The changeling (Star Trek: The Original Series)

On stellar date 3541.9, the Enterprise Federation spaceship under the command of James Tiberius Kirk arrives in the Malurian system and does not find any living creatures there, four billion aliens have disappeared without a trace. Soon, the ship undergoes a massive attack and can not oppose its weapons to a powerful enemy. The captain decides to make contact and sends a message to a small object in space in which he introduces and talks about the Enterprise’s peaceful mission. The attack stops, and an unidentified object is teleported to the starship.

To everyone’s surprise, an object of a cylindrical shape and a length of one meter is a space probe launched from the Earth in the early 2000s. The probe calls itself Nomad, and for some reason Kirk considers himself its creator. In a brawl on the bridge, Nomad kills Scotty and erases the memory of Uhura . However, very soon, on Kirk’s order, the probe revives Scott by looking at information about the human structure and medical data of the engineer. He cannot help Uhura, and she is being taught to read it again.

Spock uses the Vulcan mind-combining technique and learns from Nomad that he was created at the beginning of the 21st century by the scientist Jackson Roykirk. The probe was programmed to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, but there was a collision with a meteorite, communication with the Earth was lost, and memory blocks were damaged. Nomad drifted in interstellar space until he was met by Tan Ru - a probe of an alien civilization, probably more advanced, but also damaged. Tan Ru managed to integrate with Nomad and they became one, and Nomad’s program has changed, now he has to sterilize the planets from imperfect elements, such as people and other creatures. According to Spock, Tan Ru's program was to sterilize the planets for further colonization , but the two probe programs intertwined and, as a result, Nomad, possessing tremendous power, was able to destroy entire civilizations. Nomad destroys that life, which according to his logic is imperfect and capable of making mistakes, he considers himself to be perfection.

Kirk tells Nomad that he is not perfect and can be wrong, and proves it to him. The captain says that Nomad took him for his creator, although he is not. Since the probe should destroy the imperfect, he believes that he should self-destruct. He is teleported into outer space and there the probe explodes. Kirk is informed that Miss Uhura will graduate in a week and will be ready to join the service.

In the episode, the crew deals with a probe destroying civilization. A similar plot course was used in the film " Star Trek " 1979 ^[2] .

After Lieutenant Uhura loses memory after attacking the Nomad probe, she is re-taught the English language. Having forgotten some words in English, she goes into Swahili.

Zach Handlen from The AV Club rated B + for this episode and noted that the episode is similar to the 1979 movie. The critic wrote that the last scene in which Kirk says: “My son is a doctor” looks pretty funny ^[3] .

• The changeling on StarTrek.com
• The changeling in the Memory Alpha encyclopedia
• The changeling on the Internet Movie Database
• The changeling on TV.com
• “Changeling” (Eng.) Images before and after remastering on TrekMovie.com