Metamorphosis (episode)

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This article is written
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This article is written
from the Real World
point of view
"Metamorphosis"
TOS, Episode 2x02
Production number: 60331
First aired: 10 November 1967
Remastered version aired: 3 November 2007
← 32nd of 80 produced in TOS →
← 38th of 80 released in TOS →
← 47th of 80 released in TOS Remastered →
← 38th of 726 released in all →
Written By
Gene L. Coon

Directed By
Ralph Senensky
3219.8 (2267)
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On an isolated asteroid, Kirk finds Zefram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive, who has been missing for 150 years.

Contents

[edit] Summary

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are ferrying Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford back to the USS Enterprise. The commissioner, who has been called upon to prevent a war on Epsilon Canaris III, has developed Sakuro's Disease, a rare life-threatening illness, and must be removed to a medical facility for treatment. The commissioner is bitter at what she regards as incompetence in the Federation Medical Department, which she believes should have properly prepared her.

En route (shortly past point 3, on course 201 Mark 15), the shuttlecraft Galileo encounters a phenomenon that Spock describes as "vaguely like a cloud of ionized hydrogen, but with strong electrical impulses". Moving at warp speed, it envelops the shuttlecraft and disables its systems. The craft is pulled to course 98 Mark 12, towards the Gamma Canaris region. There, it is soft-landed on an iron-nickel planetoid with a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and standard gravity – a place entirely suited for Human life.

Examining the shuttlecraft, Spock discovers something that should be impossible: nothing is damaged, but nothing works. McCoy notes that the gaseous cloud they encountered in space seems to be here, on the surface. Then a loud "hallooooooo" breaks the stillness. Someone else is here – a young man who quickly joins the stranded group. He introduces himself as Cochrane. He tells the officers that a damping field prevents some technology here from working. But he denies knowledge of the force that brought the shuttlecraft here.

Kirk finds this man familiar, somehow. Cochrane shows his visitors to his home, decorated with instruments Kirk regards as antiques. Ominously, Commissioner Hedford has developed a fever, the first symptom of her illness.

Finally, Kirk presses Cochrane, and learns about the Companion. This is what he calls the strange creature that brought the Galileo here. Cochrane was old, and knew he wanted to die in space. So he took a spacecraft and left his home on Alpha Centauri for parts unknown. The Companion found him, reversed his aging process, and has maintained him here, ever since. Cochrane is responsible for the abduction of Kirk and his party; he communicated his loneliness in the hope that the Companion would free him, but instead it elected to bring him friends. Given these clues, Kirk also realizes why Cochrane seems so familiar: he is Zefram Cochrane, discoverer of the space warp.

Spock, meanwhile, is attempting to repair the Galileo when the Companion appears there. Curious, he touches it, and receives an electrical shock that knocks him cold. The circuitry of the ship bursts into flame; the Companion is taking no chances.

Cochrane agrees to summon the Companion, to see if it can help the commissioner, but learns that it cannot.

McCoy discovers Spock; the encounter has left Spock with a new insight: the Companion is largely made of electricity. Spock constructs a mechanism to scramble electrical impulses; with this, Kirk intends to disable or destroy the creature, so that the humans may depart. Cochrane now has reservations; he doesn't want the creature killed. Kirk overwhelms him with the force of his personality. Unhappy at being forced into the role of a Judas goat, Cochrane nevertheless agrees to summon the creature. Spock throws the switch, and discovers that his mechanism is sufficient only to irritate the creature. It attacks Kirk and Spock, and despite McCoy's pleas, nearly kills them – before Cochrane calls it off.

Nearby, the Enterprise searches for the now long overdue shuttlecraft. Finally, at 210 Mark 40, the sensors detected a strong antimatter particle concentration. Lacking evidence that the shuttlecraft has been destroyed Scotty elects to follow this tenuous course.

On Gamma Canaris, Spock has completed modifying the universal translator so Kirk can communicate with the Companion. Among the first things they discover is that the Companion is female, casting its – her – relationship with Cochrane in an entirely new light. Kirk implores the Companion to permit their departure, but she is adamant; to her, the safety and health of Cochrane is the only important goal. And to ensure that, she intends to keep the shuttlecraft crew here, forever.

Cochrane is dismayed to discover the apparent sexual dynamic between himself and the Companion. He finds it repulsive. Kirk, Spock and McCoy do not understand his parochial attitude. For her part, the Commissioner is baffled by someone who, offered love, rejects it. The great regret of her life, as it draws near its end, is that she has never been loved.

The Enterprise continues its search. It has discovered an asteroid field containing 7,000 bodies in sizes ranging from A to M. Thirty percent of them have atmospheres in types ranging from H to M. The search will be a long one, but Scotty remains convinced by the lack of evidence that the shuttlecraft landed safely somewhere, and he is prepared to search every asteroid if necessary.

Kirk tries new tactics. First, he tries to convince the Companion that without challenges to overcome, the humans will weaken and die. When that fails, he tries to convince the Companion that there can never be real love, because it and Cochrane are too different. The Companion considers this, and then disappears. Kirk's hope is that the Companion will release Cochrane and his party – love expressing itself as sacrifice – but this is not its choice. Instead, moments later, an apparently healthy Nancy Hedford appears in the door of Cochrane's small home.

The Companion has joined with her, sacrificing its immortality and its powers to become human, and experience life with Zefram Cochrane as a human woman would. Cochrane is reluctant, but becomes enthusiastic, promising to show her the galaxy. Sadly, she tells him that she cannot leave; her life emanates from this small planetoid. Just as he must eat, so she must remain here or perish. Cochrane cannot bring himself to leave her, and elects to remain behind. He asks Kirk to keep his existence a secret, a request Kirk grants.

At first, the Companion says it cannot help Nancy Hedford. Later, it is able to cure her as it merges with her. It may be that the merging process somehow routed the disease, or it may be that, before deciding to merge, the Companion was content to allow its only competition for Cochrane – the only woman aboard the Galileo – to die.

[edit] Log entries

  • "Ship's log, stardate 3219.8. Lieutenant Commander Scott recording in the absence of Captain Kirk. A shuttlecraft bearing the captain, the first officer, Chief Surgeon McCoy, and Assistant Federation Commissioner Hedford is now definitely overdue for a rendezvous with the Enterprise. We are attempting to backtrack it."
  • "Ship's log, stardate 3220.3. Lieutenant Commander Scott reporting in lieu of the captain and the first officer. We are continuing our search for the missing shuttlecraft."

[edit] Memorable Quotes

"Commissioner, we'll do what we can when we can – at the moment, we're helpless. So you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride."

- Kirk, to Hedford after the Companion takes control of the shuttlecraft


"I could even offer you a hot bath."
"How perceptive of you to notice that I needed one."

- Cochrane and Hedford


"Captain... why'd you build that translator with a feminine voice?"
"We didn't."
"But I heard–"
"The idea of male and female are universal constants, Cochrane. There's no doubt about it – the Companion is female."
"I don't understand."
"You don't? Why, a blind man could see it with a cane; you're not a pet, you're not a specimen kept in a cage – you're a lover."
"I'm a what?"
"Her attitude toward you is profoundly different from that when she approaches us. Her apearance is soft, gentle; her voice melodic, pleasing. I do not fully understand the emotion, but it obviously exists; the Companion loves you."
"Do you know what you're saying? For a hundred and fifty years, I've let something as alien as that crawl around inside me?"
"What are you complaining about – it saved your life, didn't it?"
"That thing fed on me, used me – it's disgusting!"
"There's nothing disgusting about it, it's just another life form. You get used to those things."
"You're as bad as it is!"
"Your highly emotional reaction is most illogical. Your relationship with the Companion has, for one hundred fifty years, been eminently practical, emotionally satisfying and perfectly harmless. It may, indeed, have been beneficial."
"Is this what the future holds? Men with no notion of decency or morality? Well, I may be a hundred and fifty years out of style, but I'm not going to be the fodder for any inhuman monster."
"Fascinating – a totally parochial attitude."

- Cochrane, Kirk, McCoy, and Spock


"You regard the man as a mere toy; you amuse yourself with him."
"You are wrong. He exists – I care for him."
"But you can't really love him. You haven't the slightest knowledge of what love is; the total union of two people. You are the Companion, he is the man; you are two different things. You can't join... you can't love. You may keep him here forever, but you will always be separate – apart from him."
"If... I were human, there could be... love?"

- Kirk and the Companion


"I can't go with you, Zefram Cochrane."
"But why?"
"My... life emanates from this place. If I should leave it for more than a tiny march of days, I'd cease to exist."
"Well, I can't just fly away and leave you here."
"You must be free, Zefram Cochrane."
"But even if you stay here, you'll eventually die."
"For the joy of this hour... I am pleased."
"But you saved my life. You took care of me all these years... you loved me. I never understood before; I do now."

- The Companion/Hedford and Zefram Cochrane


"Maybe you're a soldier so often, that you've forgotten you're also trained to be a diplomat. Why not try a carrot instead of a stick?"

- Leonard McCoy


"It's a big galaxy, Mr. Scott!"

- Lt. Uhura, mocking his Scottish accent

[edit] Background Information

[edit] Story and Script

  • Bantam Books published a series of novelizations called "foto-novels," which took photographic stills from actual episodes and arranged word balloons and text over them, to create a comic book formatted story. The fifth installment was an adaptation of this episode.
  • According to Elinor Donahue, in the foreword to that foto-novel, a whole landing sequence with the shuttlecraft was filmed and subsequently cut from the show. She also stated that she wore her scarf around her neck in the latter half of the episode because the neckline on her costume got "droopitis," due to her losing about ten pounds during the production of the episode. The dress itself was actually made up of scrap material salvaged and sewn together in the costume department.
  • In the 2004 DVD release of Season One, the photo log shows a still of the shuttlecraft model seen on a miniature planet set. This is likely an unused effects shot of the landing filmed and edited from "Metamorphosis", because the model is labeled "Galileo II."
  • This is the only episode in the first two seasons in which Captain Kirk is not on the Enterprise at any time during the plot. Likewise, the Enterprise does not appear until twenty-seven minutes into the episode. In four third season shows, Kirk also spends the entire episode off-ship: "The Paradise Syndrome", "Plato's Stepchildren", "Whom Gods Destroy", and "All Our Yesterdays".
  • In the first draft script, Scotty is also on board the shuttlecraft (here called the Edison) with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Hedford. It was originally he who was to encounter the Companion while attempting to repair the shuttlecraft.
  • A Gold Key Comics comic book was released as a sequel to this episode, #49: "A Warp in Space".
  • This is the first story to feature Zefram Cochrane, inventor of warp drive and an important figure to the Federation history. He would later re-appear in Star Trek: First Contact and ENT: "Broken Bow", played by James Cromwell.

[edit] Production

  • The sparkling effects of the Companion would be reused in "The Apple" when the Enterprise fires phasers at Vaal, and again in "Obsession" inside of the deadly vampire cloud.
  • The shuttlecraft mock-up is not the same as the set used for the interiors of the Galileo. Kirk and company are all crouching as they emerge from the ship, yet the shuttlecraft interior set had a lot more head room.
  • The scenes of Cochrane communicating with the Companion were all shot at one time. The set was then completely redone with his house added for all of the sequences with Kirk and company. The inconsistencies between the two versions of the same set can be seen in alien trees that are near Cochrane in one view and absent in the next.
  • Symbolically, the colored patterns in the scarf worn by the Commissioner are identical to the patterns in the energy field of the Companion. This is shown clearly as she looks at Cochrane through the scarf near the end of the episode.
  • To give an illusion of open space to a confined stage set, wide angle lenses were used. Although Glenn Corbett appears to be hundreds of yards away when he first runs toward the shuttle, he is much closer. Strategically placed rocks also allowed the camera to be very far away without seeing the edges of the set.
  • A drawback to the use of a wide angle lens is evident in the scene where actor Corbett first approaches the shuttlecraft. Accent lights on top of the set's background are clearly visible along the top of the "sky" as the camera pans to the right when following Corbett's path. At the end of the shot the black edge of the set is clearly visible behind the shuttlecraft.
  • In a rare effect, slowly moving "clouds" were blown in from hidden vents, adding a touch of reality to the usually static planet set. This was also used in "Obsession".
  • A view of the starship from dead center in front of the saucer section is used only in this episode.
  • All the footage of the shuttlecraft in outer space was reused from "The Galileo Seven", some with the Companion animation added in post-production.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Production Timeline

[edit] Video and DVD releases

[edit] Links and References

[edit] Starring

[edit] Guest Stars

[edit] Featuring

[edit] References

2030; 2119; Alpha Centauri; anti-matter; argon; asteroid; asteroid belt; automatic scanner; bath; brain wave pattern; carrot; class M; commissioner; Companion's homeworld; computer central; dampening field; Earth; electricity; electronic scrambler; English language; Epsilon Canaris system; Epsilon Canaris III; Fahrenheit; fig tree; Galileo; Gamma Canaris region; gender; hydrogen; ion; iron; Judas goat; krypton; love; nickel; nitrogen; neon; oxygen; physicist; planetoid; probability; Sakuro's Disease; scientist; shuttlecraft; shuttlecraft bay; space warp; Starfleet; Starfleet Medical; symbiosis; trident scanner; universal translator; volt; zookeeper

[edit] External link


Previous episode produced:
"Catspaw" 		Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 2 		Next episode produced:
"Friday's Child"
Previous episode aired:
"I, Mudd" 		Next episode aired:
"Journey to Babel"
Previous remastered episode aired:
"The Gamesters of Triskelion" 		TOS Remastered Next remastered episode aired:
"The Deadly Years"
Retrieved from "http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Metamorphosis_%28episode%29"
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