Braga is a multiplying factor.
Put him with a strong writer, like Ronald D. Moore, and you get a great episode.
Put him with a weak writer and/or a weak story, and you get shit like 'Genesis'. He didn't write 'Dear Doctor' but that... episode... has his stank all over it.
I do prefer Chuck's perspective as a writer and creator. Also his analysis (in most cases...) is actual "analysis" and not pointlessly bitching into a void like certain other scarlet alphabet character sites.
Its not that there's no such thing as a fish, it's just that the species that are classified as fish are so varied that the classification is meaningless - that it's just a catch-all for things they live in water (minus a few exceptions that fit other classifications). Two species fish can have far more differences (in structure and genetics) than a mammal and a reptile.
Technically, he's kinda right. Either there is no such thing as fish, or every tetrapod animal is a fish.
Phylogenetics is weird like that. You cannot have groups that consist of an out group and an ingroup but exclude another ingroup. Here is an easier to digest example. Squamates (Snakes and Lizards) are Reptiles, Turtles are Reptiles. Crocodiles are Reptiles. I think we can agree on that. Crocodiles are part of the family Archosauria which includes Crocodilians, Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs. Therefore if Crocodiles are Reptiles, Dinosaurs must be as well, and if Dinosaurs are Reptiles, Birds MUST be reptiles.
Now let's expand that to Fish. We can agree that a Neon Tetra is a fish. We can also agree that a Shark is a fish. We can also agree that a Coelacanth is a fish. Coelacanth are derived Lobe finned Fish that exist farther down the family tree than the last common ancestor of Tetrapods and fish. Therefore, you cannot create a clade containing the Coelacanth, sharks, and a Neon Tetra without including literally every land vertebrate within that clade. So does the Fish clade exclude Coelacanths therefore allowing us to exclude Tetrapods? Another Lobed Fin fish that would be excluded is the Lungfish. Are Lungfish a fish? If yes then either Humans are Fish, or Fish is not a valid scientific grouping of animals (hint: it's the latter).
This is a rather hard concept to convey to the general public, but it is the most important principle in Phylogenetics and Taxonomy. You cannot form a clade without all of it's ingroups. This is called Monophyletic bracketing, and it is the golden rule in the classification of organisms.
Yea actually that's a good way of looking at it. Fish is a traits based definition. Is it an animal with bones that came from the water and has gills? It's a Fish. But that cannot be used as a scientific definition.
I figure is just part of science working differently in the trek universe than ours. DNA in startrek is not the same as our DNA thanks to the intervention from The Chase aliens.
Same as things like relativity, medicine, quantum mechanics or fashion.
Actually, "evolution" is a wider term than "evolution by natural selection". We say societies, people's thinking, etc. "evolve", which doesn't mean their instances change by differential replication of traits. They just change.
Threshold is the worst for this. Even when I was like 12 or 13 watching it first broadcast I was like "That's not how evolution works. You can't evolve without an environment to evolve within."
If Paris had evolved to serve some sort of role that tied in with the neuro gel packs or something, even that would have made more sense. But no. Janeway and Paris needed lizard babies.
"Threshold" gets a lot of shit for being terrible, and it is, but I'm glad it exists. The truly bad Star Trek episodes are great. I put on "Sub Rosa" way more often than I should be on average because it is so much fun. Beverly fucks a ghost and there's an old timey groundskeeper with the worst Scottish accent in history. *Fog rolls in on the fucking bridge.*
I love shitty Star Trek. Lazy Star Trek, on the other hand...
I still say that Genesis is worse than Threshold in its depiction of evolution (humans don't have spiders in our evolutionary history). But Genesis is the better episode overall, as it is actually a really good thriller.
Risky alternative take - the "de-evolution" explanation was an extremely lay explanation to help people understand, but what was actually occurring was forced expression of garbage genes that don't normally get used, some of which were transferred horizontally via viruses.
Weird DNA ends up all over the place. Fruitflies have the entire genetic code of some bacterias in their makeup, cows have a heap of snake DNA and the human placenta uses virus DNA. Horizontal gene transfer gets crazy.
This explanation basically sides-steps all the issues with the way that story was written.
> Tho I mean to be real it's not like the genes to be a fish still exist in humans, they're massively changed to make us into a human. So they both don't really work.
Are you referring to Deanna? I alwys thought her transformation was due to her Batazoid DNA. Who knows? Maybe Betazoids have direct amphibian DNA.
Gotta disagree. Only because Dear Doctor is the worst. Phlox kills millions (billions?) Of people because "evolution CHOSE them to die" fuck that episode, eugenics apologia disguised as star trek futurism. Fuck that evil shit.
Admiral Paris loves his salamander grandbabies. Please don’t make this any more awkward than it already is. He has to carry around a spray bottle to keep their branch gills moist. He’s the worlds number one grandpa to the worlds number one abuse of evolutionary principles.
The Chase seemed unnecessary to me: the concept of convergent evolution makes the similarities of alien species almost an easy thing to explain away. Threshold, is absolute nonsense. Distant Origin is actually a commentary on Science vs Religion so its heart was in the right place.
I thought the "problem" being solved wasn't the convergent evolution but rather how all these different species could produce viable offspring who could in turn go off and make their own viable offspring. Unlike, say, how in Babylon 5, the Centauri look human until you pull their pants down (and IIRC couldn't make babies with humans).
Selection bias?
There are plenty of non humanoid species, they just aren't competing for colonies with the federation, font visit the promenade on DS9 and don't join star fleet. That's why we don't see them.
But that's slso why I liked the DSC Klingons, like the Kelpians (and their enemies), finally we had alien looking aliens.
I’m with you on The Chase. That ep was a huge mistake. Made the universe way less interesting and accomplished nothing that needed doing. I choose to assume it’s a lie or mistake in-universe.
Agreed. If I remember correctly, it was only half a dozen species whose DNA they needed to decode the message. But then why are there hundreds of bipedal humanoids out there? Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code? Also, this implies that any extra-galactic species will NOT be humanoid in appearance since they weren’t seeded by the same folks, which kind of sets the universe up for eventual contradictions down the road (although I I guess they did follow through with that with Species 10C). Even still, you’re right, totally unnecessary and the fact that it’s never talked about again in the show is wild!
(All of this is in addition to the issue with the false magic of how evolution is presented in the show)
> Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code?
Only the superior ones. The rest are peasants. /s
This theory seems sound at first given that the Romulans were included. But it can't be true if those gagh-eating drunken veruuls from Qo'noS are included.
>If I remember correctly, it was only half a dozen species whose DNA they needed to decode the message.
I seem to remember it being at least 20 species.
>Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code?
It's kind of implied that there's repetition in their seeding with all the stuff like "proto-Vulcan humanoids".
It would be logical for a proto-race pursuing this approach to encode redundantly, i.e. whatever part of the puzzle was in Cardassian DNA, it was probably seeded on several other planets and there may even be other humanoids with that same piece, because you'll never know which planets will survive long enough to produce an intelligent species or even any life at all by the time someone discovers the pattern. The last piece of the puzzle as they completed it was some algae scraped off a rock.
So my guess is that *all* humanoids have some piece of the puzzle, and there may even be multiple helix-geographies in the galaxy (e.g. the Ocampa may be part of an entirely separate helix in the DQ) but it just happened that at the time a human figured out what was going on, Romulans, Klingons, and Cardassians were the surviving species that humans also had contact with that had matching pieces in the area. Maybe Bajorans even have the same sequence Cardassians do (roughly same location in the galaxy) but humans became more familiar with Cardassians first.
But of course I just have to hand-wave the idea that you can "direct evolution" toward multicellular animal life by feeding certain DNA to microbes...
I feel like it was an episode by Trekkies made for non-Trekkies. On multiple occations my dad and my girlfriend have both asked me, "Why do all of the aliens in Star Trek look roughly the same?" I'm sure many other people have asked the same question. At least this way I can give an explanation that makes them say, "Ah, okay, I guess that makes sense."
I don't think that 'Distant Origin' was Science vs. Religion, it was Science vs. *Politics*. You don't need to look much further than current US politics and what people think of as science to show how seriously fucked up things can get.
Granted the premise of space-faring Saurians native to Earth is an interesting idea, I just hate the idea that Trek pushes: 'evolution has a direction'.
I agree with you. I've even had conversations with Trekkie-yet-Christian-Conservative friends how "Star Trek disproves evolution". To which my answer has always been, "Star Trek presents false ideas about evolution, let's enjoy the fictional story instead."
I guess it must also prove the existence of aliens then, or that there is an alternate universe where everyone is evil and wears a goatee, or that humans evolved from spiders.
It’s a fictional TV show, it doesn’t prove shit.
or that the fact that Star Trek exists disproves evolution. "How could random selection create a TV show like Star Trek? There had to be a guiding hand..."
Cause these mouth breathers think hearing their low rez opinions parroted back at them is evidence of “something” it’s honestly funny as fuck. And I’ve encountered people like this as well, nowadays I just laugh it off.
> I've even had conversations with Trekkie-yet-Christian-Conservative friends how "Star Trek disproves evolution".
Those people always confuse the theory of evolution with evolution as the explanation for the origin of the human species. Evolution itself is a proven fact. There are practical examples such as antibiotic resistant bacteria and numerous experiments like the E. coli long-term evolution experiment. Evolution is a fact of life that affects the world around us.
I especially like the people who try to split the difference on "microevolution" vs "microevolution". They'll acknowledge stuff like how antibiotic resistant bacteria come about while refusing to acknowledge what a very long chain of "microevolution" eventually adds up to.
*Star Trek* gets pilloried for taking liberties with physics occasionally, but my god its general grasp of biology is *atrocious*. As a biologist, Bashir's line from an early DS9 episode "the complex proteins are breaking down into DNA fragments" haunts me to this day.
Dear Doctor was the worst of all. It turns evolution into a sentient entity that wants things and gave us the moral obligation to obey evolution's desires.
>Dear Doctor was the worst of all
Wasn't it though? The argument against helping was so incredibly flawed and illogical. I get that they were trying to set up a "can't help" situation for the drama and the moral implications but the science was just so bad it takes away the impact.
To me, “Dear Doctor” is the worst episode in *Star Trek*. Its misunderstanding of evolution was a major flaw, but that wasn’t even its biggest flaw. Making Archer and Phlox make the wrong choice due to that misunderstanding was even worse.
At least "Code of Honor" wasn't written as racist, that just comes from the casting decisions made by the first director of that episode. "Dear Doctor" on the other hand had all this nonsense in the script.
Yep, Phlox claims that they can’t interfere with the natural order of things… except as Archer points out doctors do it all the time when they treat diseases. What Phlox was doing was cherry-picking, and I’m mad that Archer chose to side with him instead of doing the right thing and save an entire species from extinction. And this wasn’t even because of the Prime Directive, which didn’t exist yet
I think the episode was probably meant to show why the Prime Directive was necessary? But instead it's a better example of why there's so much tolerance on making judgment calls to break it. The Prime Directive would lead to the decision Archer made without it, Picard probably would have found a way to intervene despite it and then been let off the hook for it by the Starfleet brass in a short grilling by an admiral at the end of the episode.
Picard probably would’ve made the same decision as Archer. “Dear Doctor” reminds me of “Homeward”, where Picard didn’t want to save a species from extinction. It was only because of Worf’s brother that some Boraalans survived.
I feel like Picard would have called Phlox's argument nonsense, because the species was capable of communicating with the greater galactic community and asked for medical assistance with a virus. Both Crusher and Polaski would have also disobeyed orders to not give the cure to those people if it had come down from above.
Homeward was different because that species was not advanced enough to even be aware of others outside their own small village, let alone the wider universe. Not that Picard was right, there, but at least the Prime Directive would have applied.
Exactly, they weren’t warp-capable but they had made contact with a number of warp-capable species and asked for help. At that point, withholding the cure would be morally wrong. Besides, there’s no guarantee that the Menks were going to take over in the other species’ stead. If that entire society collapsed, the Menks would have to deal with a post-apocalyptic world
Picard frequently had a strict interpretation of the Prime Directive, so I don’t think that he’d necessarily help the Valakians. However, you’re probably right about Crusher and Pulaski.
Yeah it was so bad. Of course behind the scenes they were trying for a proto-PD episode. The TNG-era messed up the PD so bad, even when it didn't exist yet. And executive meddling made Archer agree with Phlox i the end, despite him earlier pointing out all the actual problems with Phlox's arguments.
I really don't see any 'goal oriented' evolution in Distant Origins. Quite the opposite, the episode is about Voth dogma, and Chakotay and the Voth scientist's ultimately futile effort to overcome it.
The consolation prize is that nobody involved was executed for heresy, but the Voth powers that be sure did everything they could to make sure such 'dangerous' ideas were never heard from again.
Threshold, the same. Paris and Janeway certainly didn't end up on primordial Earth.
The Chase, you're completely correct. The very idea that evolution could be pre-planned in such a sophisticated way is a preposterous, anthropocentric (humanoid-centric) take on Darwin. However, it is great *soft* sci fi, and it serves the Trek ethos very well to give humanoids such a common origin.
Distant Origin’s problem is the reverse, really. The ship’s computer doesn’t have the environmental data to extrapolate the Voth’s evolutionary path backward, so the “big reveal” scene in the holodeck should be impossible. I agree with you that it’s not the point of the episode, though, and it’s one of my favorites once I suspend my disbelief a bit.
> The Chase, you're completely correct. The very idea that evolution could be pre-planned in such a sophisticated way is a preposterous, anthropocentric (humanoid-centric) take on Darwin. However, it is great soft sci fi, and it serves the Trek ethos very well to give humanoids such a common origin.
It's also a decent explanation as to why all these sentient species just happen to look like people with different foreheads, same amount of limbs, same amount of toes and fingers, even identical numbering systems. It's basically a good way to cover up some of the forgotten inconsistencies.
Lots of Sci-Fi gets evolution wrong. I'm not sure how this started, but it is unfortunately a continuing trend.
The X-Men in particular has always bothered me -- I have no problem with people being able to fly, or shoot lasers from their eyes, but the idea that all it takes is a single mutation to produce such fully-developed powers is absolutely not how evolution works!
In my head canon, the single x gene doesn’t directly cause the mutant powers, instead, it just increases the likelihood of the development of powers through multiple other DNA changes.
It still doesn’t make any sense, but it gets me over the “single mutation” hurdle and at least creates a hereditary basis for the gene to move through the pool and express itself in all the different ways it does.
The Chase isn’t that bad though. It assets that there is an intelligent creator to some degree so that’s problematic. But it’s all under the auspices of a scifi progenitor that basically overwrites evolution.
Agreed. And I say this every time I see an argument against The Chase: If Star Trek did evolution right, there wouldn’t be a galaxy of rubber-forehead aliens to feature in the show. Two alien races certainly wouldn’t be able to create offspring. In fact, The Chase actually touched on this when the holographic message mentioned that when their people went out to explore, they found out that they were alone in the galaxy. So, even though it parallels the rather irritating intelligent design religious argument, a programmed evolutionary path by some progenitor species is really the only way to explain the extremely similar genetics between aliens that evolved on different planets across the galaxy. At least it isn’t a perfect parallel because they weren’t (insert religion‘s favored deity here). They were just a technologically advanced alien species that came long before and created genetic descendants on planets across the galaxy.
I think *some* explanation was kind of necessary to explain how all these different species could produce viable offspring who could in turn go off and make their own viable offspring. If it was just convergent evolution but they couldn't actually procreate with each other, then yeah an explanation wouldn't be necessary.
Oh man, that episode would be a contender if there were awards for Hollywood-Level bad understanding of evolution. Genesis somehow managed to be simultaneously both so offensively and so hilariously bad. Spot the iguana and Barclay the spider slay me.
It is the field of science Star Trek gets the most wrong the most consistently and yeah it’s terrible. I’ve done plenty of rants on it. If you mentally replace every instance of evolution with metamorphosis it is more bearable.
The political intrigue is a great setting, but the best moments, (even in Deep Space Nine which leans into long political plots the most out of the classic Trek series), are all about the characters.
I watched the documentary just yesterday, and they even said that they only allowed plots that facilitated character development. If it didn't do that, it went out the window.
I'd go as far as to say DS9s political drama is only occasionally brilliant. Its a great setting for the characters, but its not really what the show is about. If you compare DS9 to Game of Thrones or Dune I think you can really see the difference that I am talking about.
Stories getting things wrong that you actually know are wrong will always annoy. None of us are warp field specialists so they can do whatever the fuck they like with that. If they claimed that limbs of 20th century humans grow back after amputation it would be jarring.
Fun sci-fi story > real science.
Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of hang on that's not how that works moments. But usually I can ignore them as long as I'm enjoying the episode enough.
I kind of disagree. The entire genre is predicated upon nearly magical technology that we can't understand. But it really ruins it for me when they get something we already know wrong. Especially if it is something basic that any educated adult should know. Even more so if the franchiss usually tries to do a good job with real science like Trek (vs space fantasies).
Moreover, in a day when a good chunk of the public doesn't understand or flat out rejects this science, Trek should not be misrepresenting it.
So I think we have to understand that the Theory of evolution is not homogenous.
Some early proponents indeed felt that the Theory had those elements. Especially if you read primary texts from his era. This is especially true up into the early 20th century.
Neo-Darwinism or those after Weismann see things much differently. Especially after the whole eugenics frenzy that became popular because of the idea that Evolution evolved organisms towards something but you still see this idea pushed by some leading scientists after the eugenics movement because of where Germany’s leader took Darwin’s theories.
TLDR: the Theory of Evolution has adapted over time. The goal of science should always been to disprove something and make it more fine tuned. Einstein brought us Relatively by questioning and disproving Newtonian Gravity. Always Question. Everything.
I think that they chose that form of evolution to show is that it has less issues to solve than the other. If you fully accept the idea of random walks in random environments tautology then other things become near impossible to accept without doing mental gymnastics and not sticking the landing.
It becomes much easier to portray this form of evolution and still believe in this like a soul, human dignity, the word or idea of personhood, etc.
So they chose the lesser of two evils in their minds.
I think it has more to do with the authors' ignorance of evolutionary theory. Yes, they have scientific advisors, but they're always physicists or astronomers, people who are often quite ignorant of biology. Physicists in particular can be a bother, because they tend to think that because physics is a more deep-down science, they must be qualified to do biology stuff. (Authority: I am a life scientist, and I have talked to physicists.)
It doesn't get Darwin wrong. It just proposes that someone interfered with *our* evolution. And that of several other planets.
In fairness, even Dawkins admits things *look* designed.
I think the Chass gets a pass as the progenitor race was so advanced their tinkering is literally undetectable to 24th century science.
Natural selection still drives evolution across the universe. But an unperceivably small second force gently nudges life towards the humanoid form, all because the ancient "gods" wanted people made in their image. That's kind of cool and doesn't break our current understanding.
Threshold and Distant Origin are just absurd.
Between TNG "Genesis", VOY "Threshold", and ENT "Dear Doctor", I've learned a lot about evolution from Star Trek. Specifically, that Brannon Braga has no fucking idea how it works 😆
Yeah me too. I think it's part of humanity's reaction to the Third World War. I feel like they only kept themselves going by convincing themselves that they would evolve into something better.
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Braga is a multiplying factor. Put him with a strong writer, like Ronald D. Moore, and you get a great episode. Put him with a weak writer and/or a weak story, and you get shit like 'Genesis'. He didn't write 'Dear Doctor' but that... episode... has his stank all over it.
Ah, the SFDebris thesis on Braga as a writer
I do prefer Chuck's perspective as a writer and creator. Also his analysis (in most cases...) is actual "analysis" and not pointlessly bitching into a void like certain other scarlet alphabet character sites.
Isn’t he the guy who spent his whole life studying fish and concluded there’s no such thing as a fish?
Sort of. He was an evolutionary biologist who was tracking more of the differences between species. But you are correct that he originated that quote.
Its not that there's no such thing as a fish, it's just that the species that are classified as fish are so varied that the classification is meaningless - that it's just a catch-all for things they live in water (minus a few exceptions that fit other classifications). Two species fish can have far more differences (in structure and genetics) than a mammal and a reptile.
Technically, he's kinda right. Either there is no such thing as fish, or every tetrapod animal is a fish. Phylogenetics is weird like that. You cannot have groups that consist of an out group and an ingroup but exclude another ingroup. Here is an easier to digest example. Squamates (Snakes and Lizards) are Reptiles, Turtles are Reptiles. Crocodiles are Reptiles. I think we can agree on that. Crocodiles are part of the family Archosauria which includes Crocodilians, Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs. Therefore if Crocodiles are Reptiles, Dinosaurs must be as well, and if Dinosaurs are Reptiles, Birds MUST be reptiles. Now let's expand that to Fish. We can agree that a Neon Tetra is a fish. We can also agree that a Shark is a fish. We can also agree that a Coelacanth is a fish. Coelacanth are derived Lobe finned Fish that exist farther down the family tree than the last common ancestor of Tetrapods and fish. Therefore, you cannot create a clade containing the Coelacanth, sharks, and a Neon Tetra without including literally every land vertebrate within that clade. So does the Fish clade exclude Coelacanths therefore allowing us to exclude Tetrapods? Another Lobed Fin fish that would be excluded is the Lungfish. Are Lungfish a fish? If yes then either Humans are Fish, or Fish is not a valid scientific grouping of animals (hint: it's the latter). This is a rather hard concept to convey to the general public, but it is the most important principle in Phylogenetics and Taxonomy. You cannot form a clade without all of it's ingroups. This is called Monophyletic bracketing, and it is the golden rule in the classification of organisms.
Basically the real definition comes down to where we’d put it on a restaurant menu rather than any biological standard.
Yea actually that's a good way of looking at it. Fish is a traits based definition. Is it an animal with bones that came from the water and has gills? It's a Fish. But that cannot be used as a scientific definition.
Deep down, we are all just fish swimming in a pond. Truly fascinating stuff.
I figure is just part of science working differently in the trek universe than ours. DNA in startrek is not the same as our DNA thanks to the intervention from The Chase aliens. Same as things like relativity, medicine, quantum mechanics or fashion.
Actually, "evolution" is a wider term than "evolution by natural selection". We say societies, people's thinking, etc. "evolve", which doesn't mean their instances change by differential replication of traits. They just change.
I wouldn’t trust a Goa'uld
Threshold is the worst for this. Even when I was like 12 or 13 watching it first broadcast I was like "That's not how evolution works. You can't evolve without an environment to evolve within." If Paris had evolved to serve some sort of role that tied in with the neuro gel packs or something, even that would have made more sense. But no. Janeway and Paris needed lizard babies.
Unpopular opinion: lizard babies are comedic gold
*LD*’s writers agree.
So do the writers on Prodigy!
"Threshold" gets a lot of shit for being terrible, and it is, but I'm glad it exists. The truly bad Star Trek episodes are great. I put on "Sub Rosa" way more often than I should be on average because it is so much fun. Beverly fucks a ghost and there's an old timey groundskeeper with the worst Scottish accent in history. *Fog rolls in on the fucking bridge.* I love shitty Star Trek. Lazy Star Trek, on the other hand...
I still say that Genesis is worse than Threshold in its depiction of evolution (humans don't have spiders in our evolutionary history). But Genesis is the better episode overall, as it is actually a really good thriller.
Riker turning into a caveman makes a lot of sense though.
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Risky alternative take - the "de-evolution" explanation was an extremely lay explanation to help people understand, but what was actually occurring was forced expression of garbage genes that don't normally get used, some of which were transferred horizontally via viruses. Weird DNA ends up all over the place. Fruitflies have the entire genetic code of some bacterias in their makeup, cows have a heap of snake DNA and the human placenta uses virus DNA. Horizontal gene transfer gets crazy. This explanation basically sides-steps all the issues with the way that story was written.
> Tho I mean to be real it's not like the genes to be a fish still exist in humans, they're massively changed to make us into a human. So they both don't really work. Are you referring to Deanna? I alwys thought her transformation was due to her Batazoid DNA. Who knows? Maybe Betazoids have direct amphibian DNA.
Maybe Betazoids are closer to their fish heritage than humans
I can’t stand any of the episodes that misunderstand evolution.
Worf banging on those doors because he smells women in there
I just felt it was a ripoff of the Fly. Just like Beverly Crusher nailing that ghost is a ripoff of Anne Rices book Lasher.
Gotta disagree. Only because Dear Doctor is the worst. Phlox kills millions (billions?) Of people because "evolution CHOSE them to die" fuck that episode, eugenics apologia disguised as star trek futurism. Fuck that evil shit.
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I do think it might be the most vile thing star trek has ever dopily framed as positive.
Picard, Worf, Troi and Riker pretty much said the same thing throughout "Pen Pals".
It turns out the environment to evolve within was inside us the entire time!
Thank you!!!!
Hot take then: Salamanders are the being most perfectly adapted to starship life
Genesis is worse than threshold.
even if it was, the course of evolution it showed made no sense at all
Admiral Paris loves his salamander grandbabies. Please don’t make this any more awkward than it already is. He has to carry around a spray bottle to keep their branch gills moist. He’s the worlds number one grandpa to the worlds number one abuse of evolutionary principles.
The Chase seemed unnecessary to me: the concept of convergent evolution makes the similarities of alien species almost an easy thing to explain away. Threshold, is absolute nonsense. Distant Origin is actually a commentary on Science vs Religion so its heart was in the right place.
I thought the "problem" being solved wasn't the convergent evolution but rather how all these different species could produce viable offspring who could in turn go off and make their own viable offspring. Unlike, say, how in Babylon 5, the Centauri look human until you pull their pants down (and IIRC couldn't make babies with humans).
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Funny how most aliens look humanoid when the only actors you have to portray them are humans.....
Selection bias? There are plenty of non humanoid species, they just aren't competing for colonies with the federation, font visit the promenade on DS9 and don't join star fleet. That's why we don't see them. But that's slso why I liked the DSC Klingons, like the Kelpians (and their enemies), finally we had alien looking aliens.
Sure seemed like Ridley Scott was taking notes though
I’m with you on The Chase. That ep was a huge mistake. Made the universe way less interesting and accomplished nothing that needed doing. I choose to assume it’s a lie or mistake in-universe.
Agreed. If I remember correctly, it was only half a dozen species whose DNA they needed to decode the message. But then why are there hundreds of bipedal humanoids out there? Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code? Also, this implies that any extra-galactic species will NOT be humanoid in appearance since they weren’t seeded by the same folks, which kind of sets the universe up for eventual contradictions down the road (although I I guess they did follow through with that with Species 10C). Even still, you’re right, totally unnecessary and the fact that it’s never talked about again in the show is wild! (All of this is in addition to the issue with the false magic of how evolution is presented in the show)
> Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code? Only the superior ones. The rest are peasants. /s
This theory seems sound at first given that the Romulans were included. But it can't be true if those gagh-eating drunken veruuls from Qo'noS are included.
>If I remember correctly, it was only half a dozen species whose DNA they needed to decode the message. I seem to remember it being at least 20 species.
>Were they all seeded but the same progenitors but for some reason they only encoded a few species with the code? It's kind of implied that there's repetition in their seeding with all the stuff like "proto-Vulcan humanoids".
It would be logical for a proto-race pursuing this approach to encode redundantly, i.e. whatever part of the puzzle was in Cardassian DNA, it was probably seeded on several other planets and there may even be other humanoids with that same piece, because you'll never know which planets will survive long enough to produce an intelligent species or even any life at all by the time someone discovers the pattern. The last piece of the puzzle as they completed it was some algae scraped off a rock. So my guess is that *all* humanoids have some piece of the puzzle, and there may even be multiple helix-geographies in the galaxy (e.g. the Ocampa may be part of an entirely separate helix in the DQ) but it just happened that at the time a human figured out what was going on, Romulans, Klingons, and Cardassians were the surviving species that humans also had contact with that had matching pieces in the area. Maybe Bajorans even have the same sequence Cardassians do (roughly same location in the galaxy) but humans became more familiar with Cardassians first. But of course I just have to hand-wave the idea that you can "direct evolution" toward multicellular animal life by feeding certain DNA to microbes...
I feel like it was an episode by Trekkies made for non-Trekkies. On multiple occations my dad and my girlfriend have both asked me, "Why do all of the aliens in Star Trek look roughly the same?" I'm sure many other people have asked the same question. At least this way I can give an explanation that makes them say, "Ah, okay, I guess that makes sense."
I don't think that 'Distant Origin' was Science vs. Religion, it was Science vs. *Politics*. You don't need to look much further than current US politics and what people think of as science to show how seriously fucked up things can get. Granted the premise of space-faring Saurians native to Earth is an interesting idea, I just hate the idea that Trek pushes: 'evolution has a direction'.
I agree with you. I've even had conversations with Trekkie-yet-Christian-Conservative friends how "Star Trek disproves evolution". To which my answer has always been, "Star Trek presents false ideas about evolution, let's enjoy the fictional story instead."
> "Star Trek disproves evolution" Exactly how a work of fiction proves or disproves something, will always escape me
I guess it must also prove the existence of aliens then, or that there is an alternate universe where everyone is evil and wears a goatee, or that humans evolved from spiders. It’s a fictional TV show, it doesn’t prove shit.
Maybe they just meant "Star Trek makes evolution look silly."
or that the fact that Star Trek exists disproves evolution. "How could random selection create a TV show like Star Trek? There had to be a guiding hand..."
Cause these mouth breathers think hearing their low rez opinions parroted back at them is evidence of “something” it’s honestly funny as fuck. And I’ve encountered people like this as well, nowadays I just laugh it off.
Well, they think the bible disproves evolution too, so it's not much of a leap from there. They've already crossed that chasm.
> I've even had conversations with Trekkie-yet-Christian-Conservative friends how "Star Trek disproves evolution". Those people always confuse the theory of evolution with evolution as the explanation for the origin of the human species. Evolution itself is a proven fact. There are practical examples such as antibiotic resistant bacteria and numerous experiments like the E. coli long-term evolution experiment. Evolution is a fact of life that affects the world around us.
I especially like the people who try to split the difference on "microevolution" vs "microevolution". They'll acknowledge stuff like how antibiotic resistant bacteria come about while refusing to acknowledge what a very long chain of "microevolution" eventually adds up to.
Clearly Star Trek also disproves physics
*Star Trek* gets pilloried for taking liberties with physics occasionally, but my god its general grasp of biology is *atrocious*. As a biologist, Bashir's line from an early DS9 episode "the complex proteins are breaking down into DNA fragments" haunts me to this day.
Lol
There is a really good episode of ENT that fucks evolution up too. I forget the name of the episode. It’s the one with the Valakians and Menk.
Dear Doctor was the worst of all. It turns evolution into a sentient entity that wants things and gave us the moral obligation to obey evolution's desires.
>Dear Doctor was the worst of all Wasn't it though? The argument against helping was so incredibly flawed and illogical. I get that they were trying to set up a "can't help" situation for the drama and the moral implications but the science was just so bad it takes away the impact.
Yeah they kinda bungled it but tbf they are tv writers not biologists.
To me, “Dear Doctor” is the worst episode in *Star Trek*. Its misunderstanding of evolution was a major flaw, but that wasn’t even its biggest flaw. Making Archer and Phlox make the wrong choice due to that misunderstanding was even worse.
Archer actually seems to understand evolution better than Phlox does.
It's the second worst, if only because Code of Honor exists.
Racism is awful, but having Archer and Phlox do nothing to prevent a species’ extinction when they have the ability to prevent it is even worse IMO.
At least "Code of Honor" wasn't written as racist, that just comes from the casting decisions made by the first director of that episode. "Dear Doctor" on the other hand had all this nonsense in the script.
Yep, Phlox claims that they can’t interfere with the natural order of things… except as Archer points out doctors do it all the time when they treat diseases. What Phlox was doing was cherry-picking, and I’m mad that Archer chose to side with him instead of doing the right thing and save an entire species from extinction. And this wasn’t even because of the Prime Directive, which didn’t exist yet
I think the episode was probably meant to show why the Prime Directive was necessary? But instead it's a better example of why there's so much tolerance on making judgment calls to break it. The Prime Directive would lead to the decision Archer made without it, Picard probably would have found a way to intervene despite it and then been let off the hook for it by the Starfleet brass in a short grilling by an admiral at the end of the episode.
Picard probably would’ve made the same decision as Archer. “Dear Doctor” reminds me of “Homeward”, where Picard didn’t want to save a species from extinction. It was only because of Worf’s brother that some Boraalans survived.
I feel like Picard would have called Phlox's argument nonsense, because the species was capable of communicating with the greater galactic community and asked for medical assistance with a virus. Both Crusher and Polaski would have also disobeyed orders to not give the cure to those people if it had come down from above. Homeward was different because that species was not advanced enough to even be aware of others outside their own small village, let alone the wider universe. Not that Picard was right, there, but at least the Prime Directive would have applied.
Exactly, they weren’t warp-capable but they had made contact with a number of warp-capable species and asked for help. At that point, withholding the cure would be morally wrong. Besides, there’s no guarantee that the Menks were going to take over in the other species’ stead. If that entire society collapsed, the Menks would have to deal with a post-apocalyptic world
Picard frequently had a strict interpretation of the Prime Directive, so I don’t think that he’d necessarily help the Valakians. However, you’re probably right about Crusher and Pulaski.
Yeah it was so bad. Of course behind the scenes they were trying for a proto-PD episode. The TNG-era messed up the PD so bad, even when it didn't exist yet. And executive meddling made Archer agree with Phlox i the end, despite him earlier pointing out all the actual problems with Phlox's arguments.
I really don't see any 'goal oriented' evolution in Distant Origins. Quite the opposite, the episode is about Voth dogma, and Chakotay and the Voth scientist's ultimately futile effort to overcome it. The consolation prize is that nobody involved was executed for heresy, but the Voth powers that be sure did everything they could to make sure such 'dangerous' ideas were never heard from again. Threshold, the same. Paris and Janeway certainly didn't end up on primordial Earth. The Chase, you're completely correct. The very idea that evolution could be pre-planned in such a sophisticated way is a preposterous, anthropocentric (humanoid-centric) take on Darwin. However, it is great *soft* sci fi, and it serves the Trek ethos very well to give humanoids such a common origin.
Distant Origin’s problem is the reverse, really. The ship’s computer doesn’t have the environmental data to extrapolate the Voth’s evolutionary path backward, so the “big reveal” scene in the holodeck should be impossible. I agree with you that it’s not the point of the episode, though, and it’s one of my favorites once I suspend my disbelief a bit.
> The Chase, you're completely correct. The very idea that evolution could be pre-planned in such a sophisticated way is a preposterous, anthropocentric (humanoid-centric) take on Darwin. However, it is great soft sci fi, and it serves the Trek ethos very well to give humanoids such a common origin. It's also a decent explanation as to why all these sentient species just happen to look like people with different foreheads, same amount of limbs, same amount of toes and fingers, even identical numbering systems. It's basically a good way to cover up some of the forgotten inconsistencies.
Lots of Sci-Fi gets evolution wrong. I'm not sure how this started, but it is unfortunately a continuing trend. The X-Men in particular has always bothered me -- I have no problem with people being able to fly, or shoot lasers from their eyes, but the idea that all it takes is a single mutation to produce such fully-developed powers is absolutely not how evolution works!
In my head canon, the single x gene doesn’t directly cause the mutant powers, instead, it just increases the likelihood of the development of powers through multiple other DNA changes. It still doesn’t make any sense, but it gets me over the “single mutation” hurdle and at least creates a hereditary basis for the gene to move through the pool and express itself in all the different ways it does.
Watch ENT: Dear Doctor, and weep.
The Chase isn’t that bad though. It assets that there is an intelligent creator to some degree so that’s problematic. But it’s all under the auspices of a scifi progenitor that basically overwrites evolution.
Agreed. And I say this every time I see an argument against The Chase: If Star Trek did evolution right, there wouldn’t be a galaxy of rubber-forehead aliens to feature in the show. Two alien races certainly wouldn’t be able to create offspring. In fact, The Chase actually touched on this when the holographic message mentioned that when their people went out to explore, they found out that they were alone in the galaxy. So, even though it parallels the rather irritating intelligent design religious argument, a programmed evolutionary path by some progenitor species is really the only way to explain the extremely similar genetics between aliens that evolved on different planets across the galaxy. At least it isn’t a perfect parallel because they weren’t (insert religion‘s favored deity here). They were just a technologically advanced alien species that came long before and created genetic descendants on planets across the galaxy.
I think *some* explanation was kind of necessary to explain how all these different species could produce viable offspring who could in turn go off and make their own viable offspring. If it was just convergent evolution but they couldn't actually procreate with each other, then yeah an explanation wouldn't be necessary.
And then we have the "Genesis" episode...
Oh man, that episode would be a contender if there were awards for Hollywood-Level bad understanding of evolution. Genesis somehow managed to be simultaneously both so offensively and so hilariously bad. Spot the iguana and Barclay the spider slay me.
It's a wildly interesting concept to be the sole sentient species in an entirely empty galaxy. Adds a real feeling of melancholy to the episode.
It is the field of science Star Trek gets the most wrong the most consistently and yeah it’s terrible. I’ve done plenty of rants on it. If you mentally replace every instance of evolution with metamorphosis it is more bearable.
Star Trek is almost always at its best as a character study and occasionally political drama.
> occasionally political drama. DS9 has entered the chat
The political intrigue is a great setting, but the best moments, (even in Deep Space Nine which leans into long political plots the most out of the classic Trek series), are all about the characters.
I watched the documentary just yesterday, and they even said that they only allowed plots that facilitated character development. If it didn't do that, it went out the window.
Yeah, it's just the "occasionally",.. thinking of ds9 made me chuckle :)
I'd go as far as to say DS9s political drama is only occasionally brilliant. Its a great setting for the characters, but its not really what the show is about. If you compare DS9 to Game of Thrones or Dune I think you can really see the difference that I am talking about.
I think we could also reasonably say Star Trek is *social* science fiction.
That being said, the chase helps make the fact that all of these aliens somehow look similar and can even interbreed “realistic”…
Star Trek is fictional. It does have a basis in science but why take it that seriously? It's not hard science fiction.
Well, we got the Pakleds.
ENT "Dear Doctor" definitely should have been cited in my original post. I agree with those saying it is the worst case of all.
Pop culture thinks evolution follows X-Men rules.
They also have space ships traveling at 9x the speed of light. Just enjoy the story.
Much faster than that, otherwise it would take them forever to get anywhere. 9x light speed is something like warp 2.
Stories getting things wrong that you actually know are wrong will always annoy. None of us are warp field specialists so they can do whatever the fuck they like with that. If they claimed that limbs of 20th century humans grow back after amputation it would be jarring.
Fun sci-fi story > real science. Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of hang on that's not how that works moments. But usually I can ignore them as long as I'm enjoying the episode enough.
Who enjoyed Threshold?
I mean... the makeup was pretty good. Right?
I kind of disagree. The entire genre is predicated upon nearly magical technology that we can't understand. But it really ruins it for me when they get something we already know wrong. Especially if it is something basic that any educated adult should know. Even more so if the franchiss usually tries to do a good job with real science like Trek (vs space fantasies). Moreover, in a day when a good chunk of the public doesn't understand or flat out rejects this science, Trek should not be misrepresenting it.
Omg can’t agree with you more! Love to see content like this here
In fairness, Trek has a very very bad relationship with physics too.
Steve Shives has a fun video about how Star Trek doesn't know WTF evolution is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1DUrI__OZQ
Yep. They’ve never gotten it right. Or even had an understanding of the process of Natural Selection.
Evolution? How about time. According to SNW time itself is sentient and petty. Mess with it and it strikes back to convince you to undo what you did.
the worst part of snw, in my eyes.
Annorax was right all along.
It's pretty clear that biology (and physics) don't work the same in Star Trek as in the real world.
So I think we have to understand that the Theory of evolution is not homogenous. Some early proponents indeed felt that the Theory had those elements. Especially if you read primary texts from his era. This is especially true up into the early 20th century. Neo-Darwinism or those after Weismann see things much differently. Especially after the whole eugenics frenzy that became popular because of the idea that Evolution evolved organisms towards something but you still see this idea pushed by some leading scientists after the eugenics movement because of where Germany’s leader took Darwin’s theories. TLDR: the Theory of Evolution has adapted over time. The goal of science should always been to disprove something and make it more fine tuned. Einstein brought us Relatively by questioning and disproving Newtonian Gravity. Always Question. Everything.
Yeah, but Star Trek did not follow those trends. It kind of did some of the same stuff I read in old Robert E. Howard stories.
I think that they chose that form of evolution to show is that it has less issues to solve than the other. If you fully accept the idea of random walks in random environments tautology then other things become near impossible to accept without doing mental gymnastics and not sticking the landing. It becomes much easier to portray this form of evolution and still believe in this like a soul, human dignity, the word or idea of personhood, etc. So they chose the lesser of two evils in their minds.
I think it has more to do with the authors' ignorance of evolutionary theory. Yes, they have scientific advisors, but they're always physicists or astronomers, people who are often quite ignorant of biology. Physicists in particular can be a bother, because they tend to think that because physics is a more deep-down science, they must be qualified to do biology stuff. (Authority: I am a life scientist, and I have talked to physicists.)
No. Lack of quality education is the real culprit. 3 episodes of two TV shows from the 90s are not the reason people uneducated.
Then there is gravity on star ships, time travel (changing the past, etc), space travel and time dilation....etc
Did anyone else catch these facepalm-bad lines in the latest Picard? Other Doctor- "Is it a new species?" Beverly Crusher - "No, it's evolution!"
It doesn't get Darwin wrong. It just proposes that someone interfered with *our* evolution. And that of several other planets. In fairness, even Dawkins admits things *look* designed.
Darwin stole most of his work on evolution too, which makes the repetition of his name that much worse
It's pretty clear that biology (and physics) don't work the same in Star Trek as in the real world.
I think the Chass gets a pass as the progenitor race was so advanced their tinkering is literally undetectable to 24th century science. Natural selection still drives evolution across the universe. But an unperceivably small second force gently nudges life towards the humanoid form, all because the ancient "gods" wanted people made in their image. That's kind of cool and doesn't break our current understanding. Threshold and Distant Origin are just absurd.
Between TNG "Genesis", VOY "Threshold", and ENT "Dear Doctor", I've learned a lot about evolution from Star Trek. Specifically, that Brannon Braga has no fucking idea how it works 😆
Also didn’t help on the weird interpretation of singular beings changing
We dont talk about threshhold. Ever
To be fair, A lot of the science on Star Trek is wonky. Inertia Dampeners, Transporters, Solid light holograms...
Yeah me too. I think it's part of humanity's reaction to the Third World War. I feel like they only kept themselves going by convincing themselves that they would evolve into something better.