The Changeling

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

"The Changeling" (Sept. 29, 1967) Old TV Guide synopsis: 'Kirk encounters a sophisticated killer, a talking metallic cylinder programmed to destroy life forms that don't meet its mechanical standards of perfection.' An old earth probe called 'Nomad' (voiced by Vic Perrin) is damaged in deep space, merging with an alien probe to follow a new directive that results in the loss of billions of lives across the galaxy. The Enterprise narrowly avoids destruction by its response to Captain Kirk, mistaking him for its creator, Jackson Roykirk, and revealing itself to be no larger than one meter in diameter. Its inability to understand human traits finds Scotty killed and Uhura's memory erased just for singing to herself; while the former is easily restored to life by Nomad, Uhura must become reeducated in Sickbay until she can finally return to her post. A Vulcan mind meld spells out how Nomad accumulated such devastating power, its mission to destroy 'imperfect' life forms putting Kirk in the position of having it focus upon its own shortcomings before it reaches the planet Earth. This was the prototype for the 1979 TREK feature film, but far more compact and suspenseful in an hour long format.

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.

"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.

Classic Trek aficionados often pan the Third Season of Classic Trek as being the worst of the worst, and specifically they assign "Spock's Brain" as being the absolute worst Star Trek episode ever.

I disagree. I label "The Changeling" as the worst, and not because it was used as the basis for the first Star Trek feature film back in the late 70s.

No.

I just can't stand the execution of this story. The story concept is intriguing enough, but the interpersonal interaction with the mechanical antagonist and Enterprise crew, to me at least, is nearly laughable. If I'm watching classic Trek, and this thing happens to be on the DVD set I've got in the player, then I may keep it on in the background, but it's really painful to watch at times.

To me this episode is the poster boy for people to point at who think Star Trek is stupid. And you know what? I'd be hard pressed to deny them that claim after watching this particular installment.

I just don't know what went wrong here. For all the money that they had to spend on this episode, was this really the best the creative team could come up with? One is reminded of "Red Dwarf's" props department, and the Holly-Hop drive prop. Yeah, it's that bad.

Shatner and gang give us Kirk and crew to outwit a schizophrenic robot. It's a little cliché in that regard, which just adds another nail in the coffin for this episode, but it's not really the defining moment as some may think.

Not a worthy installment of the franchise, if somewhat interesting. Good acting (save for M-5), poor production values (again, M-5), and a lack of vision on how to properly present the story.

Take it for what it's worth.