10 Star Trek Moments More Important Than You Realised

The Vulcan mind meld is a powerful ability that, among other things, allows them to share their deepest thoughts and memories with other sentient beings. The practice was frowned upon in early Vulcan history, but by the time of The Original Series, Vulcans like Spock used mind melds often when no other options were available.

One of Spock's most interesting mind melds was with the robotic space probe Nomad in the episode The Changeling. Seeing that Nomad, a lost Earth probe from the early 2000s, had mutated and turned into a seemingly intelligent being, Spock suggested a mind meld and was able to peer into the machine's thoughts, proving for a fact that it was self-aware. Using the meld, Spock was able to learn Nomad's intentions to destroy all life in the universe, and the origin of it's self-awareness.

This was the first time we saw a mind meld with an artificial intelligence, but not the last. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture Spock did the same thing with the V'Ger entity and once again shared thoughts with a sentient machine.