Tuesday 17 June 2008

Star Trek: TOS 2.8 - The Changeling

Review 36 - Episode 37

The One that's a bit like The Motion Picture

Tricky one this. Two or a Three? In many places it's terrible and quite boring. In other's, funny and enthralling. Bit like TMP then. What's startling to me is that this is as much a dress rehearsal for TMP as Balance of terror/Spacer Seed is for Wrath of Khan. The innocent probe sent out, becomes altered, and comes back ridiculously powerful and looking for the creator.

Right, confession time. I've had a couple of wines and Euro 2008 is intruding on my trek watching, so this might be a wee bit random. Disclaimer aside lets proceed.

There were strange references here, Kirk calling Sulu navigator and Spock barking out observations like early season 1. The 2nd half was much warmer and I suspect rewriting here, but it jars.

So the Enterprise is nearly destroyed by a robot who resembles a dustbin and beams it aboard. It's powers are frankly ridiculous including wiping out a solar system and resurrecting the dead! Kirk talks it to death and we're all right.

Kirk has some good scenes with the crew and talking to Nomad. The problem is that Nomad looks so fucking ridiculous that it's hard to take seriously rather than a god like being who can wipe out solar systems.

Spock does a mind meld with it which he pulls off well, but I'm very suspect of it working with a computer. Bones is his usual irritable self, but slightly unprofessional in goading Nomad and Chapel is sporting a Rand hair-do.

The ancillary cast have a few good scenes though. Scotty is KILLED and gets brought back to life and he's back in engineering the same day!! Uhura is caught singing and has her BRAIN wiped and somehow retrains English and all her starship skills in week? WTF? And poor Sulu is relegated to driver role.

Nah, you know what. This is a two. It's average trek without any brilliant storyline threads to save the day. And Nomad's power level are stupid. I wouldn't watch this again, but it's worth a spin.

2/5

Overall Star Trek Franchise Rating so far: 108/180

1 comment:

Siskoid said...

NON SEQUITUR!

Totally a guilty pleasure for me, this one.