Nota bene: There may be some spoilers for BSG below. If you cared about it, you should already know it, but on the off chance you just awoke from a coma and are going through the DVDs, I'm giving fair warning. And here's another, even fairer one: stop at "Revelations." You'd thank me if you only knew.
Also, this review assumes you've seen the episode. It's long-winded enough, and a synopsis shouldn't be necessary.
All right:
I recently watched The Chase again, for a few reasons--firstly, because I remembered it being entertaining, and, secondly, to see if there was any way to interpret the premise in a reasonable fashion. I was entertained, but unfortunately it is extremely difficult to rationalize away the glaring problems.
The Chase is ultimately a good story, with a strong allegory and hampered mainly by a premise that is in turn hampered by its creators', Ron Moore and Joe Menosky's, lack of knowledge.
Indeed, this episode is famous for being, alongside such titans as "Threshold" and "Genesis," amongst the most biologically and scientifically ignorant episodes Trek has ever produced. The foolishness is not even limited to the central premise that humanoid form was dictated by DNA seed code implanted in early life on a number of worlds, four and a half billion years ago.
As an example--there is a line about Indri VIII, one of the planets the Enterprise crew visits during its titular chase. The planet is "covered in deciduous vegetation... [but] possess no animal life whatsover." Is there no oxygen cycle on Indri VIII?
Also very problematic is that this same planet is so totally immolated that no DNA remains in readable form, by a "plasma reaction" apparently generated by a cloaked Klingon ship. Did they wind up with a Genesis torpedo after all?
Why in the world would Moore and Menosky establish that the KDF has a planetkilling weapon that can deploy during cloak, and do so so unthinkingly nonchalantly? Remember how crazy people got in TSFS and TVH over Genesis? Remember how scary the thalaron device was supposed to be? Turns out the Klingons had this kind of weapon since 2368, and nobody on board the Enterprise at least is either surprised, or really even cares.
On a minor note, I am concerned that a four billion year old program written in DNA could overwrite the programming of a brand new tricorder OS, written in whatever unknowable programming language of the future. That just seems a little... implausible.
The notion that an archaeologist just happened to discover the evolutionary links between spacefaring peoples that had known each other and had had DNA samples from each other for centuries is also so questionable as to be unbelievable. We know there are an untold number of biologists within and without the Federation--biologists apparently uninterested in the obvious similarities between genetic material on planets separated by light years.
The similarities easily fathomed by the Enterprise's computer would at the latest have been noticed by scientists shortly after First Contact with the Vulcans--if not hundreds of years before. Hell, the very fact we both had DNA would have been the first clue and would have provided the impetus for simply massive comparative research. By the 24th century, the fact that humans and, say, Cardassians are distant cousins would be such common knowledge that no one would care any more than I do that I am ultimately cousins with every known organism on this planet, if you take the genealogical tree back just far enough.
They were admittedly between a rock and a hard place here--taking away the reveal that humans, Vulcans, Klingons, etc. are related in some fashion rips the dramatic heart of the story out of the dramatic ribcage; however, to include it is to demand that the audience suspend disbelief so far as to expect that over centuries or millennia no one has so much as comparatively sequenced Alien X and Alien Y DNA.
Ordinary curiosity does not exist in "The Chase" until such time as the story is ready for it. This, as I realized much later during BSG, is without a doubt Ronald Moore's single greatest flaw as a writer. He does not write about people, because he forgets that all people know how to ask questions. He writes about events--events that he dictates the content, rules, and even meanings of, and events which he is content to shield from the characters for fake drama because he can dictate when and where they will finally ask the questions any real human would have demanded the answers to days, months, years or, in "The Chase," centuries before.
It's actually quite easy to compare and contrast BSG's "Daybreak" and "The Chase," because they are nearly the same story, simply substituting "ancient humanoids" with "Colonial and Cylon ape-rapers." You'd think, given the reaction to "The Chase," Moore would have learned his lesson, but he very clearly did not, and in "Daybreak" he must have made an intentional mistake just to sell the climax of a story. Of course, this is the same guy who said humans and Cylons were biologically indistinguishable, yet Cylons had silicon parts, telepathy, superstrength. Yeah, there's no way of distinguishing that. Short of something crazy like a routine medical examination anyway.
All right, less BSG bashing. I said my piece on that a long time ago.
Anyway.
If "The Chase" had simply restrained itself, they could have still made a somewhat plausible story. They would have had to change much of the story, perhaps a great deal of it, to reach their ultimate and worthy goal--to emphasize the relatedness of Trek's species, and allegorically the relatedness of us fractious humans.
Perhaps even within the framework as exists it could have been done. Fossils of early life, possibly the first DNA molecules on any given planet themselves (probably more interesting to a paleontologist than an archaeologist, but I digress
), could have been discovered. If two or a few from planets hundreds of light years apart were identical, not just similar, it would finally put the question on the table. If the divergences between modern phylogenetic trees of the Founders--I mean the ancient humanoids'--original, identical DNA seeds are sufficient, as after 4 billion years they might well be, the similarities simply might not have been noted, or ignored as statistically insignificant. This would have explained why no one had realized that we're cousins to Klingons.
But even with disbelief suspended to the fullest, they went yet another step further, undermining the potential wonder of a dying race seeding thousands of potential cradles the galaxy with DNA. They told us that, four and a half billion years ago, the humanoid body plan was coded into DNA. That's right, the humanoid body plan which requires 46 chromosomes in us, was present in the nonchromosomal origins of life, present in the very first DNA strand. And this was passed down into eukaryotic life, such as us--which by the way cannot be coded for, because eukaryotic life probably came from a process known as endogenesis, the fusion of two or more symbiotic, existing life forms. It was continually passed down, through cnidarians, echinoderms, arthropods (not to mention the freakin' plants!)... all of whom have a humanoid body plan resting unexpressed in their DNA. Extremely unexpressed.
Not only was this stupid, it was unnecessary: we don't need to know why everyone is humanoid--we know why, because they're fucking human actors! I'm happy with a convergent evolution explanation. Some argue that it's not all that likely, but it's a damned sight more likely than what "The Chase" has to offer.
Nerys Ghemor has done some excellent work trying to reconcile the silliness--and I apologize if I'm misrepresenting her in any fashion--by implicating introduced viral agents that did the original humanoids' work, pushing evolution on various planets in a planned way. I applaud this, but find it disturbing, at the very least, that it allegorizes, intentionally or not, an intelligent design paradigm for the Trek universe.
I want to emphasize that I think the episode is still pretty entertaining, and has its heart in the right place. It's not just jerking off with science for cheap and stupid thrills like Threshold and Genesis were. It had a point to make, a good point, a point we should all take to heart: we are all family, however removed, and we should not let pleas to act more like a family "fall on deaf ears."
Unfortunately, bad science and artificially making every species in the quadrant too stupid to realize their relatedness until Salome Jens tells them so, undercut what could have been a powerful message.
6/10--because it has some strong points, and I don't think they meant to hurt me.
As a final thought, what about those Horta? They don't use DNA by definition. Can we still make omelettes in the Vault of Tomorrow?
Also, this review assumes you've seen the episode. It's long-winded enough, and a synopsis shouldn't be necessary.
All right:
I recently watched The Chase again, for a few reasons--firstly, because I remembered it being entertaining, and, secondly, to see if there was any way to interpret the premise in a reasonable fashion. I was entertained, but unfortunately it is extremely difficult to rationalize away the glaring problems.
The Chase is ultimately a good story, with a strong allegory and hampered mainly by a premise that is in turn hampered by its creators', Ron Moore and Joe Menosky's, lack of knowledge.
Indeed, this episode is famous for being, alongside such titans as "Threshold" and "Genesis," amongst the most biologically and scientifically ignorant episodes Trek has ever produced. The foolishness is not even limited to the central premise that humanoid form was dictated by DNA seed code implanted in early life on a number of worlds, four and a half billion years ago.
As an example--there is a line about Indri VIII, one of the planets the Enterprise crew visits during its titular chase. The planet is "covered in deciduous vegetation... [but] possess no animal life whatsover." Is there no oxygen cycle on Indri VIII?
Also very problematic is that this same planet is so totally immolated that no DNA remains in readable form, by a "plasma reaction" apparently generated by a cloaked Klingon ship. Did they wind up with a Genesis torpedo after all?
Why in the world would Moore and Menosky establish that the KDF has a planetkilling weapon that can deploy during cloak, and do so so unthinkingly nonchalantly? Remember how crazy people got in TSFS and TVH over Genesis? Remember how scary the thalaron device was supposed to be? Turns out the Klingons had this kind of weapon since 2368, and nobody on board the Enterprise at least is either surprised, or really even cares.On a minor note, I am concerned that a four billion year old program written in DNA could overwrite the programming of a brand new tricorder OS, written in whatever unknowable programming language of the future. That just seems a little... implausible.
The notion that an archaeologist just happened to discover the evolutionary links between spacefaring peoples that had known each other and had had DNA samples from each other for centuries is also so questionable as to be unbelievable. We know there are an untold number of biologists within and without the Federation--biologists apparently uninterested in the obvious similarities between genetic material on planets separated by light years.
The similarities easily fathomed by the Enterprise's computer would at the latest have been noticed by scientists shortly after First Contact with the Vulcans--if not hundreds of years before. Hell, the very fact we both had DNA would have been the first clue and would have provided the impetus for simply massive comparative research. By the 24th century, the fact that humans and, say, Cardassians are distant cousins would be such common knowledge that no one would care any more than I do that I am ultimately cousins with every known organism on this planet, if you take the genealogical tree back just far enough.
They were admittedly between a rock and a hard place here--taking away the reveal that humans, Vulcans, Klingons, etc. are related in some fashion rips the dramatic heart of the story out of the dramatic ribcage; however, to include it is to demand that the audience suspend disbelief so far as to expect that over centuries or millennia no one has so much as comparatively sequenced Alien X and Alien Y DNA.
Ordinary curiosity does not exist in "The Chase" until such time as the story is ready for it. This, as I realized much later during BSG, is without a doubt Ronald Moore's single greatest flaw as a writer. He does not write about people, because he forgets that all people know how to ask questions. He writes about events--events that he dictates the content, rules, and even meanings of, and events which he is content to shield from the characters for fake drama because he can dictate when and where they will finally ask the questions any real human would have demanded the answers to days, months, years or, in "The Chase," centuries before.
It's actually quite easy to compare and contrast BSG's "Daybreak" and "The Chase," because they are nearly the same story, simply substituting "ancient humanoids" with "Colonial and Cylon ape-rapers." You'd think, given the reaction to "The Chase," Moore would have learned his lesson, but he very clearly did not, and in "Daybreak" he must have made an intentional mistake just to sell the climax of a story. Of course, this is the same guy who said humans and Cylons were biologically indistinguishable, yet Cylons had silicon parts, telepathy, superstrength. Yeah, there's no way of distinguishing that. Short of something crazy like a routine medical examination anyway.
All right, less BSG bashing. I said my piece on that a long time ago.
Anyway.
If "The Chase" had simply restrained itself, they could have still made a somewhat plausible story. They would have had to change much of the story, perhaps a great deal of it, to reach their ultimate and worthy goal--to emphasize the relatedness of Trek's species, and allegorically the relatedness of us fractious humans.
Perhaps even within the framework as exists it could have been done. Fossils of early life, possibly the first DNA molecules on any given planet themselves (probably more interesting to a paleontologist than an archaeologist, but I digress
), could have been discovered. If two or a few from planets hundreds of light years apart were identical, not just similar, it would finally put the question on the table. If the divergences between modern phylogenetic trees of the Founders--I mean the ancient humanoids'--original, identical DNA seeds are sufficient, as after 4 billion years they might well be, the similarities simply might not have been noted, or ignored as statistically insignificant. This would have explained why no one had realized that we're cousins to Klingons.But even with disbelief suspended to the fullest, they went yet another step further, undermining the potential wonder of a dying race seeding thousands of potential cradles the galaxy with DNA. They told us that, four and a half billion years ago, the humanoid body plan was coded into DNA. That's right, the humanoid body plan which requires 46 chromosomes in us, was present in the nonchromosomal origins of life, present in the very first DNA strand. And this was passed down into eukaryotic life, such as us--which by the way cannot be coded for, because eukaryotic life probably came from a process known as endogenesis, the fusion of two or more symbiotic, existing life forms. It was continually passed down, through cnidarians, echinoderms, arthropods (not to mention the freakin' plants!)... all of whom have a humanoid body plan resting unexpressed in their DNA. Extremely unexpressed.
Not only was this stupid, it was unnecessary: we don't need to know why everyone is humanoid--we know why, because they're fucking human actors! I'm happy with a convergent evolution explanation. Some argue that it's not all that likely, but it's a damned sight more likely than what "The Chase" has to offer.
Nerys Ghemor has done some excellent work trying to reconcile the silliness--and I apologize if I'm misrepresenting her in any fashion--by implicating introduced viral agents that did the original humanoids' work, pushing evolution on various planets in a planned way. I applaud this, but find it disturbing, at the very least, that it allegorizes, intentionally or not, an intelligent design paradigm for the Trek universe.
I want to emphasize that I think the episode is still pretty entertaining, and has its heart in the right place. It's not just jerking off with science for cheap and stupid thrills like Threshold and Genesis were. It had a point to make, a good point, a point we should all take to heart: we are all family, however removed, and we should not let pleas to act more like a family "fall on deaf ears."
Unfortunately, bad science and artificially making every species in the quadrant too stupid to realize their relatedness until Salome Jens tells them so, undercut what could have been a powerful message.
6/10--because it has some strong points, and I don't think they meant to hurt me.
As a final thought, what about those Horta? They don't use DNA by definition. Can we still make omelettes in the Vault of Tomorrow?
) be delayed "by a few days." Granted, later they may have delayed it more. However, the distances involved on the map that Xerxes linked to should only be measurable by travel time in terms of months, years--or decades!
