Nomad, an intelligent, deadly, and seemly indestructible space probe, comes on board the Enterprise. It's objective is to destroy any imperfect life forms (which pretty much means all life forms). The only thing that buys the Enterprise crew time before Nomad kills them all is that Nomad erroneously thinks Kirk is its inventor, but that stroke of luck might not last forever.
This episode is so sad, because there is a lot of good material here that is inexplicably wasted through needlessly bad script decisions.
The good: Nomad is genuinely menacing. You can sense Kirk and his crew are terrified, watching what they say and do because at any moment this unpredictable machine could effortlessly kill them all. The episode manages to create that real tension, and that real feeling the crew is walking a razor's edge.
But such an effective atmosphere of fear, which could have supported a great episode, is ruined by some terrible additions. Lt. Uhura is drained of her knowledge and has to be re-educated, and that whole scene is embarrassing and drags down the episode. And it was not necessary. Why was it put in there at all? Then Spock does a mind meld with the robot and provides another embarrassing, silly scene. Once again, it was not necessary: there were other ways to convey the admittedly fascinating idea of two robots merging in the depths of space.
Then four red shirts die in a contrived way: Kirk just sends them to guard Nomad, they inexplicably shoot at it, and all die. Admittedly it helps establish that Nomad does not kid around, and is lethal, but it also was contrived. Nomad's lethality could have been communicated without the need for anybody, especially Kirk, to do anything stupid. Nomad could have simply killed somebody for making a routine mistake.
Finally, and worst of all, the episode, filled with fear and death, ends with a lame joke, as if all the lost lives move no one. This "lame joke ending" approach almost tanked "The Galileo Seven" episode, but here it puts the last nail in the coffin of "The Changeling." Star Trek has lots of good episodes. "The Changeling" is one of the worst, and the saddest part is it could easily have avoided that.
This episode is so sad, because there is a lot of good material here that is inexplicably wasted through needlessly bad script decisions.
The good: Nomad is genuinely menacing. You can sense Kirk and his crew are terrified, watching what they say and do because at any moment this unpredictable machine could effortlessly kill them all. The episode manages to create that real tension, and that real feeling the crew is walking a razor's edge.
But such an effective atmosphere of fear, which could have supported a great episode, is ruined by some terrible additions. Lt. Uhura is drained of her knowledge and has to be re-educated, and that whole scene is embarrassing and drags down the episode. And it was not necessary. Why was it put in there at all? Then Spock does a mind meld with the robot and provides another embarrassing, silly scene. Once again, it was not necessary: there were other ways to convey the admittedly fascinating idea of two robots merging in the depths of space.
Then four red shirts die in a contrived way: Kirk just sends them to guard Nomad, they inexplicably shoot at it, and all die. Admittedly it helps establish that Nomad does not kid around, and is lethal, but it also was contrived. Nomad's lethality could have been communicated without the need for anybody, especially Kirk, to do anything stupid. Nomad could have simply killed somebody for making a routine mistake.
Finally, and worst of all, the episode, filled with fear and death, ends with a lame joke, as if all the lost lives move no one. This "lame joke ending" approach almost tanked "The Galileo Seven" episode, but here it puts the last nail in the coffin of "The Changeling." Star Trek has lots of good episodes. "The Changeling" is one of the worst, and the saddest part is it could easily have avoided that.