It amazes me how much we let stuff slide as children. Growing up watching this show I remembered loving it. Seeing it again as an adult its some of the hokiest stuff ever. MST3K could make a career just lampooning each episode.
That said most of the episodes with the 'monster of the week' are just silly innocent over the top fun, but this episodes, 'monter' is the worst most ill concieved enemy ever! First, the alien itself is this shapechanger that can someone (never explained) can completely mimic the target perfectly as well as memories. Where it gets stupid, is the aliens have the power to heal while at the same time their touch causes severe burns. If that is not silly enough, they also have this weird morality where they cannot KILL, yet they can command and even CONTROL the body of another to kill. Tell me how this is different than killing?
The next problem I have is how easily a nuclear missile can be deployed without any security back ups or redundancy. Next is how no one seems to be willing to get help. When the Admiral first see's the alien he could have easily called in the others and had the alien shot or at least attempted to arrest it. Throughout the episode no one ever seems to want to get help with anything. The fight scene between the Admiral and the Chief was so badly done all I could do is laugh about it, and what is up with the crew failing to believe in crazy stuff after 2 years of some of the craziest stuff they been through. It is like the writer was hired only to write this one episode and knew nothing about the show and didn't bother to find out. The last stupidity was the Admiral let the alien go without any attempt to stop them. How do you know if it won't work if you don't try it. This was a trainwreck of an episode.