March 21st, 1994, "Genesis"
Oh, the science in this one is going to hurt...
Fiver by Marc
BARCLAY: Blurred vision, dizziness, palpitations, a stinging sensation in the lower spine. It's Terrelian Death Syndrome, isn't it.
CRUSHER: I thought we agreed you'd come to me before checking Starfleet Medical Database.
It's far too late into Barclay's character arc to do a story like this. It occurs to me that there should be a difference between the publicly available medical database of common stuff and the sickbay-only one for the more obscure stuff.
"When you hear hoofbeats, you just go ahead and think horses, not zebras!"
BARCLAY: Electrophoretic activity? Is it serious?
CRUSHER: Well, based on this, I'd say you've got seventy, maybe eighty years.
BARCLAY: Eighty? Eighty years?
Even if we accept that McCoy's longevity is unusual, 120 seems young by 24th century standards.
CRUSHER: Yes, Reg. What you've got a mild case of Urodelan Flu. It's nothing serious. Most humans have a natural immunity to it, but the T-cell in your DNA that would normally fight off the infection is dormant.
BARCLAY: So you mean I have bad genes?
CRUSHER: You have one dormant gene out of a hundred thousand, and I can activate that gene with a synthetic T-cell let the body attack the infection naturally. You should feel better in a couple of days.
This seems silly. Reprogramming the immune system that easily is absurd. Why not just attack this thing directly instead of tricking the body into doing it?
OGAWA: I know what you mean. I don't want to know either.
CRUSHER: Alyssa?
OGAWA: Spot's not the only one who's going to be a mother.
CRUSHER: Oh, Alyssa, that's wonderful! How did Andrew take the news?
OGAWA: He was a little shocked, but he's getting over it.
Like I've said before, the timeline just doesn't work here. It's way too early for Alyssa to suspect, she just got engaged
a month ago and it was clearly not a shotgun wedding. Did they decide to start trying immediately and she's been scanning herself daily?
The annoying part of all this is that they had her get married to service a terrible episode. Spot turned into a girl to service a terrible episode.
WORF: The next test will involve the new photon torpedoes. The explosive yield has been increased by eleven percent and I have enhanced the targeting system for increased accuracy.
How do you increase the amount of antimatter by 11% without making the torpedoes too large for the launchers? As for the targeting system, why is Worf doing this instead of Geordi or the eggheads back at Starfleet Command?
PICARD: Maintain a sensor lock on the torpedo, Mister Worf. We'll have to go after it.
DATA: That would be inadvisable, sir. The asteroid field is unusually dense. The Enterprise is too large to safely navigate through it.
The average distance between asteroids in the asteroid belt is a million km. The Enterprise is one kilometer long. Don't even think of telling me that the deflector shield around the ship is a million km wide. This is a stupid way to get Picard and Data off the ship. I would've preferred it if they were just away at a conference like in Timescape and returned to a ship in chaos. Sure it'd be lazy, but it wouldn't be stupid lazy.
PICARD: Then I'll take a shuttlecraft and retrieve it. Mister Data, you're with me.
RIKER: Captain, the shuttle pilot who's on duty is Lieutenant Hayes.
PICARD: I happen to be a reasonably qualified pilot, Number One.
Wouldn't Data fly the shuttle even better than Hayes?
RIKER: Wait a minute. Slow down. I lost you back there. Which sensor clusters?
I don't like this idea that only Riker is getting dumber. Especially since everyone is devolving into more primitive lifeforms.
TROI: Worf, it's freezing in here.
WORF: You have already raised the temperature three times. It is too hot.
TROI: Live with it.
I'm pretty sure you'd need a doctor's note to justify altering the environmental controls. This episode is just full of idiocy.
TROI: What are you doing here?
WORF: I had to be near you.
TROI: Computer, increase temperature by five degrees.
WORF: Get out of that water now.
TROI: Leave me alone!
(Worf grabs her arm and bites her on the cheek)
A key problem with the Worf/Troi romance is that it was never used as a simple romance. It was always a source of drama and a lazy plot device. Plus it never made sense. Maybe on some twisted level Worf would conclude that Troi getting along with Alexander makes her good stepmother material, but he has his needs as well. And Troi definitely falls into the "too fragile" category.
LAFORGE: Commander, I've got seven security teams out hunting for Worf, but for some reason sensors are having a difficult time locking onto him.
Ugh. Yet another case of "no commbadge=impossible to track". Even if Worf is devolving there are only two Klingons on board, what is so hard for the sensors to track?
And I just hinted at another big problem with the premise of this episode: the children. They'd be panicking, their parents would be panicking, there'd be riots all over the ship. It's not reasonable to put children on the ship unless they're going to be considered in each and every episode. They weren't even evacuated before the Borg invasion!
PICARD: Adjust the axial stabilisers to match the attitude and rotation rate of the Enterprise, I'm going to dock the shuttle manually.
The use of "dock" in this sense doesn't really fit. They somehow opened the shuttlebay doors to get inside. Does prefix code authorization extend far enough to control the in-bay tractor beam?
PICARD: Any sign of the crew?
DATA: I cannot access internal sensors from here.
So? He's got a tricorder, doesn't he? And the shuttle has its own sensors, right? This is a stupid episode.
DATA: I am picking up one thousand and eleven individual life forms within the ship. All exhibit a similar genetic flux to the one we observed in Counsellor Troi.
So 1,012 minus Data and Picard plus Ogawa's baby? But what about the multiple pets on board?
PICARD: I've regained attitude control for the ship...
Attitude control just means that the ship isn't drifting anymore. Frankly that's not the priority right now. Picard should've activated the emergency quarantine beacon by now.
PICARD: It looks as though the entire power transfer grid has been destroyed.
How? Are there fuses that Geordi's team has to change every day? The Jenolan was fine for seventy-five years!
DATA: I have analysed Commander Riker's DNA structure. A synthetic T-cell has invaded his genetic codes. This T-cell has begun to activate his latent introns.
PICARD: Introns?
DATA: They are genetic codes which are normally dormant. They are evolutionary holdovers, sequences of DNA that provided key behavioural and physical characteristics millions of years ago, but are no longer necessary. For instance, Counsellor Troi's gill slits and other amphibious characteristics were derived from introns which still contain amphibious codes.
Of course this is complete nonsense. In real life introns are just the junk parts of a gene that aren't used.
CRUSHER: He transformed into a spider and now he has a disease named after him.
TROI: I think I'd better clear my calendar for the next few weeks.
He he.