This episode includes another example of special treatment for the cast by an enemy. When Nomad zaps Nurse Chapel, she's only stunned. When Scotty gets it, he's killed, but left in one piece. But when the redshirts get hit, pow! vaporized. Always wear blue, I say.
I don't understand what Nomad did to Uhura. He's says he erased her memory. Yet later, during the cutesy remedial reading scene, Uhura reverts to Swahili when she has trouble reading English. Does this mean Nurse Chapel went to the trouble of teaching Uhura Swahili _before_ she taught her English?
And what about Uhura's memories? "Wiped clean" to me means "blank"--no memories of family, life events, everything. They'd have to start with pottytraining, not reading! Yet McCoy seems pretty blase' about retraining. I guess he delegated all the messy tasks to Nurse Chapel.
Apart from the problems with future history, there's the problem with Jackson Roykirk being the father of Nomad. Now, I realize that a deep space probe would be a significant leap foward in space science, but so was Voyager, or the Mariner probes, or Apollo. Can anyone name the "father" of these space ships? No, because such a massive undertaking has many "fathers." How could Nomad be different?
Isn't Nomad's launch date (A.D. 2020) during the period of Earth's great economic and social problems, just prior to WWIII? How did that society have the resources to launch what must have been a very expensive probe?
Once again, Kirk gets to outthink and thus destroy a computer. How many is that now, Jim?
I remember David Gerrold making the comment about Kirk, "How IBM must hate that man!"
What would IBM have against Captain Kirk?
Regarding what happened to Uhura--I think the Blish story version made a bit more sense. But only a bit. In the story, Nomad clarified what it had done to her by saying, "She still remembers her life experiences, but her memory of how to express them, either logically or by the illogic called music, has been purged." In other words, all they had to do was teach her to talk, like teaching a baby.
This still doesn't explain why she was babbling in Swahili, unless in teaching her English, they were somehow able to remind her of Swahili, her first language.
CCabe--because he blew up so many computers. I should have mentioned that the quote comes from the 1970's, before the PC revolution, when IBM was the only computer game in town. Remember mainframes? Remember IBM? Oh boy do I feel old...
Dr. Daystrom's (sp?) computer.
M5 and the computer in "A Taste of Armageddon." Plus, in "Wolf in the Fold" he freaked out the Enterprise's computer in order to drive out Redjac. And he threatened the ship's computer with destruction in "Tomorrow is Yesterday."
Actually, it was Spock that had the ship's computer calculate the value of pi in Wolf in the Fold.
Cazbah--because Kirk told him to.
I loved this episode. There were alot of 'fear the computer' stories in the sixties. Anyone remember the movie 'Colossus'? I'm sure Mike does, being as how he's so old. Ha! j/k Mike!
GUEST STAR PATROL (Ha ha ha ha...it's baaack!)
Vic Perrin (Nomad's Voice) was the Control Voice on "The Outer Limits". He also plays Tharn in "Mirror, Mirror".
Anyone else spotted the shadow of a boom mike that swoops across the wall while Kirk and Spock are yakking to Nomad, just before the mind meld?
And those energy bolts are taking an awful long time to travel 90000km (1/3 of a light second!) at Warp 15, aren't they?
A final thought- I wonder how many times Picard has wished that HIS Enterprise had shields that could take 270 photon torpedo hits? (3 energy bolts with the energy of 90 photon torpedos).
Kail, you young whippersnapper, if my arthiritis wasn't bothering me so, I'd hit you with my cane.
Yes, I do remember "Colossus." I actually read the novel!
How exactly did Nomad operate the turbolift to get to the bridge?
The turbo-lift is voice operated; all he had to do was give it directions. Alternately, he could have directly interfaced with the controls, using his radio antenna.
They beamed Nomad aboard, but later when Spock tried to scan Nomad, it had a protective screen up. Since Spock is one of the Creator's Units, from Nomad's point of view, and it keeps the screen up to prevent him from scanning, then how did the transporter get a lock on Nomad, reduce it to energy and put it back together again?
Earlier Nomad absorbed the power of a photon torpedo. Don't you think somebody should have explained that to the security guards who tried to shoot Nomad with phasers?
Kirk orders Nomad to stop what it is doing to the engines, Nomad then says reversed as ordered. Kirk didn't order Nomad to reverse what it was doing, he ordered Nomad to stop.
Most of the time Nomad bobs up and down in the air, but when Kirk is talking to it in Engineering, it's as steady as if it were setting on something.
Nomad has incredible power, sterilizes whole planets, fires energy weapons that are as powerful as 90 photon torpedoes, and it can travel at Warp 15, but when it self-destructs at the end, the released energy doesn't seem to affect the Enterprise in any way.
Isn't it odd that Mr. Singh completely ignores Nomad long enough for it to sneak out of Auxiliary Control? The man must really be wrapped up in his work, he doesn't even hear the door open and close.
I understand that Uhura might feel like singing while performing some routine procedures, but after Nomad is reported missing from Auxiliary Control, Kirk puts on a shipwide security alert. Now should a bridge officer be merrily singing while the ship is on security alert?
My favourite crew member, Lieutenant Leslie (seen rushing to Scott along with McCoy when Nomad kills Scotty) is wearing a gold shirt in this episode. He is seen in red in every other episode (I think).
Is Chapel qualified to educate Uhura? Does she have a background in teaching? You'd think with this crew of specialized experts (we've seen a historian, a sociologist, and a psychologist in past episodes) that there would be a crackerjack educator among the crew.
Can Spock really mind meld with a machine?
When Kirk takes the antigravity device from Scott to place on Nomad, he says "Now - get those antigravs on it". These words do not match with Kirk's lip movement.
As usual, the episode ends with some humourous comments from Kirk on the bridge. I guess he's not too down about the billions of people who lost their lives (in fact it's possible that an entire race has just been annihilated). Oh well, as long as it's not Earth, and we're okay, so let's all have a little chuckle.
The Enterprise becomes aware of Nomads first attack when Sulu announces that "the shields just snapped on". Since when do the shields operate automatically in this way? In all the other space battles, Kirk has to order them raised.
Leslie wore a blue shirt in "Where No Man has Gone Before".
The Enterprise becomes aware of Nomads first attack when Sulu announces that "the shields just snapped on".
That would have been a handy feature to have in STII:TWOK.
Leslie wore yellow in a corridor stock shot used in "The Corbomite Maneuver", "The Menagerie" and "Assignment: Earth". Eddie Paskey also played Connors who wore a blue jumpsuit.
Nomad eventually self-destructs itself for making an error between the names "Kirk" and "Roykirk"...however...Nomad made an error previous to this...he "fixed" the warp drive to make the ship go faster than it was designed.
If Nomad is so superior, it should have checked that out first, then fixed the warp drive.
Of course, if it noticed that, it'd be a shorter episode.
The guards who take Nomad out of engineering are not the same guards who walk out of the turbolift with him... at least one isn't. Notice the ranks.
Strange but true....
For some reason NOMAD sounds a lot like the leader of the Metrons in "Arena"
Hmm...I wonder why?
At the end, when NOMAD explodes, as the shot fades out, Shatner appears to go out of character for a second or so.
My guess is that he's cut off just as he's about to say 'About that bacon...", which was a blooper clip that carried on from another scene he did when he said, "Listen, that bacon is really bad!" Apparently, somebody fed him burnt bacon or some such thing at the cafeteria!
I think that this episode showed FAR-AND-AWAY foresight in it's portrayal of Nomad's voice ... it sounds astonishingly like the computer-voice that the learned author Stephen Hawking uses.
Thre are two cool shots of the Enterprise in this episode....one during the title of the episode, the other after the sickbay scene.
The explosion of NOMAD look very real.
BAD SFX....you can briefly see the wire that suspends NOMAD when it moves off the transporter pad.
Once again, the red alert lights stay on instead of flashing after they are activated.
Unless I miss my guess....it appears that Lt. Palmer from "The Doomsday Machine" is in Uhura's post at the end of the episode while Uhura is being re-educated.
NOMAD gets the "Hiroshima Award for Most Destructive Weapon"....energy bolts that can travel at warp 15 and has the power of 90 photon torpedoes.
The episode establishes that NOMAD was launched sometime between 2000 & 2002......GET TO WORK NASA!
RUMINATION: At the end of the show, Kirk quips,
"My son, the doctor." This statement is quite prophetic because we find out in ST2-TWOK that Kirk's son (David) IS a doctor!
GREAT WARDROBE: Uhura's Hospital gown....mmmmmm!!!
NIT: Twice in the episode Kirk says, "It (Nomad) thinks I'm its MOTHER"....The term "mother" is a feminine title....."Father" is masculine.
The footage of the Enterprise firing its torpedoes comes from "Balance of Terror"...however, in that episode the bursts of energy were called "Phasors"
KUDOS to the SFX dept. the balls of energy that NOMAD fires look very realistic!
KUDOS to the camera dept....I LOVE the hard angles they used in this episode...especially when they put the camera right behind NOMAD....it's too cool.
In one blooper from this ep, you can see the dolly that Nomad was mounted on. I think there were two ways of moving it-traveling on the dolly, and hanging it on wires.
Mr. Singh bears a striking resemblence to Lt. Spinelli from "Space Seed" Twin brother, maybe?
Same actor (Blaisdell Makee, I think.)
Thanx Adam....however, it was a rhetorical question.
After Kirk shows NOMAD the map, NOMAD says, "Yes".
"YES"?! What happened to "Affirmative"?
Up until this point NOMAD uses "Negative" or "Affirmative" for yes / no questions.
Why did he change syntax?
Because he made an error
When Spock shows the picture of Jackson Roykirk, why is Roykirk wearing a 23rd century engineering outfit? (It's complete with 23rd century medals..simular to Kirk's medals seen on his dress uniform) The guy was from the late 21st century.
GREAT MOMENT: Uhura's bare naked legs! (Yummy!)
I agree; much more appealing here than in Star Trek V.
Me thinks John A. Lang is really becoming a one-dimensional badly written character
Sorry, I think Uhura's legs look good in STV too.
Also, I think that this episode is the last TOS episode that features Uhura singing and that she won't do so again until STV.
Right after Spock mind-melds with Nomad, he is explaining to Kirk what happened. In that scene, Spock appears to have some form of 5 o'clock shadow, most noticeable on his upper lip.
Great Lines
Spock: Your logic is impeccable. We are all in great danger.
and
Spock: A dazzling display of logic
Kirk: You didn't think I had it in me, did you?
Spock: No Sir.
John,
It's been a while since I've seen the ep, but didn't Uhura sing in "The Way to Eden"?
ScottN, I'll let ya' know when the DVD comes out.
Nomad makes the ship go warp 10....how come the Enterprise didn't get to "keep" it?
Several people mentioned Mr. Leslie's appearance in this episode...well, how about his disappearance?...He vanishes after Scott is taken to Sick Bay.
ScottN--No...Uhura did not sing in "The Way to Eden". She was not in that episode.
The credits have the spelling Blaisdel Makee while he was credited in "Space Seed" as Blaisdell Makee.
EQUIPMENT ODDITY: After Uhura gets zapped by Nomad, Kirk orders that she be taken to Sickbay. The crewmen nearby comply...however, there's no "swish" noise for the Turbolift door when they exit.
Here's an interesting question---after Spock recovers from his mind meld with Nomad, he tells Captain Kirk what he found out about the probe. When Kirk asks whether it is the original Earth probe, Spock replies "Not the probe WE launched from Earth." After all, Mr. Spock hails from Vulcan. Shouldn't it be "the probe YOU/THEY/YOUR PEOPLE launched from Earth?"
I have an answer. You see, Spock's human half recovered first and spoke to Kirk---and in his post mind-meld trauma, he used the wrong pronoun.
Spock has ancestors from Earth, so his statement was correct.
The diagram for the original Nomad says "Probe 2002-45b", so I'm assuming it was launched last year. NASA has indeed talked about a sample return from Mars. There's a bit of a debate over whether to sterilize the sample because of the possibility of a disease being released that Earthlings have no immunity to. That's very unlikely, though -- it's unlikely any Martian bacteria would grok Earth life (hey, another Martian reference). Anyway, that's just Mars. Nomad was the first interstellar probe.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are awfully familiar with a failed space probe launched hundreds of years ago. I'll grant Spock -- maybe he memorized all the missions in Earth's early space launches. However, it's a stretch that McCoy knows the mission and recognizes the picture of Jackson Roykirk.
As for the mind-meld, Nomad has some sort of telepathy. He can scan Uhura's mind, and erase (or whatever) her memories.
Nomad seems to be able to scan for "biological infestations", so why did it need to see Kirk's medical log?
There are more nits to pick about the merging of Nomad and The Other. Even assuming the Other had a super-duper power source, where did the rest of Nomad's gadgets come from? Presumably neither probe came with an energy bolt cannon. Did it figure out to build one, or were blueprints for one stored in its memory banks? And how did it rebuild itself? There don't appear to be any "arms". Force beams? Maybe that's how it "fixed" Scotty and the ship's engines.
Another gadget is the Communications Officer Mind Wiper(tm). Nomad just happens to have a device that can scan and manipulate a human nervous system, something that 200 years after Nomad was launched, the Federation doesn't have ("The Menagerie", "Spock's Brain") (Nomad scans Uhura before studying the medical tapes.). Nomad's computer was supposed to be really advanced, but they haven't matched it 200 years later?
Near the end of the episode, Kirk makes a big deal to Nomad that he will "destroy anything...that is in error". Then when Nomad says that there are no exceptions, Kirk says, "I made an error in creating you." So why didn't Nomad kill Kirk right there?
Probably because Nomad had trouble digesting that bit of information. Remember, Nomad believed itself to be perfect and without error. But if its creation was an error, well, that was something that did not make sense to it. It was a logic paradox it had to resolve before carrying out its prime function.
Even so, Rene's observation does make a mockery of Spock's assertion that Kirk's logic was 'flawless'...
The initial attack from Nomad is so drawn out that I don't understand how the ship was even hit. Spock scans a powerful energy bolt heading their way; 15 seconds later we see it on the main screen. Sulu says 'It's going to hit!', at which another 13 seconds pass before the Enterprise is rocked by the impact. That's 28 seconds that Kirk had to alter course and avoid the bolts. Even moving over a couple hundred feet would have avoided them, but he just let the bolts hit his ship head on.
When Nomad beams aboard the ship, it doesn't make a sound. After the commercial you can hear it clicking and humming. Granted the music signaling a commercial could have blotted out the mechanical sounds, but why?
The chart of the Sol system that Nomad scans is definitely not to scale. The planets are not an equal distance from one another.
Why would the designers put a hooded viewer that's backwards to the rest of the controls? Spock is reading data about Nomad in such a device, but it looks pretty awkward.
When Nomad enters the bridge in search of the source of the singing, Scott's intercom light is on. Nomad is shrown approaching her, but when we cut back to Scott, the light is off and he has to turn on his intercom to alert Kirk.
After Nomad 'kills' Scott, the bridge is cleared of everyone except Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I sure hope the ship is stationary, because there's nobody flying it, let alone monitoring the engineering or communications stations, and Kirk doesn't request replacement officers.
Since the episode was produced in 1967, and near-death experiences weren't discussed or even known of at that time, I guess we could forgive the creators for over-looking the following;
Scotty was dead. Dead, non-living, zero, for several minutes, until Nomad 'repaired' him. Scotty's soul or essence or whatever should have seen that white light/tunnel, and when he was brought back to life he should have undergone a bit of a change in his character. Most people I hear about that have such near-death experiences have an insight into what is or isn't actually important and or special in life, so Scotty should have been a little more mellow, or even quit Starfleet to do something else with his life.
As it is, the relatively easy job of bringing Scotty back almost makes it look like the creators didn't believe there was a soul inside us that would have to be pulled back, as it were, into our bodies. Scotty's 'death' might as well have been a heavy stun to him, judging by his reaction.
That probably explains Mr. Leslie's "death" in "Obsession" as well.
Actually many times it is shown that in the trek universe religion is considered a mythological thing and a bit of the past childhood that humanity had to grow up and go throw.
Will - Since the episode was produced in 1967, and near-death experiences weren't discussed or even known of at that time,
When my dad was a kid, long before 1967, he had what would now be considered a near-death experience. Didn't seem to change him much (although he didn't really understand what it may have been until many, many years later.)
Scotty's soul or essence or whatever should have seen that white light/tunnel
While the white light tunnel one is apparently the most common experience, there is also the floating around looking down at your body thing (my dad's experience) & the dark place filled with monsters experience, as well as those who experience nothing at all.
According to one researcher the type of person you are has nothing to do with the experience you will have. (So killers can have the white light tunnel & kind, gentle, helpful people can experience the place filled with monsters.)
agnos - religion is considered a mythological thing
Apollo: Hi, I'm Apollo!
Megas-Tu: Hi, I'm the Devil!
Quetzecoatl: Hi, I'm Quetzecoatl!
Kirk: Why won't these mythological dieties leave me alone? *
Is it really mythological when you actually meet the 'gods' in person?
Reading your line made me think of The Hitchhiker's Guide where the philospher complained about how can they argue the existence of God when Deep Thought can just give out his phone number & the comment about how with proof God wouldn't exist. (Or in Trek's case doesn't get any respect. "God? Pfff, you're just an alien!")
* OK, the last two were from the Animated Show, and I left out STV's God because there was no evidence he had actually been to Earth & been the basis of any god.
Of course things like gods and elves and fairies exist. But that's no reason to believe in 'em. It only encourages 'em.
Who built Tan Ru? How long has it been in space? Where did it come from? Apparently, Kirk and co. only care about the Earth probe, Nomad, since nobody looks into Tan Ru's origin.
If Tan Ru was the origin of the energy bolts (since Nomad wasn't), that would imply Tan Ru might have needed defense against an unknown enemy, which would have had very powerful shields. Or perhaps Tan Ru was supposed to seek out resource-rich planets and sterilize the intelligent lifeforms thereon so its creators could take the planets over.
Amazing that NASA could launch an automated interstellar probe in August, 2002 (I THINK that the drawings or dialogue state this, been a while since I've seen it) but still had to use sleeper-ship technology until 2018 (obviously, they could protect the computer from the cosmic radiation but not the crew). Amazing that there is seemingly no spaceflight capability in the US in 2063, so that Zefrem Cochrane has to use a 75-year-old ICBM to get into orbit to launch his warp drive ship, but doesn't have government sanction or security. Amazing that Nomad's computer is so incredibly intelligent it can take parts from an alien probe and rebuild itself, make itself better than before...better...stronger...faster...(the Six Million Dollar Probe!), yet isn't intelligent enough to avoid colliding with a meteor in space. Amazing that Tan Ru, with it's amazing bolt weapon, would let a primitive alien probe take it apart and mate with it, essentially.
Tan Ru must have either been irreversibly damaged, no longer able to defend itself, so that Nomad could mess around with it...or must have been a remotely-controlled probe, with instantaneous communication (FTL) with its homeworld. Since they didn't stop Nomad from messing with it, perhaps something happened to their homeworld. Or...chilling thought...Nomad probably had some equivalent to Voyager One and Two's famous gold record with Earth sounds and information plaque showing where it was from...perhaps Tan Ru's builders were xenophobes. Xenophobes which sterilize alien civilizations before they can develop starflight and visit their homeworld. Xenophobes which caught the damaged Nomad and rebuilt it in interstellar space with Tan Ru's parts, then sent it back towards what is now Federation space to destroy the homeworld of Nomad's creators (meteor damage that made it think Kirk was the creator probably damaged the data about where Earth was, so they sent it back along it's general path and crossed into UFP space near the Malurian system).
BTW, Malurians were also a race from TNG, so either they weren't totally wiped out by Nomad, or else they were on many worlds. Although I think they might have been a pre-warp race, so perhaps Dr. Manway was studying them (the UFP loves to send out cultural observers to less-advanced worlds...John Gill and Ekos comes to mind).
Jackson Roykirk was an extremely gifted inventor, able to work on many projects simultaneously. He also was involved with the Knight Rider 2000 team at KITT Industries (yes, KR 2000 mentioned him as a friend of one of the regulars, slipped into the script as an inside joke, but that enables Knight Rider to crossover to the Trekverse). Perhaps his work with the intelligent supercar KITT gained him funding from Knight Industries to continue funding his work on the advanced probe Nomad. He seems to be working in the field of artificial intelligence. If KITT is any indication, his work is very advanced indeed. KITT, despite his physical limitations as a car, seems comparable to Data in some ways. I guess in the chaos of the early and mid 21st century (Sanctuary Districts and the Bell Riots, World War III), advanced technology research has broken down, and there's no spaceflight capacity because of it. No wonder Cochrane thinks warp drive will be a gold mine...it will REALLY jumpstart the economy again! That also might be why Cochrane's civilian team is running around a US missile silo without US Army or Air Force troops manning the base or providing security--a Second Great Depression has hit the world in the wake of WWIII, and the US has completely abandoned those silos up in Montana, or sold them to the highest bidder for pennies on the dollar. Notice, too, that it's Cochrane's civilians providing the actually security, and they aren't very good at it either. But they do recognize the need for it, as the possibility of 'European' tech spies is alluded to by First Contact dialogue. As bad as things are on Earth (even though improving after FC), no wonder he wants to go drift off into space and die.
RE: Adam Bomb....I also saw the blooper reel of Nomad on the dolly...along with the man crawling on the floor pushing it around.
I also saw the blooper reel of Nomad on a wire heading for a door and the door opened too late...Nomad smacked right into it!
NANJAO: The photo of Jackson Roykirk is actually one of frequent Trek director (and director of this ep) Marc Daniels.
Sir Rhosis
PRODUCTION PROBLEM (or equipment oddity): After Nomad raises his antenna & heals Scotty, the antenna doesn't go down again. It stays up the entire scene.
My son, the biggest mass-murderer in history? The ending seems a bit flip, considering how many people died in the star system that Nomad sterilized. It's been a while since I've seen it -- wasn't it in the billions?
*LESLIE ALERT* Mr. Leslie is at the Navagator's Position wearing yellow.
This is the second episode in a row that Scotty gets zapped and knocked backwards.
In production order, it's the second episode in a row where he is the victim of an accident caused by a woman. (indirectly, but still . . .)
Hadley's all over the place in the last five minutes. We see him in his usual yellow climbing out of access shaft, followed not long after by Nomad. We next see him with yellow-shirt Leslie as they pass Kirk and Spock in the corridor, but now he's wearing blue. When Spock and Scotty arrive in Engineering to find Kirk doing his "You are imperfect!" bit with Nomad, Hadley is there with them...this time in red overalls.
The remastered "The Changeling" airs next weekend. Main effects are the attack on the ship at the beginning and the explosion of Nomad at the end.
They could conceivably replace the Solar System and original Nomad diagrams, or update the phaser shot by the guards on Nomad. However, they haven't been doing too many "extras" lately.
Alan -it killed 4 billion?
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.They always cut up Uhuru's ( I know its Uhura) ball is blue scene until recently.
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note to kam , and anyone else who cares--when I had my seizure, I was in a fog.,knew nothing until I saw a white light
while I was in Or...for four hours! then when the docs were done, called up my kid, took me home.I took home all the wiring they put in me.
first thing my wife said to me when she came from China is- You're still here!
Not that this explanation is suggested in the episode anywhere,but how about some speculation regarding Mr.Spock being able to mind-meld with a machine.Tan Ru's creators might have been a civilization far more advanced than even the Federation,perhaps they were able to construct living machines,like Moya on Farscape.So the Nomad/Tan Ru merging is one of pure technology with living technology & that accounts for the sentient aspect.
for Nomad- you mean Scpipt!
just saw the tape-the photon bolts at warp 15 turned green..nomad's unchanged,they even kept some of the Enterprise shots..
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for alan- nomad was the greatest mass murderer since Adolf hitler killed 37 mill.
it was in the story line.
Given the immense power of Nomad/Tan Ru as we see it can fire energy bolts that nearly destroy the Enterprise as this episode begins,totally absorbs the photon torpedo fired by the big E,kill Scotty & then bring him back to life,& so on,I have some questions.I can understand the Nomad probe being devastated by a meteor impact,but what the heck could have possibly damaged Tan Ru,with all of its immense technilogical prowess? If Nomad is so highly intelligent,how come it did not grasp the fact that by reconfiguring the engines so that the E could attain warp 10,that it would place such an enormous strain upon the ship that it could destroy it? And nurse Chapel tries to stop Nomad from examining medical records? She might have taken a hint as to how powerful Nomad is from its attack upon the E,& killing Scotty & the security guards.She'd have been wiser to simply let Nomad alone & alert Kirk.The remastered version was on last night.The energy weapon that Nomad attacks the E with has been nicely changed,as well as the explosion of Nomad at the episode's conclusion.The two different looking animated beams Nomad uses to scan Uhuru's brain with,& kill Scotty & the security officers,looks unchanged from the original.Which was fine with me as they both looked sharp to me to this day.
The plasma bolts fired at the Enterprise (a reuse of the Romulan bolts) were changed to a green effect that looked pretty good. The explosion of Nomad at the end was also updated.
The effects in the ship -- Nomad's rays, the phasers, diagrams -- were unchanged. To simulate Nomad's screen, the original effects had the phasers bounce of a vertical line. Unfortunately, they chose lines that existed in the background such as a door frame, which looks rather odd.
Although Nomad is capable of independent movement inside the ship, it apparently can't hover and talk at the same time -- its speech slows down dramatically when it starts moving.
The remastered "The Changeling" airs next weekend, followed by "Bread and Circuses" the following week.
Nomad initially asks if they can come out of the ship to meet it, so it understands that there are independent entities inside the Enterprise, but it then acts confused by the Enterprise's reciprocal offer -- that of course there are no "parasitical beings" inside it. It shouldn't have expected them to know, because it had a sensor-proof screen.
Had they been able to take Nomad up on its offer, what exactly would that entail? Just floating in space in front of Nomad, communicating by radio?
I never thought the Changeling metaphor was that apropos, and amusingly, Blish seemed to have the same feeling. In the novelization, Spock says
quote:That would be a parallel if Nomad is actually the alien probe intact. But actually, its programming is now a combination of the two.
The short scene when the library-computer burns out was cut from the re-mastered print, even though Kirk still makes reference to it happening.
The remastered print, or just the one that aired on TV?
Just the one that aired on TV. The DVD's of the re-mastered episodes are uncut, AFAIK.
It is strange that CBS has spent so much time, money and effort to re-master the series but uses the syndication cuts not the full length episode. Has there been a comment or reason for this?
Eh? The CBS team remastered the full episodes and that's what's on the DVDs. For syndication, they're cut so the local stations can air more commercials than were aired in 1968. It's not a choice to air them as they originally were -- the stations would simply refuse to buy it and air something else that did let them air more commercials.
The lighting (or lack thereof) of the ceiling area of the Enterprise is unusual in this episode. Several scenes (nearly all, in fact) of the ceiling on the bridge or engineering, or sickbay is very dark. Almost as if it was meant to hide something **coughcoughNomad'sstringscoughcough**!!
If Spock can mind meld with a machine like Nomad, then it stands to reason that he could mind meld with Data, or Norman, or Rayna, or Kirk's double from Exo-III.
My, my, my but how times and children have changed! Uhura is said to be up to a First Grade Reader-- ie. 'The boy has a ball'...'The ball is blue'.
I don't know about you guys, but these days no child I know is so illiterate at age 6 (Grade One). My friend's son can read whole sentences and paragraphs (and he's no genius), and my friend has Harry Potter and Gameboy games to thank for that!
'The ball is blue'? More like, 'The ball is blue and made of rubber and can bounce very high when the boy throws it onto the sidewalk in front of his house.' !
I think at the time that this episode was made, the writers didn't know how much a kilogram was, compared to a pound.
One kilogram equals 2.205 pounds. If you multiply that by the 500 kilograms that Spock says Nomad weighs, that little machine is suddenly 1,102.5 pounds! Way too small for such a heavy weight!
John A. Lang - "Nomad makes the ship go warp 10....how come the Enterprise didn't get to "keep" it?'
Kirk tells Nomad that the ship's structure can't take such speeds. I guess it's just not built to go that fast before pieces start breaking off.
Of course, there's the warp 14.9 speed from That Which Survives, and they survived that.
If you multiply that by the 500 kilograms that Spock says Nomad weighs, that little machine is suddenly 1,102.5 pounds! Way too small for such a heavy weight!
Nomad's dimensions are approximatly 100x20x20 centimeters. If it was a solid piece of steel, it would weigh about 300 kilograms. If it was made of osmium, the densest element known, it would weigh about 900 kilograms. Obviously, Nomad cannot be a solid mass, it has to be hollow to house its working mechanisms. On the other hand, it is small, so those mechanisms have to be efficiently packed inside that small space with little room wasted. Being this massive, even if we limit ourselves to known substances and alloys, is not beyond the realm of the possible. And we know that there are many materials in the Star Trek universe that we know little about. Some of those, like tritanium, could be very dense indeed and easily allow Nomad to be that heavy despite its small size.
Mike Konczewski on Thursday, October 15, 1998 - 9:02 am: Apart from the problems with future history, there's the problem with Jackson Roykirk being the father of Nomad. Now, I realize that a deep space probe would be a significant leap foward in space science, but so was Voyager, or the Mariner probes, or Apollo. Can anyone name the "father" of these space ships? No, because such a massive undertaking has many "fathers." How could Nomad be different?
Roykirk could have been in overall charge of the whole development process.
Isn't Nomad's launch date (A.D. 2020) during the period of Earth's great economic and social problems, just prior to WWIII? How did that society have the resources to launch what must have been a very expensive probe?
Maybe they managed to cobble it together from a load of spare parts!
The poor writers never realize that real history would catch up with them.
I never liked the name 'Jackson Roykirk'. I've always felt 'Roykirk' didn't sound right.
He should have been Jackson Van Kirk, or Jackson MacKirk, or Jackson O'Kirk or Jackson Kirkington. Anything, but that awkward pairing of 'roy' and 'kirk'.
The credits show 'Barbara Gates' as 'Crewwoman'. As far as I can tell, that would be the crewwoman that holds Uhura, after her memory has been wiped by Nomad on the bridge. I'm surprised a non-speaking role was acknowledged. Usually, they're never accounted for, unless there are speaking parts, or at least a part that involves more than 5 seconds of generic footage, standing beside someone.
Now that SpaceX has sent up their own spaceships, without NASA's help, I guess the existence of Jackson Roykirk and his creation of Nomad isn't as far-fetched as it used to be.
Kirk says that Nomad's mission was 'essentially peaceful'. Essentially? How about 'completely'? There would be nothing aggressive or hostile about seeking out new life.
If the Malurian system is the only one destroyed, then the merger with Tan Ru might have been recent. At least that might make the search for Tan Ru's origins easier.
The credits show 'Barbara Gates' as 'Crewwoman'. As far as I can tell, that would be the crewwoman that holds Uhura, after her memory has been wiped by Nomad on the bridge. I'm surprised a non-speaking role was acknowledged.
I guess the rules had changed by the time TNG rolled around. Otherwise, Tracee Cocco would have gotten a nod in the credits. She was in almost every episode from the fourth season on, as well as in the first three TNG movies.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tracee_Lee_Cocco
When Chapel is teaching Uhura how to read, she is sitting on the same medical bed as Uhura. How does that bed know who's set of vital sign readings to display on its panel?
When the first energy bolt hits Enterprise, the ship is violently shaken and rocked, and everyone on the bridge is thrown all over the place for several seconds. Yet, the subsequent hits with the shields already weakened by the previous ones barely shake things up.
When told that the energy bolts travel at warp 15, Kirk says that they can't outrun them, so diverting warp power to the shields was the correct thing to do. Still, they could first have tried warping away as fast as possible, maybe the attacker would have lost interest in a retreating target and not pursued.
Nomad was launched in 2002. Funny, I don't remember any such probe being launched that year!
Really? For me, I don't remember when the Jupiter 2 was launched in 1996!
However, I vividly remember the Jupiter THREE!
The episode starts with Nomad having just destroyed the Malurian system, or rather all living things in that system. Kirk mentions that there was a Federation team there, who also perished.
If these were the same Malurians that Archer and Co. encountered in Civilization, looks like relations between them and the Federation improved in the century since.
This may have been noted before; I guess there aren't many nits left after all this time. 
In Act IV, we see Bill Blackburn's Hadley, wearing a gold command shirt, exit the ladder tube that Nomad floats up a second later. In the very next scene, as Kirk and Spock are called to sickbay, Blackburn, wearing a blue science shirt, walks right by them. Or, better said, Kirk and Spock race past him.
Must be a case of identical twins (like the Delaney sisters on Voyager.
Or the six Mister Leslie's! 
That alien probe, Tan-Ru. It's mission was collect soil samples.
So, why did it have the power to wipe out whole planets!?
I understand the Doomsday Machine started out as a lawn mower at one time!
I believe that Phil also pointed this out in his book.
In the credits, there's someone listed as 'Merde Martin' as a crewman. 'Merde' is French for 'death'. I wonder if that's one of the four security guards that's killed in this episode-- that would be fitting!
Chapel tries to stop Nomad from reading Kirk's history. I guess it stopped reading it at some point, considering it would not have found a single minute of Kirk's history that was spent 'creating' Nomad. Now, if Nomad had simply scanned his medical records, that's okay-- he's just a biological unit. But, if you check his history, you find out instantly that James Kirk is not the Creator.
Why is the Enterprise flying anywhere, after Nomad adjusts the engines? Where are they going? Nomad isn't controlling the engines, so why bring the ship any closer to Earth than necessary?
'Merde' is French for 'death'.
Actually, 'merde' is french for '$hit', or 'cr@p'
Oops. My mistake. 'merde' is French for '••••'.
'Mort' is French for 'death'.
That '••••' is 'dam' with an 'N' on the end.
Still trying to keep our language clean, I see.
Why is the Enterprise flying anywhere, after Nomad adjusts the engines? Where are they going? Nomad isn't controlling the engines, so why bring the ship any closer to Earth than necessary?
When did they say they were going towards Earth?
I guess they could have altered course at some time away from Earth, but once Nomad found out where Earth was he was going to 'sterilize' it. During a break in scenes, the ship is seen flying through space, but I don't know where. My suggestion would be to just sit there, motionless in space.
The recent novel, Living Memory, follows up on what happened to Uhura in this episode.