Nomad
- Mechanical probe on episode No. 37 "The Changeling" of
the original STAR TREK/NBC/1966-69 series. Nomad (voice of Vic Perrin) was
a five-foot long cylindrical object with radiating antennas that floated
on anti-gravity beams. Originally an Earth probe launched on August of
A.D. 2002 to seek out alien life forms, Nomad was damaged by a meteoroid
and wandered out of contact with the Earth until finally merging its
programming with an alien space probe called Tan-Ru whose mission was to
secure and sterilize soil samples.
Unfortunately, their combined programming now
reflected a new mission to destroy all that was imperfect, including all
organic life.
After killing some four billion inhabitants of
the Malurian System, Nomad confronted the starship USS Enterprise.
While probing the craft for signs of imperfection, it mistook the ship's
Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) for its own creator Jackson
Roykirk.
Using this to his advantage, Kirk convinced
Nomad that if it could mistake him for his creator, it's programming was
flawed, imperfect. Seeing the logic of the situation Nomad
self-destructed.
A similar but larger mass killing device (a
planet destroyer) appeared on episode No.35 "The Doomsday Machine."
