33. The ChangelingFORMULA: The Return of the Archons + Charlie X
WHY WE LIKE IT: I LOVE Nomad! He's both dangerous AND funny.
WHY WE DON'T: Nomad is carried along on a string, but what really turns me off is the conversation that tells us what the title of the episode means.
REVIEW: Ok, I'll admit a huge bias here - Nomad is one of my favorite Trek creations. I know he's a little silly, especially when dragged along on a string (embarassingly obvious in the DVD format), but his look is credible, and his tone and dialogue are often repeated in my house. "Non sequitur" is, in fact, a favorite expression of mine. It's all a bit kitsch, but Nomad is also pretty creepy, effectively working as a monster. The "Nomad-cam", for example, that follows him around, creates some eerie visuals, and the mindmeld with Spock is chilling. There's also a lot of tension to be had when Nomad finds out his so-called creator is a biological unit.
Kirk finally gets to interact for an extended period with a computer he will lock into a logic loop and destroy, making this a better story than similar episodes like The Return of the Archons and A Taste of Armageddon.
Where the episode goes wrong is in the humor. The creators probably figured that Nomad was a little silly, so they might as well give the episode a lighter touch. Maybe, but 4 billion people had just been massacred, a fact not respected at the end when Kirk and company are yucking it up. The indecent treatment of Uhura is also deplorable, even if it leads to a cute moment. (I surmise that Nomad didn't really wipe her memory clean, since she's reeducated in a number of weeks, never loses her native tongue, and seems to remember who everyone is - by the next episode at least - anything more would be greatly sadistic to the character.)
The weakest speech in the episode is the one where the title is "plugged". I can't believe anything in the story could have made Kirk think of that legend, and it just seems like there was a need for explaining the title and/or giving a little more weight to the episode by dropping in a litterary/cultural reference. Bah. It all devolves into "it's space-happy!", which is among the worst dialogue written for Trek.
LESSON: The "e" is silent at the end of "blue". (I also learned a little latin!)
REWATCHABILITY - Medium/High: Medium for you, High for me. Although there are great flaws in this story, I still love the character of Nomad, and would watch this episode anytime I found it on. Somebody obviously thought it was a good enough idea to repeat it in The Motion Picture. Alas, it wasn't. ;-)
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