Original air date: September 29, 1967
SYNOPSIS
A powerful artificially intelligent Earth probe, with a murderously twisted imperative, comes aboard the Enterprise and mistakes Capt. Kirk for its creator.
CANON CONTEXT
The episode is one of only a handful in the original series that takes place entirely aboard the Enterprise.
The episode is perhaps most known for being a predecessor to the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which also features an Earth probe that somehow merges with a powerful alien entity far from Earth and causes problems
RECAP
This is a strange one but before it even began I noticed something I don’t think I had before: 50min. And I had to smile to myself with how lovely time must’ve been back when there were hardly any advertisers for lengthy commercial interruptions. Can we go back to those days?
Anyway, the Enterprise is on their way to a cluster of planets that apparently should be inhabited by four billion people, but where they arrive and scan the planets there isn’t any sign of human life. Instead, they encounter NOMAD.
Okay, I have to give some props…to the props department for putting this together. If not for the few scenes where you can clearly see it’s literally hanging from a thread, it wouldn’t be as “simple” and toy-like as it seems. Either way, this thing thinks Kirk is its creator, Jackson Roykirk, which is a good thing, otherwise it would’ve wiped out the crew when they were first encountered by it.
Instead, NOMAD wishes to learn and please it’s creator, aka Kirk. However, it gets a bit dicey when it hears Uhura singing and decides to ask her why she is doing such an arbitrary thing. You see, it’s main function is to seek out perfection and destroy anything that falls short of that directive. Uhura, singing for pleasure, confuses it and therefore falls short.
Now, we must discuss Scotty, who, up until last season was just another member of the crew. After his “death” in this one I must say he’s become quite the punching bag! I mean, here he comes to Uhura’s aid because it seemed like no one else was going to. And what should happen? Bones saying the famous line, “he’s dead, Jim.”
Leave Scotty alone, writers! lol
Okay, back to NOMAD. To try and figure out how to stop him and his directive Spock decides to do his Vulcan mind-meld. This leads to some strange stuff that involves Spock caressing a machine. We’ll just overlook that for now.
Oh, before I forget, Scotty is brought back to life by NOMAD after Kirk insists he restore him. However, when it comes to Uhura, poor dear, he can’t exactly fix her. He wiped her memory completely. Her brain works, except she is like a child who must now learn to speak and read and become knowledgeable again.
I am not sure how I feel about this part of the storyline. Especially, that by the end of the episode they manage to say, “oh yeah, as for Uhura, she is learning at a college level and will be back to work in a couple days.” What?! Uhm, okay…great…her mind was just wiped but we aren’t going to worry about the fact that she may or may not even remember who she is let alone how to be a lieutenant again?!
Back to NOMAD. He’s discovered that Kirk isn’t, in fact, his creator. He is a mere human who isn’t perfect and therefore his entire crew must be eliminated. But we all know Kirk. He can talk a good game.
He tells NOMAD, in no uncertain terms, that because he incorrectly identified Kirk as his creator he is in fact in error and therefore must destroy himself. Pretty ingenious as simple as it might’ve seemed at the moment. NOMAD gets all confused about its directive and effectively blows itself up right at the moment they transport it outside of the ship.
DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?
Capt. Kirk: [of Uhura] What d'you do to her?
Nomad: That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.
Spock: That "unit" is a woman.
Nomad: A mass of conflicting impulses.