Writer: Gene L. Coon
Director: Ralph Senensky
Producer: Gene L. Coon
This another Gene Coon written episode that expressed Star Trek's central pleas for tolerance, understanding, and diversity. It's a strong statement on the validity of "mixed" or "non-traditional" relationships most notably mixed race romances at the time this episode aired, but the central metaphor could also apply to homosexual relationships or any love deemed as "Other" by the times. It's too bad that a couple of weak story choices, some problematic language, and the unsconscious patriarchal heteronormativity of the production team serve to undercut this central message at times.
Kirk, Spock and Bones are aboard a shuttlecraft with a prominent Federation diplomat whose mission to prevent a war has been interrupted by her contracting of an extremely rare disease. They're returning her to the Enterprise for treatment when their craft is taken off course by a mysterious force and lands on an unknown planetoid. There they find Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive, lost mysteriously a century and a half earlier as an old man. He explains that he had grown tired of life and fame and had headed out into space to die, when he was found by an energy being that took him to this planet, and rejuvenated his youth, and kept him alive and young ever since. He calls it The Companion, and communicates with it telepathically. It was what brought the shuttle here, as Cochrane had expressed lonliness so the Companion, rather than releasing him has brought him other humans.
But of course, Nancy Hedford, the Federation diplomat, will die if Bones can't get her treatment. For whatever reason, the Companion won't cure her. Kirk and Spock attempt to reason with it, through Cochrane, through the universal translator, but it will not let Cochrane go, and since he's lonely, it won't let them go. And that's when they figure out the Companion is, when it comes to gender, feminine, and that she's in love with Zefram Cochrane. The episode's best scene is perhaps Cochrane's reaction to this information. He's a man who, for all his innovative genius, is 150 years behind the times compared to our heroes. He's disgusted at the idea of love with a being as utterly alien as the Companion, repulsed at how he's been "used" by her all these years, and when Kirk, Spock and Bones are utterly flabbergasted as his bigotry, as to them inter-species romance is totally ordinary, Cochrane is sickened by them too. If this is what modern morality is, he wants no part of it.
Now, isn't that a familiar stretch of words? Spock can't understand the irrationality of Cochrane's response. Of love he says "I may not understand the emotion, but it obviously exists", and argues that Cochrane has been existing as one half of a romantic couple for 150 years and it was totally fine until he realized it. It's a really apt portrayal of the irrationality of bigotry.
Too bad the episode flubs it in the final act. So Hedford is dying of the disease, and even she finds Cochrane's attitude inexcusable. She reveals that while she's always been good at her job, she's never known love, and can't understand someone who would throw it away. Meanwhile, Kirk tries to argue with the Companion that Cochrane will never love her because she isn't human, hoping it will see the uselessness of keeping them there. You see where this is going?
The Companion merges with Hedford, curing the disease but tying their life to the planetoid - they can never leave. They are both personalities merged in one body, forming a new being, and Cochrane decides this he can love, and so the elect to stay behind and live and grow old together on the planet - no longer immortal, just regular people. Cochrane makes Kirk promise not to reveal his existence.
And right about when you're asking "wait, what about the war?" Kirk handwaves it away to Spock by saying they'll just find another diplomat. Okaaaaay.
So the problem here is twofold: For one thing, Cochrane learns nothing. He's disgusted by the Companion's love when she isn't human, so she becomes humand now he's cool with it. There's no growth or arc there. Secondly, while the episode tries to go out of its way to say, y'know, Hedford was gonna die anyway, she always wished for love, she consented to the transformation, and she wasn't actually needed as a diplomat anyway, the fact is that it's very hard not to get the impression the Companion just possessed this woman who had her own life and goals before this happened, and hijacked her body to serve her own purposes. She's literally reduced to a prop in the story of two other people. So yeah, the ending, while perhaps inevitable given the way the story sets up its pieces, isn't exactly the best resolution to this story.
One other aspect of this episode I feel worth bringing up -- when the universal translator translates the Companion into an English voice, it's female. Cochrane is surprised at this, asking why it's programmed that way, and Kirk responds that "male and female are universal constants" and thus if the translator voice is female it's because the Companion is female, and this leads to the revelation that she's in love with him. I get why this line is here, I get what Gene Coon was going for with this, and I can't fault a forty-three year old heterosexual white dude in 1967 for not addressing nonbinary people (largely because I doubt Coon was even aware of the existence of such), it's still a line that reads as cringeworthy in a modern context. And even if we dismiss the socially problematic elements of that line -- why would you say that in a sci-fi story? Male and female are universal constants?? How limiting is that for a sci-fi writer? Why would you limit your universe like that??
Anyways, "Metamorphosis" is a good episode, but it's efforts to be 1967 progressive involve some stuff that feel 2016 regressive, and should be watched out for when giving it a go. I still think that it's central argument, that love should outweigh bigotry, is validly and eloquently expressed enough to buy it a lot of leeway on the stuff it stumbles on.
Rating: 3 out 4
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