star trek next generation unnatural selection

Unnatural Selection (episode)

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Production history
• 4.2 Story and production
• 4.3 Continuity
• 4.4 Reception
• 4.6 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Special appearance by
• 5.4 Guest stars
• 5.5 Co-stars
• 5.6 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.7 Stand-ins
• 5.8.1 Unused production references
• 5.9 External links

Summary [ ]

En route to the station, Captain Jean-Luc Picard asks Counselor Deanna Troi to come to his ready room about his new chief medical officer, Katherine Pulaski . He has concerns about her dedication interfering with her objectivity. She senses his concerns, but believes she is a good choice for chief medical officer, telling Picard that she believes this because she has spent more time with Pulaski and gotten to know her.

Data then receives a distress signal from the Federation supply ship USS Lantree . All they say is that they are dying, unable to give any more details. The voice on the other end of the comm is weak, and then falls silent.

Act One [ ]

" They died of old age! "

When the Enterprise arrives and hails the ship, there is no answer. Data reads no life signs , but all systems seem functional. At Commander William T. Riker 's suggestion, the Enterprise establishes a remote link with the Lantree 's computer. Picard quickly goes to his ready room to provide access codes to authorize the link. When they turn on the bridge monitor, the entire crew is dead. Dr. Pulaski's scans find they died of natural causes through aging.

In the conference lounge , everything is laid out on the table. They download and play back Captain Telaka's last entry:

"We need your help."

Riker says that Captain Telaka was his age . The Doctor 's search of medical records indicate nothing happened, except that the first officer was treated for the Thelusian flu at Darwin Genetic Research Station on the planet Gagarin IV . She has the ship quarantined with quarantine transmitters activated and they head for Gagarin IV.

Act Two [ ]

Once in orbit , they hail the station. Doctor Kingsley answers, and explains they have declared a medical emergency. Their staff is suffering from the same phenomenon as the Lantree . She is convinced they were infected by the crew of the Lantree . She wants Enterprise to help them evacuate their genetically-engineered children to protect them. Doctor Pulaski says there must be a full quarantine on the station, and that includes them. But Doctor Kingsley pleads that the children have no symptoms. The captain interrupts and says there is very little they can do, they will discuss it.

In the conference lounge, Doctor Pulaski says that the children should be evacuated after a full examination in a force field . Picard decides that they must err on the side of caution, and denies her permission for the examination. If they are carriers , the ship could quickly become infected. The doctor instead suggests she beam up a child encased in styrolite , in suspended animation , so she can scan for disease without it being able to spread. She doesn't know what to scan for, and the only way to determine the cause is to collect some data.

A test subject beams aboard

Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge sets up the force field, and the twelve-year-old child David is beamed aboard by Chief O'Brien . However, what materializes is a male whose apparent age is closer to twenty. Worf is about to call it a trick, but Picard stops him from doing anything rash. Since the styrolite is intact, he orders the force field down, and lets the doctor scan him. Counselor Troi immediately detects a strong presence, even in stasis. She believes he is telepathic , a surprise to everyone. Pulaski, looking over the boy, remarks with wonder that he may be the next step in Human evolution. " At least, Dr. Kingsley's vision of it, " Picard replies.

Act Three [ ]

After scanning with everything they've got, the doctor concludes ecstatically that he is in better health than the crew. In fact, his immune system is so advanced, it may not be possible for him to contract disease. She wants to release him to do further tests. Picard won't allow that. Despite her passionate opinion and interrupting the captain a few times, the risk is too great. She tries to think of everything, suggesting force fields and separate environmental systems, but the captain knows they can fail, and to him, that is not acceptable. The best he can give her is an open door: if she can find a way which is more accident-proof, bring it to him, and he'll allow it. Picard then informs Pulaski that he is not one to discourage input but asks her to let him finish his sentences once in a while.

" He's telepathic! "

When Pulaski talks to La Forge in engineering , he suggests the only independent environment is a shuttlecraft . When she takes La Forge's suggestion to Picard, he doesn't like it, since she would still be at risk. But as Pulaski is about to argue, he actually approves her request, much to her surprise. She takes Data to pilot the Sakharov , and has the boy beamed aboard. She removes the styrolite and immediately he comes to life. She is surprised when he suddenly reaches out to her telepathically. For eighteen minutes, she examines him, and when Data confirms that everything seems to be fine with her, she suddenly gets an arthritic cramp, the first stage of the disease.

Act Four [ ]

Still startled, in pain and very agitated, she tells them to immediately return the boy to Darwin station, and says there is nothing they can do for her. She will not make herself an exception to the quarantine. Since she is now suffering from the same disease as the Darwin staff, she decides to head to the station.

When the rest of the senior staff meets in the conference lounge, they don't see what they can do for her. The children are carriers, and they can't screen out the disease through the biofilter because the boy was beamed twice already and he still had it. However, Transporter Chief O'Brien gets an idea: they can use the transporter trace , a previous pattern when she didn't have the disease, to control the way she is reconstituted. Unfortunately, no one remembers her ever using the transporters; she possesses transporter phobia . Picard asks for the captain of her last assignment, the USS Repulse , to be contacted via a captain's priority subspace message .

" Perfect, in every way. "

Aboard the station, the puzzled Kingsley still cannot believe it is the children who transmit the disease. She shows Data and Pulaski several telekinetic children, their finest achievement. These children, she proudly argues, are perfect in every way. In fact, their immune system is aggressive, creating an antibody to destroy the virus in midair by altering its genetic code . It even works at a distance. That's when the light bulb goes on in Pulaski's mind; remembering that the Lantree 's first officer was suffering from Thelusian flu when he visited the station, she tells Data to run a genetic analysis on the interaction between the flu virus and the antigen. Kingsley remarks that such an analysis could take months; Pulaski informs her that Data has a way with computers.

Back aboard the Enterprise , Captain Taggert said they erased her pattern after she transferred, not that she used the transporter much, preferring to take shuttles. Taggert says he would have given Pulaski a shuttle if it kept her on the Repulse ; however, the moment she saw there was an opening aboard the Enterprise , she jumped at it, because she greatly admired Picard, which he finds extraordinary.

Data's analysis is conclusive, and unfortunate. As he explains to the astonished Kingsley and Pulaski, the antibody the children's immune system created to counteract the Thelusian flu does more than simply attack the virus; it actually interacts with normal Human DNA to change sequences which affect the aging process. The children thus are, in fact, more than simply carriers of that disease; they're the cause. Since DNA is self-replicating, the effects are irreversible, and as evidenced by how rapidly the crew of the Lantree were wiped out, any infected person is capable of infecting others.

Pulaski sadly and silently accepts her fate, while Kingsley tries to maintain her own composure, but in vain as she breaks down in tears nonetheless: her experiment, of which she was so proud, has both succeeded beyond her wildest dreams and proven to be a miserable failure. Her children are so "advanced" that they can never be allowed any contact with the rest of Humanity, as they have already proven lethal to herself, Pulaski, the science team, and the crew of the Lantree .

Act Five [ ]

" The rest of us are just about out of time. "

Looking tired and at least twenty years older, Pulaski explains the situation to Picard through the viewscreen. She is in obvious pain, but trying her best to look strong. He wishes to beam her aboard in suspended animation and keep her until they can repair this damage, but she is adamant against it. She does not want them to leap before they looked like she did. Instead, she reads a log entry over the com:

Transporter therapy

Data beams back aboard after a farewell to the now-white-haired Pulaski, who appears to have aged to approximately one hundred years old by this time, like the equally deteriorated Kingsley. Both women seem to have accepted their terrible fate with more calm by now, but both still look very depressed. However, after Data is screened for organics and beamed aboard, Picard asks him about another idea. Since the genetic changes are the cause, they could take a sample of her genetic code and have the transporter reverse the transposition. Chief O'Brien says it will work, but it would be risky, since they will lose her pattern if the procedure fails.

It takes some doing to get a DNA sample; Pulaski's records have not arrived at the Enterprise from Starfleet Command yet. Riker and Data search her quarters and finally find a hair follicle on her hairbrush . Picard calls Pulaski. The bridge crew and Picard are shocked by the image of her severe deterioration, as she now looks much older than one hundred years.

" Good to see you, doctor. "

The captain explains the possible solution to the terminal doctor. Pulaski, now totally exhausted, out of time and options, is willing to give it a try. Troi is very shaken and sad, seeing and possibly feeling Pulaski's terror, despair and unbearable suffering. O'Brien warns Picard that the trip is one-way only; if the procedure fails, then Pulaski cannot be beamed back to Darwin Station. Picard takes the transporter controls and assumes full responsibility for the attempt so that O'Brien will not be to blame should something go wrong, to O'Brien's gratitude. After a tense several seconds of controlling the transporter during beam-in, the doctor, restored to her proper age, appears. Picard admits to her had the procedure not worked he would have had to beam her pattern into space. Pulaski does not mind this, since she always assumes the worst whenever she uses it anyway.

" All achievement has a price. "

The Enterprise returns to the USS Lantree and, after paying final respects, consigns the ship to oblivion and USS Lantree is scuttled by destroying it with a single photon torpedo . Then Riker orders course set for Star Station India .

Log entries [ ]

• Captain's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), 2365
• Captain's log, USS Lantree (NCC-1837)
• Chief medical officer's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Extreme caution. The USS Lantree is a quarantined vessel by order of Starfleet Command. Do not board. "

" Looks like they had a battle with time… " " …and lost. "

" Doctor, God knows I'm not one to discourage input, but I would appreciate it if you'd let me finish my sentences once in a while. "

" What is your condition, doctor? " " Not exactly up to factory specs. "

" Commander, I want an analysis of the interaction between the Thelusian flu and the children. " " On a molecular genetic level? " " We don't have time for that! Genetic analysis could take months! " " Not necessarily. Commander Data has a way with computers. "

" Chief Medical Officer's Log, this will be my final report to the Enterprise . Just as changes in evolution are known to be caused by changes in the environment, we now know the process also works in reverse. An attempt to control Human evolution has resulted in a new species, which is lethal to its predecessors. The children will be condemned to live out their lives in isolation. The quarantine of the Darwin Station must be maintained forever . "

" Apparently, she's been an admirer of yours for some time. " " Extraordinary. "

" What if we used a sample of her DNA, say, from a blood test taken before she was exposed to the disease. Could that be used to filter out the genetic changes? " " Well, I'd have to get into the biofilter bus and patch in a molecular matrix reader. That's no problem. But the wave form modulator will be overloaded without the regeneration limiter in the first stage circuit. " " Interesting. However, theoretically– " " Data. "

" If this hadn't worked, it would have been necessary to beam your energy into empty space… " " … and spread my atoms across the galaxy! " " Yes, I'm sorry, it... " " No, no, don't be sorry. Every time I get into the damn thing I'm convinced that's what's going to happen. "

Background information [ ]

Production history [ ].

• Final draft script: 10 November 1988 [1]
• Premiere airdate: 30 January 1989
• First UK airdate: 15 May 1991

Story and production [ ]

Michael Westmore working on Muldaur's makeup

• In an earlier draft of the script, the episode had extensive scenes set aboard the Lantree , as opposed to the finished episode where only the ship's bridge (a redress of the battle bridge set) is seen on the viewscreen. The Lantree was also destroyed in the middle of the story, rather than at the end. [2]
• Another change from earlier drafts of the script was the total deletion of a character named Rina, whose great beauty caused her fellow crewmembers to suffer a number of comic mishaps, and also had a romantic subplot with La Forge. In place of Rina, O'Brien was written into the episode to assist La Forge. [3]
• Actresses Patricia Smith and Diana Muldaur had worked together on Planet Earth , a movie created by Gene Roddenberry as a TV pilot.
• In an earlier concept of the story, a strikingly beautiful and fully recovered Dr. Mandel would be seen on the viewscreen of the Enterprise during the last minutes, thanking the crew for saving the lives of everyone on the station. To save time and money (with a younger actress) this idea of a scene was discarded and the audience never gets to see Kingsley in her true, young and healthy form.
• According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion , 2nd ed., p. 74, the Darwin children were originally to have appeared nude, but the use of transparent furniture nixed that idea.
• According to director Paul Lynch , Muldaur had some difficulty remembering her lines in this episode. The producers solved this problem by putting her lines on cue cards. ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 176)
• Makeup designer Michael Westmore noted that the old-age makeup in this episode was much easier than that for " Too Short A Season ", where he had not been satisfied with the look of Clayton Rohner ( Mark Jameson ). This was in part due to experience from the previous episode, and in part because of Muldaur's more mature features. He commented, " We were able to make intermediate changes by using highlight, shadow, and a little stretch rubber. With Rohner, it was impossible to make those changes without using appliances. Overall, I was very happy with the end result. " ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 083)
• The later introduction of the concept of a ban on genetic experiments in Humans during the production of DS9 creates a problem in retrospect for this episode, even though no such ban existed from the writers' perspective when this was produced, which explains why no one on the Enterprise was shocked by the nature of the research, with Picard making no arrests.

Continuity [ ]

The modified sickbay

• The sickbay set was modified and the corridor to the doctor's office replaced with a wall and a console.
• The genetic engineering of advanced children apparently ignores the fact that such engineering is banned and outlawed in the Federation. This is stated in at least three different Star Trek series ( ENT : " The Augments ", DS9 : " Doctor Bashir, I Presume ", TNG : " A Matter Of Time "), albeit all of them were produced after this episode creating continuity issues.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion , 2nd ed., p. 74 notes that this episode is similar to TOS : " The Deadly Years ", which also featured crewmembers suffering premature aging. In both episodes, one character (McCoy and Pulaski) very close to death decides to risk all with an untested cure which could prove fatal. The method is a success, and all the remaining afflicted persons are cured off-screen.
• The episode is also similar to TAS : " The Lorelei Signal " in that the transporter is used to reverse the effects of premature aging.
• The matte painting of the research station is used again (slightly modified) for Arkaria Base on Arkaria in " Starship Mine " and an Ohniaka III Research Station on Ohniaka III in " Descent ".
• This episode marks the first time that Miles O'Brien is referred to as the transporter chief, and the first time he is referred to by his last name. Remembered Colm Meaney , " A script arrived and suddenly he had a name. " ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 335) This was also the first episode where Meaney was credited as a guest star and not in the closing credits although he got credited in the end credits in the next episode.
• This is the first episode in which Dr. Pulaski's loathing of the transporter is mentioned, giving her a key commonality with previous Enterprise doctor Leonard McCoy .
• This is the first appearance of the Miranda -class starship in TNG. For this episode, the ship's model was slightly altered, losing the roll bar and torpedo pod that the class had in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home .

Reception [ ]

• Colm Meaney remarked, " I liked the episode a lot. I thought it was really good. It held your interest, it was a marvelous sort of detective story in a way, while at the same time it was making a statement about the dangers of these wonderful scientific developments that can be used for great benefit. It also said something deeper about the dangers of them, and in a sense it begged the question should we really be trying this? " ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , pp. 175-176)
• A mission report for this episode by Robert Greenberger was published in The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 7 , pp. 39-42.
• This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Hairstyling for a Series.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• Original UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 17 , catalog number VHR 2470, 1 July 1991
• UK re-release (three-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment ): Volume 2.3, catalog number VHR 4739, 3 May 1999
• As part of the TNG Season 2 DVD collection
• As part of the TNG Season 2 Blu-ray collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
• Jonathan Frakes as Cmdr. William Riker

Also starring [ ]

• LeVar Burton as Lt. Geordi La Forge
• Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf
• Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi
• Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data
• Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher

Special appearance by [ ]

• Diana Muldaur as Doctor Pulaski

Guest stars [ ]

• Patricia Smith as Kingsley
• Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien

Co-stars [ ]

• J. Patrick McNamara as Capt. Taggert
• Scott Trost as Ensign

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Majel Barrett as USS Enterprise -D computer voice
• George Baxter as David
• James G. Becker as Youngblood
• Michael Braveheart as Martinez
• Robert Bray as Darwin scientist
• Cibby Danyla as science division officer
• Larry Guthrie as Darwin scientist
• Nora Leonhardt as command division officer
• Scott Leva as command division officer
• Tim McCormack as Bennett
• Lorine Mendell as Diana Giddings
• Ronnie Merritt as Darwin scientist
• Lydia Nielsen as Darwin scientist
• Captain L. Isao Telaka
• L. Isao Telaka (voice)
• Male Quarantine Voice
• Command division officer
• Female Darwin scientists
• Female medical assistant
• Operations division officer
• Ops officer
• Six Darwin children
• Lantree bridge officers 1 , 2 , and 3

Stand-ins [ ]

• James G. Becker – stand-in for Jonathan Frakes
• Darrell Burris – stand-in for LeVar Burton
• Dexter Clay – stand-in for Michael Dorn
• Jeffrey Deacon – stand-in for Patrick Stewart
• Nora Leonhardt – stand-in for Marina Sirtis
• Tim McCormack – stand-in for Brent Spiner
• Guy Vardaman – stand-in for Wil Wheaton

References [ ]

2330 ; 2335 ; 2353 ; 2365 ; achievement ; adenine ; adult ; Advanced Genetics ; advice ; age ; aging process ; air ; " all right "; alternative ; android ; answer ; antibody ; apprehension ; area ; argument ; arrival ; arthritic inflammation ; assignment ; " as soon as possible "; " at least "; atom ; attack ; author ; auxiliary space vessel ; " backward and forward "; battle damage ; bearing ; bedside manner ; biofilter ; biofilter bus ; birthday ; blood test ; blueprint ; body structure ; " by way of "; carrier ; case ; cell ; chief medical officer ; chromosome ; chromosome address sequence ; Class 3 defensive ; Class 6 Federation supply ship ; colleague ; " come in "; complement ; computer ; contact ; coordinates ; course ; crew ; crisis ; cytosine ; danger ; Darwin Genetic Research Station ; data ; day ; degree ; delta-T ; Denkir IV ; disease ; distance ; distress signal ; DNA ; DNA sample ; download ; duty cycle ; effect ; emergency ; energy ; engine ; environment ; evacuation ; evidence ; evolution ; experiment ; exposure ; fail-safe ; failure ; Federation ; fingernail ; " first hand "; force field ; " for God's sake "; " for the record "; frequency ; French language ; friend ; Gamma 7 outpost ; Gamma 7 sector ; Gagarin IV ; genetic analysis ; genetic code ; genetic engineering ; genetic research facility ; genetics ; geriatric phenomena ; " go ahead "; " good luck "; grade ; green light ; guanine ; hailing frequency ; hair ; hairbrush ; hair follicle ; hailing frequency ; health ; heart ; hour ; Human ; Human equation ; illness ; immune system ; immunity ; impulse speed ; infection ; interlock ; isolation ; isolation lab ; judgment ; kilometer ; laboratory ; Lantree , USS ; Lantree first officer ; launch sequence ; life sign ; lifeform ; " Linear Models of Viral Propagation "; liver ; log ; log entry ; lungs ; machine ; manufacturer ; marker beacon ; masterpiece ; medical courier ; medical emergency ; medical examination ; medical research ; medical scan ; medical test ; message ; meter ; microscope ; microsecond ; Milky Way Galaxy ; milli-parsecs ; mind ; minute ; mission ; mistake ; molecule ; molecular matrix reader ; molecular transposition ; month ; musculature ; " my God "; nature ; NCC-7100 ; neighborhood ; " no doubt "; number one ; " of course "; officer ; old age ; " once in a while "; opinion ; opportunity ; pain ; panel ; parallel course ; parsec ; passion ; pathology ; pattern ; performance ; personality ; photon torpedo ; physician ; port of call ; price ; priority channel ; problem ; prognosis ; Pulaski, Kate ; quarantine ; quarantine transmitter ; quarters ; quote ; reason ; record ; regeneration limiter ; rendezvous ; report ; Repulse , USS ; research ; result ; rhinovirus ; risk ; rulebook ; sacrifice ; Sakharov ; scientist ; security access code ; security override ; sentence ; service record ; shuttlecraft ; Shuttlebay 3 ; side effect ; signal ; " sit down "; solution ; space ; species ; specification ; speed ; standard orbit ; " stand by "; Starfleet Academy ; Starfleet Command ; Starfleet Headquarters ; Starfleet Medical ; Starfleet regulations ; Star Station India ; Star Station India sector ; stasis ; stasus ; stubborn ; styrolite ; subspace ; subspace frequency ; supply ship ; suspended animation ; suspicion ; symptom ; telekinesis ; telepathic ; Thelusian flu ; theory ; thing ; thought ; threat ; three-dimensional chess ; thymine ; time ; tissue sample ; tour of duty ; training ; transfer ; transmission ; transport sequence ; transporter ; transporter control ; transporter trace ; transporter log ; transporter pattern (aka trace pattern ); trick ; truth ; Type 7 shuttlecraft ; understanding ; viewscreen ; virus ; voice ; volunteering ; waveform modulator ; week ; work ; year

Unused production references [ ]

Astarte ; Gagarin system ; Propulsion Theory ; Rina ; Tsiolkovski

External links [ ]

• " Unnatural Selection " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Unnatural Selection " at Wikipedia
• " Unnatural Selection " at MissionLogPodcast.com
• "Unnatural Selection" script  at Star Trek Minutiae
• " Unnatural Selection " at the Internet Movie Database
• 1 Bell Riots
• 2 Christopher Russell

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E7UnnaturalSelection

Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E7 "Unnatural Selection" » Recap

Original air date: January 30, 1989

Captain Picard calls in Counsellor Troi to request her assessment of Dr. Pulaski. She tells him that Pulaski is almost too dedicated to her work as a doctor. But their conversation is interrupted by a garbled distress call. The call is traced to the supply ship USS Lantree , where the entire crew is found dead, having inexplicably undergone rapid aging after leaving the Darwin Genetic Research Station a few days prior. The Lantree is quarantined as the Enterprise heads for the station to investigate.

Darwin Station is found to be suffering from the exact same phenomenon, and the lead scientists insist that their subjects, genetically engineered children, need to be protected from it. Picard isn’t willing to risk sending anyone into the station and grows increasingly frustrated by Pulaski's bull-headed approach to her job, but she eventually convinces him to beam onboard a child completely sealed in space-plastic for her to examine. Even though the initial examination reveals nothing dangerous, Picard refuses to allow the child to be freed onboard the ship unless there is absolutely no risk to the crew. Pulaski eventually proposes examining him in a shuttlecraft, and to her surprise, Picard agrees. She brings Data along for the examination, but mere minutes after she releases the boy from his plastic cage, she finds herself suffering the first symptoms of the mysterious ailment.

Since it doesn’t matter anymore if she breaks quarantine, Pulaski heads to Darwin Station and talks to the doctors about their experiments. It turns out they’re biologically engineering superhuman children with psychic powers and an aggressive resistance to disease. Overly aggressive, to the point that their immune system seeks out disease even before it reaches the children, including in the bodies of anyone nearby. Data does some quick research and puts together that it’s that very immune response that is causing the rapid aging in the people around them. He deems the process irreversible, and Pulaski sends word to the Enterprise that she will remain in quarantine in the station.

Tropes featured in this episode:

• Angst? What Angst? : Discussed; after Picard mentions that the crew of the Lantree were wiped out by the ageing disease, Dr. Kingsley shrugs it off seemingly without a care in the world. Picard calls her out on her lack of reaction, but she fires back by pointing out that since they now know beyond a doubt that the disease is fatal, it means they should be focusing on researching a cure, and that they can mourn the Lantree crew later. invoked
• Bittersweet Ending : The aging disease is cured, but the children must remain in quarantine and the research staff working to find a way to fix their children's immune system so the children don't spend their lives in isolation. The episode ends with the Enterprise destroying the Lantree , whose crew remain dead in order to keep the virus from spreading.
• Blessed with Suck : The genetically modified children have aggressive immune systems that attack pathogens before they get to them. This caused one virus to allow DNA to mutate in others. Because of this, the children will have to be in quarantine for their whole lives.
• Lantree is same class as Reliant (and the same filming model).
• The plots are about genetic engineering that went awry.
• One ship uses the other's prefix code to access its systems.
• The Chains of Commanding : Picard relieves O'Brien just before they make the attempt to save Dr. Pulaski so that if they fail, then Picard will shoulder the responsibility of scattering her atoms across space. O'Brien thanks him.
• She faces her Fantastic Racism toward Data. When they're working together, she's her typical rude and dismissive self until she gets infected. After her infection, Data stays with her for moral support and is instrumental in helping to find a cure. When she makes a crack about her health "working to specification" (like an android), she seems to genuinely regret her insult and gives an honest apology. After this episode, she's consistently more open-minded toward Data and appreciative of his unique talents.
• Pulaski was also openly stand-offish and seemed to love bucking authority whenever the opportunity arose, which naturally led to blows with Picard. She starts off full-force in this episode, constantly downplaying the risks of her medical procedure, and winds up exposing herself to the virus for her troubles. She openly admits that her exposure was her own fault, and after this episode she's more careful to listen to the concerns of her crewmates and captain.
• Character Shilling : An unusual variant that occurs well after the introduction of the character: Pulaski, repeatedly. Most notably when her previous CO was gushing over her to Picard. Probably for the same reasons discussed in Character Development .
• Deadpan Snarker : Whether or not it was intentional remains a mystery: Picard: But say if it were undone, would she be normal again? Data: As normal as ever, sir.
• Due to the Dead : At the end of the episode, the Enterprise returns to the quarantined Lantree . The crew comes to attention in silent salute, then a single photon torpedo is fired to destroy the ship and the plague aboard her.
• The Federation maintains a genetic-engineering outpost specifically to produce Transhuman children. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would later establish that there's No Transhumanism Allowed in the Federation because Khan and the Eugenics War showed that Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke .
• Captain Picard openly hugging Doctor Pulaski upon her healthy return, later episodes show Picard to be much more distant, restrained and uptight with feelings and showing affection, especially towards the members of his crew.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum : They just invented a way to reverse the aging process ! Ironic because before they reverse her aging, Pulaski remarks that the whole experience has given her new insight into Geriatrics. Insight which should now be obsolete.
• Given Name Reveal : After starting as a nameless helmsman in the pilot episode "Encounter At Farpoint", Colm Meaney got solidified into a transporter chief in this season, but this is the first episode where he's given the name O'Brien and treated as a real character. Season 4's "Family" later established that his full name is Miles Edward O'Brien (Miles being named after producer Rick Berman's nephew).
• Gone Horribly Right : The children's active immune systems did a damn good job attacking the flu virus when it showed up at Darwin Station — and then they kept going and attacked everything and everyone else.
• Hollywood Old : Zig-Zagged . Diana Muldaur gets extensive makeup, but the Darwin Station scientists are all older actors rather than aged up younger actors, though some of them also get aged-up over the course of the story.
• Kill It with Fire : The Enterprise destroys the USS Lantree with a torpedo to keep the virus which killed her crew from spreading any further.
• Mind over Matter : The genetically modified children have telekinesis.
• Older Than They Look : The enhanced children. The oldest one is twelve, yet they look like they're on the verge of adulthood.
• Overnight Age-Up : The Lantree 's crew, the research outpost staff and Dr. Pulaski all suffer this. The cure comes too late for the Lantree .
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot : Data, being an android, is the only one who can go to the space station and subsequently return to the Enterprise until a cure is found.
• The Plague : Played with. The crew initially assumes the Lantree crew's death and the similar rapid ageing of the Darwin Station's staff to be the result of some contagious disease, but find no sign of it in the child who gets sent up. Pulaski finds out the hard way that while it's technically not a disease, rather an unintended side-effect of the children's aggressive immune system, the end outcome is the same, since anyone who becomes afflicted is capable of doing the same to others.
• Psychic Children : The enhanced children at Darwin Station.
• Technobabble : Miles O'Brien gives a rather lengthy jargon-filled speech about reconfiguring the transporter (albeit unlike most later episodes, Picard quickly shushes him and tells him to just get to work): O'Brien: Well, I'd have to get into the biofilter bus and patch in a molecular matrix reader. That's no problem. But the wave form modulator will be overloaded without the regeneration limiter in the first-stage circuit.
• Safely Secluded Science Center : Darwin Genetic Research Station, an isolated research facility on the planet Gagarin IV. As it turns out, the isolation is well-justified, as the scientists have managed to engineer children with immune systems so powerful that their antibodies attack anyone in their immediate vicinity, resulting in a plague of Rapid Aging .
• Science Is Bad : Pulaski's internal log states that, no matter who benefits in the long term from scientific progress, in the short term someone always ends up paying the price. In this case it was the Lantree crew.
• Smart People Play Chess : It's implied that the genetically modified children are geniuses because we see them playing chess (using Mind over Matter to move the pieces).
• Theory Tunnel Vision : To Doctor Kingsley, her genetically engineered children are "perfect" and some external force must be responsible for the malady that killed the Lantree crew and is causing the science staff to age rapidly. Data's analysis quickly shows that the children are so "perfect" that they are unwittingly lethal to any normal humans who come into contact with them.
• Too Dumb to Live : The Darwin Station researchers. The fact that the human immune system will treat even other human tissue that is not a genetic match as an infection is common knowledge, and a factor in nearly all tissue transplants. Yet despite their bio-medical expertise, it never occurred to them that extending their Augments' immune systems to their external environment would be an incredibly stupid idea.
• Transhuman : The genetically modified children grow quickly, are immune to disease, and have psychic powers.
• Viking Funeral : As attempting to salvage the vessel is too risky, Picard orders the Lantree destroyed by torpedo while the crew stands at attention to honor them.
• We Only Have One Chance : After the transporter is jury-rigged, O'Brien tells Picard that this setup is "one-way" only. If it doesn't cure Dr. Pulaski, the only alternative will be to disperse her transporter pattern into space. Of course, she's minutes away from death at this point anyway.
• Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer : During the argument about studying a patient in a shuttlecraft, Picard suddenly relents and allows Pulaski to do so. It takes her a couple seconds to realize this.
• The characters affected by the antibodies. Riker says the Lantree 's captain was his age, but his corpse looks about 100.
• Also the genetically engineered children, whose growth and development is so rapid that one twelve-year-old boy has the body of a twenty-year-old man.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E6 "The Schizoid Man"
• Recap/Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E8 "A Matter of Honor"

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Unnatural Selection (S2E07)

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Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Unnatural Selection”

Season 2, Episode 7 Original air date: January 30, 1989 Star date: 42494.8

Mission summary

With Enterprise en route to Star Station India to meet a Starfleet medical courier, Captain Picard is mulling over Dr. Pulaski, who has been on his ship for about seven episodes. He asks Counselor Troi if he should be worried that the irascible doctor is so good at her job that she might be bad at her job, but Troi assuages his concerns about her new BFF. He grudgingly agrees with her, and a timely distress call may provide the means to discover if he was right after all.

The U.S.S.  Lantree , a Federation supply ship, sends an ominous transmission:

Can’t hold out any more. People dying. Too many to help.

There is no further communication, so Picard decides to intercept the vessel to render assistance. The Lantree seems undamaged, but there are no life signs aboard. Picard uses remote desktop access to turn on the Lantree’s webcam, which shows a bunch of old people dead at their Bridge stations.

RIKER: Looks like they had a battle with time. WORF: And lost.

Pulaski confirms that they all died of natural causes: old age. Damn you, Time!

The puzzling thing is that everyone on the crew had been checked out before their mission and were in prime health, and the captain is supposed to be Riker’s age. The ship’s first officer had contracted Thelusian flu, but it seems more likely that their visit to the Darwin Genetic Research Station is somehow involved.

They quarantine the Lantree and take off for Gagarin IV, where Dr. Pulaski is warmly greeted by Dr. Kingsley, who is a big fan of her erotic bestseller, “Linear Models of Viral Propagation.” Kingsley and her staff are all succumbing to “geriatric phenomena,” which begins with a bad case of arthritis. Pulaski suggests that their genetic research is coming back to haunt them, but Kingsley pooh-poohs it away, and she begs  Enterprise  to save their children. Please, won’t someone think of the children?

Picard hates children, of course, and these are potentially dangerous besides, as they might be carrying the unknown disease. Pulaski’s insubordination convinces him to allow her to beam one up to study under a forcefield and in suspended animation. Instead of a 12-year-old boy, they get a manchild, but at least he’s still shrinkwrapped and in mint condition. In addition to his advanced maturity, Troi senses that the kid is telepathic—the result of Kingsley’s attempts to upgrade humanity to the next level.

Pulaski insists that to properly examine this perfect, nearly naked physical specimen, she has to remove his sterilite containment. She and Picard argue over it; he won’t allow her to proceed unless she can find a foolproof way to isolate him from the ship.

The only way is to study him on a shuttlecraft. She volunteers herself as a guinea pig to test her theory that the boy is not a disease carrier, and she brings her favorite mechanical pal, Data, to pilot the shuttle–theorizing that he won’t be affected if she’s wrong. As soon as she removes the boy from his blister pack, he talks to her telepathically. In a short while, she cries out in pain, clutching her left elbow: sudden and severe arthritis! She is so dead. Or maybe she’s just been playing too much Wii tennis with Troi lately.

They send the kid back where he came from, and since they’re under quarantine, Pulaski and Data take the shuttle to the station as well. Pulaski soon realizes that the kids’ overzealous immune systems created an airborn antibody in response to exposure to the Thelusian flu, which has irrevocably altered the DNA of the normal humans around them. It is irreversible.  Irreversible !

On  Enterprise , a desperate Picard and Chief O’Brien discuss various improbable scenarios in which the transporter can be used to save Dr. Pulaski, who is aging at an accelerated rate. They hit a setback when they can’t get a hold of a recent transporter trace to serve as a template for their witchcraft, since Pulaski rarely uses the infernal machine. But there might be a way, if they find a DNA sample that will allow them to use the transporter’s biofilters to remove her genetic alterations. After rifling through her sock drawer, they finally locate a hairbrush. Jinkies! That’ll do.

Picard takes over the transporter controls from O’Brien, since if this experimental procedure fails, he’ll have to beam Pulaski’s atoms into space. Following some brief dramatic tension, it works after all. They use the same technique to fix all the scientists and leave them on Gagarin IV, alive but forever separated from their deadly children on the station in orbit.  Enterprise  then returns to the  Lantree  to destroy it, while Pulaski gets preachy about scientific achievement coming with a price.

Many of the original series episodes involved an intriguing medical mystery and a race against time to save a planet, a station, a ship, or Enterprise officers from an untimely demise. “Unnatural Selection” is a bit of a throwback to those storylines, and it even “borrows” from one of the best episodes of Star Trek , “The Deadly Years.” But as we saw with “The Naked Now,” TNG just doesn’t excel at these kinds of stories, and the same is true here. Where “The Deadly Years” was grounded in characters we cared about and their personal, emotional struggles with old age and impending death, in this episode the only stakes are a small crew of strangers and a station full of mad scientists, and the script scrambles to try to make us care about Dr. Pulaski in just one episode—cramming several episodes worth of character development into one short teaser. I’m more distressed that they lost a shuttlecraft because of this mess. So long, Sakharov .

In addition to the belated attempts to make Pulaski interesting or sympathetic, or at least more than an expendable replacement for Dr. Crusher, the script does an impressive job of seeming to make some kind of scientific sense. They speak a lot of big, fancy words with conviction. But once you start talking about airborne antibodies rewriting human DNA, you’ve kind of lost me. (However, there may be some interesting commentary in the fact that the children’s bodies identified their parents as harmful to their health.) I was absolutely floored by the frantic handwaving and unrestrained technobabble cluttering up the script. Surely Colm Meaney deserved an Emmy for delivering lines like this with a straight face:

Well, I’d have to get into the biofilter bus to patch in a molecular matrix reader. That’s no problem. But the waveform modulator will be overloaded without the regeneration limiter in the first stage circuit.

Riiiight… Did you get all that? This is the equivalent of expositional tap dancing, and Meaney is a master. “Make it so,” Captain Picard? I think you mean, “Make it up!”

Though they’re all so uncertain that this is going to work, that maybe it has never been tried, we’ve already seen it many times in the franchise, including the animated series episodes “The Lorelei Signal” and “The Counter-Clock Incident.” (This is not a good thing.) And we will see it again and again and again. Whenever someone gets sick with some rare, deadly, unknown disease, or is inexplicably aged in one direction or the other, the first protocol should be, “Run them through the transporter on fluff cycle.” Which I suppose puts Dr. Pulaski at a bit of a disadvantage, given her mistrust of the technology. Ah, bitter irony. The very device she fears has saved her life!

Her similarity to McCoy’s phobia about the transporters is laid on pretty thick here, and I have a hard time believing that Starfleet would accommodate any officer who refused to use a basic piece of “proven” technology. In Kirk’s day, maybe, but here it’s nearly a century later and the transporters have improved, and she’s still inconveniencing everyone into giving her shuttle rides? Even McCoy rarely tried to get away with that; he used the transporter in practically every episode, he just complained about it a lot.

It’s even harder to accept that Picard would tolerate one of his crewmembers giving him as much attitude as Pulaski does. Even though he calls her on it, he essentially grimaces and bears it, and we’re meant to believe that once he finds out she’s a Picard fangirl, all is forgiven. He even hugs her at the end! How cute that she has the same doubts about Picard’s passion blinding his judgment! Though I appreciate the nearly unprecedented level of interpersonal conflict between the crew, it’s only surface deep and feels much too forced—as well as having a weak payoff, because they’ve only been trying to settle their differences for about forty minutes.

There are also some other stupid things to consider, such as a so-called scientist risking exposure to prove a point, which is frankly a huge cliché. Risk is established as a big theme in this episode, because everyone’s talking about it, but it loses its punch when someone can literally flip a switch at the end and reset everything to the way it was. Speaking of transporters, why did O’Brien have to go watch that kid beam out of Sickbay while his assistant pushed all the buttons?

I did really like one moment in the episode: when Data beams back after being under quarantine and Picard rushes up to ask him a question, the captain pauses to say it’s good to see him again. No matter how busy you are, it’s important to remember your manners.

It seems a waste to deal with a disease that causes old age without taking the opportunity to address the implications of old age, but another episode did it better, and “Unnatural Selection” would rather warn us about messing with nature—a very unexpected message from a show that celebrates human evolution, advancement, and ingenuity.

Eugene’s Rating: Warp 1 (on a scale of 1-6)

Best Line:  TROI: Let’s just say you both have well established personalities.

Trivia/Other Notes: Maurice Hurley heavily rewrote this script, removing scenes on the Lantree as well as a subplot concerning an attractive assistant/love interest for La Forge whose beauty inadvertently caused her crew mates to suffer amusing accidents. (Seriously?)

Appropriately enough, Diana Muldaur apparently couldn’t remember her lines and required cue cards.

This is the first episode in which Colm Meaney’s character is named O’Brien and designated as Transporter Chief.

This episode also contradicts later episodes (or vice versa) that establish that genetic engineering is outlawed in the Federation. Khaaaaaaaannnnn!!!

Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 6 – “ The Schizoid Man .”

Next episode: Season 2, Episode 8 – “ A Matter of Honor .”

About Eugene Myers

27 comments.

Oh, gods-on-toast, the flying DNA episode.

I thought Season 2 was supposed to be better ?

/curmudgeon

Also, as it reminded me, I actually have one degree of separation from Andrei Sakharov. Back when I was in university (1992, to be exact), I was called on at very short notice to be one of two interpreters for Elena Bonner, Dr. Sakharov’s widow and fellow peace campaigner, when she visited our university to receive an honourary doctorate. For three days, I got to meet all the great and famous of southern Ontario, as they flocked to meet the famous lady. Got some awesome food, and to spend a fair amount of time just talking with her in various limos, elevators, and so on. An amazing and forceful personality, not what you expect from such a huge peacenik, very strong opinions, smoked like a steel mill, nasty Russian cigarettes too, sometimes small cigars.

Considering I was only in fourth year, I was very cognizant of the enormousness of the honour I got. I did a few other interpreting gigs, before I realized I much preferred translation and gave it up. Interpreting always gives me headaches, trying to think in two languages at once, and holding three sentences in my head at a time, and…ugh. Sore just thinking about it. :/

So yeah. There’s my brush with greatness.

@1 CaitieCait

I know… I count like 4 or 5 really good ones coming up later this season, and some watchable ones. Stay with us! :)

That is very cool. I should also mention that the planet Gagarin IV is likely named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. The script writers clearly have much love for Russian pioneers.

Eugene: Yeah, I guess it speaks well of our community here that I just assumed everyone would know who Sakharov and Gagarin were, no? :)

What this episode really does is solidify my intense dislike of Pulaski. She’s brusque, arrogant, humorless, has poor bedside manner, and thinks the rules don’t apply to her. At the very least, they could have used the time she and Data had in the shuttle to do something to develop the relationship between them, but that’s just another lost opportunity.

Colm Meany’s ability to spew technobabble believably is probably what got him the DS9 gig. They wanted to bring somebody over to offer viewers some continuity and that skill along with his slowly growing presence as the new Mr. Kyle made him a good choice, with Chief Engineer being a good excuse. Anybody else would have overshadowed Avery Brooks early on.

Caitie, hang on, we’re almost there. The next couple of weeks are a major uptick (mind you, after that things go all over the place, but it’s a start). And I hear you with interpreting. I won’t touch it. Too stressful. Not to mention, I process things much better visually than aurally.

You’d think that after The Naked Now they’d know better than to recycle old Star Trek episodes. But no.

I’m highly amused that their method of trying to get people to like a generally unlikable character is to give her a disease without a cure. I’m even more amused that with DIana Muldaur is one of the oldest regular members of the cast, they still decided to give her an aging disease. It’s just not going to have as big an impact seeing someone like Pulaski age as it would have if it were Riker or Wes. On the other hand, since Sir Patrick apparently doesn’t age, it’s a good thing they didn’t try it on him.

I hate it when they use the transporter as a solution to a disease. Impossibly lame.

Perhaps I am alone in thinking Pulaski comes across rather well in this episode, at least at the very end. Or at least, better. She shows an almost fanatical devotion to medical care that transcends the usual wave of a medical tricorder followed by, “He’s dead, Jim.” Beverly gives up and pulls off the scrubs rather casually most of the time, too. Pulaski’s not going to give up on these patients or this problem.

On first watch, without knowing what’s to follow, one might be momentarily deceived into concluding this is “it” for Pulaski. She’s not established as a regular, and we don’t really know what her long-term status is among the regular cast. Much of it seems to be filing down her thorns for the inevitable send-off, and so that part seems effective. There comes a point late in the episode where the Enterprise really does seem about to depart and leave her to her fate. And she seems resolved to that fate.

Recombining her with more youthful DNA from her hairbrush is handwavery of the highest order and really opens a jumbo can of worms: Given this treatment, why should anyone ever die of age or disease again? Once again, the transporter is just Magic.

Indeed, my wife was half-watching this with me and assumed from the very beginning that Pulaski was done for, because she’d never seen her before or had forgotten about Crusher’s brief hiatus. It would have been surprising and interesting if she had died, or been forced to stay behind, kind of how Kai Opaka, a semi-regular character on DS9, soon suffered an unconventional fate. You’re right that on the first watch, there could have been a true sense of jeopardy because she’s only ever listed as a guest star, and she’s been on for a handful of episodes–which only makes the lengths they go to save her that much more ludicrous. They handle this much better in later seasons and series when we grow attached to a minor character only to have him or her turn out to be a traitor or canon fodder. (Pun intended, naturally.)

This episode marks the one and only time humans are seen performing legal genetic engineering, since it will later be established that genetically engineering humans is illegal in the Federation.

But it is possible that genetic engineering is illegal in the Federation for normal lay people, while at the same time the government does allow a small group of experts to do work in the field. It is possible for something to be illegal for most, but legal for some with special government consent and oversight. Like use of certain types of drugs or weapons.

I’ve always been interested in what happen to these poor kids, given my dislike of the Federation ban on genetic engineering.

@9 Data Logan

Excellent point that the government might be carrying on secret experiments. But this begs another question: Why didn’t Enterprise know what was happening on the station? So they find out that everyone on a ship has mysteriously died of old age, and the ship was recently at a laboratory that carries out genetic engineering, but it seems no one ever looks up what kinds of experiments they’re up to. And now that I think about it, why can’t they contact Darwin Station before they arrive? Couldn’t they have hailed them from a distance and asked what was up?

I dislike when TNG does thin retreads of original series episodes, and this one almost crosses two of them; “The Deadly Years”, and in a tangential sort of way,”Miri” ( you know, genetically mutated kids left on their own ). Except that that in this case, they left out all of the emotional involvement with any of the characters and their plight.

By the way; is it possible that old age make up got even LESS convincing in the ’80s than the ’60s? If this episode and “Too Short A Season” are any indication, I would have to say, “yes”!

Weak gruel, indeed.

—Perhaps I am alone in thinking Pulaski comes across rather well in this episode, at least at the very end. Or at least, better. She shows an almost fanatical devotion to medical care that transcends the usual wave of a medical tricorder followed by, “He’s dead, Jim.” —-yep—couldn’t agree more–as much as i enjoy the interaction of these officers and crew–using their expertise to solve problems—it is sad that this is a waste–because we all know that the good doctor is a throw away—and i was thinking–how much the spirit of the prime directive is consistent with making genetic engineering illegal—btw—nice plug by riker for the viewscreen guys—how’d you do that?—good job—

@11 dep1701

is it possible that old age make up got even LESS convincing in the ’80s than the ’60s?

I was thinking the same thing! It’s especially bad considering Muldaur was already older than the rest of the cast. I assume it’s simply a difference between the makeup artists on the original series and those on TNG. Perhaps in the 60s they had more of a theater background? Or they were at least better at using lighting in conjunction with the makeup and special effects.

@12 lane arnold

Though the producers say they didn’t fire Muldaur, she has openly criticized the series for not being as creative and original as she had hoped; I’m still surprised that she never returned or was even mentioned later in the series or movies. They may have mentioned her in passing in one of the other seasons, but I don’t think so. In contrast, Yar continued to be referenced and Crosby managed to come back in the same and related roles later. They seem to want us to forget that Muldaur ever happened, but whether she worked or not, she was one of the more interesting things to happen to TNG in its entire run, and I think her character deserves better than to be completely forgotten.

“Though the producers say they didn’t fire Muldaur, she has openly criticized the series for not being as creative and original as she had hoped; I’m still surprised that she never returned or was even mentioned later in the series or movies. They may have mentioned her in passing in one of the other seasons, but I don’t think so. In contrast, Yar continued to be referenced and Crosby managed to come back in the same and related roles later. They seem to want us to forget that Muldaur ever happened, but whether she worked or not, she was one of the more interesting things to happen to TNG in its entire run, and I think her character deserves better than to be completely forgotten.”

I wonder if Muldaur could be added to the list of original series vets invited to participate in the new series who became disenchanted with Roddenberry’s new uncompomising and aloof attitude ( aided by his apparent Svengali, lawyer Leonard Maizlish ). From many reports, Maizlish did his best to prevent people from any having access to Roddenberry and participated in rewrites ( although he was not a member of any writer’s guild ).

Others who left on bad, disillusioned or unhappy terms were Dorothy Fontana, Robert Justman, and David Gerrold. Another short term staffer who had less than flattering things to say about Roddenberry was Tracy Torme. Andrew Probert left too, but that was more due to Rick Berman ( which is another chapter entirely ).

I believe that, somewhere along the line, Gene must have started to believe ( at least a little ) the things adoring fans were saying about him being a ‘visionary’. He began to jealously protect what he felt was HIS vision, forgetting that a lot of what made the original series so great were the contributions and collaborations of other writers and crew. Maizlish apparently fed this megalomania and did his best to keep anyone with an opposing viewpoint at bay. This helped keep the ” no one in the 24th century will be jealous, covet, argumentative, vain, or exhibit any other recognizable human foibles” nonsense in place.

Part of this could also be attributed to the illness that was creeping up on Gene at this point, but really, how many of us could be told by wide-eyed adoring masses how wonderful we are for 20 years, and not buy into it…at least a little bit?

I spend a week in Dallas digging in an archive and this happens. Well. It hasn’t shaken my feeling that Pulaski stands with Picard as the two most interesting characters in TNG. That scene where she asks to use the shuttlecraft should have been the point where she becomes established as a member of the crew. But it wasn’t. Everybody criticizes Muldaur’s performances but how much is the fault of the writers? I get the feeling they didn’t know how to write for a character like Pulaski. (And the interference from the front office didn’t help.) This episode has moments that stand strong in my memory from my first viewing but I do agree with the problems cited above. The interplay between Pulaski and Data could have (should have) set the playing field for their argument. Something like “But, you don’t realize that in trying to act Human you set yourself apart. Humans don’t try to act Human, they just are what they are. Do you even know what you are? I don’t mean being an android. I mean instead of trying to be what you think someone else thinks you should be, you let the core of who you feel yourself being came out and grow. No mimicry, just let me see the real Data and maybe I’ll be able to see you as more than your programming.” The writers couldn’t let this happen though because doing so and letting it guide Data’s development would have endangered his potential as comic relief.

“There are also some other stupid things to consider, such as a so-called scientist risking exposure to prove a point, which is frankly a huge cliché.” Yes, it is, but it is also what doctors do. Sometimes it’s a big risk, but usually it’s a small risk.

On the use of the transporter. This episodes suggests that we should work to develop that technology. Don’t you realize. The transporter could be used to cure the common cold.

Inspired by Ludon’s thoughts on the transporter, do we know whether Data’s positronic brain is in some manner a quantum computer? Only I’m wondering how a transporter could possibly beam him anywhere and expect him to come out anything but…well, randomized?…if he were?

So probably better that he isn’t. I don’t think the writers really want to spend time considering the interaction of “definitive time-based description of all entities” and quantum computing.

Of course, if he IS quantumcomputational, then it becomes perfectly reasonable – in fact, accurate – for him to answer the question “how are you?” with “yes”.

Yeah, most of the absolute nonsense about the transporter has already been hit — it’s just clear these authors have no idea how a transporter would actually work (if they have the pattern they do not need *your* atoms, *your* atoms are nothing special and there’s no reason to send them across space! You just need a big bucket of carbon, some nitrogen, a little potassium for flavor, etc.) A Transporter Is a Replicator. So they should have, say, as many Datas as they could wish.

Aaaaaanyway.

The other Total Science Fail was the idea of free-floating antibodies that attack threats before they are even threats. What? How would that possibly work? Are these kids walking around in a cloud of self-emitted proteins whose job is to freak out whenever they encounter a novel substance? That makes no sense, and even if it did, it’s a terrible idea, and no. why?! no! No one would ever build this!!

@17 DeepThought

The other Total Science Fail was the idea of free-floating antibodies that attack threats before they are even threats. What? How would that possibly work? Are these kids walking around in a cloud of self-emitted proteins whose job is to freak out whenever they encounter a novel substance? That makes no sense, and even if it did, it’s a terrible idea, and no. why?! no! No one would ever build this!!

Well-l, this is kinda how white blood cells work…. More to the point, the scientists didn’t exactly build this. IIRC, it was an unintended consequence of their Frankenscience to create a better human with a more aggressive immune system.

The idea was intrguing, but left undeveloped, that a new breed of human would aggressively supplant the old breed, perhaps the way Homo Sapiens (apparently, who really knows?) supplanted Neanderthals.

Of course the Star Trek wardrobe department hates children. This is because children are horrible.

@ 19; Of course they are. Simply see TOS episode “And The Children Shall Lead” for proof.

Hey all, sorry I’m late to the party. I had a last-minute trip abroad and just got home yesterday, so today’s post is going to be late and I’m only getting to this one now.

@ 2 Cait That is massively cool.

@ 5 DemetriosX I am with you. I really don’t understand how this woman has a job at all, let alone on the Enterprise. If she can’t take orders or even let her commander finish speaking, she shouldn’t be wearing a uniform.

@ 6 Toryx That was also weird to me. She’s older than Patrick Stewart at this point, right?

@ 7 Lemnoc My issue with her devotion to this cause is how fickle it is depending on the plot. She turns into a maternal metaphor, obsessed with saving these “children,” thinks nothing but the best of these grotesque genetic experiments, risks life and limb (stupidly, in my opinion–don’t take off your suit unless you know what causes the disease!) for everyone but herself. The episode just heaps abuse on her. It teaches her A Lesson about Taking Risks But Not Too Many, and then rewards Picard for saving her. It just strikes me as the worst kind of put-her-in-her-place throwback. I don’t think her qualities of devotion to science are supposed to be laudable, and her risks are so absurd that you want her to be proven wrong. She is effectively humbled by the experience.

@ 15 Ludon I don’t have a problem with Muldaur’s performance. She does the best she can with the dreck she’s given, and she has some serious stage presence when she’s up against Picard. But she’s written as hopelessly, foolishly rigid.

Re: Data, I can’t disagree more. Humans learn everything through mimicry. Absolutely everything! Language, behavior, culture… It makes complete sense that he would discover himself the same way.

Lastly, doctors absolutely do not put themselves at risk for stupid things like that. I remember watching Contagion and being outraged when the doctor decides to just inject herself with a prototype vaccine and walk around the plague ward to see if it works. That kind of behavior leads to a massive extinction of scientists…

@ 19 S. Hutson Blount See our tag: horrible horrible children .

I don’t have much to add here, but I thought the Muldaur-Stewart interactions were riveting. Finally, two really strong actors facing off! Unfortunately they’re both written to behave as foolishly as possible. As I said above, I really do not understand how Pulaski has a job. She should have been fired five times over by now, and Picard shouldn’t be taking any crap from her.

This also has some of the worst science of any episode of Star Trek, and that’s saying something. Magical airborne DNA antibodies science science science! I have no sympathy for the mad scientists and their freaky children. I think the Enterprise should have just bombed the station into oblivion.

@21 Torie: “This also has some of the worst science of any episode of Star Trek, and that’s saying something. Magical airborne DNA antibodies science science science! I have no sympathy for the mad scientists and their freaky children. I think the Enterprise should have just bombed the station into oblivion.”

“Yeah…it’s the only way to be sure”

You tell ’em, Ripley! ;)

@21 Torie Mimicry is only a part of the learning process. Observation and association without mimicry or acting out is another part. Even the part of the process that uses mimicry, experience, doesn’t rely solely on it. A child decides to try to build a top heavy structure with wooden building blocks and learns the limitations of the tools by experimenting until a structure doesn’t collapse. Let the child play with Lego bricks and the lesson that different tools can have different limitations can be learned. I don’t believe it has been made clear if Data had to learn these little lessons or if they were already part of his programming.

I think my main problem with Data is that they focused more on the mimicry and tended to use it as comic relief. I enjoyed watching Data during the first run of the series. Now he is my least favorite character. Now, some of the attempts at humor remind me of the way kids played the special education kids for laughs in school.

There are still moments that I like with Data and these tend to fall within the observation and association part of learning. For example, Data making the association of the number Three in Cause And Effect, and his realization of how to detect the Romulins crossing into Klingon space in another episode. Those events were pointed out within the episodes but then you’d have to wait through more examples of comic relief or watching Data do special android things to save the day or influencing the situation just by being an android. We saw learning experiences but we hardly saw Data grow as a character. Was he that much different in Insurrection than he was in Encounter At Farpoint? Even his last act in Nemesis could be called to question if you think of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.

@ 23 Ludon I would argue that next to Worf, Data grows more than any other character on the ship. First Contact lets him flirt with actually getting his wish to be human, and by the end of the movie he realizes how absurd he’s been to spend his life wanting such a thing. To be human would be to become someone else, not himself. He learns to appreciate his unique (albeit lonely) nature, very La Forge-like. It’s a beautiful close to the seven seasons of identity issues.

Nemesis never happened.

@Torie Yes, I enjoy seeing Data at the end of First Contact, but in Insurrection it’s like he hadn’t learned much from that experience. We get cheap laughs from him saying the wrong thing. I’ll admit that his friendship with the boy in Insurrection was something that he’d have not been able to carry on the same level in Encounter At Farpoint, but in my memory I keep coming up against the comment about boobs and thinking it’s still the same old Data. Maybe I should watch Insurrection again.

As for Data in the series, I guess we’ll just disagree on his growth or lack of growth.

@ 25 Ludon Insurrection never happened either. I can’t imagine any scenario in which you should watch that movie again. (Sadly, I can imagine one in which I do…)

For everyone else: sorry I got so behind (it’s my last week of work and I begin grad school on Sunday!), but this week we’ll resume as scheduled with “A Matter of Honor.”

@25 Tori “Insurrection never happened either. I can’t imagine any scenario in which you should watch that movie again. (Sadly, I can imagine one in which I do…)”

Insepidness? Oh that was utterly awful. Luddite SF, two things that don’t great together. Congraulations on your Grad School acceptance.

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Unnatural Selection

After discovering a unresponsive federation starship, Dr. Pulaski contracts a disease and starts to age.

Diana Muldaur

Colm Meaney

Patricia Smith

Scott Trost

J. Patrick McNamara

Majel Barrett Roddenberry

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Patrick Stewart

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I'm kind of liking Pulaski was the female version of McCoy. That same sort of arrogance/ arguing with the captain, bias against the nonhuman (he was biased against Spock, she against Data), all without the casual leering sexism of McCoy.  I hope they work in some homage like  "Dammit Picard, I'm a doctor, not a..."

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Star Trek: The Next Generation “Unnatural Selection” Review

Stardate: 42494.8. A mysterious hyper-ageing sickness kills the crew of a Federation cargo ship, and Dr. Pulaski must race against time to find a cure.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

Unnatural selection (1989).

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Star Trek: The Next Generation : "Unnatural Selection"/"Matter Of Honor"/"The Measure Of A Man"

"Unnatural Selection"

How do you solve a problem like Pulaski? Let's overlook the character flaws, the miscasting, the way she doesn't quite fit, and just deal with generalities. As mediocre as the first season of TNG  was, the new crew of the Enterprise  was a solid unit by the end. Some of them had been developed better than others, but with the death of Tasha Yar, we finally settled into something approaching a groove. People had roles, and they fulfilled them, and even more importantly, those roles all meshed with each other reasonably well. Yes, Troi was a bit on the useless side ("I sense understatement, Captain,"), but this is less about individual importance and more how we, as the audience, became attached to a certain concept of the show's cast. You watch something long enough, you develop a bond with the people you're watching. Upset that bond, and the show risks ruining one of the few undeniable advantages it has.

Enter Pulaski, then. It's the second season, so it's not automatically the end of the world to do some cast change-up. Beverly Crusher, while pleasant enough, hadn't had a huge amount of character development (dead husband, nerdy son, had the hots for Picard), so her absence doesn't ruin any delicate structures. The trick, then, is trying to make her as important to the audience as the rest of the crew, in a much shorter span of time. The downside is, before Pulaski is sufficiently developed, her sudden appearance can throw off the cast chemistry, her scenes becoming dead spots in each episode. Fortunately, though, since the rest of the character know their responsibilities, it's easier to contrast their personalities against this new person's, and use that contrast to flesh her out.

Well, that's a theory, anyway, and "Unnatural Selection" is an attempt to do something with that theory, by giving Pulaski her first real main storyline. Not only is she the person driving the action for much of the episode, characters spend an awful lot of time discussing her in her absence. By the end, we have a much clearer picture of the character—or at least, we have a clearer picture of what the writers really want her character to be. Unfortunately, like I mentioned at the start of the season, those intentions fail to live up to the final result, and what we have is a classic example of a strong actor unable to find a necessary sympathy with the role she's performing.

The Enterprise  gets a distress signal from the Lantree,  but by the time they arrive the entire crew is dead of old age. (Pulaski does a scan, brings out the old chestnut they always deliver in premature seniority story-lines: "They all died of natural causes." Why is this supposed to be more shocking than the evident fact of their advanced aging?) We get a neat scene where Picard takes remote control of the Lantree  via computer codes, just like Kirk took control of Khan's ship way back in Wrath Of Khan , and then a quick scan of the records determines that the ship's last stopping point was at the Darwin Station. They do genetic research there. Wonder if that's relevant?

The crux of the episode is Pulaski's supposed humanism. As a McCoy analog, she is supposed to be passionate, willful, and intent on putting her patients' needs above all other concerns. In practice, this means becoming immediately and deeply obsessed with protecting the results of the research done on Darwin: supposedly genetically perfect humanoids who are unaffected by whatever's causing the aging sickness. The Darwin scientists themselves are all suffering, including their spokeswoman, Dr. Kingsley, who blames contact with the Lantree  for the problem. She demands that the Enterprise  beam the children aboard, since they won't be able to fend for themselves with the adults dead. Pulaski agrees with Kingsley's assessment, despite never having seen these children, and despite the fact that contact with them would put the Enterprise 's crew—people it's her job  to protect—in potential danger, regardless of Kingsley's repeated assurances otherwise.

Pulaski's commitment to a foolhardy idea doesn't do her any favors. Over and over throughout the episode we're informed of her devotion, her stubbornness, her intellect, and while all three traits are technically apparent, in practice, they don't serve to make her more endearing. Her arguments with Picard don't work, because it's impossible to understand what point she's trying to make. Intellectually, yes, a case could be made for the importance of protecting the kids, given the amount of time and research put into them, and simply for their rights as living, sentient beings. In order to make that case work, though, a person would have to be so convinced of the rightness of their cause that their passion for it would overwhelm all other responsibilities. It would need to be a situation in which the children will die without immediate intervention.

This sort of conflict happened all the time in TOS . Kirk was often faced with situations in which he'd need to sacrifice the few for the needs of the many, and part of McCoy's job on the show was to make sure the voice of those few was always heard. The trouble is, TNG  doesn't really deal in the same levels of danger. There have been (and will be) times when the crew is in incredible peril, but rarely are we faced with the kind of moral dilemma that the original show did so well. If TOS  was about translating fables into science fiction, TNG  is about using science to exhaust all options. There's no sense of necessity in Pulaski's demands. She comes off as short-sighted and immature, and given that her entire performance is so restrained and detached, there's no way to empathize with her.

Really, Diana Muldaur isn't right for this part. Her sudden intense desire to protect the kids comes across less as a defining characteristic than as a weird kind of nervous breakdown. We learn over the course of the episode that Pulaski is frustrated with Picard's "by-the-book" methods, which is a conflict I had to keep reminding myself had been established before (she objected to the security team being present while Troi gave birth in "The Child"), and then later we discover she specifically requested a transfer to the Enterprise  because of her deep respect for the man. Neither the conflict nor the respect rings true. Pulaski seems to equally dislike everyone  on the ship, and if she's so in awe of Picard—a man who's methods she's studied, a man who she herself has accused of being obsessed with regulation—why the hell would her first act upon transferring aboard his ship be to ignore him and directly contradict established procedure?

Pulaski gets her way, and deals with one of the kids, putting herself and Data at risk in order to prove what anyone with a brain knew ages ago: the kids are responsible for the aging sickness. Super genius Kingsley keeps bragging about the children's perfect immune systems, and it turns out those immune systems are so amazing that they produce airborne antibodies at even the slightest hint of disease. (Hence the mention of Thelusian Flu earlier.) Once the antibodies are activated, they decide that "regular" humans are essentially viral, and must be destroyed. There is potentially a tragic arc to science creating lethal beauty, but Kingsley is tedious and one-note, and the children themselves are vaguely beatific blank slates. As episodes go, this had a clever enough conclusion—using the transporter to restore the afflicted was satisfying, and it's always fun to see Picard save the day. The problem is, "Selection" depends on Pulaski for emotional depth, and that gets old, fast.

"Matter Of Honor"

Oh thank god yes.

So far I haven't had a whole lot of surprises doing these recaps. I knew the first season was largely terrible, I knew I didn't much care for Tasha Yar or Dr. Pulaski, I knew Patrick Stewart kicked ass, and all of these beliefs have been confirmed. There are little surprises, though, and the best of them is that I really dig William T. Riker. Jonathan Frakes has always struck me as a nice enough guy, but I don't remember having an opinion on him when I first watched the series. Data and Picard took up most of my attention. As I got older, somewhere I got the idea that Riker wasn't all that highly respected among Trek fans. I decided he was smarmy, and dumb, and, at best, a place-filler for the real leads to bounce lines off.

Screw that. Riker is really, really fun. He is a bit smarmy, but the guy is so clearly having fun with his job that it's infectious. He's the Han Solo of the group, and while Frakes doesn't quite have Harrison Ford's charisma (Frakes is too familiar to be really rakish; he's like an uncle who occasionally sells you pot), he does well as a guy who loves his work, loves his friends, and every once in a while likes to screw around with both. For fun, check out the way he stands. It's easy to mimic, easy to mock, but it's also bad-ass, because he knows he's a little ridiculous and he doesn't care. Kind of makes me think of Timothy Olyphant's strut, although that is a deliberate, "I'm walking this way to keep myself from murdering someone each time I put my foot down," whereas with Riker, it's like he just wants to make sure you know he's screwing with you. He takes his duties seriously, but he also finds a lot of things pretty hilarious at the same time, and I dig that.

Another surprise is how much I like Worf. He hasn't gotten as much to do yet, but the show is getting better at giving him lines, and letting him be funny. (The eye-roll he does when Pulaski demands the children be saved in "Selection" is great.) Worf and Riker's relationship is probably the closest the show gets to really capturing that TOS  tone: the two are friends, but there's an edgy playfulness to that friendship that you don't really see in, say, Data and Geordi's interactions. Worf doesn't do a lot in "Matter of Honor," but what he does get is choice, and he's basically an entry-point to Klingon culture as a whole. We've seen how Worf deals with others of his race in the context of the Enterprise , but what happens when a mere human is set adrift in Klingon culture, without the recourse of the Federation to aid them?

"Honor" has Riker signing on for a temporary re-assignment to the Klingon ship Pagh . It's part of an officer exchange program, but no one from Starfleet has ever attempt to serve with Klingons. The impression we get here is that it's a potentially dangerous mission, but not an inherently suicidal one. Picard first introduces Riker to the idea while the two of them are playing some sort of target practice with lasers game, and the captain clearly wants Riker to volunteer. Picard is not one to risk his crew lightly. (Which we'll have even better proof of next episode.) He does, though, take the Enterprise 's mission of exploration and discovery very seriously, and what's really cool here is that Picard is encouraging Riker to take the assignment for philosophical reasons. It's a plot motivated by one character's eagerness to learn something knew.

Plus, Riker clearly gets a kick out of doing his job well. He takes to this new assignment with what can only be deemed as "gusto," sampling ugly Klingon delicacies, and questioning Worf as to the subtleties of Klingon high command. (Turns out it's the job of the first officer to assassinate his captain the moment the captain proves unworthy to lead. Any bets on how a battle royale between Riker and Picard would turn out?) One of the impressive things about "Honor" is how it manages to set up its premise, and deliver sufficiently on that premise, in the space of a single episode. It's easy to imagine this playing out over multiple hours, and if it happened in a modern genre show, that's probably how it would go—Riker taking some courses, then slowly working his way into Klingon society, developing relationships, questioning his own identity as he starts to relate more and more to their warlike ways, until finally he's forced to make some kind of dramatic choice, betraying a part of himself in the name of survival.

That could've been compelling, but I doubt TNG could pull it off as the show currently is, and there's also a great deal to be said for brevity. As a single unit, "Honor" is forced to refine its major conflicts down to their most basic elements. So we get a scene with Riker eating Klingon food, to set us up for a later scene on the Pagh where he has to prove himself to his shipmates by munching on some live worms. We get a danger, with the biological organism that threatens the integrity of the Pagh 's hull, putting the ship at risk and giving the already suspicious Captain Kargan ample reason to mistrust Riker and the Enterprise . There's an arc here, and while I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say Riker goes through significant change, there's a sense of him coming into his own. Riker stands equal (or better) with the Klingons, and it works because the Klingons aren't softened or diminished in order to make them "safer." TNG is still painting with broad strokes, but its respect for the alien culture here makes for some of the best dramatic moments I've seen on the show. Riker taking over the Pagh by tricking Kargan is a cheer-worthy twist, and it wouldn't have worked if it didn't feel earned.

There are some minor quibbles. I don't mind the sub-plot with Mendon learning valuable lessons in the art of communication, but combined with Riker's domination on the Pagh , it skews a little too close to the "humanity is the greatest!" tone the series leans on. Some of Kargan's behavior is on the inexplicable side, especially considering his paranoia. He can't possibly believe that Riker would willingly help destroy the Enterprise , and while I can see him trying to test the first officer by drawing out his loyalties, Riker probably should've been thrown in the brig once Kargan decided that Starfleet wanted the Pagh destroyed. Also, why the hell are the lights so dim on the Pagh , anyway? Are Klingons just that into the color red? Maybe it's a genetic thing, in which case Worf should spend most of his time on the Enterprise bridge squinting.

This was really excellent, though, and between it and "Measure of a Man," I finally feel like TNG is starting to pay off on investments. Much of what Riker does here follows the familiar genre pattern of an outsider making a place for himself in a new society, but instead of making the story overly-predictable, that familiarity resonates. It's deeply satisfying, which is not a feeling I often get watching this series. I hope it lasts.

"The Measure Of A Man" It must be a rule every starship captain's adventures must at some point put him in contact with old flames. How else can you explain the presence in "Measure of a Man" of Phillipa Louvois, former lover and adversary to Jean-Luc Picard, and current JAG Captain at Starbase 173? Much like the "Court Martial" episode of TOS , "Measure" tries to mine some emotion out of a years buried relationship, and while watching the two characters spar is amusing, it's not really necessary. (It also doesn't help that Amanda McBroom isn't anywhere near the same acting league as Stewart.) Picard and Phillipa are not the heart of this story. Data is. And for once, we finally get an episode that lives up to his character's potential.

As viewers, there are certain things we tend to accept without asking when we watch sci-fi and fantasy. Those elements change from show to show, but the basic principle stays the same: we accept what is presented as truth in the universe we're watching. We don't have warp travel, we don't have spaceships like the Enterprise , we don't have instant teleportation or replicators or holodecks, but all of these are presented as given on TNG , and so we don't question there presence. Sure, we can wonder as to the plausibility of certain elements, but unless a show starts breaking its internal rules, we're willing to take quite a lot at face value. Just the name alone, "science fiction," has our expectations prepared. We don't need to see the physics explained in detail as to how Picard and his crew sail the stars. Just to know there's a ship is enough.

For a while now, Data has been one of those accepted truths. Anyone who's spent much time at the movies has seen robots before, so he's not really an anomaly to us. There's Geordi's visor, and Worf, so we already know that this new universe is not solely populated by understandable technology or recognizable humanoids. Yet all along, there have been these certain threads of disquiet as to just what his position in Starfleet, and among his fellow crewmembers, really is. There's a reason that "fully functional" line is so creepy, after all. It's bad writing, but it's also a reminder of Data's uniqueness, his distinction and separation from basic humanity interaction. It's not like anybody had sex with the toaster, but at the same time, just how much of Data is programmed response? How much is choice?

Actually, I doubt that's a question that has plagued me much, since there's never really been any doubt that Data has a soul, that he's a fully conscious, self-realized entity. So maybe the real question, then, is how the other characters view him. Even if we as audience members are conditioned to accept certain central tenets, Picard an the others are not. They accept the holodeck because it's been there for ages, same with warp speed, but Data is a new idea, and even if we have no trouble believing in his basic reality and rights within the series' context, there's no rule that says the characters that live in that context have to agree with us. Imagine if cars started demanding equal pay, or if refrigerators would only be willing to hold certain kinds of food.

On the one hand, it makes sense that a scientist would want to take Data apart to see how he works. It's a bad idea to us, and to the people on the Enterprise , because we "know" Data, and his presence on the show (and on the ship) is as valuable as anyone else's. (In some cases, quite a bit more.) To Starfleet, though, Data is simply another computational tool. So now we get to spend some time trying to find out how our acceptance of the idea of Data, and Picard and the others' belief in him, can be expressed in concrete enough terms to defend Data's rights.

It's surprising that Pulaski isn't more present in "Man," considering her general feelings towards the android. I'm not sure if this was a conscious choice, or simply a matter of time; she appears at Data's farewell party, and doesn't have any snide comments to make, so that's all right. She doesn't even rise to some very obvious bait in the poker game at the start of the episode. (Ahhh, TNG poker. This, I remember.) Picard does most of the heavy lifting here, as Data's ability to come to his own defense is one of the questions that needs to be answered. Riker gets a few meaty scenes, and Geordi has a semi-tearful goodbye to Data, but mostly, this one is all the captain. He's the one trading barbs with Phillipa, he's the one who demands a hearing be called to defend Data's rights, and it's his efforts that ultimately save Data from dismantling. Spiner and Stewart work well together, as Data's trusting nature and straight-forwardness meshes nicely with Picard's clear contempt for the complexities of social convention. It's great to see Picard stepping in to protect his crew, and his clear emotional investment in the issue (an issue he himself may have had some questions on before) makes his final arguments in the hearing powerful and moving.

As for the episode's flaws, well, having Guinan basically spell out "THIS IS LIKE SLAVERY" was unnecessary. While I appreciated the overall discussion, I sometimes wondered if the arguments made against Data's autonomy were a little soft. (As when Maddox, the scientist determined the see what makes Data tick, says that no one would allow a ship's computer to refuse a refit. I think if the computer was actually capable of making the refusal, the situation would change. Isn't Data's desire for survival here proof enough of consciousness?) I really, really didn't like shoehorning Riker into leading the prosecution's case, because it's a very obvious attempt to create fake drama. Still, he does well with the role. There's a great scene which shows Riker studying Data's specs; he finds information that can help him "win," grins, and then realizes that in winning, he'd be dooming a friend.

Overall, this was as good as "Matter of Honor," albeit in a different way. "Honor" was an adventure story; "Measure" is the sort of profound philosophizing that Trek has always made its bread and butter. Soft arguments or no, "Measure" does well to not play anyone as the bad guy. Even Maddox, a definite irritant, is proven to be more blinded by his passion for his work (and a fear of his own inadequacies)  than a villain. Hearing him call Data "he" instead of "it" at the end was nice. (Less nice: Phillipa immediately pointing out the change. Apparently, we can be trusted to follow high-minded debate, but as an audience we suffer from serious pronoun trouble.) TNG hasn't lost its flaws, but it's finally, definitively shown that it can be great. The next time I find myself wishing I could fast-forward to the good parts, I'll just remember Picard's big speech here, or Riker taking down the Pagh 's second-in-command. I don't mind waiting for more of that.

Stray Observations:

• Hey, Brian Thompson! Between this and X-Files , I can't seem to shake him lately.
• Is "Unnatural Selection" the first episode to give Chief O'Brien a name? It's good to see him popping up on the show more regularly and getting lines. They even included him in the poker game.
• I mentioned "Naked Now" earlier; "Measure" references Tasha and Data's physical intimacy, and does so to far great emotional and dramatic impact than the actual original scene did. And Picard's time on the Stargazer is also mentioned, which means that two of my least favorite episodes now have some small reason to exist.
• Next week, it's "The Dauphin," "Contagion," and "The Royale."

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Tng rehashed a classic star trek story but kirk's show did it better.

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How To Watch All Star Trek TV Shows In Timeline Order

I can't believe star trek only teamed up these 2 tng characters once, recasting star trek: the next generation for a movie reboot.

• TNG's "Unnatural Selection" and TOS's "The Deadly Years" both feature a rapid-aging storyline affecting main characters.
• The makeup in both episodes is effective, despite "The Deadly Years" being produced over 20 years earlier.
• TNG's attempt to make Dr. Pulaski like Dr. McCoy didn't work due to the lack of conflict between characters in TNG.

One Star Trek: The Next Generation episode stole its premise from a far better episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. In its first two seasons, TNG was still finding its footing, and several episodes borrowed storylines or other elements from TOS . Some early TNG episodes pull ideas directly from TOS episodes, while others adapt stories that were proposed during the TOS era but never produced . However, what worked on the original Star Trek often did not have the same effect on The Next Generation . Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew on the USS Enterprise-D were very different from Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his Enterprise crew.

Star Trek: The Next Generation seasons 1 and 2 struggled to maintain consistent writers, and the WGA Strike in 1988 complicated matters even further. This led the show's producers to look into Star Trek's past for episode ideas. TNG truly became great when it stepped out from beneath the shadow of TOS and focused on further developing its characters . TNG season 2, episode 7, "Unnatural Selection," did provide some character development for Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) , but its plot rehashes the story from TOS season 2, episode 12, "The Deadly Years."

The Star Trek TV franchise has existed for 57 years and consists of 12 shows (and counting). Here's how to watch them all in timeline order.

Star Trek TNG's "Unnatural Selection" Copies TOS's "The Deadly Years"

Both episodes feature a rapid-aging storyline that affects at least one main character..

In Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Unnatural Selection," the USS Enterprise-D answers a distress signal only to find a ship full of corpses who appear to have died of old age, despite the young age of crew members. When they continue to Darwin Genetic Research Station on Gagarin IV, they find that the scientists there have also contracted this mysterious aging disease. Dr. Pulaski investigates and discovers that the disease originated from the genetically enhanced children the scientists had created. Pulaski then contracts the disease only to be miraculously cured at the last minute thanks to a technobabble solution involving the transporter.

The old age makeup used on Diana Muldaur's Dr. Pulaski improves on that used on Admiral Mark Jameson (Clayton Rohner) in TNG season 1, episode 16, "Too Short a Season." Amusingly, the makeup used in TOS's "The Deadly Years," looks just as good as that from "Unnatural Selection," though the TOS episode was produced over 20 years earlier.

Star Trek: The Original Series' "The Deadly Years" follows Captain Kirk and his crew as they stop at a space station where all of the young officers have died of old age. When Kirk, First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) investigate the station, they also begin aging rapidly. They eventually conclude that radiation from a passing comet caused the rapid aging phenomenon and that an adrenaline-based medicine can be used to cure it. Without the burden of the unnecessary genetically engineered children plot of "Unnatural Selection," "The Deadly Years" focuses more on the effects of growing old on the characters . Kirk grows increasingly tired and forgetful, as his young crew members look on with sadness and pity.

TNG Tried Too Hard To Make Dr. Pulaski Like Dr. McCoy

Pulaski never had the chance to become her own unique character..

The Star Trek: The Original Series version of this rapid aging plot works better because it focuses on the characters rather than the disease itself. While TNG's "Unnatural Selection" is ostensibly an episode focused on Dr. Pulaski, she could have been replaced with nearly any other character, and the plot would have been the same . Pulaski isn't even the one who comes up with a solution to the disease - it's Captain Picard and Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) who come up with the transporter trick. "Unnatural Selection" also hammers home the idea that Pulaski was meant to be TNG's version of Dr. McCoy , by highlighting her fear of the transporter and having her butt heads with Picard.

While Dr. McCoy was a great character who worked well on TOS , that type of character simply didn't work on TNG . Captain Kirk, Spock, and McCoy bickered all the time on TOS, but the characters of TNG rarely bicker at all (by design, as Gene Roddenberry had a "no-conflict" rule on TNG ). Dr. Pulaski interrupts Captain Picard and picks on Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), and while Picard stands his ground, Data often misunderstands Pulaski's remarks. Data cannot be the Spock to Pulaski's McCoy because he does not understand her sarcasm , so is unable to respond in kind. Dr. Katherine Pulaski had the potential to be a great new addition to the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast, but the show never quite knew what to do with her.

Star Trek: The Original Series & Star Trek: The Next Generation are available to stream on Paramount+.

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Episode Preview: Unnatural Selection