The Shape of Water is one of the strangest Best Picture winners of all time. The 2017 film mixes fairy tale plotting with The Creature From the Black Lagoon to arrive at a place where a mute, socially isolated woman falling in love with a fish-man feels not only natural, but tragically necessary. It is a film about the thin line between fascination and love, how the former can beget the later, and how falling in love is a natural process as much as it is the result of a conscious choice. The more tragic elements - and bittersweet ending - suggest that control over that process is a key focus for the powerful; it is an unrivaled lever for manipulation and can only be uncomplicated through directly supernatural means. Here, in “Metamorphosis,” Star Trek creates its own fable of love with equally arresting results. But where The Shape of Water was the result of Guillermo Del Toro’s obsession with 50s monster movies, “Metamorphosis” plays on the more classical references with which the show is more comfortable. Shakespeare, Greek mythology, Roman history; this episode is a respun yarn of Odysseus and Calypso, fashioned into a happy ending.
The start does not foreshadow its end though. The episode begins almost identically to its immediate predecessor “I, Mudd,” with the main characters forced off course for unknown reasons. However, instead of an android saboteur, the crew suffers under the withering commands of the visiting Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford. Hedford, sent to negotiate a peace treaty between unnamed factions on the outer reaches of Federation space, has come down with a deadly illness and must be transported to the Enterprise’s world class medical facilities in order to receive the cure. When the Galileo shuttlecraft - crewed by Kirk, Spock, and McCoy - is inexplicably forced off course onto a small planet, the running clock on Hedford’s life suddenly becomes much more important.
McCoy watches over the sickly Commissioner Nancy Hedford. Hedford, the highest-ranking female Starfleet official seen up until this point, was played by Elinor Donahue, whose biggest success had come in the previous decade on the 50s sitcom Father Knows Best.
It’s a credit to the producer Gene Coon’s writing that “Metamorphosis” does not collapse at this point, for the alien planet holds at least three episodes’ worth of reveals on its surface. First, the crew meet the only inhabitant, quickly revealed to be Zefram Cochrane - the inventor of the warp drive that interstellar travel relies on. Cochrane has been presumed dead for over a century after disappearing in a spaceflight at age eighty-seven. Here, he does not appear a day over forty, and explains that he was rescued and restored by a gaseous entity he calls “The Companion.” Cochrane is shocked to learn that the world has changed so much without him and is eager to return. But the Companion will not allow it. Indeed, she - check the Stray Thoughts - brought the Galileo here to provide Cochrane company. Cochrane explains that he can communicate with the Companion nonverbally, their feelings can merge in a kind of symbiosis that allows for understanding. Kirk, upon witnessing the symbiosis, immediately recognizes what is going on. The Companion is in love with her captive.
The score and effects for the symbiosis scenes communicate the feeling too; none of Kirk’s deductions feel out of place with the warbly, plaintive music behind the delicate, psychedelic colors of the Companion merging with Cochrane’s body. But Cochrane is surprised and enraged. He displays a vicious reactionary streak upon hearing Kirk’s thesis - a “totally parochial attitude.” He calls the Companion’s feelings unnatural, he feels disgusted, as Spock puts it: “he was loved, and he resents it.” The Companion’s rehabilitation and care saved his life but also kept him chained while the world moved on without him. Cochrane’s disgust is fundamentally arrogant though. He disappeared at age 87, the world was moving on already, he is on borrowed time that is solely a gift of love. Commissioner Hedford - in ever worsening condition - wishes for Cochrane’s fate as she slowly dies in his small hut. Her job, it seems, has kept her from true love. For her, home is solitary.
The Companion and Cochrane merge. According to the fine folks at the Star Trek fan wiki, the Companion’s effects were designed by Richard Edlund, a legendary visual effects artist with two Academy Awards in the category (Star Wars, 1978, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1982) out of four nominations (Die Hard, 1988, and Alien 3, 1992).
Kirk’s objections to the situation are not so “parochial.” Instead, the Captain jumps on his hobbyhorse at the sound of the news. The Companion has kept Cochrane here, alive and happy, but fundamentally bored. His great mind is without struggle, obstacle, and ambition. As Kirk often says, in episodes like “The Apple” and “This Side of Paradise,” the human condition requires challenge and goals more than comfort. Cochrane must be freed. He approaches the situation with characteristic confidence, believing that he can explain to the Companion why Cochrane and she cannot be together. Their different forms, their different thoughts, their different *material states* are a gap that love cannot bridge, he pleads.
The Companion - to her immense credit - disagrees. She merges her form with the dying Hedford’s body, giving up her immortal form in the process. Cochrane is stunned by her sacrifice. And then it clicks.
COCHRANE: You gave up everything to be human? But even if you stay here, you'll eventually die.
COMPANION: The joy of this hour. I am pleased.
COCHRANE: Well, I can't just fly away and leave you here.
COMPANION: You must be free, Zefram Cochrane.
COCHRANE: You saved my life, took care of me. You loved me. I never understood. I do now.
At the end, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are freed from indentured companionship, on one condition. Cochrane no longer wants to escape the planet. It has space and good soil for his homestead. He understands that the world out there truly has passed him by, and longs only for the rest of his days with the true love that made those days possible. Cochrane demands that they tell no one what they found. Kirk agrees. The crew depart the planet and return to the Enterprise while Cochrane ponders about whether to plant a fig tree.
Zefram Cochrane and the Companion explain their choice to the crew. Cochrane was played by Glenn Corbett, who had a successful career in Western-themed television and a recurring guest spot on the 80s hit Dallas. Cochrane the character would go on to reappear across Star Trek media, given his importance to the underlying lore, including a large role in the 1996 Next Generation film Star Trek: First Contact, where he was portrayed by James Cromwell.
At the fear of giving too much credit to sentimentality, this is affecting stuff. “The City on the Edge of Forever” is the last Trek episode to deal with love in a more than surface level way, with Kirk being forced to choose his duty over his feelings. That episode is a tragedy because of its conflicts, its engagement with history and place in the real world. Out here, love is complicated and sublimated. But “Metamorphosis” purposefully sets itself apart. An isolated world. A man out of time. An impossible, immortal love that literally sustains life. “The Shape of Water” resembles a fable only in its mood; this builds a fairy tale world for its science-fiction romance and is all the better for it. Perhaps even Kirk can agree that people do not need ambition if they can be this fulfilled.
Everything about the episode - from the aforementioned unique score by George Duning and ethereal special effects for the Companion itself - helps it succeed. Ralph Senesky - director of “This Side of Paradise” and a contender for best director not named Marc Daniels or Joseph Pevney - shoots a straightforward and clear setup that allows those elements to work their magic. He also manages to create one of the most indelible images in the series up to this point. As the Companion walks with Cochrane after her metamorphosis, she holds up a sleeve of Hedford’s dress and filters Cochrane’s image through the colors. It looks remarkably as the two of them did when merged. In “Metamorphosis,” love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Stray Thoughts
Kirk and Spock manage to rig the universal translator to communicate with the Companion and discover that it is female due to a big heap of sci-fi jargon about gender essentialism. At one point, Kirk declares male and female to be a “universal constant,” which is not even true of life on Earth! Well, he is a captain, not a doctor.
McCoy reminds Kirk at one point that he is a “soldier so often that he forgets he is a diplomat.” That’s a pointed line that sums up one of the best tensions in Star Trek, talked about more in my piece on “Mirror, Mirror.”
Photo Credits
The Shape of Water dance sequence: https://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/The-Shape-of-Water/pages/The-Shape-of-Water-728.htm
McCoy and Hedford: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/683843524647967914/
Companion and Cochrane merging: https://www.kethinov.com/startrekepisodes.php?id=187