Curious, he touches it, and receives an electrical shock that destroys the scanner and knocks him out cold. While doing so, with a trident scanner, the Companion appears there, directly behind him. Kirk asks Spock to attempt to repair the Galileo. During the discussion Hedford suddenly starts crying and yelling incoherently, forcing McCoy to sedate her with a hypospray and place her in Cochrane's bed. Cochrane is responsible for the abduction of Kirk and his party via communicating his loneliness to the Companion he had thought that the Companion would simply release him. The Companion found him, reversed his aging process, and has maintained him here ever since. So he took a spacecraft and left his home on Alpha Centauri for parts unknown. Cochrane was old, and knew he wanted to die in space. Kirk asks him his first name, and then realizes why Cochrane seems so familiar: he is Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri, inventor of space warp drive. This is what he calls the strange creature that brought the Galileo here. Ominously, Commissioner Hedford has developed a fever, the first symptom of her illness.įinally, Kirk presses Cochrane, and learns about the Companion.

Cochrane shows his visitors to his home, decorated with instruments Kirk regards as antiques. Kirk and McCoy find this man familiar, somehow, but cannot quite place him. But he denies knowledge of the force that brought the shuttlecraft here. He tells the officers that a damping field prevents some technology here from working. He introduces himself simply as Cochrane. Someone else is here – a young man who quickly joins the stranded group. Then a loud 'hallooooooo' breaks the stillness. McCoy notes that the gaseous cloud they encountered in space seems to be here, on the surface. Examining the shuttlecraft, Spock discovers something that should be impossible: nothing is damaged and yet nothing works. There, it is soft-landed on an iron- nickel planetoid with a standard oxygen- nitrogen atmosphere and standard gravity – a place entirely suited for Human life. McCoy, Kirk, and Spock on Gamma Canaris N

The craft is pulled to course 98 Mark 12, towards the Gamma Canaris region. Moving at warp speed, it quickly envelops the shuttlecraft and disables its systems. The commissioner is bitter at what she regards as incompetence in the Federation Medical Department, which she believes should have properly prepared her.Įn route (shortly past point 3, on course 201 Mark 15), the shuttlecraft Galileo encounters a phenomenon that Spock describes as 'vaguely like a cloud of ionized hydrogen, but with strong erratic electrical impulses'. The commissioner, who has been called upon by the Federation to prevent a war on Epsilon Canaris III, has developed Sakuro's Disease, an extremely rare life-threatening illness, and must be removed to a medical facility for treatment. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are ferrying Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford back to the USS Enterprise.

Star trek metamorphosis