2.9 — “Metamorphosis”
Plot: En route to the Enterprise, after picking up a diplomat needing medical care from Epsilon Canaris III, the shuttlecraft Galileo is pulled off course by a mysterious energy force in space. Spock says he’s never seen anything like it before, although it’s not so different from encounters the ship has had in “The Squire of Gothos,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Held by the force, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Commissioner Nancy Hedford, and the Galileo are marooned on a small, inhabitable planetoid. There, they meet the strange Mr. Cochrane, a young man from Earth who is out of place and unable–or unwilling–to give a sufficient account of himself. Incredibly, this turns out to be Zefram Cochrane, star of Star Trek: First Contact, and inventor of the warp drive, alive and well 150 years after his recorded death. What is he doing here, what is the strange entity he calls The Companion, and will Kirk and crew be stuck on this rock forever?
Thoughts: You never know what you’re going to find out there. This is a little like journeying to the dark side of the moon and finding Albert Einstein eating a sandwich.
“Metamorphosis” succeeds in having a distinct look and feel. I love stories where you can’t tell where they’re going. At the end of the teaser and the first act, it seems the story could still veer off in a hundred directions.
The planetoid is slightly bioluminescent, like Pandora. Good job with the graphics, matte painting, and special effects, enhanced, of course, by the team who worked on the remastered special effects.
Something about the dynamic in the shuttlecraft, with the imperious female authority figure making impossible demands of the hapless flight crew mid-crisis, gave me powerful déjà vu. I can’t quite place from where–perhaps Commr. Hedford reminds me of the dog-walking lady in A Fish Called Wanda? I’m sure Star Trek didn’t invent this dynamic, but It works nonetheless.
Here’s a beautiful piece of dialogue: “We’re on a thousand planets and spreading out. We cross fantastic distances and everything’s alive, Cochrane. Life everywhere. We estimate there are millions of planets with intelligent life. We haven’t begun to map them.”
We get a view of the burdens of command weighing on Kirk, making him think more like a soldier than a diplomat, and of him falling back on McCoy to remind him of his humanity, and Spock of his scientific curiosity. This feels like season one Kirk. I like these scenes. Shatner’s monologue about how we need obstacles to overcome in order to thrive is more affecting than the usual paean to human fallibility.
Most interesting (other than the first reference in Trek to a universal translator! Ah! A small effort to make sense of the peculiar rules of the Star Trek universe, where space has gravity, light speed is no constraint, English is a universal interspecies language, and the thoroughness of the colonization of space in a scant 300 years defies all practical limitations) is K, S, & M’s dialogue refuting Cochrane’s gut reaction that interspecies romance is disgusting, indecent and immoral. Instead, they say, there is no problem, if the relationship is emotionally satisfying, practical, and harmless. Differences? “You get used to those things.” Do I mistake myself, or is this an argument for acceptance of homosexuality (not to mention tolerance of things like interracial romance), disguised for mainstream television broadcast in the year 1967?
Cochrane’s line “I just sort of clear my mind and it comes” had me thinking that the episode was going to go in a more metaphysical/religious direction, with meditation (prayer?) being the key to give Cochrane access to a healing, encompassing and omnipotent protective force. They don’t quite go there, but there’s enough of a suggestion of this to add further dimension to the story. The story, after all, ends up being about the overriding psychic importance of love, which speaks to the elevation of spiritual needs over physical and intellectual ones. May I venture to suggest, however, that Cochrane and Nancy may well get bored over time, all by themselves, even with their love to sustain them? Although with Cochrane being an inventor, and Nancy being part-whatever, they may indeed find all manner of projects. If they have children, would they share Nancy’s disability, or could they leave the planet, if their parents are clever enough to cobble together the means? Failing that, perhaps K, S, or M will manage to visit again someday. I would want to.
The praise I have for this episode does not extend as far as approval of the scenes concerning the entity’s takeover of Commissioner Hedford. As depicted, I can’t see this as being consensual. In fact, it resembles more closely concepts like murder, kidnapping, and rape. The blithe manner in which this is treated perhaps doesn’t speak well of the writer’s (producer Gene L. Coon) view of women. These scenes could have been fixed if the Commissioner had died first (although that would still be creepy!), or perhaps if Hedford had had a relationship with the entity first, she could have plausibly agreed voluntarily to the symbiotic joining (which would have made the resulting relationship with Cochrane even more clearly a three-way). By the way, I love her dress.
“Metamorphosis” is interesting, but isn’t half as interesting as the Wikipedia page on metamorphosis that I read while searching for this episode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis). Insects, amphibians, and fish that abruptly transform their body structures after birth or hatching through rapid cell growth and differentiation? How science fiction is that?!
4.5 out of 5 lovers, not zookeepers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)
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