Talk:Metamorphosis (episode)

Removed
Removed "Nichelle Nichols does not appear in this show." since she does! Walter Koenig is not in this episode. –Kurt of North Bend

Cochrane's age
"Despite this, it is difficult to reconcile the Cochrane in this episode with the one portrayed in the film. Star Trek: First Contact." - Why not? Cochrane states in this episode that not only has he stopped aging, but it was also reversed, so a timeline to fit in 'First Contact' would go something like this;

1. Enterprise 'E' encounters Cochrane and assists with first Human warp jump.

2. Sometime during or after 'Enterprise' series, Cochrane retires to Alpha Centauri (Thereby fitting in with Spocks ascertation that he's human, but from Alpha Centauri.)

3. He gets bored, so travels into space where he eventually meets the companion.

4. The companion causes him to 'de-age' to an age before the Enterprise 'E' crew met him, in order to save his life.

5. A century later Kirk, Spock and McCoy encounter a man, who's experience and longevity cause him to act in a much more mature demeanor than the man the Enterprise 'E' crew met in 'First Contact'.

All this is cannon, and fits in quite well I believe, but I haven't edited the original page, because I can't quote sources off hand. Hopefully someone will see my idea and take it up - thanks--MikeStrett 05:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasn't it actually Kirk who stated that Cochrane was from Alpha Centauri? - Adambomb1701 17:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Kirk says that, but I could say that I'm from Liverpool (where I currently reside), it doesn't mean I was born here. I think this is just nit-picking over the English language and think the timeline I've provided fits in quite well.

Anyway, my original suggestion was the removal of the comment "Despite this, it is difficult to reconcile the Cochrane in this episode with the one portrayed in the film. Star Trek: First Contact." which has been removed, as you can reconcile the two Cochranes as I've shown. --MikeStrett 17:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * A few side notes: In First Contact isnt the actor who plays Chochrane a little too old to be a man of 31 years of age? I mean Cohchrane was born in 2032 and in 2063 they have the first warp flight, which would make him 31 - unless I am missing something here. In 2063 Cochrane looks like 50+ something - and that is certainly not a matter of opinion (he definitely doesnt look 31).


 * Also, with respect to where he is from: it can go both ways. You can actually be a native of somewhere and say "I am from XYZ" or just lived there for the past 6 years and say you are from XYZ (in this episode Kirk says "Cochrane...OF Alpha Centauri" by the way - not from). If he is indeed of Alpha Cantauri, then he probably resided there for a while - if you just visit you arent of that place. He couldn't have resided there for too long because in 2119 he officially opened the Warp Five Complex (at the age of 87)on Earth. Unless he sort of lived in Alpha Centauri then - assuming in 50-sthg years after developing the warp engine, Earth managed to establish a colony there - then came back to Earth for the opening of the Warp Five Complex to go back to Alpha Centauri again where he decided to travel around and landed w/ the Companion on that planetoid. There just seems to be a disconnect there. – Distantlycharmed 00:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree that Cochrane needs to have lived on Alpha Centauri for a lot of his life. You could say 'Armstrong of the Moon' without him ever having lived there. Alpha Centauri need only be associated with Cochrane for some reason. Certainly travelling to Alpha Centauri would be an important part of human history and regardless of how he was involved, Cochrane was the man who made it possible so association between the two is perfectly reasonable. CleverAndKnowsIt 03:39, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This is already heavily discussed here. --Alan 00:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

After the episode
Question: I visited this page because the episode was on TV today and I was curious what became of Cochrane and the Companion after the episode. Is there reference to them ever again in their later years? Did they have children, etc.? I'm assuming Kirk put a privacy block on parts of his logs so that people wouldn't go looking for Cochrane until after he'd be dead. I'm more interested in canon material, although if there's non-canon stuff, that might be interesting to know. Thanks for any help. 71.243.5.125 20:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC-5)


 * In canon, nothing was ever revealed about the life of Cochrane and the Companion after the episode again. In later episodes, we learned a lot about Cochrane's earlier life, but nothing about his life after the visit by Kirk and co. --Jörg 00:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Background Cleanup
I removed the following for being unnecessary, as we KNOW ZC is from Earth from later canon: I guess it could be rephrased to rebut the idea that this ep implies that ZC is an Alpha Centauri native, but I think this is unnecessary.
 * Although Cochrane is from Alpha Centauri, he must have been a native of Earth originally – when commenting about his home, he says, "It's not Earth, of course." Spock also refers to him as being an irrational Human being at the conclusion of the episode.

I removed the following for being mere commentary:
 * Perhaps no episode of the series demonstrates the concept of "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" more fully than this. Cochrane runs a gamut of emotions from defending the Companion to resenting the fact that it "used" him, to finally accepting its love fully. As McCoy says, "There's nothing disgusting about it. It's just another lifeform... you get used to those things!" Acceptance of alien life is a common theme in many of Gene L. Coon's scripts.

And I'm not really sure of the significance of this note: – Cleanse 11:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Act two ends with the Companion attacking Kirk and Spock inside Cochrane's house. The picture fades out to commercial and the music ends, but the final sound is of Kirk choking.

Cut scene

 * 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.

Absolutely false. A landing sequence was never photographed. What you see is what we shot.

Speculation
I removed the following note, which was in the summary for some reason. It's speculation ("It may be...or it may be that...") and somewhat of a nitpick:


 * 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.

– Cleanse ( talk 03:52, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Removed
I removed the following totally bogus and false "information": "In the 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."

1. That still is taken from "The Way to Eden", and is mistakenly featured on the season 2 DVD set. The "Galileo II" sign was made for that episode, and never before appeared. And that's not the model, that's the mockup of the shuttlecraft.

2. That legendary "landing scene" never existed and was never filmed or photographed in any way. Director Ralph Senensky can confirm that.

3. The entire "info" is complete speculation.

And please do not post any more stuff about that bogus "landing scene". Have a nice day. --Ltarex 11:28, June 17, 2011 (CET)