She felt Kirk’s actions were out of character, considering how quickly he went to the nuclear option of trying to incapacitate/potentially kill The Companion before trying to communicate and resolve the issue. I felt that his actions could be justified given that he had someone under his authority dying. I was more bothered by Cochrane’s attitude towards The Companion after finding out she was in love with him. My guy, she’s kept you alive for 150+ years and communicates via mind meld. How the hell did you not know she loved you? Is this how blind all men are to affection? I can’t say I haven’t been just as ignorant about it, but I haven’t been joining my consciousness with theirs for over a century and a half.
It could be argued that the Companion’s nature/understanding evolved after the first mind meld with Cochrane to save his life, possibly introducing it to the concept of emotion at that point. To the point on the Ambassador, the Companion/Ambassador does keep referring to themselves as we, even though it’s clearly the Companion in the driver’s seat. I’m not as familiar with Next Generation, oddly enough, but should definitely check those episodes out.
I can’t imagine the ambassador would really be cool about staying on that little planet, alone with Cochrane, for the rest of “their” “lives.” But this is another product of its time issue: The reason they’ll be stuck alone is because Cochrane doesn’t wanna be bothered by an onslaught of Federation historians and Starfleet fanboys. The ambassador, if she’s still there at all, just gets to go along with what the man wants—it’s never brought up whether she can be asked what she wants.
So I guess overall I don’t think “Metamorphosis” is a very good episode. It’s in a cerebral, what’s-going-on sort of style, but then what’s the point of what’s going on? I read one time that theme isn’t a word, it’s a sentence: a story can’t be “about ambition” (for example), but rather, it has to be about how ambition can isolate you from those around you, or how ambition can make you lose touch with yourself, or how ambition will throw you into a world full of sharks.
I can’t nail down what “Metamorphosis” is about, thematically. What were the writers trying to tell us? And maybe this is an unfair question, since a television show has to crank out some number of episodes, and a writing team doesn’t have time to coherently unify plot, theme, and character every single week. Maybe we should just look at the Companion as a monster of the week, but it’s a monstrous kind of love, and there was a mad scramble to tie a bow over the conflict.
Wow, I’ve never heard that bit about theme being a sentence. Thanks for sharing that, I really appreciate the thought process behind it.
I agree that the episode wasn’t paced properly to give every angle a chance to breathe. The Ambassador essentially just exists as set dressing/a prop to drive the story they were trying to tell with Cochrane and the Companion. I think that Metamorphosis is an episode that deserves the Star Trek continues treatment, similar to how Who Mourns for Adonais is continued in the episode I linked. There are a lot of open threads that could be used to tie the story up and give it some more impact and evolve/clarify the theme.
https://youtu.be/3G-ziTBAkbQ