“The Chase”
Written by Ronald D. Moore & Joe Menosky
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Season 6, Episode 20
Production episode 40276-246
Original air date: April 26, 1993
Stardate: 46731.5
Captain’s Log: The Enterprise is in the midst of a three-week exploration of a stellar nursery. Riker summons Picard to the observation lounge—and the captain finds the room darkened, save for one light on an artifact on the table. The lights go up, and Picard is reunited with Professor Richard Galen, the person who got him interested in archaeology back at Starfleet Academy. The artifact is a Kurlan naiskos, which Picard initially identifies as fifth dynasty, but Galen goes into full professorial mode. “Is that your conclusion, Mr. Picard?” (And it’s a testament to how highly Picard thinks of Galen that he allows him to use the honorific of “mister” rather than “captain.”) After some study, Picard realizes that it’s third dynasty and a piece by the mysterious Master of Tarquin Hill, an artist never identified by name, known only through the work. The naiskos is 12,000 years old.
Riker points out that Kurl is very far from Federation territory, and Picard adds that he thought Galen’s Kurlan research was complete, but he was apparently in the neighborhood.
Galen then encourages Picard to open it, at which point Picard is rapturous. There are small figurines inside, symbolizing the community of the Kurlan people, and the many voices that are inside an individual. Finding a naiskos with the figurines intact is exceedingly rare, and Picard is overwhelmed when Galen offers it to the captain as a gift.
It turns out the naiskos is a bit of a bribe. Galen hasn’t been seen much, either at symposia or in the literature, and many of his scheduled appearances have been cancelled at the last minute. Galen explains to Picard over drinks in Ten-Forward that he made a discovery that was so spectacular that silence was his only recourse. He needs to prove his findings, and he’s close—three months, perhaps a year. He won’t tell Picard what it is unless the captain agrees to come along with him. Galen’s not a young man, and he could use some help.
Picard says he needs to sleep on it. The following morning, he meets Crusher for breakfast. He knows that he can’t do it—his responsibility to the Enterprise is too great—but he hates saying no to Galen. He also explains to Crusher that his and Galen’s relationship was very paternal; Picard’s own father never understood him, nor did Galen’s own children understand him.
When Picard turns Galen down, Galen rips into him. As far as Galen is concerned, he’s just a dilettante, where he could’ve been the finest archaeologist in history. Instead, he’s mapping stars like a Roman centurion patrolling the outer reaches. Galen leaves the ship after that, even though his rendezvous isn’t for another two days, as there’s nothing for him here.
The Enterprise completes the mission to the stellar nursery and proceeds to her next mission, though Picard is mopey. Worf then says there’s a distress call from Galen. His shuttle is under attack by a Yridian vessel. The Enterprise moves to rescue him, but while the Yridians are destroyed by Worf’s phaser fire, Galen himself is killed by a disruptor blast.
La Forge and Data are able to reconstruct some of Galen’s shuttle computer, which has seemingly random blocks of numbers. Galen had been able to protect some of the data, but not all. According to the shuttle’s logs, Galen went to Ruah IV before coming to see Picard, but when they get there, there’s nothing useful. He had told Picard that his next destination was to be Indri VIII, and Picard orders the Enterprise there.
Indri VIII’s atmosphere is being consumed by a plasma storm of some kind that is wiping out all life on the planet. It’s an odd thing for someone to do—wipe out all life on a neutral uninhabited planet with no strategic value—but it prompts the notion that Galen’s numbers might relate to biological life. Narrowing the search to the biological database, the computer determines that the number blocks represent DNA fragments from species all over the galaxy, but have protein sequences that are uniform. When you link the protein sequences (which, in the case of the one in human DNA, is something that’s been part of life on earth for countless millennia), they form an algorithm. It’s incomplete, but it’s some kind of computer program that was apparently inserted into the primordial soup of at least nineteen worlds.
This, Picard realizes, is what Galen was looking for. Obviously—based on the Yridian attack on Galen and the destruction of Indri VIII—other people know about this. Picard then remembers that Galen had said he was “in the neighborhood” of Kurl when he picked up the naiskos that he gave Picard. He sets a course for the one planet in Kurl space still capable of supporting life, and they arrive to find two Cardassian ships.
While Picard speaks with Gul Ocett, a Klingon battle cruiser decloaks, demanding to know what they’re all doing here. Picard invites Ocett and the Klingon captain, Nu’Daq, on board the Enterprise to discuss their next move. Obviously, they’re all there for the same reason, and Picard puts his cards on the table that they’re all trying to finish Galen’s work. Nu’Daq admits to destroying Indri VIII’s biosphere after taking a biological sample from it, and Ocett makes it clear that if anyone tries to take a similar sample from the planet below, as she has already done, she’ll fire on them.
Nobody has all the fragments, so the only way to determine what the program is—the Cardassians think it a power source, the Klingons a weapon—is to combine the fragments they already have. They agree, but even combining all three gives an incomplete picture. However, they have enough that they might be able to extrapolate the location of the still-missing piece based on where the fragments they have came from. Because they have to compensate for billions of years of stellar drift, it’ll take a while to run that program.
Nu’Daq stays on the Enterprise, and he challenges Data to Klingon arm wrestling, at which Nu’Daq loses rather badly, and then he attempts to bribe Data into giving him the results of the program ahead of time.
The program finishes, and they discover that the missing fragment is at the Rahm-Izad system. Ocett then beams off the Enterprise and fires on both ships before heading there. However, La Forge detected Ocett’s attempt to tamper with the Enterprise’s defensive systems, and so they fed her false information and faked damage. The Klingon ship was less successful at pretending to be damaged, and can’t go anywhere, so Picard offers Nu’Daq passage on the Enterprise to the real source of the missing piece: the Vilmoran system. The second planet is dead now, but it used to support life. Picard, Crusher, Worf, and Nu’Daq transport to a spot where there’s some fossilized plant life.
The Cardassians show up—and so do the Romulans. A Romulan commander intercepted communiqués between the Yridians and Cardassians, and were there, under cloak, when Galen’s shuttle was destroyed. They’ve been shadowing the Enterprise ever since, and now are claiming the final piece of the puzzle.
Ocett threatens to destroy the fossilized plant. She, the Romulan, and Nu’Daq bicker back and forth, while Picard whispers a suggestion to Crusher to scan the bed of what used to be the ocean for biological samples. The final DNA fragment activates the program and emits a hologram from Picard’s tricorder of a humanoid woman, with no hair, small ears, and unformed features. Her people were the first life to exist in this part of the galaxy, and they explored the stars, but found none like themselves. They seeded the primordial oceans of life on many planets, which would result in life very much like them. It was hoped that the peoples of many worlds would come together in fellowship to see this message.
The Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans are all greatly disappointed that they went through all this for a glorified “Kumbaya” moment—though the Romulan does later take the time to contact Picard with a message of hope before heading home.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: Somehow, linking pictures of protein sequences can form a computer program that can alter a tricorder built billions of years after it was written. SCIENCE!
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi tries to cheer Picard up after Galen’s departure with a walk in the arboretum, which is cut off by Galen’s distress call. After Galen’s death, Troi tries and fails to remind Picard that he has duties as a starship captain that supersede a wild goose chase.
If I Only Had a Brain…: Data’s arm-wrestle with Nu’Daq is funny. Nu’Daq’s attempt to head-butt Data afterward is hilarious, as the impact with Data’s very hard head sends the Klingon ass over teakettle. Data also proves difficult to bribe.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf fires on the Yridian ship, destroying it with one shot. It’s never explained how that happened, as Worf himself expresses confusion over it, and then the whole thing is forgotten.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Picard and Crusher are still having breakfast together every morning. It’s adorable.
I Believe I Said That: “As far as we know, it might be a recipe for biscuits.”
“Biscuits? If that is what you believe, than go back to Cardassia. I will send you my mother’s recipe.”
Ocett and Nu’Daq being pissy.
Welcome Aboard. Some fine actors in this: Linda Thorson, probably best known as Tara King on The Avengers alongside Patrick Macnee, plays Ocett—the first adult female Cardassian seen onscreen—while the venerable Norman Lloyd, probably best known as Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere, plays Galen, while Maurice Roëves has gravitas as the Romulan captain.
Two others make their Trek debut here. John Cothran Jr. leaves no piece of scenery unchewed as Nu’Daq. He’ll be back on Deep Space Nine as another Klingon, on Enterprise as a Xindi, and in two videogames, Klingon and Borg (the former as yet another Klingon, the latter in his only human role on Trek). Salome Jens provides something of a warmup for her best-known Trek role as the female changeling on DS9, a role that recurred from season three all the way to the end.
Trivial Matters: Picard spends the entire teaser going on (and on and on) about how amazing the naiskos is, how rare it is, how valuable it is, how old it is, and how stupendously honored he is to be given it as a gift by his mentor/father-figure. So it’s kind of hilarious that, when the Enterprise crashes at the end of Star Trek Generations, Picard casually tosses the naiskos aside atop the wreckage.
This is the first time humans, Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans have all appeared together in a single episode. It’ll happen again a lot on DS9, especially once the Dominion War storyline kicks in.
This episode was shown before its airdate at the StarFest convention in Denver in April 1993 to a generally favorable response.
Two of the inspirations for this episode were Carl Sagan’s Contact and (in the early drafts, at least, before Michael Piller and Rick Berman asked Moore and Menosky to tone it down) It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Any resemblance between the ancient humanoid seen at the end of the episode and the Preservers from the original series’ “The Paradise Syndrome” (or Sargon’s people from “Return to Tomorrow”) is purely not-very-coincidental. Co-writer Ronald D. Moore has said that he deliberately left it open so that these were the same Preservers, but didn’t want to state it overtly.
There are apparently seventeen people serving on the Enterprise who are from non-Federation worlds. We know at least two of them: Worf and Ro. One draft of the script had Crusher testing Mr. Mot, which would have established that Bolians aren’t Federation members, either.
The Kurlans will be reference again, in Unjoined by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, the Trill portion of the Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book series, which establishes a link between the Kurlans and the Trill, and shows that the naiskos design was more than metaphorical… (Thanks to Christopher L. Bennett in the comments for the reminder.)
Make it So: “You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence.” Until I had to for this rewatch, I have never watched “The Chase” since I saw it the first time. And the reason for this is quite simple: it’s not an episode of Star Trek, it’s a big-ass retcon pretending to be an episode of Star Trek. Worse, it’s an explanation for something that doesn’t even need to be explained. Given the limits of time, budget, and the fact that, y’know, all our actors are human beings, of course the aliens are all going to be at least vaguely humanoid. Even on a show like Farscape, for which the Henson Creature Shop created all manner of fascinating creatures, the vast majority of the aliens we met were people in makeup and/or prosthetics.
And yet, they decided to take an entire episode to explain it. I suppose it’s not as bad as Enterprise, which took two episodes to explain the smooth-forehead Klingons versus the bumpy-forehead Klingons issue, something that had already been perfectly well handled by a brief conversation in the “Trials and Tribble-ations” episode of Deep Space Nine, but still pretty ridiculous. Besides which, the original series already covered this ground, not just in the aforementioned “Return to Tomorrow” and “The Paradise Syndrome,” but in “Bread and Circuses,” with Kirk’s citation of Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development, and in all three cases actually built a story around it, rather than trying to make a glorified wink at the viewer be the plot.
Watching it again for the first time in two decades, therefore, I was reminded of what was good about the episode: Picard’s relationship with Galen, explicating the former’s love of archaeology (established way back in “Contagion”), but also making it clear that it’s always been a hobby. For Galen, though, it’s an obsession, and he resents Picard for not sharing it. I like that the episode wasn’t afraid to make Picard’s father-figure a flaming asshat. The Kurlan naiskos is a very nifty bit of sculpture, as well, and I like the philosophy behind its design, plus watching Picard geek out over it is an absolute joy to watch.
In addition, the guest casting is superb, from Norman Lloyd selling Galen’s churlishness and brilliance to the nicely understated Maurice Roëves as the never-named Romulan captain to the always-wonderful Linda Thorson kicking ass as our first female Cardassian gul. But the best part of the episode for me is John Cothran Jr. as Nu’Daq. Yes, he’s an obnoxious, stereotypical boisterous Klingon, but he so totally owns that he’s an obnoxious, stereotypical boisterous Klingon. He’s just having so much fun in the role that you can’t help but enjoy his performance. (Well, okay, I can’t help but enjoy it…)
Sadly, watching it again also reminded me of the bad parts, which are legion, most of them boiling down to how little any of it makes, y’know, sense. First of all, Worf doesn’t know how he destroyed the Yridian ship—and neither does anyone else, nor does anyone seem too concerned about the destruction of a ship full of people. And the whole story depends on the notion that protein sequences can be an algorithm for a computer program, and just the act of putting a graphic of them together on a tiny computing device is enough to create a magical hologram containing a shiny happy message of unity that’s mostly lost on its audience. That sound you hear is my disbelief dying of asphyxiation.
Having said that, the message is a good one, and very Roddenberry. But after all the ridiculous gadding about, I had to agree with Nu’Daq in the end: “That’s it!?”
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido hopes everyone had a great Thanksgiving and has at last digested all their food.
So it’s kind of hilarious that, when the Enterprisecrashes at the end of Star Trek Generations, Picard casually tosses the naiskos aside atop the wreckage.
I think that was supposed to symbolize Picard realizing what was really important, or something. He could have donated it to a museum, though.
All this episode needed is a Ferengi thinking the final product would be a perpetual money making machine ;)
But yeah, this episode was kind of blah to me, especially because the existence of many ‘humanoid’ looking species could also just be explained by convergent evolution. It’s not something that really needed to be explained.
Plus, I didn’t find the ultimate revelation (that they were all related in some way and it wasn’t just convergent evolution happening idependently on multiple worlds) THAT astounding or shattering. I predicted it from the start, so as a result there wasn’t a whole lot of suspense in this episode for me.
I find it fascinating, in a deeply nerdy way, that both Classic Doctor Who and Star Trek had stories called “The Chase” that are forgettable, lame filler; and both had stories that tried to do something with the OK Corral that were utterly terrible.
I think there’s a lesson here for future SF writers, really…
Once again I find myself going “What a great multi-episode arc this could have been.” Think about it- the point of Star Trek is to explore and discover and here is the ultimate discovery: Where did all life come from? And we wrap it up in 42 minutes??? It could have been some sort of uber-mystery that could take all season to unravel. Professor Galen and his search, different races searching planets, having conflicts with each other, general mystery and a build up to a mysterious discovery. Could it be something that would give one race a superiority? Oh… it’s only the mystery of life itself. Never mind…
But, it’s not answering the question, “where did all life come from?” but only “where did *our* life come from?”
One of the things that leaves me dissatisfied with any “origin of universal life” story that posits a species like the Progenitors as the source (Alien/Prometheus included) is that it only kicks the can up the road a bit and leaves the question “what was the origin of life of the seeding, Progenitor civilization?” mostly unaddressed. It relies unnecessarily on bad philosophy to create an “Intelligent Designer” where frankly, none needs to have existed.
It’s not about philosophy, though; it’s just about making an excuse for all the humanoid aliens in a television SF universe where they have to rely on actors in makeup. Obviously, the Progenitors evolved naturally, the same as all the nonhumanoid species out there. What we know about natural biogenesis and evolution is enough to answer that question. Explaining something physical like the origin of life is the province of science, not philosophy, because it’s a question that can actually be objectively answered by observing nature and conducting experiments, not merely a matter of abstract debate. The Progenitors’ artificial intervention is only necessary to explain the fictional conceit of so many species evolved on different planets being humanoid (and interfertile).
Lisamarie: In the earlier, funnier versions of the script — the ones that were more like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — the Ferengi were part of it…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
StrongDreams: It was a gift from the guy who he told Crusher in this episode was the father he always wanted. It was also the last thing ever given to him by the father he always wanted. And it was an INCREDIBLY RARE ARTIFACT.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Personally I like it that they tried to justify the ubiquity of humanoids — not to mention their ability to interbreed. “Convergent evolution” doesn’t come close to explaining the former (maybe a roughly bipedal form, but not aliens that have identically shaped eyes and mouths and can wear human clothes off the rack), and it has no chance of explaining the latter. Sure, the explanation is fanciful and rushed, but it’s better than nothing. (And it’s not complete nonsense. DNA as a basis for computers and nanotechnology is a subject of serious research today, since DNA has remarkable abilities both for data storage and self-assembly.)
I’m deeply annoyed, however, that so many people — Ron Moore included — have mistaken these First Humanoids for the Preservers. That’s an error of chronology so vast it makes Fred Flintstone coexisting with dinosaurs seem credible. The one known instance we have of Preserver activity was the transplantation of Native American populations that Spock identified as “Delaware, Navajo, and Mohican” from Earth to an alien planet in order to protect them from extinction (though given that they put them on a planet in the middle of an asteroid field, the Preservers don’t seem to have been very good at their job). The only time in known history when those populations would’ve been in simultaneous danger of extinction was the 17th century or after, as European diseases ravaged the continent and then European settlers did the same. Also, since cultures are not static and unchanging, the only way Spock could’ve recognized them as having the traits of those cultures is if they’d been taken sometime relatively close to European contact with and documentation of those cultures.
In short, the Preservers are unmistakeably a modern civilization, existing contemporaneously with our own species and culture. (Personally I think they could be the same as the Vians from “The Empath,” who had an identical mission.) The idea that they could have anything to do with a civilization that existed four billion years ago, before even single-celled life arose on Earth, is ludicrous beyond my ability to express. It’s the most grotesque example I’ve ever seen of the fallacy that everything in the past happened at the same time. Not to mention that their methods are totally different. The First Humanoids were advanced enough to design genetic programming that directed the evolution of life on thousands of worlds for billions of years thereafter. All the Preservers did was kidnap a bunch of people and truck them to another place, and stick a big tractor beam down next to them without even explaining its workings to more than one person. They didn’t show evidence of any technology more advanced than what Starfleet has by the 24th century (and yes, Starfleet does have memory-wiping by then — see “Pen Pals” and “Who Watches the Watchers?”). The Preservers are nothing like the godlike, ancient beings that too many Trek fans mistakenly imagine them to be.
Ahem. Anyway, getting back to the episode — yay, Norman Lloyd! Forget St. Elsewhere, the man worked with Charlie Chaplin and was a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater! As for Linda Thorson, I never cared for her as Tara King. Mrs. Peel was a hard act to follow, granted, but she was a very disappointing replacement. As for John Cothran, Jr., he was fantastic in Enterprise.
An item for Trivial Matters: the Kurlan civilization was revisited in Worlds of Deep Space Nine: Trill: Unjoined by Andy Mangels & Mike Martin, in which the Kurlans were linked with the Trill, and the meaning of the naiksos was revealed to be less metaphorical than the episode suggested.
Christopher: Thanks for the reminder about Unjoined — it’s been duly added. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad,
tell that to Braga and Moore. I didn’t say it was a sensible reaction that Picard had. Especially since Picard never needed convincing about the importance of living in the here and now. He was trying to get out of the nexus from the first moment.
(Of course, all the NG Trek movies suffer from bad writing of one kind or another, most notably turning the cerebral, diplomatic Picard into bald Rambo over and over again…as pointed out to me by Red Letter Media, I think it was.)
All this episode needed was a rendition of “One Tin Soldier” somewhere and I think my head would have exploded…
Oh, well. At least it’s not as bad as the Voyager episode that not only depicted evolution as some godly, sentient, mystical force reaching out to guide life, it claimed that humans trapped on a shuttlecraft could be “evolved” into giant salamanders.
(If anything, their descendants could potentially become a species better adapted to life on a shuttlecraft. Which giant salamanders aren’t.)
One of the things I liked about this episode was the log at the end where he explains they have to sit still for a while because of their frequent use of high warp in a short period of time. A nice on-screen confirmation of why they are not constantly going at Warp 9.
Does anyone know if it’s a widespread hypothesis that the ancient beings from this episode were the solid-state form of the Founders before moving to the Gamma Quadrant? I mean, Salome Jens by herself could be dismissed, but creating races is something the Founders still do, and the facial features seem somewhat similar to what Founders take on when assuming a generic humanoid shape. We know that “eons ago” they were like the Solids. Not saying I’m a huge proponent of this theory, but I’m just wondering if others have had this thought.
@12: I’ve heard the idea before, due to Jens and the similar makeup, but again, we’re talking four billion years here. No species lasts that long. Certainly not in the Trekverse, where intelligent life tends to evolve into an incorporeal state eventually. (Okay, the Q have individuals that are at least 5 billion years old, reputedly, but they’re hardly corporeal.)
And remember, the form we see the Founders take is not their “natural” appearance in any way. The other Founders are just mimicking Odo’s face as a courtesy or something, and Odo’s face looks the way it does because he was never very good at mimicking humanoids.
@13: I had thought that about them mimicking Odo as well…it does sort of raise an interesting question as to what they appeared like to the Vorta before having met Odo though.
StrongDreams: That’s not on Braga and Moore, that’s on the set designers and David Carson.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I just caught the end of Generations on IFC the other day and winced at Picard tossing away the naiskos. Nobody could go back and remember the episode it came from and what it was for? It was bad enough that they ignored Livingston the Lionfish.
@11: If there’s ever a Voyager rewatch, that’ll be a hell of a thread.
@14: Probably they appeared as any damned thing they wanted–gods tend to behave that way.
“Given the limits of time, budget, and the fact that, y’know, all our actors are human beings, of course the aliens are all going to be at least vaguely humanoid.”
Yeah, you know this and I totally agree, but I get the impression that many fans have complained so LOUDLY about it for so many decades. It’s a little like your recurring wish that aliens would be “more alien” rather than carrying exaggerated or isolated aspects of some human trait – it’s just that one thing that bugs one group of fans, but not another.
@7 – Well, yes, realistically, there probably would be more differences (and I actually totally forgot about the ability to interbreed), but I just figured that perhaps bipedalism happens to be the most effective body structure. Not that I was opposed to the idea of some single life form spreading from planet to planet eons and eons ago. I guess it just didn’t bug me one way or the other.
That being said, I have often wondered, if life did exist on other planets, if they would even use DNA. Who is to say that some other method of genetic transfer couldn’t develop? Like, if we find a bunch of bacteria on Mars that evolved on their own there (and I know there have been fossils found but I can’t recall at the moment if we’ve ever gotten genetic material) would we even be able to sequence it, would there be a 16S ribosomal sequence, could we compare it at all to the phylogenetics of bacteria on Earth? Or maybe that would suggest that there is some common thread…
@18: Any life we find elsewhere in the Solar System is likely to have the same chemical and molecular basis as ours, due to billions of years of impact-driven panspermia. Rocks blasted off of Mars by impact events have fallen to Earth, and rocks blasted off of Earth have no doubt made their way to Mars. Probably the whole system’s been mutually cross-contaminated by now.
As far as other solar systems are concerned, it’s harder to say. There are other possible nucleic acids that could potentially support life. But it could be that DNA is the one that works best and outcompetes all the others; or it could be that panspermia works on an interstellar scale too (although it’s believed it would only be likely to happen between stars that started out as members of the same birth cluster, and there’d be a relatively narrow window between the origin of life and the point when they’d spread too far apart for transfer to occur).
I’ll say this, anyway: at least the idea that Earth’s primordial soup was seeded with programmed DNA 4 gigayears ago is less stupid than the common sci-fi cliche that humans alone were seeded here by aliens (an idea I’d thought was a relic of the ’70s ancient-astronaut fad but has been resurrected in recent years in Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, and Prometheus). Even TOS: “Return to Tomorrow,” which implied that Sargon’s people were the ancestral race of all the humanoids, was smart enough to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that humans evolved here on Earth and are intimately connected to the rest of the biosphere.
Essentially ST has given us three explanations for humanoid aliens, and I think they all fit together rather than conflicting. The way I see it: The “Chase” progenitors are the explanation for all roughly humanoid creatures, even the weird ones like Cardassians and Klingons and Jem’Hadar and Xindi. Sargon’s people are the ancestors of Vulcanoids and possibly other fairly human-appearing humanoids such as Betazoids, Deltans, and Bajorans. And the Preservers are responsible for the occasional Earth-duplicate culture like Miramanee’s people and maybe the “Bread and Circuses” Romans.
MikeKelm@4
I think that might have been what JM Straczynski had in mind when he pitched a Star Trek reboot to Paramount. Certainly, he intended an arc plot that would slowly be revealed throughout the series.
For those unaware of this, iirc, the idea was to reboot Star Trek with new actors playing Kirk et al and while each episode would be pretty much standalone, there would be a running underlying arc which involved a secret mission that Kirk was on for Starfleet.
Or was the whole thing an internet hoax?
Something I like about the appearance of the First Humanoids is that, considered as the basic model, they effectively make humans look like another species of Forehead Alien.
What I found odd was that the Federation was completely out of the loop on this whole process, especially considering Picard’s link to Galen. All these other races are right on this guy’s heels, and the Federation just blunders its way into the middle of it.
I never thought the stuff like the naiskos were just left in the wreckage of the Enterprise. What Picard was doing was more of a grab and go. Almost like he said, “Hey I need to get my photo album before we evacuate for the debriefing.” And Riker just accompanied him. I would like to think they came back later for thingd like the naiskos, Riker’s trombone, Data’s paintings, etc. In fact, Picard had the Mintakan tapestry from “Who Watches the Watchers” on the Enterprise-E, which he did not remove from the Enterprise-D onscreen.
I was going to question the use of the term “retcon,” especially in reference to Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development. But reading more about “Return to Tomorrow,” it does seem to explain the relationship of at least Humans and Vulcans (and Romulans). Thanks to CLB @19 for showing how the three explanations can mesh without conflicting. After all, couldn’t the Theory of Relativity be considered a retcon of Newtonian Mechanics? It’s a different explantion of the underlying reality, but it doesn’t invalidate the laws of motion.
Assuming it is a valid explanation, I’m surprised “The Chase” wasn’t at least a two-parter. It was all resolved rather quickly, really. And to the satisfaction of few. One of the most momentous discoveries of galactic history, and it’s never mentioned again. I guess a 4 is right, if only for that.
Heading off a potential correction, I realize that Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development is from “Bread and Circuses,” not “Return to Tomorrow.”
I realized when I started reading this yesterday that I hadn’t ever seen the episode, so I watched it this morning. If nothing else, like Keith said, the guest stars made it palatable, even if the storyline was a little meh. Another thing that I appreciated, though, was that they didn’t do a”beat you over the head with what we learned today” soliloquy about how we’re all the same at the end. I thought that the call from the Romulan did the same thing without making it feel like a “very special episode.”
@23: Well, I suppose they would have had to remove all extraplanetary artifacts from Veridian III, one way or another. And Starfleet wouldn’t tie up the whole senior staff overseeing that operation. There was also presumably an inquiry about the ship’s destruction.
Actually, that brings up another point that in canon, Kirk’s body remains on Veridian III indefinitely, with his Starfleet badge. Maybe not a big deal for the Prime Directive, but I always wondered why an unmarked grave on a planet where Kirk was for maybe 5 minutes, even if he did save said planet. My sister suggested that Picard wanted to keep Kirk’s brief return quiet because of the time travel aspect. The DTI would have been leaping down his throat about it, no doubt.
Okay, that has nothing to do with this episode, but whatever.
@@@@@ 23, 26, and a whole bunch of others…. Majicou beat me to it. I sort of figured that Picard and Riker were getting the stuff they wanted to take with them immediately on the Farragut on their way back to Earth and that someone after the fact picked everything up and cargo shipped what was salvageable back to the crewmember.
@@@@@20 I vaguely recall that reboot idea of Star Trek, but I was never sure if that was a solicited or unsolicited idea. I sort of figure that the search for the origin of life (why are there so many bipedal humanoids with compatible DNA and similar climate tolerances) might be an overarching mission that was what you turned to when there weren’t immediate demand. Fleshing out the Chase into a season or multi-season arc would be a doable thing. It would mean a random scene or lines being put into an episode where nothing else was going on as well as what I call character memory of previous episodes (the characters actively make reference/are changed by what happened to them in a previous episode) which was only starting to be a norm broken on TV at the time.
So maybe in the season opener Picard runs into Galen at a starbase- Galen says he’s onto something big and invites Picard, who turns them down. The two fight and go on their way. At the end of the episode the Enterprise gets a distress message that he is under attack. Episode two starts with them responding too late to the attack and Galen dying. (Act 1 of the chase) The next few episodes are “normal” missions until Picard decides to abandon the ships mission to follow the clues. They follow the clues and find the planet with the atmosphere being destroyed. (Act 2) A few more normal epsisodes and then Data uncovers a hidden file of Galens, and they go to the planet with the Cardassians/Klingons. After some tension and perhaps a non-decisive combat, they call a truce, have the meeting, the Enterprise gets tampered with, they tamper with the data, the Cardassians attempt a double cross (Act 3/4)
In the arc finale they put together the last pieces, go to the planet, run into the Romulans, Ferengi, Denobulans, etc. Throw in one of those wacky ancient defense mechanisms and the usual mystery planet that the Federation solves and has to get everyone to trust them. They put together their data, get the kumbaya moment, but then have some sort of early warning of some strange acting Borg…
Again- this could be a much more interesting arc instead of a 42 minute Rodenberry-esque episode.
@28: “After all, couldn’t the Theory of Relativity be considered a retcon of Newtonian Mechanics?”
More of a broadening. Newton’s laws are a special case of Einstein’s laws for velocities significantly below the speed of light, or at least a good approximation thereof.
I think I was at the perfect age for this when it aired: old enough to be knowledgable, young enough to be credulous.
*I* always took it for pure symbolism. The science on the face of it is ridiculous. But the idea has merit; it could theorectically be possible to build some sort of message like that into DNA. It’d take forever to find, and forever to figure out, and in the end would look more like the
Arecibo message, but it’s hypothetically possible. And also terrible tv. So they can’t be realistic about it, of course not.
This is a terrible episode. And let’s figure out how much data there is in DNA, vs. how much it takes for a lengthy holovid, shall we?
I’ve never commented on here before, but I felt it had to be said: Worst. Episode. Ever.
I definitely think this episode is a contender for worst TNG episode, because it isn’t just bad, it’s offensive. It not only misunderstands natural selection, but it ends up resorting to the kind of mumbo jumbo that Erich Von Daniken was peddling in the seventies.
This episode is contrary to what I consider the entire ethos of TNG, which is on the side of rationalism and science. And as others on this forum have observed, the explanation it offers isn’t even necessary.
@30:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram
I can’t remember how much DNA they were working with in the episode, nor do I know what kind of holography compression algorithms ancient aliens may have used, but the storage density of the stuff is still damned impressive.
@31: I don’t know. Have you seen “Shades of Gray”? Of course, as I said in that thread, I’m divided on whether it should be deemed the worst episode ever or not even an episode.
@31: No, Von Daniken stuff would be what the original Battlestar Galactica did, or Stargate in its later seasons when they established that the Ancients came from another galaxy rather than evolving on Earth, or what Ridley Scott’s Prometheus did — the idea that humans specifically were seeded/engineered by aliens, which is ridiculous because it ignores how much our DNA and biology has in common with the rest of the life on Earth. Even “Return to Tomorrow” got that right and refused to say that Sargon’s people had seeded humanity, insisting we’d evolved on this planet.
What “The Chase” did is orders of magnitude further back in time, going all the way back to the beginnings of single-celled life. That is far more plausible, because it allows an “aliens influenced our evolution” premise without denying or glossing over our intimate connection to the rest of the biosphere, since it’s the whole biosphere that was influenced from the very beginning.
And no, I don’t agree it runs against rationalism and science. Applied to the real world? Yes, it would in that case. But it’s different when it’s applied to the fictional world Star Trek takes place in. In that world, as we’ve seen for decades, most aliens are humanoid, sometimes even indistinguishable from human, and different aliens are often interfertile. And not just humanoids, but other species as well — alien dogs, alien horses, whole planets full of green grass and familiar-looking trees. And we can assume that other planets have their equivalent of grapes and barley, given how many types of alien brandy and ale there are. So entire biospheres seem to have evolved in parallel across the galaxy. The idea that such an improbable situation just came about by chance would be completely irrational. So given the evidence we have, the idea that there’s a single underlying origin that links all these biospheres together is very rational, even if we can quibble about the technicalities. Science is not about reinforcing our prejudices and preferences. It’s about following the evidence and formulating a consistent explanation for it. And when we’re following evidence from a fictional universe, the rational, scientific conclusion may be very different from one based on evidence of the real universe.
Apologies, my previous post is missing a paragraph. The full post is as follows:
@33: I hear you, but I still think this episode propagates a common misunderstanding of natural selection, and as a result is against science. Evolution is adaptation to a given environment, and the idea that human beings might be developing towards a predetermined state is not only contrary to Darwinism, but would alter our understanding of life in a very profound way.
I take on board what you say about needing an explanation within the fiction to justify similarity between different alien species and plant life. However, this explanation is not necessary because evolutionary theory tells us that other inhabited planets are likely to be similar to our own.
Sharks and whales have both evolved fins because it’s the best means for an animal to swim – even though they come from entirely different branches of the evolutionary tree. By the same rationale, in order to build spaceships an alien would likely need to be bipedal and have opposable thumbs.
The same theory also explains similarities across plant life. For example, fruit is favoured by natural selection if it is sweet and carries small seeds, so you end up with something resembling a grape.
When looked at like this, similarities between alien species aren’t improbable, as you suggest, but are actually likely.
@32: I retract my ‘worst episode ever’ criticism, because ‘Shades of Gray’ is indeed the worst by far. This episode is, I think, second worst.
@35: I couldn’t disagree more. Yes, parallel evolution has often been used in fiction to justify humanoid aliens, but it’s a bogus idea if you really think about it — and since I’ve been writing science fiction for decades and put a lot of care into working out alien evolution, I’ve thought about it very, very extensively. Yes, there are advantages to our form, but it’s narrow-minded to think it’s the only form that has those advantages. Bipedalism is good, sure, but if you look at the various bipedal forms of life that have existed in Earth’s history — therapod dinosaurs/avians, kangaroos, indrid lemurs, hominids — they split about evenly between bipeds with upright bodies and no tails and bipeds with horizontal bodies and cantilevering tails. And they also split about evenly between walkers and hoppers, though the split is different. So realistically, alien bipeds could be built more like a velociraptor than a human.
Not to mention that it’s just chance that we have five fingers instead of four or six, that there are many different possible jaw and mouth shapes besides the ones that vertebrates happen to use, etc. Not to mention such specific details as the shape and size of our heads, the positioning of our joints, and so on. Particular the human chin, and the way it tapers to a relative point. That’s a unique feature of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Even Neandertals, our closest genetic relatives in the universe, didn’t have it. So I can’t buy that aliens would have it either.
So parallel evolution could explain the occasional biped that broadly resembles our shape, alongside other bipeds that look more like kangaroos or therapods or lemurs. But it’s ludicrous to claim that it even remotely begins to explain a galaxy full of thousands of alien species who look like human actors with latex glued to their foreheads. It just plain doesn’t work.
And no, the idea of “The Chase” does not mislead the audience about evolution, because it states explicitly that the evolutionary process has been artificially mediated, that there’s something other than natural selection affecting the outcomes. And it’s only saying that’s true about a fictional universe, not the real one. The clear implication is that in our universe, without some alien program forcing us to evolve in a certain direction, the only mechanism is natural selection.
@32: But we’re actually not talking about the entire human genome…just the part that has remained unchanged since the primordial soup! Which would be approximately none.
#37: DNA is complicated. One part can affect other parts. Consider how what used to be thought of as the “non-coding” majority of the DNA molecule is increasingly being understood to play a role in epigenetic factors like the proteins that determine the shape in which the DNA molecule is configured and what base pairs are accessible for coding. It’s not completely absurd (at least, no more absurd than a lot of stuff we routinely suspend disbelief about in ST) that a programmed sequence encoded into DNA could be capable of influencing the evolution of other parts while also protecting itself from overwriting. And it could easily be fragmented, stored in many pieces across the length of the molecule and with redundant copies of the relevant sequences, as a protection against data corruption/erasure.
And you’re wrong that none of that original DNA remains. We have at least a couple of percent of our genes in common with bacteria, 17% with plants, 30-40% with invertebrates, better than 85% with fish, etc. And those are just the coding genes, which make up only a tiny part of the total genome (the rest being the non-coding stuff I mentioned before).
@35: I really didn’t expect a debate about this. I feel like we’re going in circles here, so this will be my last post on the matter. Also, I honestly can’t see how writing sci-fi necessarily qualifies you to talk about evolutionary theory. I gather L Ron Hubbard wrote a lot of science fiction, and he had some very questionable ideas indeed.
To clarify my point for the last time: I’m not saying that all aliens would evolve to be like humans – of course they wouldn’t. I’m saying that many of the ones able to build spaceships might resemble us – the “occasional bipeds” you refer to.
Yes, aliens could evolve to be like velociraptors, but they aren’t going to be the ones charting the galaxies or attending peace talks. This would explain why the races appearing in Star Trek could be mostly but not exclusively humanoid, and why there are no indrid lemurs hopping around Picard’s ready room.
This debate rages on between people far more learned that either of us, so I suggest readers look elsewhere for a sensible debate on this matter.
@39: I’m not trying to debate you, I’m just going to throw in some ideas here, so don’t take this the wrong way. Also feel free to not respond.
It seems like species capable of space travel would need appendages that allow them to manipulate things sufficiently to create machinery and things, so they would need something akin to hands. Also, it may be useful to have these appendages freely available when in locomotion, but I don’t know if it’s absolutely necessary. They would also need fairly advanced brains, obviously. Eyes in the front of the head? I’m not sure, but it seems like it would be useful if you were doing things like inventing microchips. Communication ability would also seem to be very useful.
So a lemur-descended creature with a larger brain and speech capability would meet these requirements. Velociraptors, maybe not so much. But velociraptor descended creatures with opposable thumbs, and big brains? Maybe.
@39: My work as a writer gives me perspective on this because I write hard science fiction, based on research into real science. L. Ron Hubbard wrote a very different style of SF. Don’t lump all SF writers into a single category. I’ve spent decades thinking about how alien evolution might work and researching the science involved. Here are a couple of articles by scientists debunking the “inevitability” of the human shape for intelligent life:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/10/27/dinosauroids-revisited-revisited/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=will-e-t-look-like-us
“Yes, aliens could evolve to be like velociraptors, but they aren’t going to be the ones charting the galaxies or attending peace talks. This would explain why the races appearing in Star Trek could be mostly but not exclusively humanoid, and why there are no indrid lemurs hopping around Picard’s ready room.”
You’re missing the point. Of course I’m not saying they’d be exactly like those species — my whole argument is that it’s nonsensical to expect any alien life forms to be anywhere near an exact match for any Earth species, human or otherwise. I’m talking only about the variety of bipedal body plans that are potentially available. An alien could have the body shape of a theropod, the fur of a mammal, and mandibles similar to those of a crustacean, perhaps. The aliens in my first published story looked kind of like kangaroos with chameleon heads and horselike manes. Convergent evolution doesn’t mean everything is the same, just that certain specific traits correspond even if everything else is different. Like the convergent evolution of the mammalian eye and the cephalopod eye. Or the pterosaur wing, the bird wing, and the bat wing — three roughly similar solutions to the same problem, but with clear differences as well. It’s a failure of imagination to think the human shape is the only one that can build starships or attend conferences.
And for the record, in the Star Trek: Titan novels, the chief medical officer, Dr. Ree, actually is built very much like a theropod dinosaur.
I think this is all very interesting :)
I’m really surprised you didn’t like this episode. It is one of my top 10 favourites.
I thought it was incredibly suspenseful, showing four races of beings trying to find a supposed hidden treasure, only to find out that they all need to work together to solve the puzzle.
I thought it was a good allegory for racial tension on contemporary Earth. All of these races depicted on the episode were antagonistic towards each other at some point in the series, but the science behind the episode made them realize than they had more in common than they had ever thought. I think they wanted people to realize that racial superiority on Earth is just as silly because we are actually all related and decended from a common ancestor.
It also poked holes in the theory that we are creations of some “supernatural” being and showed the possiblity that life was started through natural means from other sentient species.
And the tricorder scene does make sense to me. I thought the human computer technology on the show was advanced enough to piece together and understand computer programs of all stripes, even alien technology that had never been encountered before. I thought when they put the DNA sequences together, the tricorder was able to find a hidden message within them, which it could then project as an image rather than simply show it on the screen.
@43: I don’t think this episode precludes the notion that the original race of aliens could’ve been created by a supernatural creator.
This episode is bad, because there’s too much stuff put into 45 minutes.
They inexplicably waste way too much time on exposition, all that Picard screen-time in the beginning. It’s nice, but there’s already 400 minutes fewer than required.
And then it rushes through scenes and dialogue and nothing seems to really matter. Even the revelation in the end.
In today’s matured TV landscape, the plot of “The Chase” would have been used as a season arc. It could have been wonderfully used to hang all sorts of other episodes onto it, what with the Enterprise chasing around the Galaxy and running into every humanoid species.
Another thing I loved about this episode: it was the first time we got to see the Romulans and Cardassians together. I always wondered how each one would perceive the other.
I always wondered which race was more ruthless and nasty towards other people, but as time passed I came to see the the Cardassians as ultimately worse by the end of DS9. I think they believed in using “scorched Earth” tactics, they were driven to subjugate other people, and were beyond reason, whereas the Romulans seemed more driven by an irrational and over-the-top need for self-preservation (like US Republicans, haha) and using subterfuge and less confrontational tactics to further their agenda
Amazing how sci-fi morphs into sci-fact over time.
With Shakespeare’s help, researchers show potential of DNA for storing digital information fox ^ | January 23, 2013
Here’s another article suggesting that “The Chase” may have made more sense than we thought:
http://io9.com/scientists-say-an-alien-code-may-be-hidden-inside-our-d-472157262
I really enjoyed this episode. My main issue, touched on numerous times above, is that is went too fast! It would have made an awesome season-long arc, like was done so well on BSG (Temple of Athena, anyone?). Or at the least, a two-parter.
I loved having so many species gathered together in one place — though the reaction of the Klingons and Cardassians was a little disappointing, albeit in character. I also would have liked the message to be more elaborate, and presented with more gravitas, but the content of the message was awesome.
At least this explains our obvious similarities as well as helps to explain the ability to mate (though it’s still a stretch). After seeing a Klingon/Romulan girl a couple of episodes ago, and of course Spock (though I had thought he might be the product of genetic manipulation enabling two different species to mate), I have been thinking a lot about how the species in ST are really more like cultures here on Earth. They’re stand-ins for various human cultures, because none of them are that alien (Klingons any one of various warlike cultures, Vulcans like Buddhist monks, Romulans like ancient Romans, Cardassians being like a more modern-day ruthless power–I have yet to see DS9, so I don’t have a firm handle on them yet.)
Anyway, I digress. I really love archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary theory, so I enjoyed this one a lot. It just went by way too fast, once the “chase” began. And it’s ridiculous they intended to pattern it after “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” which I also love but is a madcap romp. This just doesn’t have the same tone.
Vikings. The Klingons remind me of the Vikings (I just watched that series on the History channel.) The warrior ethic, the longing to die in battle, the rewards in the afterlife, family sharing shame, women warriors — all shared with the Vikings. For instance, one middle-aged man goes out of his way to try to die in battle, so he can be honored in Valhalla.
I just Googled it, and I’m not the first to see this connection (obviously!).
http://www.northlightgroup.com/runes/klingvik.htm
My point being the “races” are really all reflections of us, and none are truly alien.
Where Lessons felt rushed to the detriment of any sense of tension, The Chase feels rushed for the opposite reason. There are too many pieces of the plot to fit into this short amount of time. There are four (!) enemies and a benevolent species in addition to Picard’s old mentor, all thrown into the mix — and still enough time to sit around for the entire middle act. I think this episode would have been MUCH better spread out over two parts. They could have given us much more time with the Cardassians, and the Romulans wouldn’t have been reduced to a simple cameo. As it is, the different players barely have enough time to appear on screen and recite the lines needed to advance the plot.
I’m not necessarily saying it is a story deserving of a two parter, but it would have been better than some others they had. And a stronger ending could have made it a classic.
Thanks for those links, Christopher. This is a fascinating subject for me, bumping the rating up to, oh, a 7? Agree with others that it would have worked better as a multi-episode story, and also various plot holes drove down the entertainment value here – the exploding ship, the wholly non-essential scene in Ten Forward – what was that meant to explicate, exactly?
But this was a subject that needed addressing, or could have made for fascinating TV if done so thoughtfully, anyway. Interestingly enough Ridley Scott threw in billions year old humanoids meddling with our genetic code into his Alien universe with his recent film Prometheus – and they were bald, too! Hair is a step forward, eh?
A much much much more thoughful/plausible approach to having a galaxy full of two armed/eyed/legged bipeds of roughly the same size was thrown together by Ursula Leguin in her Hainish stories – the Hain were aliens who explored the local area of the Milky Way, futzing about with the local DNA in various ways – for Earth, they crossbred their own geneotype with that of the indigenous primates, thus explaining our rather aggressive tendencies. Using a similar device in the Star Trek universe would explain the (love this coinage) Forehead Alien Phenomenon, up to a point, anyway. It’s still wholly absurd that species disparate as humans and vulcans could interbreed, of course.
@52: If I could reinvent the Trek universe from scratch, I’d set it thousands of years in the future, after humanity has colonized multiple worlds and engineered itself into numerous distinct species adapted to those worlds. Maybe say that space was colonized only at sublight speeds and it was millennia before warp drive was perfected, so that these different humanoid species had plenty of time to develop distinct cultures and histories. Although, given sufficient budget, I’d want some of the species to be CGI or animatronic nonhumanoids. Like, maybe something more insectoid for the Andorians, or a fully reptilian form for the Cardassians.
“I think that was supposed to symbolize Picard realizing what was really important, or something. He could have donated it to a museum, though.”
Anything’s possible, but you know what I think? I think they said “let’s have Picard throw something away before finding the photo album”, and then they found this prop… what is this, I… I dunno
What puzzles me about this is why, if they already decided to “explain” the similarity between the species in-universe, they didn’t just go with the idea that a part of humanity somehow went into space somewhere around the time of completing the evolutionary transition? And then they developed head bumps, and after that split up even further? I mean this should’ve been the first thought to occur to humanity during the first contact with aliens, and if hadn’t just been something so trivially known no one had mentioned it (to the audience) all this time, then the “discovery” surely should’ve merely confirmed something they all had suspected all along.
And if they absolutely had to make it about an ancient super race who was dying and hence spread its genes all around the universe (awww!), then the fact that it was this and not the most obvious (and consistent with the evolutionary model) one should’ve been the big twist! This discovery would’ve turned everything known about evolution on its head – revealing a “guiding program” instead of or in addition to the known “random mutation, natural selection” model.
Instead they’re all like “dooooh, gee sure didn’t think we were all related! how inspiring/outrageous/insulting/promising!”.
Or I dunno, has the “programmed evolution” been a recurring thing in Star Trek until that point, i.e. not just in Threshold later? If yes, one could posit that the current evolutionary model had been overturned/updated at some point before TOS, or, more likely, the writers were deluded about this subject matter themselves. The writers of Threshold definitely didn’t know any better LOL!
The only thing one could say in its defense is that, as late as The Chase, or at least during certain singular episodes like it, ST was still more of the “social allegory” it started out as, rather than a completely “real” SF setting.
In that sense, it could very well be understood to reflect, say, things like conservative racist groups rejecting evolution because that would mean they’re related to those dayemn niggers! Though I personally believe the writers were genuinely clueless and set out to create an “interesting SF scenario” that would evoke real life associations of that kind, but only succeeded in the latter.
How, accepting the known evolutionary model, “related seeds” could’ve all independently led to almost identically looking humanoids that even could interbreed with each other, is utterly beyond me – the human form as it is, the fact that they evolved from apes rather than wolves, or birds, or squids, is a result of chance and circumstances… had the climate or something been different at a specific point, or a different group of species been wiped out, the “intelligent life form” could’ve been ended up as something entirely different, if at all!
Voyager, of course, had that one episode with the reptilians who refused to accept that they evolved from lizards or something like that, but you know what? They still looked like humanoids, and I bet if particularly kinky individuals of either species decided to “try it”, they could’ve totally produced an entirely shaggable green chick.
So yea… weird episode. But whatever, right :)
@55: Nope, not much was said about human evolution in TOS, except for a mention in “Return to Tomorrow” that humans were known to have evolved on Earth rather than being seeded.
And it is not “deluded” to choose to employ a fanciful premise as the basis for a work of fiction. After all, the writers of fiction know that the stories they’re telling aren’t real, and they trust their audience to understand that as well. Heck, a five-year-old can tell the difference between fiction and reality. It’s obvious that, say, J. K. Rowling doesn’t really believe in hidden magic schools and Cruciatus curses and Dementors and horcruxes, because — news flash — she made them up herself. So it’s pretty ridiculous to call a writer of fiction “deluded” into believing that something they personally made up is actually real. I mean, they were there when they made the things up, so they obviously know they’re made up.
Have the people complaining about the DNA science of the episode ever watched Star Trek before? I would have thought you’d have quit in disgust when they showed the first human-alien hybrid, when humans can’t even interbreed with chimpanzees. That’s before we even get to warp drive, Heisenberg compensators, and everybody speaking English even when there’s no humans around.
It’s a fun and dramatic episode. Suspend your disbelief on the DNA science for 42 minutes and enjoy it.
Crimethink: Nope, never let it get in the way of my enjoyment of the show. But I also was quite aware that Trek, in all in variations, plays fast and loose with science. When it gets something right I just put it down to the old saying “even a stopped clock is twice a day”. It’s entertainment, not education.
There was a chance to do something a bit more rooted in reality with the recent reboot but they decided to embrace the absurd portions of the lore just as much as the previous show. Not that such an approach is wrong. It’s just a TV show. It can be good or bad but it can’t be wrong. It’s like claiming one episode of TOS is wrong because it contradicts another episode of TOS.
For me, I accept it all as part of the tapestry. Paraphrasing –
Dr. Julian Bashir: Even the contradictions?
Elim Garak: Especially the contradictions.
It’s the quality of the story, not the accuracy of the science that I like. Which, considering the science of Trek, is a good thing.
@57/crimethink: It is entirely possible to enjoy a work of fiction and criticize elements of it. It’s illegitimate to claim that audiences are somehow obligated to turn off their brains and question nothing. It’s called willing suspension of disbelief, not the mandatory and permanent absence of disbelief. The “willing” part means that we choose whether or not to suspend disbelief, and it’s a writer’s responsibility to earn that willingness from the audience, either by making the story plausible or by being a good enough con artist to make a big lie feel credible, at least in the moment. And the “suspension” part means that it’s temporary. We can choose to accept the conceits of a story for the duration of the story, and then step back afterward and critique its ideas and approach. There’s no conflict between the two. Science fiction in particular should stimulate the imagination and the curiosity. Even a fanciful approach to a scientific subject can inspire audiences’ curiosity to find out what the reality is. Look at all those books out there about The Science of Star Trek/Star Wars/Doctor Who/etc., frequently based on totally fanciful franchises. It’s not about condemning the entertainment value of those franchises, it’s about using them as a launching pad for exploring ideas that are worth exploring in their own right. Questioning is not attacking. Indeed, in science fiction, inspiring questions and analytical thinking is something to be proud of.
It seems a long arc was not a plausible option in early ’90s American TV but this could conceivably have been a two-parter. I’d rather have that than “Time’s Arrow”. The “chase” is lots of fun even if the “treasure” was the friendships you make along the way to some degree a silly attempt to justify certain necessities related to production. For the Romulans coming in so late, it’s nice to have the captain in this one be relatively non-aggressive although I guess allowing the Romulans depth already arrived with “Face of the Enemy”.
I do kind of wish some Ferengi had beamed in after the recording ended, yelling “where’s the treasure?” and everyone would just roll their eyes and walk away.
So now it’s possible to get shot with your shields down and take zero damage as long as you know in advance just where you’re getting shot and fiddle with some stuff? I guess we can hand-wave that it’s just not possible to do for the whole ship but the durability of ships is really inconsistent in this show. Sometimes the Enterprise is crippled after a few shots even with shields up (see “Rascals”) and now this. Why were they sure the Cardassian captain wasn’t ruthless enough to just destroy them rather than merely wreck their engines, though?
I’m vaguely reminded of an infamous Doctor Who review that ripped into the story because the reviewer misheard a line. Because it’s clearly established when the Romulans turn up at the end that they were the ones who destroyed the Yridian ship, not the Enterprise.
But hey, in those pre-DS9 days it was cool to have the Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians all in one episode. We were kind of wondering if the Borg would turn up next.
Since I’ve always been very ready, willing and able to suspend my disbelief on such matters, I don’t think that it was in any way necessary to explain the preponderance of humanoid species. That said, I have always really enjoyed this episode as an ancient civilisation seeding different planets with life in order to preserve its legacy is an extremely cool sci-fi idea. I like the fact that Picard gets to be Indiana Jones in space, which seems like a much more natural fit for the character than the attempt to make him John McClane in space in “Starship Mine” just two episodes earlier.
At the very, very venerable age of 102, Norman Lloyd has the distinction of being the longest lived actor to appear in the Star Trek franchise. He is wonderful as Galen. It is a shame, albeit very understandable and downright unavoidable, that the storyline necessitated his death as I would loved to have seen more of him in the role.
Great episode until the last 5 minutes. A mystery, some space battles, all the major antagonists, Picard’s father figure, the whole thing is a lot of fun until the lame-o ending.
Picard’s enthusiasm about the naiskos was nice, but it bothers me that Federation archaeologists apparently own the things they find and can give incredibly rare artifacts as gifts to their friends. What is this, the 19th century? Shouldn’t such a find belong to the general public?
I don’t like the idea of evolution as a guided process, and I don’t think it makes sense. If humanoid life has been the end goal of evolution all along, why have such a long age of dinosaurs first? And did the ancient humanoids who seeded the galaxy send the meteorite too?
On the other hand, the Star Trek galaxy with all its humanoid aliens is a metaphor of Earth and its peoples, so “We’re all related” is certainly an appropriate message.
@64/Jana: The idea was that the programmed DNA would encourage the evolution of humanoid forms, but naturally with plenty of variations depending on the individual planet’s evolutionary history. If the non-avian dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct, then Earth would’ve probably ended up with a humanoid dinosaur species. Indeed, we know that such a species actually did evolve: the Voth. So the “programming” that nudges anatomy toward a humanoid configuration can manifest more than once in a planet’s evolutionary history. Or it can be outcompeted by other forms, as on planets where humanoid life didn’t arise.
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs was the most recent of five major mass extinctions in Earth’s history, and it happened only 65 million years ago, some three and a half billion years after the First Humanoids died out. Remember, the reason they seeded so many worlds 4 billion years ago was because they were dying out and wanted to leave a legacy. So they can’t have stuck around to micromanage evolution after that. Mass extinctions are just part of the evolutionary process. They’ll happen repeatedly on most any habitable world due to impact events, climate shifts, and the like. They actually encourage evolutionary progress by creating new challenges and pressures and opening new niches, and by reducing populations to a small enough size that novel mutations that would be outcompeted before have a chance to survive and generate new species.
@65/Christopher: That’s a good interpretation. I had forgotten about the Voth.
@64 – Jana: “If humanoid life has been the end goal of evolution all along, why have such a long age of dinosaurs first?“
Because dinosaurs are cool, duh! :)
@67/MaGnUs: You win.
No, we all win. :)
Why not? That is my response to this episode answering the question of why there are so many humanoids in the Star Trek universe. In my opinion, there’s only so many times one can suspend their disbelief before wanting some continuity. I think it’s human nature to have an answer to everything, so I applaud this episode for just giving us an answer and moving on.
That’s not to say I don’t like ambiguity. “Time Squared,” for example, is one of my favorite episodes precisely because it had no answers. But, as an ongoing debate, choosing to give an answer to the biggest question of all in Star Trek at this point in the franchise, was a good idea imo. Perhaps I am overnalyzing things, but what the heck. As Data once said: “Knowing that he knows that we know that he knows…”
I’ll wrap this up by saying that my favorite part of “The Chase” was the end. I love how the Romulan, of all people, was the only representative of the three major alien races in the episode to actually be moved by the message at the end. It was very Star Trek.
I won’t comment on the main point of this episode (explaining humanoid aliens when KRAD is quite right to say that never needed to be explained), but I wanted to point out two things that have always bugged me.
The first is small. Picard is a complete jerk to Troi when she tries to remind him of his duties and there is no closure to that thread at all. I loved this in one sense: I think everyone on the Enterprise is usually portrayed as too nice, with no allowance for disagreement. But that also means it’s very out of character for Picard to never circle back to this and thank Troi for doing HER duty by trying to steer him back to his real mission.
And that brings me to my second point. Galen tells Picard that if he had access to the Enterprise, his mission could be finished in weeks, not a year. Well, guess what? Picard HAS access to the Enterprise and he finishes Galen’s mission in a matter of days once the professor is killed. By this point in the show, Picard has already established himself as basically independent, and immune to orders from Starfleet (I, Borg anyone?). If he believes that Galen’s research is as critical as the professor contends, then he should have just pulled the Enterprise from the diplomatic conference to finish the search right from the start.
Also, this episode seems to steal a lot from the Iconian episode in season 2 (Contagion), right down to cloaked Romulans intercepting transmissions to participate in the hunt.
The Romulans are nothing if not consistent.
I have a theory that the Naiskos that Picard so casually tosses aside in the wreckage at the end of Generations is actually a replica of the actual one Galen gifted him. Think about it – Picard had to be aware that the Enterprise could be destroyed/lost, as actually happened in the movie, and so it would be very risky to keep aboard such an important treasure. He probably donated the real Naiskos to the Smithsonian or something.
I was always disturbed (and still am) that Nu’Daq destroyed ALL LIFE ON AN ENTIRE PLANET when he purposefully tainted the biosphere. I think the implication is that there were no civilizations on the planet, but still, all of the animals and plants and vegetation ARE DEAD! It’s a good thing the Klingons aren’t members of the Federation or otherwise I’d assume there would be some major ramifications of such an action. And sure Nu’Daq is a “fun” character and played magnificently but that doesn’t take away the fact that he’s a criminal asshole!
@71: Yes, Picard is a jerk to Troi but as far as not circling back to her later regarding his previous behavior, I find it consistent with what’s been established about his personality: he does not apologize, or at least hasn’t up to this point. Like in Datalore Wesley got the infamous “Shut up, Wesley” even though Wesley was actually right and didn’t receive a formal apology later. Maybe Picard thinks to apologize would make him seem like a weaker captain.
Anyway, I do like the episode itself despite the unnecessary story to explain why nearly all aliens in Star Trek look alike. The end result is lame (and I love Nu’Daq’s reaction, “THAT’S IT!?!” for his line delivery and what seems like the writers’ wink at the audience), but it’s everything getting to the conclusion that’s so fun, from having all of the major aliens/adversaries in the same episode, to the space battles, to the dialogue, to the stellar guest actors, to Picard geeking out over the archaeological find, to the sweet last scene between Picard and the Romulan commander. It does seem odd that the reason for the destruction of the Yridian ship was glossed over. Some reason like their warp core being unstable or something could have had at least been invented.
I’d rate this one a 7. It’s just too much fun.
Presumably, the Progenitors have since gone on to evolve into giant nonsapient newts.
Awful episode. I guess all good things do have to come to an end and the amazing run of high quality stuff starting in the latter half of season 3 ended here. I haven’t been this bored and checking the clock every 5 minutes since some of the dreck they were producing in season 2. The tone of this makes no sense. A few episodes ago, the Federation and Cardassians were at war and Picard was brutally tortured…now they’re squabbling over parts of a treasure map like It’s a Mad Mad Mad World. According to Memory Alpha, the two influences were Mad Mad World and Contact, but I’d say it feels 90% like Mad Mad World and only about 10% Contact.
Up until the end I was expecting the professor to secretly have been alive the whole time, because of the weird way that the Yrelian ship was destroyed and because the professor wanted to use the Enterprise to do what they ended up doing. The retcon was a bit silly but the revelation itself just wasn’t that interesting. The episode started off interesting but the only highlight is Data with the Klingon. I always love seeing Data use his super strength and endurance and the show gives him few chances to do so.
@@@@@75/Tommy Tutone
The Federation and Cardassians were not at war a few episodes ago. As I understood it, the whole point of the covert mission to Celtris III was because they weren’t at war and the metagenic weapon threat was so dangerous, that it had to be investigated and destroyed if it were true. The whole thing turned out not to be true and Gul Lamec claimed that Starfleet officers massacred civilians. That was the whole reason Picard was left to be tortured without protection as a prisoner of war. If it had been acknowledged that he was acting on Federation orders, that would have been an excuse for the Cardassians to officially declare war. The Federation would have looked like the aggressors. Instead, Captain Jellico made the smart move not to acknowledge Picard’s mission and then put the plans in motion to discover the hidden Cardassian fleet in the McAllister Nebula. As Jellico was not going to take the bait, the Cardassians were set-up for what looked to be a preemptive sneak attack. That was the excuse needed to unravel the Cardassians’ scheme and finally have Picard released. As Leskit in DS9 ‘s “Soldiers of the Empire” once said about the Cardassians: “A plan within a plan within a plan leading to a trap!”
While I do think Picard’s indifference to the presence of Cardassians in the treasure hunt was played as if his torture in “Chain of Command” never happened, your assertion that they were at war a few episodes ago, is incorrect
Thanks, Krad, for providing this great forum for discussion – I am rewatching TNG during Covid times, and enjoy the respectful, informative conversation (debate?) that happens on these rewatch threads. This is my first comment, here at the (almost) end of Season Six.
Count me among those who were somewhat disappointed with this episode. However, one reaction I had does not seem to be represented in the comments above, so I wanted to articulate it here. I felt a powerful connection to the message of the ancient humanoid at the end, thinking, “maybe that’s us.” When the figure explains that they developed at a time such that they were alone in the galaxy, I thought of our own limited explorations of the space around us, and how we’ve so far come up empty. What if Christopher Bennett @53 is right, in a sense, that the universe of Star Trek is actually millennia (eons) in the future, and we are the species that plants our seed across the universe?
Perhaps it is the underlying loneliness brought on by Covid, but that was what hit me when hearing the ancient humanoid’s message.
Actor Norman Lloyd died today at age 106.
I will always remember him as the headmaster from Dead Poets Society.
@78: Oh, damn. Just the other day, thanks to a conversation about the TV series Seven Days, I was thinking about Norman Lloyd and how eternal he seemed to be. I read there was even a new movie in pre-production that he was slated to appear in. Has there been anyone else in the world who was directed by both Alfred Hitchcock and Jonathan Frakes?
I just read that Norman Lloyd passed away which was shocking to me as I had assumed he passed away like a couple of decades ago. I had never seen him in anything other than this episode (at least that I can recall) so I had no idea that he had steadily acted up until 2015. And he was 106 years old – very impressive.
EDIT: Just saw the previous comments before mine. I’ve definitely seen Dead Poets Society and at least the first episode of Seven Days so I for sure have seen Lloyd in things other than Star Trek but I’ll forever associate him with this episode where he makes a good impression as a sort of father figure for Picard.
@80/garreth: Norman Lloyd’s first major movie role, as the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur from 1942 (not to be confused with Hitchcock’s Sabotage from 1936), is worth checking out. He was also in Hitchcock’s Spellbound in ’45.
@81/CLB: Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve mainly seen and liked Hitchcock’s output from the ’60s and will probably at some point get around to the rest of his filmography.
I’ll put in another vote for Saboteur. Norman Lloyd plays something like the evil Toht character from Raiders of the Lost Ark well before the actual Toht, and he’s wonderful in the role. RIP.
RIP Norman Lloyd. I can’t definitively say I’ve seen any other thing he’s been in other than TNG, but he was very impressive in “The Chase” and a perfect choice for Picard’s mentor.
@7. Christopher Bennett said, ” . . . ‘Convergent evolution’ doesn’t come close to explaining . . . aliens that have identically shaped eyes and mouths and can wear human clothes off the rack. . .”
To say nothing of alien races whose females still wear 20th/21st Century Earth women’s lipstick, even when they’re warship commanders . . .
The Chase has always been one of my favorites…no matter what any of you say!
AND as i just rewatched it, I realized the sculpture in the start – the naiskos – was a representation of something a counselor acquaintance of mine believed: that each of us has many beings inside us with different voices and personalities. She found that very useful in her treatment with outpatient / private clients. This was in the 80’s.
My real query is – who sculpted that figure in reality, and where is it now? I can only imagine it’s price, but would love to know more about it.
Also – any human cultures with that belief that have been identified?
Big thanks to anyone with info or leads……
@86/janieb43: According to Memory Alpha,”The Kurlan naiskos prop was created by special effects artist Christopher Bergschneider.” According to an auction site I found for one of the smaller interior pieces, it was made of cast terracotta, and apparently its faces were modeled on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Revisiting this post many years later, I’m reminded at how wrong fiction writers can get academia. (And, I suspect, service academies, too.)
Assuming that Starfleet Academy is essentially a West Point or Annapolis or Sandhurst analog of some sort, it’s a *four-year institution* (or presumably would be, by 20th/early 21st century reckoning). So why would Professor Galen be chasing down an undergrad-only Mr. Picard across the far reaches of the galaxy among the thousands of students he taught to go on this wild goose chase for any reason other than plot device when he probably had dozens of more promising and more readily available students from which to choose?
OK, so maybe Mr. Picard did follow-up studies at a Starfleet service graduate institution akin to the Army War College or the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. It still begs the question: why would Professor Galen be chasing down Mr. Picard across the far reaches of the galaxy to go on this wild goose chase for any reason other than plot device when he probably had dozens of more promising and available advanced graduate students from which to choose? Say all you want about brilliant Mr. “Pickard” may have been, it still makes zero sense. Except for plot device.
And, regardless of whether Mr. P was an undergrad or a grad when Professor G knew him, it still makes no sense that he would have trouble understanding why Mr. P. would choose duty over chasing an untamed ornithoid. Unless the writers were just pulling rabbits out of places I’d rather not think about. Professor G was presumably teaching at a *Starfleet* academy of some sort (either SF Academy or SF Graduate Academy, or whatever), and his students like Mr. P were clearly destined for Starfleet careers. It therefore makes no sense whatsoever for Prof G. to be surprised or disappointed that Mr. P would choose career over chasing . . . whatever. IT’S EXPECTED OF THOSE ACADEMY STUDENTS. Unless . . . plot device.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m just nitpicking. I do think the *emotional* aspects of the relationship might be sound, but the logic of how it might have come to be just doesn’t hold up.
My nits are probably lost on most readers anyway who’ve never been academics or worked in academia, but if you’re a writer and prioritize doing background research, this aspect of the episode (which I otherwise like–I’d give it a 5 or maybe even a 6 myself) is a total hand wave and FAIL.
I dunno, after reading the comments to this thread I consider myself blessed I am not as interested in the pure science fiction plausibility of this episode, or whether this is necessary addition to the Trek oeuvre. The scene with the Klingon and Data was classic, and I was pleased to see that for once our heroes got the drop on the bad guys ahead of time. How many episodes where have we seen where dumbass Ferengi or some other incompetent boob has the Enterprise and its crew in the palm of their hands because of complete ineptitude by pretty much everyone involved. This time, they’re alert and definitely outmaneuver everyone, all the way to the very end when Picard and Crusher let the others squabble while they solve the mystery.
And if someone has noted before, the coda was a nice touch, with the Romulan thoughtfully expressing some hope that this new knowledge might someday, somehow bridge a gap between and among such disparate beings.
So yeah, I’ll take your word for it- the science here really sucked. Boo hiss. I enjoyed it- a hell of a lot more than most of this season.
@89/fullyfunctional: I still say that even the unlikely technobabble explanation for convergent humanoid evolution is much less scientifically absurd than just saying humanoids evolved everywhere by coincidence. And at least they avoided the usual stupidity of the trope of humans being seeded by ancient astronauts, by having the alien intervention be way back at the beginning of life on Earth so that it’s consistent with the fact of our close genetic relationship to the rest of Earthly life.
@90 CLB- and I do appreciate the thoughtful response, as well as the entire discussion. I have read through all 88 comments before mine and really enjoyed this comment thread. The episode itself I enjoyed because it was a fun little romp in the mad mad mad world style, with twists and double crosses and some hammy overacting. I like that sometimes as a change-of-pace. This is one of my favorites…
I feel like this was made up purely for the purposes of science fiction (i.e. to explain why the budget of the show only permits human like aliens) but a lot of people took it as a metaphor for something (Intelligent Design, Ancient Aliens, Evolutionary criticism) which it manifestly is not.
Which just goes to show you the only truism: “Sometimes an orc is just an orc.”
Whether you are willing to take my word for it that I know what I am talking about or not, my take is that C. Bennet is correct: convergent evolution is not a remotely adequate explanation for Star Trek humanoids that so closely resemble humans.
I can’t imagine a method for “guided” evolution that would work over billions of years, unless they left something around to kidnap random individuals and alter their DNA occasionally. However, this is a fictional universe and I am willing to give them some leeway. Given a choice between the explanation being (1) some unknown mechanism for guiding evolution via “space magic” and (2) “convergent evolution” I will take one every time all day long. The problem with 2 is that’s it’s so absurd that it amounts to no explanation at all.
There are certainly some extreme examples of gross morphological convergent evolution. However even in those cases, there are major details that allow the groups to very easily be distinguished. No-one would mistake an icthyosaur for a dolphin, or an ankylosaurid for a gylptodont. Even in those cases, we have taxa all descended from a common ancestor in the relatively recent past (Hylonomus lived about 315 million years ago and is probably very close to the common ancestor of all tetrapods). The idea that starting from bacteria you could get humanoids similar enough to look like humans in makeup is absolutely absurd. “Convergent evolution” is not an explanation at all, it’s complete ignorance comparative biology.
At least “ancient alien space magic” that guided evolution is in fact an explanation. At the periphery Star Trek has a lot of elements that are basically fantasy (e.g., the Q, the galactic barrier). I’m ok with any explanation that is logical and internally consistent.
PS: and apologies for the typo, by tetrapods I mean amniotes. Tetrapods includes amphibians, Hylonomus was one of the earliest amniotes (the group including all “reptiles”, mammals, and archosaurs including birds) we have found.
@93/Yeebo: I appreciate the backup.
Really, I think it’s conceivable that, in a galaxy with millions of planets inhabited by macroscopic life, it’s statistically possible that you could have a handful of species that bear an approximate resemblance to humans by chance alone. But the resemblance would probably not be so exact that they could pass for human if you saw them on the street, or that they could wear human clothes off the rack. And they’d be a tiny, tiny minority alongside countless species that could never possibly be portrayed by human actors in prosthetic makeup. You’d probably have to go halfway across the galaxy to find one, rather than running into a dozen or more within 20 light-years.
So the Klingons can destroy all life on a planet in 30 seconds with a Vor’cha-class Cruiser. It’s a scary universe Star Trek depicts sometimes.
@96: I commented before on how I found that scene/action taken very disturbing but Nu’Daq is just treated as comic relief the rest of the episode. I think the writers figure the destruction of the biosphere isn’t really all that bad since there is no “intelligent” life there.
@96/Thierafhal: You want scary? Any drunk driver in a shuttlecraft could cause a global mass extinction event by crashing into a planet at a high percentage of the speed of light. And you don’t need to send in an armada of warships to destroy a planet — just put engines on an asteroid, point it in the right direction, and wait a few months or years. Any technology that permits interstellar travel within a human lifetime also makes it disturbingly easy to destroy all life on a planet.
@98/CLB: Makes Star Wars and the Deathstar seem like overkill…
@99/Thierafhal: Well, that’s a fantasy universe, but even so, being overkill was literally the point of the Death Star. It was explicitly built as a weapon of terror, so excessively destructive as to crush any hope of defiance. Like nuclear weapons in the Cold War. At the peak of the Cold War, the US and USSR had something like ten times as many nuclear weapons as it would take to exterminate all life on Earth. There was no practical military need for that much overkill; it was mainly a deterrent, a threat so preposterously excessive that nobody would dare risk bringing it down. Also a way to keep the money pouring into the military-industrial complex and the politicians in its pocket, and probably a large degree of just macho “mine’s bigger” psychology on the part of the national leaders. All of which probably applies to the Death Star as well.
In modern Star Trek, the story of this episode would fill a full season and the crew would almost die at least once in every single episode of it – and during almost dying, spend 10 minutes with crying of course while making highly motivational speeches.
I like the character work, from Picard and Galen at the start to the low-key Romulan, enough to…well… maybe not forgive the episode its faults, necessarily, but abide them.
Not to bump a very old comment thread, but I just rewatched this episode for the first time in years and then read this review, and this portion jumped out at me:
”Worf fires on the Yridian ship, destroying it with one shot. It’s never explained how that happened, as Worf himself expresses confusion over it, and then the whole thing is forgotten.”
When the Romulans show up they say they had been shadowing the Yridian ship, I took that as an implication they they destroyed the Yridian ship to eliminate them from the chase and timed their shot with the Enterprise’s phaser blast to keep their presence secret. Am I reading into something that’s not there?
@103/Brian: Interesting theory, but how could the Romulans have known that the Enterprise was going to fire on the Yridian ship? I mean they literally would’ve had to have someone’s finger on the trigger ready to fire in a split second just in case that’s what the Enterprise decided to do.