Stardate: 3541.9
Synopsis: As soon as the Enterprise discovers that 4 billion Malurains have been killed, a mysterious force attacks it. A small robot named NOMAD is behind the attack and, once it comes on board, mistakes Kirk for its creator, Jackson Roykirk. What we uncover is that NOMAD was a probe sent from Earth centuries ago to discover new life, but after a debilitating collision with a meteorite, took the form of The Other it encountered, and now seeks to sterilize all imperfect life forms - including the entire Enterprise crew and, eventually, Earth itself. Ultimately, Kirk confuses NOMAD describing how it itself is imperfect and that it must sterilize itself - leading to NOMAD freaking out and exploding after being launched into deep space.
Review: Despite NOMAD being a lame boxy non-futuristic robot, a few plot elements here really stick in your head. The writers could have taken the predictable Terminator-style route of an artificial intelligence becoming self-aware and murdering its human creators, but instead NOMAD somehow merged with a second probe, this one of alien origin, and that is the "Changeling" being referenced in ancient mythology - a foreign being taking the face of a human child. Very cool stuff.
Whoever knew that Spock could perform a mindmeld on a computer? My immediate question is, while their "minds" were merged as one, couldn't the computer upload, essentially, a sort of self-propagating recursive virus that would destroy the Vulcan's mind? Like I said, "COOOOOL!".
Even the episode's final punchline seemed to come out of the unexpected nowhere - Kirk referring to NOMAD as "my son, the Doctor" - was funnier than usual. There's a lot here that will have me rethinking this episode for a while.
Review: 4 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment