The Changeling, TOS 2
“The Changeling,” let’s face it, is just a more snappy and entertaining version of Star Trek I. My favorite moments in this episode is seeing the all-powerful space probe NOMAD (which in early scenes absorbes whole photon torpedoes and zaps the energy right back atchaa) dangling and bobbing through the set of the Enterprise on fishing wire. You can almost hear the offscreen cast giggling at this silver-painted cardboard essence of perfect cheepnis. Other great elements: Kirk (yet again) destroys a computer with logic. We know the computer is about to die when its voice gets all fast. Why would anyone program a computer to have its voice go fast when it is about to implode from over “does-not-compute”-ness? Also: hardcore sexism. NOMAD responds to Uhura’s love of singing with a brain scan and declares her to be a mass of conflicting impulses. Spock replies, “That unit is a woman.” I suppose, though, the sexism is reversed when it is implied that the now tabula rasa Uhura will be able to relearn everything she ever knew in just a few weeks. That’s some good studying! If you can’t enjoy this episode (where two different pairs of Redshirts get killed in the exact same way) then you’ve got no business watching Trek.
[...] This is a pretty dumb-ass episode. As I feel like we’ve seen before, a race has died off, but they set a computer to carry out the business of defending their planet. Time has moved on, but the computer’s gone a little nutty. Yeah, yeah. A couple cool bits of business that may keep you mildly interested. One is the funny dance move Sulu and McCoy have to do to protect Kirk from the evil space computer projection with the deadly touch (projection is a scantily clad woman, natch.) Two, we meet a Lt. Radha, an Indian woman complete with bindi on forehead. Lt. Radha is played by a woman with a very Indian-sounding name: Naomi Pollack. (Lt. Singh from the episode The Changeling was played by a Hawaiian.) Lastly, Mr. Spock, at the helm as Kirk is trapped on the planet below, seems to have taken his sassy pills this morning. Everything out of his mouth is a snappy answer to a stupid question. After the Enterprise shakes and Spock is thrown from the Captain’s Chair, Uhura asks “What happened?!” Spock, dusting himself off responds, “the occipital area of my head seems to have impacted with the arm of the chair.” You can almost hear the Leslie Neilson follow-up: “but that’s not important right now.” [...]
Pingback by Jordan Hoffman Dot Com » That Which Survives, TOS 3 — January 23, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
Wrong show for the comment above.
Comment by Sven Golly — July 18, 2012 @ 11:13 am
Some sillyness, I Admit. The end, though, is great… ‘My son, the doctor…’
Comment by Amron222 — March 9, 2013 @ 1:27 pm