Did they break Federation law at Darwin Station?

Unnatural Selection was the episode where we're introduced to a lot of technobabble regarding the magic that the transporter can do. It fixed Dr. Pulaski very well, and the rest of the adults at Darwin Station.

But didn't they just break a ton of Federation laws regarding genetic engineering and creating essentially a whole new race of humans? I thought that sort of thing was outlawed?

 

Assuming the Federation even knew what was going on there, which is by no means certain.

In any case, we don't know when, specifically, the ban on genetic engineering was enacted. Perhaps Darwin Station was the tipping point? The ban could have been put into effect AFTER the events of that episode.

 

But aren't we basically trying to retcon the DS9 Bashir stuff? I'm not totally versed in all that, but isn't it impossible to make sense of it because Bashir's youth is prior to the Darwin Station stuff by about a decade or so? & the Bashir illegality stuff supposedly dates back to the Eugenics wars.

So it's an example of the episode predating a lot of subsequent canon, & got ignored, no? So essentially the Darwin scientists got made criminals in the narrative, after the fact.

 

We know it was in effect when Bashir was a child.

 

Yeah, this is the downer of watching episodes grossly out of order. DS9 had all the genetic manipulation stuff being banned. Of course, season 2 was pretty much "it didn't exist, la la la la la - oh, except for remembering Data in the people's court episode."

Or somebody was doing it despite the ban and the continuity was never stitched up by the franchise's makers, either deliberately or they opted to let fans have the fun to decide what may have happened.

 

Perhaps Darwin Station got special dispensation. It might make sense for the Federation to have one facility working on the technology. In an emergency they wouldn't want to be 200 years behind in research compared to the other rival powers.

 

Just a hint of a new Augment Virus, and the Klingons would burn the Federation to the ground.

Worf didn't care. Although he was educated by the Federation, and in Trials and Tribbleations, the humans didn't know jack shit about the Augment Virus. As if the Federation were sanitizing their history George Orwell style. Which would explain all the patriotic head cases we saw over the years.

 

It's one of those early oddities, like the Klingons not speaking Klingon but just nonsense, or them having "joined" the Federation, or Data graduating in '78

 

Oh and I'd love to know the back story with Phillipa and Jean Luc that looked really juicy and they seemed quite hostile to each other.

Star Trek should have done a JAG show

 

We already know that story.

At the Stargazer court-martial, she was the prosecutor.

 

OK was that court martial part of TNG though?

 

Yeah she says in the Episode, it's just a couple of lines and easy to miss though, I only remember because I saw Measure of a Man a couple of days ago.
Picard accuses her of having enjoyed court-martialling him

 

I see no contradiction between there being a ban on something, and the government practicing it. That's what governments are for. The police can gun you down for trying to gun somebody down; the army gets medals for mass murder; and the doctor can apply a scalpel to heal a stabbing victim.

What Darwin did was not just over the counter, it was all across the billboards as well. Heck, the place, supplied by Starfleet, was named "Darwin Genetic Research Station"! Also, as soon as the heroes arrived, Dr. Kingsley started advertising her work on superhumans. And while Picard was apprehensive about a possible connection between the work and the disaster of the day, he wasn't apprehensive about the work itself.

Not letting civilians do what Darwin did (and probably still does) sounds like a sensible setup. Nuclear research today is a nicely regulated monopoly, too - and genetic research is getting there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I haven't watched this mediocre episode for many years, but this thread prompted me to do so.

I don't have anything to add regarding the main point, but I found the Darwin scientist to be extremely stupid. She blurted out how the children's aggressive immune system works, but failed to see how the antibodies could have caused the illness.

This was a very poorly-written and directed episode. It followed the TNG formula, but not in an original, entertaining way. And, the direction made it seem even more awkward, but I guess the script didn't give them much to work with.

 

^ This. Early TNG (just like TOS) didn't operate under all the "rules" that were added to the Star Trek universe later.
Another example is Justice, where the Enterprise crew plan to take shore leave on a planet with a pre-warp civilization.

 

... Which is quite aware of space aliens to begin with.

Early TNG had good consistency with TOS (which is no wonder when one recycles old TOS plots). Later TNG simply forgot much of that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

My dream come true.

This episode was one that I tried in my first time watching. It was one episode that made less and less interested going forward. But, the use of the transporter was the most interesting part. I always figured that the outpost was operating for research purposes only and the research got out of control. That was my take away anyway.

 

Legal or not, it shows that it's not wise to fool with Mother Nature. Imagine if one of these children had been on a heavily populated planet, like Earth. The casualties would have been horrific.

 

If it was illegal I'd say they paid for it...and hey, at least it lead to the discovery that transporters are immortality machines, thus virtually eradicating death in the Federation!

If we didn't "fool with mother nature" our lifespans would be damn short...

 

Maybe, but certain things can be taken too far.