"Evolution" thoughts

[Shatnertage]

This is strange. I don't think, in 23 years of watching TNG in the original run and reruns, I've ever seen this episode. If I have, I've completed blocked it out of my mind. So for the first time in a very long time, I got to watch an episode of TNG and didn't know what to expect.

And I'm glad I didn't expect much. It starts off as a Wesley episode, with an unfriendly outsider (a recurrent theme on the show) not making nice with the crew. Then it gets in to a whole ethical debate that I think I've heard more than once (though it might be on later episodes that were rehashing this one, so it's not fair to slag it just for that).

The resolution seems really bizarre. Basically, a high school kid created a new life form (which is never, I think, referenced again), and they give it its own planet? I thought the point of nanites was that they were microscopic. Wouldn't a decent-sized house be enough for them? Or an abandoned shopping mall, at the most?

I enjoyed seeing "new" TNG, but I can see why this one isn't on many top ten lists. It makes it likely that I have in fact seen it before, but completely pushed it out of my mind.

It's not awful--it just seems like one of those episodes where no one's trying particularly hard.

I did like the visiting scientist's clothes, though: proof that everyone in the 24th century doesn't go skin-tight. I liked the music, too.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

I've seen parts of it. I was never hooked or inspired enough to bother seeing the whole thing.

In regards to Wesley creating a new life form...it wasn't so much that he created them (nanites had been around for some time and were used a few more times in Trek) but rather that he had helped them achieve sentience. I think that's also why they got their own planet, because they had reached that status and were going to try and create their own civilization and society.

 

[Timo]

I liked some of the more mundane aspects of this episode - the little things we learn about Starfleet/UFP life when there's no galaxy-spinning adventure going on. Scientists getting Starfleet starship time for their experiments (with cool VFX to show it!) is something that resonates well with poor humble researcher/starship afecionado me. Instead of bug-eyed monsters, the heroes and guests now fight timetables and malfunctions. And it's sort of fun how the emergence of a new form of life in the 24th century is treated as an "accident", an "inconvenience" and something of an "embarrassment", rather than as a miracle...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Danny99]

One of those underrated episodes. It's never going to make a top ten list, but it was definitely a good episode.

 

[Hober Mallow]

It was the season three premiere, and the last TNG season premiere to not be the second part of a season-ending cliffhanger.

 

[RAMA]

I really liked that episode, maybe it wasn't monumental, BUT it had a lot going for it...a rare story with Wesley identifying with someone on the ship...NANITES...one of the first appearances of nanotech on TV! Some mentions of baseball. A new Enterprise model, and some cool new FX shots. I also enjoyed the music...

RAMA

 

[Mojochi]

It works for me. TNG did far worse, imo

 

[Piano&Startrek]

It works for me. TNG did far worse, imo

Yeah, but this one was a bit weird. Sometimes the lifeforms that are so-called "sentient" are just too unbelievable.

Could these nanites really create their own civilization? After all, weren't they microscopic and living in the ship's computer? Where would they reside after that? Too many unanswered questions.

 

[Snaploud]

The resolution seems really bizarre. Basically, a high school kid created a new life form (which is never, I think, referenced again), and they give it its own planet? I thought the point of nanites was that they were microscopic. Wouldn't a decent-sized house be enough for them? Or an abandoned shopping mall, at the most?

They were multiplying exponentially. It's not surprising that they would over-run a starship given enough time.

 

[Timo]

But by that token, they'd overrun a planet in no time flat as well. They'd have to self-limit in order to survive, no matter what. So why not self-limit to something the size of a building rather than a planet?

OTOH, the Trek universe is full of empty planets. The Feds could no doubt easily spare one for the purpose of creating potential friends with advanced technology and out-of-the-box thinking. In Borg fashion, the Feds seem to be suckers for both things, although their emphasis is on nurturing those things, not in harvesting them...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Snaploud]

But by that token, they'd overrun a planet in no time flat as well. They'd have to self-limit in order to survive, no matter what. So why not self-limit to something the size of a building rather than a planet?

Good point. On the other hand, a planet could delay that decision-date considerably (thereby allowing them to come to some other solution). A planet also gives them a number of resources not available on-ship.

 

[Shatnertage]

One of the things that bugged me about the episode is the idea of evolution that underlies it, like how they just have to wait a certain number of generations for the new species to communicate. It's that same Trek cliche of evolution as a teleological progression rather than adaptation to the environment.

And if was really this easy to make nanites that reproduce so aggressively, the next logical step is that someone tries to use them as a weapon. Why bother with photo torpedoes when you can just beam some nanites over?

Or are there intergalactic conventions about the use of nanites as weapons?

 

[Timo]

Surely communication would be a natural adaptation in their environment? They were inhabiting a device built for processing information...

And nanites were weaponized soon enough - they were suggested as an anti-Borg weapon in "Best of Both Worlds"! I doubt our heroes were the first to come up with the concept... They were probably quoting some manual on dirty tricks to pull in wartime, and simply didn't have time to implement.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

One of the things that bugged me about the episode is the idea of evolution that underlies it, like how they just have to wait a certain number of generations for the new species to communicate. It's that same Trek cliche of evolution as a teleological progression rather than adaptation to the environment.

And if was really this easy to make nanites that reproduce so aggressively, the next logical step is that someone tries to use them as a weapon. Why bother with photo torpedoes when you can just beam some nanites over?

Or are there intergalactic conventions about the use of nanites as weapons?

Most likely they are a WMD that Starfleet and local powers have a treaty about...but nanites would make storytelling very difficult...nanotech can almost seem magical. Incidentally, its the "dumb" regular old nanites that would be used, not the super-evolved ones.

Nanites were in fact created by men, and it IS their environment they were exposed to that accelerated their evolution..its been speculated often in SF literature that machine/AI life would evolve more quickly and aggressively than biological ones (because of their created nature).

RAMA

 

[Shatnertage]

its been speculated often in SF literature that machine/AI life would evolve more quickly and aggressively than biological ones (because of their created nature).

RAMA

That's the technological singularity we're headed towards, right? When they start evolving faster than we can react to them?

 

[RAMA]

its been speculated often in SF literature that machine/AI life would evolve more quickly and aggressively than biological ones (because of their created nature).

RAMA

That's the technological singularity we're headed towards, right? When they start evolving faster than we can react to them?

Yes, so says Hans Marovec and others...but in this case, in the ST universe it hasn't come to pass, and by "aggressive" I simply mean more boldly.

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/

http://www.foresight.org/nano/

RAMA