The Changeling

If the first Star Trek movie had merited much attention, then this episode likewise would have become famous as the source from which the movie’s plot was “borrowed.”

A derelict spacecraft floating around in the middle of nowhere turns out to be an immense amount of power packed into a sentient box approximately the size and shape of a Sharper Image air purifier. Once beamed aboard, the thing announces that its name is Nomad and its mission is to sterilize impurities out of superior life forms. This poses an immediate problem, because Nomad regards the Enterprise as a superior life form and its crew as an infestation of some kind.

But then it seems to recognize the name Kirk and becomes convinced that the captain is its creator. This buys the crew enough time to figure out that the thing is actually a bizarre crash-combination of two different spacecraft: a 20th century Earth probe designed by a scientist named Roykirk to seek out life in the universe and an agricultural drone designed to kill pests that infest crops.

Eventually it tumbles to the obvious conclusion that human beings are imperfect. And as its ultimate destination is its point of origin, the entire population of Earth is now threatened. Kirk makes a desperate gamble, pointing out to Nomad that its belief that he was its creator was in error and therefore Nomad itself is imperfect. Fortunately they manage to beam it back into space before its suicidal brain lock prompts it to blow itself up.

Episode rating:

Stardate: 3451.9

Episode type: Powerful alien

Written by: John Meredyth Lucas

Original air date: September 29, 1967

Who Mourns for Adonais? / Mirror, Mirror

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