TOS - Metamorphosis

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/s031.php

I'm always fascinated by the early world building episodes of Trek. Its not as formative as a Journey to Babel, but is a bit tighter than something the Savage Curtain which threw out a bunch of potentially interesting historical figures that Surak aside, ultimately do little except partake in the typical TOS fight scenes.

[Thebestoftherest]

Nice seeing some of TOS.

[unknownsample]

What's happened to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds?

[SFDebris]

What's happened to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds?

That got the video kicked. This is a temporary solution until I think of something permanent.

[chaos42]

What's happened to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds?

That got the video kicked. This is a temporary solution until I think of something permanent.

star trekking across the universe

[bz316]

I remember the first time I saw this episode being really surprised by McCoy, as in how open-minded he was regarding the life form. McCoy often gets portrayed as being kind of a...space-chauvinist I guess you could call it. He frequently makes low-key bigoted remarks directed at Spock (and by extension the Vulcans) and is often guilty of judging the culture and actions of non-human species by human standards (ex. "The Apple"). In this episode, however, he's shocked at how vehemently Cochrane is disgusted by the life-form and openly defends it, pointing out that it saved his life and agreeing with Spock about how, despite how unusual the life-form's expressions of emotion (for lack of a better world) are by humanoid standards, it was acting quite benevolently and to its own nature. Not saying this is a bad thing, but it does seem kind of out of character for old Bones...

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

I remember the first time I saw this episode being really surprised by McCoy, as in how open-minded he was regarding the life form. McCoy often gets portrayed as being kind of a...space-chauvinist I guess you could call it. He frequently makes low-key bigoted remarks directed at Spock (and by extension the Vulcans) and is often guilty of judging the culture and actions of non-human species by human standards (ex. "The Apple"). In this episode, however, he's shocked at how vehemently Cochrane is disgusted by the life-form and openly defends it, pointing out that it saved his life and agreeing with Spock about how, despite how unusual the life-form's expressions of emotion (for lack of a better world) are by humanoid standards, it was acting quite benevolently and to its own nature. Not saying this is a bad thing, but it does seem kind of out of character for old Bones...

I think it's more that McCoy might act like a jerk at times, but I think it's not so much closed-mindedness or bigotry so much as he's just really irritable or is easily bewildered by the actions of others. A lot of older people are like that.

[remagynona]

This episode always left a sour taste in my mouth. Even when I was a kid I felt there was something wrong with how the Companion "resolved" things. It can make a human immortal (and hurt, if not kill them as evidenced by what it did to Spock) but can't cure a disease. Thinking on it now, it feels like it allowed the Commissioner to die so it could take her body and live a human life with Cochrane.

[pilight]

5/10 feels about right. Not a bad episode, but terribly remarkable either.

[AllanO]

I only remember seeing the scenes around the universal translator with this one. Was this the first episode to explicitly feature the universal translator? Of course it is chiefly a contrivance for why they don't have to worry about languages. As with telepathy it conceives of mental phenomenon as admitting of existence as a separate sort of thing from crude matter, brains, living clouds of energy and so on are somehow manifesting the same thing that can be interacted with pretty much directly. The thing is the difficulty of translating stuff from one language to another illustrates that while there is something common between mental constructions like languages, they don't act directly like a simple direct action that can be easily universalized and just plugged in to one another.

Another song appropriate for this episode would be Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now (as sung by Leonard Nimoy?) given that several of the characters have looked at clouds from both sides now in various ways.