The Changeling

Yeah, lots of plot holes and cheesy special effects but this is one of my favorites, and it's entirely due to Shatner's restrained (for once) performance. He actually seems to be acting and responding to the crew (mainly Spock) like a normal human being without any of his typical over- the-top hamming it up. Well, with the exception of the ending where, sadly, the writers reverted back to the cutesy crap. I can't really blame Shatner for that, either. When given decent dialog in the rest of show, The Shat did alright in this one, making it one of the most watchable episodes.

And a shout-out to user verbusen for noticing Lt. Leslie in his review. After rewatching these episodes many times, you start picking up the small things in the background, and Lt. Leslie at the helm next to Sulu, as well as wearing a gold tunic (as opposed to his typical red) is unusual. What isn't unusual, of course, is that Leslie has no lines. It's worth noting that the actor who played Leslie, Eddie Paskey, made a point of actually reading the scripts beforehand so he knew when an anonymous red-shirt was going to get offed, and made a point of making himself scarce during those red-shirt casting calls.

"This episode obviously inspired the plot of the first Star Trek Movie where the mysterious and immensely powerful and dangerously destructive evil force is referred to as "V-ger" by the kidnapped and subsequently returned (and reprogrammed) female crewperson of the new and improved Enterprise."

Start Trek: The Motion Picture wasn't simply "inspired"by the Changeling. Roddenberry pretty much took the plot and characters of "The Changeling" tried to file the serial numbers off, and expand it into a feature film without any payment to the author of this script. Said author however wasn't sleeping, nor dead, and sued him over the attempted theft. You can pretty much do a direct mapping of the plot and characters from this episode to that film with Lt. Ilia taking the place of Uhura, but pretty much everything else lifted intact.

Season 2, episode 3. The Enterprise has encountered a powerful energy that has wiped out an entire solar system and all inhabitants. It holds the Enterprise and attacks... Kirk opens up communication with it and it agrees to beam aboard the ship. Kirk, McCoy and Spock head to the transporter room to me it. It is a probe that calls itself Nomad. When it hears others call the name Kirk it believes that Kirk is it's creator Roy Kirk. Kirk and Spock work together to find out more about this probe called Nomad. Nomad's programming is to destroy all biological imperfections - meaning all human and humanoid lifeforms. Kirk and crew must find a way to put an end to the highly destructive Nomad, there is one piece of hope since the "perfect" Nomad believes the "imperfect" Kirk is his creator.

Good episode that shows what could happen if thinking robots thinks they are a perfect creation and their imperfect creators must be destroyed. Machine vs Man.

8.5/10

Under attack from an old satellite, when it's on board demonstrates great insight, but the hybrid is mad, a crazy nomad, and it puts up a hell of a fight.

A bucket from the past that has evolved into a super thinking machine jeopardises the Enterprise and potentially all those back on planet Earth.

Enterprise encounters the deadly space probe Nomad.

This is an okay episode that has decent premise and some memorable scenes.

The plot is another fairly technophobic entry from the original series with similar themes and resolution to episodes such as 'Return of the Archons'. It is pretty good concept, but unfortunately the writers dedicate an entire episode to Kirk and crew interacting with Nomad in a number of either silly or uninteresting ways.

The same concept was done better (only slightly) in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as there is really only so much of a cylindrical machine floating about the Enterprise talking to people that you can watch before things start to feel a bit flat.

I like the visual design and the simple effects that bring Nomad to life (so to speak). The voice is very old fashioned sci-fi, but all part of the fun.

The best thing about the episode is that Uhura has something different and relatively cool to do for a change. It is a bit of stretch in terms of plausibility, but I like how it is done in a way that implies she is a very capable individual who can learn very quickly.

Most performances are solid, particularly Nichelle Nichols for a brief moment of good screen time.