples" would be but a small and misunderstood part).
Personally, I visualize Nomad flying into a cloud of nanites called Tan Ru, and being thoroughly mutilated, a tiny central core of its original (possibly multi-hundred-meter) frame remaining but now teeming with futuristic gadgets from the Tan Ru cloud.
I could even see a story of heroism there: Tan Ru travels through the void hoping to exterminate all competition to its creators, and shanghais innocent probes to its cause, converting them to further sterilization machines. Nomad falls victim and begins a career of berserking but, much like Locutus, fights back enough to allow its creators and comrades to overcome the reprogramming and open the door for the heroic suicide.
Apart from that, ditto with tafkats, but resulting in a 7.
Timo Saloniemi
Even though the Poll says it closes March 5- when I vote it says its now closed!
No matter- I give "The Changeling" a 10!
Totally entertaining, Shatner & Nimoy were excellent in it, Nomad was a little scary when I was little, Nomad zapping Scotty- the stuntman was teriffic, the whole Uhura storyline was rediculous but neat at the same time, Nomad flying with the fishing line, Nomad considering Jackson Roy Kirk.....just an entertaining hour.
I like the fadeout in the transporter room as Shatner was going off about food to the camera crew, that is seen in the famous blooper reels.
One of my favorite Season 2 episodes!
No matter- I give "The Changeling" a 10!
Totally entertaining, Shatner & Nimoy were excellent in it, Nomad was a little scary when I was little, Nomad zapping Scotty- the stuntman was teriffic, the whole Uhura storyline was rediculous but neat at the same time, Nomad flying with the fishing line, Nomad considering Jackson Roy Kirk.....just an entertaining hour.
I like the fadeout in the transporter room as Shatner was going off about food to the camera crew, that is seen in the famous blooper reels.
One of my favorite Season 2 episodes!
The two probes would never collide by chance, but one could have detected the other and turned to intercept it. And then they collided because the signals each was emitting fouled up the other's navigation protocols.
The repair is all about some impressive feat that Tan Ru was capable of.
And I don't think NOMAD had awareness, so that's not a problem.
That said, I don't rate this episode very highly. It's an uninspired one they ground out on the assembly line. It has a lot of faults.
It won't let me vote! I must have forgot to register.
I agree with your assessments, but I vote 2.
This is season 2's Alternative Factor.
It's bad but the actors put so much effort into it it's hard to completely hate it.
Nimoy is so good in that mind meld scene it's easy to forget he's playing it with a prop.
But, one of my chief complaints that no one has mentioned yet, but the whole, it's the strength of 90 of our torpedoes and we can take it but it absorbs 1 (!) of ours and it's frikkin amazing that it's fine. Does that sound any bit reasonable? It's crazy to me. The Uhura scene, the killing and repairing Scotty, but when it kills the four Security it doesn't put them back together, he vapes them. Duh. I'm sounding too much like bitching so I'm going to stop.
That would have been better, or just leave it in the buffer like the Klingons in Day of the Dove, but yours is better.
I agree with your assessments, but I vote 2.
This is season 2's Alternative Factor.
It's bad but the actors put so much effort into it it's hard to completely hate it.
Nimoy is so good in that mind meld scene it's easy to forget he's playing it with a prop.
But, one of my chief complaints that no one has mentioned yet, but the whole, it's the strength of 90 of our torpedoes and we can take it but it absorbs 1 (!) of ours and it's frikkin amazing that it's fine. Does that sound any bit reasonable? It's crazy to me. The Uhura scene, the killing and repairing Scotty, but when it kills the four Security it doesn't put them back together, he vapes them. Duh. I'm sounding too much like bitching so I'm going to stop.
That would have been better, or just leave it in the buffer like the Klingons in Day of the Dove, but yours is better.
I think the logic was that the Enterprise deflected and withstood Nomad's blast (which I admit 90 sounds like it too many) BUT
that Nomad ABSORBED the Enterprises's torpedo.
That is.....
sucked in the energy into itself. Kirk says--- "Absorbed??!!"
So if I'm wearing a suit of armor and I get shot and it deflects the bullet--that's seems reasonable, but if my suit of armor absorbs the bullet--that would seem amazing.
Indeed! Kudos and star stickers to Grant.
The fundamentally annoying thing about all that is that "photon torpedo" is clearly a unit of measure for our heroes here. This undermines all efforts to refer to "adjustable yield", a feature at least the TNG-era torps assuredly have and one that nicely excuses a great many seeming inconsistencies.
Or is Spock defining "our photon torpedoes" on basis of the yield Kirk selected for his one projectile intended to deal with this meter-long object? That would make the figures tally: Kirk wouldn't want to waste an antimatter charge sized to gut a Klingon battle cruiser on a target this small, and the charge he would choose might be needed five-times-90-fold to collapse the shields of a starship.
The big problem with that is that Kirk only learns of the nature and size of his opponent well after the "90 of our photon torpedoes" incident...
Timo Saloniemi
The fundamentally annoying thing about all that is that "photon torpedo" is clearly a unit of measure for our heroes here. This undermines all efforts to refer to "adjustable yield", a feature at least the TNG-era torps assuredly have and one that nicely excuses a great many seeming inconsistencies.
Or is Spock defining "our photon torpedoes" on basis of the yield Kirk selected for his one projectile intended to deal with this meter-long object? That would make the figures tally: Kirk wouldn't want to waste an antimatter charge sized to gut a Klingon battle cruiser on a target this small, and the charge he would choose might be needed five-times-90-fold to collapse the shields of a starship.
The big problem with that is that Kirk only learns of the nature and size of his opponent well after the "90 of our photon torpedoes" incident...
Timo Saloniemi
As to beaming Nomad out into scatter-land, "The Changeling" was made before "Wolf In the Fold", so that idea probably hadn't been invented, yet, by the show. Likewise for the holding the pattern in dematerialized state as per "Day of the Dove". As such, it's kind of unfair to critique this episode on those particular points.
Now, even assuming the writer came up with the idea of using the transporter to annihilate Nomad, it could easily have been avoided with by having Nomad beam itself in and then refuse to leave, or just come in through an airlock.
Now, even assuming the writer came up with the idea of using the transporter to annihilate Nomad, it could easily have been avoided with by having Nomad beam itself in and then refuse to leave, or just come in through an airlock.
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...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.
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
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.
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
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