Podcast Enterprise: S2E09 Metamorphosis

Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before

We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis: when this episode begins, Kirk, Spock and McCoy, they’re taking Federation Commissioner Nancy Headford back to the Enterprise. She is sick with Sakuro’s disease. A very rare and Potentially fatal disease that she’s got and she must be treated for it. So Kirk is taking a back to the USS Enterprise.

However, on the way, Galileo gets accosted and they encounter a phenomenon that looks like a cloud of ionized hydrogen.

And it’s, there’s something seriously wrong with that encounter. And the Galileo is yanked to this planet into the Gamma Canaris region.And there they come to a planet they meet a young man who calls himself Cochrane.

He’s lonely seems to be the only individual on that planet, which is a bit of a problem because there’s no other life form apparently in that place. And then there’s an issue with Nancy Hedford because she’s sick.

She needs treatment and she also begins acting very erratically and McCoy has to sedate her, I believe, because she needs to be kept under control so that the sickness does not worsen. Now the issue is, there is something else on this planet with Cochrane, some sort of sparkly mist.It can be pretty hostile. It does go out of its way to attack Kirk, Spock and McCoy, if it deems them to be a threat to Cochrane.

And this is not an ideal situation. They’re trapped here. They can’t get out of there. Cochrane doesn’t tell them much about this entity there’s a communication barrier. And eventually, what happens is they find out that this Cochrane, even though he looks young, He’s several centuries old, and he is the creator of the warp drive that all the ships use for their interplanetary travel.

And this mist like entity, is what is keeping him alive.And it seems to care for him in some strange way. One thing leads to another, and Kirk decides to use a translator to try and figure out how to communicate with this entity, they find that this thing is female.

It has feelings and through the Universal Translator, it manages to communicate with them and tell them that she feels for Cochran, she wants him to stay there, she doesn’t want him to leave, but he, on the other hand, is going mad with loneliness, so there has to be a compromise.

And basically that compromise comes in the form of Nancy Hedford, who still has the disease. She has to be cured. And this entity decides to possess Nancy Hedford. And then she stays there as a companion to Cochrane and that’s how this episode ends.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!

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Acknowledgements

1. Intro music: Music from anchor.fm
2. Shotcut for editing the podcast
3. References: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/