Growing up I was told that The Motion Picture was based on a TOS episode, but I had never seen it before tonight. I can see why they picked this one, but I wish they had used it's pacing and not just its plot. This episode has a dalek, I mean V'ger, I mean nomad for a villain, although it is more of a dangerous god child than a villain. This episode features the second, "he's dead Jim," a mindmeld with an AI, and the second destruction of a computer by Kirk using nothing but paradox.
Changeling begins with the ship arriving at a populated system to check on some researchers, only to find the population of over 4 billion completely gone. The ship is suddenly hit with an energy weapon, "as strong as 90 photon torpedoes," traveling at warp 15. Apparently they changed the rules for how warp factor is calculated by the time I learned them, but at any rate the ship is in grave danger. Just as the shields are knocked down Kirk hails and this time they get a response. It is in some television writers idea of binary to start with, but after some data it speaks in English. The ship they are talking to is less than a meter in length so they agree to beam it aboard.
The probe is named Nomad and Spock quickly realizes it is at least partly a probe from earth launched hundreds of years ago, and that it thinks Kirk created it. While trying to work things out it kills and then heals Scotty and erases Uhura's memory, but don't worry, they can reeducate her (yeah, this is actually the plan, and by the end of the episode she is, "at college level"). Spock mindmelds with Nomad and learns that it was damaged and encountered an alien probe that it merged with. Their programming also merged and it took Nomads desire to look for life and mixed it with the alien probes desire to sterilize soil samples. This might be a problem.
Kirk accidentally reveals that he is not a machine and Nomad decides it doesn't have to be pushed around by a bag of guts any more. After killing at least 6 red shirts it makes its way to engineering. Kirk confronts it and convinces Nomad that it must eliminate all that are in error, and that it is in error. Scotty beams it off into space just before it detonates and Spock mourns the loss of such a logical being.
Segment of review: The idea of an earth probe merging with an alien probe is kinda silly, but once you get over that assumption this is a good episode. Nomad is a fairly cheesy prop that floats in just such a way that the top or bottom is always mysteriously out of frame, but there are some cool low angle camera shots that manage to make it imposing. The whole Uhura losing her memory but being fine thing still bothers me so it is:
6 out of 10
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