Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis"

"Metamorphosis" Season 2, episode 9.

In a shuttlecraft, cut short of their mission, Commissioner Headford is sick. She yells at McCoy about "the inefficiency of the medical branch of Starfleet." The funny part is that she is quite right in being pissed off because she didn't get an inoculation for a disease McCoy says is so rare that contracting it is "billions to one." How can you not be inoculated? What, were they trying to save a few bucks?

Then they are accosted by some "thing" again, some kind of ionized cloud that takes them off course and makes them land on an asteroid with a breathable atmosphere. Isn't it amazing how many bad things happen from "ionized" clouds or storms?

On the surface of the asteroid they find none other than Zephram Cochran, discoverer of the space warp. He knew Spock was a Vulcan, making that sync with Star Trek: First Contact. The Companion, the ionized cloud, saved his life and rejuvenated him. Now it keeps him as a pet of sorts, or a lover. Bones says it is more like love. Kirk says that Cochran is from Alpha Centauri, so that is weird. Cochran wonders, "What's it like out there?" Kirk responds, "We're on a thousand planets and spreading out. It's estimated that there are millions of planets with intelligent life and we haven't begun to map them. Interested?" (On a side note, it is a thing like this that makes me sad for living in this technological infancy of the early 21st century.) Cochran plays like Rip Van Winkle, "How'd you like to go to sleep for 150 years and wake up in a new world?" Cool concept.

I truly like the theme of some of these episodes of being imprisoned against the will even if that imprisoned life seems perfect and well cared for. Compare this to the episode "This Side of Paradise."

Cochran gets pissed when they talk of him and the Companion being lovers; he is just about revolted. Somehow though, when the Companion takes over the body of the Commissioner, well, that's just hunky-dory then! Still the Companion but now in a human body--plus, what about the ramifications of the Companion "taking" the Commissioner's body--isn't that like killing? How does Kirk write that off in his log? Did she die or not? If she did, it was McCoy's fault for not inoculating.

There was a novel, Federation, that took on Cochran's life after this, actually in the time of The Next Generation.