The Final Frontier 8/Final Frontier 8 (Disk 3 of 4).adf/LCARS/TextFile/BBS/Tim_Lynch_Genesis.pp/Tim_Lynch_Genesis

Text File | 1994-09-06 | 16.1 KB | 320 lines

TF01
3,Genesis - Review
4,by Tim Lynch

             Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Genesis"
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                        Reviewed by Tim Lynch
                       -----------------------

Tim Lynch is one of the  more  well-known  names on the 'net, writing
his never ending series of reviews  of  TNG  and DS9 episodes as they
air in the states. Here's one of them...

                 ----------------------------------

WARNING: This post contains  lots  of  spoiler  information for TNG's
         "Genesis".  If  you   don't   want   early   access  to  the
         information, hold off.

Ugggggggh.  What were they *thinking*?

Or, perhaps, "WERE they thinking?" is a better question.  Regardless,
this is probably an  episode  that  should  never  have been made, at
least in its current form.  More after a synopsis:

In sickbay, Riker is being  tended for a... romance-induced encounter
with a cactus, Barclay is being treated for an illness that is mostly
in his imagination, and  Data  brings  in  a  very  pregnant Spot for
prenatal care (given by  Ogawa,  who  is  *also*  pregnant as of very
recently!).  Bev finds that Barclay has Urodinan flu, and injects him
with a synthetic  T-cell  to  activate  his  dormant  immunity to the
virus.

When a field-test of upgraded photon  torpedoes goes awry, Picard and
Data take a shuttle to  retrieve  the  torpedo (the Enterprise cannot
chase the torpedo down itself,  as  the surrounding asteroid field is
too dense). Shortly after  their  departure,  however, strange things
begin happening.  Worf takes the setback with the torpedo very badly,
becoming snappish, coarse,  and  primitive;  Troi  begins complaining
about  the  ship  being  too   hot   and  too  dry;  Barclay  becomes
hyperactive, willing to do anything except  rest; and Riker begins to
have more and more difficulty concentrating or thinking.

Things begin to come  to  a  head  when  Troi,  taking  a bath in her
quarters, is surprised to see a  very  primal Worf come in.  He tells
her simply that he needed to be near  her -- and then *bites* her, on
the neck, hard enough to  draw  blood.   Later, in sickbay, Bev finds
that Troi's body temperature is way down, and that she's not the only
one.  Worse yet, however, Worf is no longer speaking to anyone -- and
when she finds something on his neck  that appears to be a venom sac,
he spits venom in her  face  and  escapes.   A short time later, Worf
still hasn't  been  found,  Bev's  in  stasis  pending reconstructive
surgery, and Riker is  virtually  unable  to  function.  He defers to
Geordi's judgement about  a  security  alert,  but  when  he tries to
contact Starfleet  to  let  them  know  what's  happening,  he  can't
remember the code for a secured channel...

Days later, Picard and Data return  to find the Enterprise adrift and
without power.  They  manage  to  enter  the  shuttle  bay  and begin
exploring.  After hearing a number  of animal-like noises and finding
what appears to be a layer  of  skin  someone shed, they reach Troi's
quarters.  Entering, they  find  Troi  in  the  bathtub -- completely
submerged, and with gills  as  well  as  lungs.  Data's scans suggest
that her genetic codes are being rewritten  on the spot, and that she
has mutated -- in effect, she is now amphibian rather than human.

Moving on, they reach the  bridge  only  to  find all personnel there
dead, ripped apart as  if  by  a  wild  animal.   Data manages to get
enough power to read out life signs, and finds that everyone on board
is changing just as Troi  has  done.   He  and Picard suddenly hear a
thump and a growl in  the  ready  room, and enter cautiously.  There,
they find Riker there watching the fish-tank -- but Riker now appears
rather primitive himself, much  like  a  Neanderthal man.  He attacks
Picard, only to be stunned unconscious by Data.

Further research on  both  Riker  and  Troi  reveals  that, in Data's
words, "the crew is  de-evolving."   A  synthetic  T-cell is invading
everyone's genetic makeup and activating their introns, the effect of
which is to  mutate  them  into  earlier  evolutionary states.  Every
humanoid should be affected -- and  since coming on board, Picard has
now become infected as  well,  doomed  to  de-evolve  into a lemur in
short order.  They decide to  adjourn  to  Data's quarters, where his
independent computer might be able to help them search for a cure.

There, they find that Spot has  also de-evolved (into an iguana), but
Spot's day-old  kittens  have  *not*  been  affected.   They  quickly
theorize that the natural antibodies  in  Spot's amniotic fluid might
be the  cause,  and  suggest  that  amniotic  fluid  from  a pregnant
humanoid (i.e. Ogawa) might  prove  an  effective  basis  for a cure.
They decide to get Ogawa from the  arboretum, but are first forced to
stop in Engineering to fix a plasma conduit.

After the stop in Engineering (where they encounter Barclay, now well
into his transformation into a  spider),  the pair retrieve Ogawa and
find that her amniotic fluid  does,  in  fact, contain the antibodies
they need.  Just  as  they  begin  creating  a  retrovirus  of sorts,
however, there is a strong pounding at  the door -- and scans suggest
that it's a horribly mutated, and horribly strong, Worf.

They realize that Worf's likely  reason  for  coming to sickbay is to
find Troi, Worf's perceived mate  (hence  the earlier bite), and that
they must lure him away if Data's  research can be successful.  As he
works, Picard takes an extraction of Troi's pheromones and lures Worf
away with them.   Trapped  in  a  Jeffries  tube,  however, Picard is
forced to electrify the tube  to  stun  Worf.  Data then releases the
cure in gaseous  form,  and  eventually  everything  and  everyone is
returned to normal, leaving Barclay (whose cellular structure created
the mutated T-cell in the  first  place)  with  a disease named after
him.

                             ----------

Well, that's that.  Don't worry if  it  didn't  make sense -- it's an
accurate summary, I'm sad to say.  Now, some commentary.

Yaaaaaaa.

Now, some more involved commentary.  :-)

I hardly know where to begin.  TNG  has had plenty of shows that have
turned me off (particularly  this  season;  I  don't know what's been
happening, but I hope it doesn't  bode  ill for the finale and film),
but "Genesis" is the first one this  season  that seemed to go out of
its way to make me wince, and wince on an almost constant basis.

And, just for those who are worried  at this turning into a repeat of
my review of last year's "The Chase", only  some of it has to do with
the science (which was absolutely godawful,  but the sort of godawful
where all you can do is laugh  hysterically to keep from pitching the
television out a window, not  get  up  in arms).  Science aside, "The
Chase" was a decent show.   To  put  it  mildly... "Genesis" wasn't a
good show on much of any level.

There was basically *no* internal logic  to  this show at all.  Okay,
so Barclay is the carrier  for  this  "virus"  (which it's not, but I
said I'd keep science out of it  for now), which must have been first
activated in sickbay. Given that, it would seem that the people first
affected after Barclay would be those  either in sickbay or those who
work with Barclay a lot (i.e. those in engineering).

Is that what we got?  No.  Bev  isn't affected at *all*, and Ogawa is
affected very little, at least until we've seen the "days later" part
of the show.  As for Geordi,  we  never  get  to see what he's turned
into -- no doubt because  there's  nothing the producers could safely
"de-evolve" the sole black character on the show into without opening
themselves up for brickbats across  the  country.  No, the two people
affected most strongly and most quickly are Worf and Troi, two of the
people who are _least_  likely  to  have  had  extensive contact with
Barclay or sickbay in  that  twelve  to  twenty-four hour period. The
pattern of infection  was  less  organized  than  the average ten-car
pileup on any LA freeway.

Then, there's the fact  that  main  power  is  lost because "the main
power grid has been  completely  destroyed".   Fine.   If so, though,
it's extremely tough to believe that  (1)  it  can be restored in any
reasonable form without major  repairs  at  a  starbase, and (2) that
these rapidly devolving wild  animals  were  able  to destroy all the
systems without either  blowing  up  the  ship  or  knocking out life
support.  Awfully smart animals, there.  (Until  I heard that line, I
thought it likely that perhaps one of the last crewmembers with their
wits about them ordered an emergency  shutdown of everything in order
to keep things intact.)

Other problems:

-- Um, Bev?  If you've realized  Worf  has  a venom sac, maybe asking
   him to open his mouth  when  you're  right  in  front  of him is a
   *really* dumb idea.

-- The torpedo was an  awfully  convenient  excuse  to get Picard and
   Data off the ship.  Okay, the power fluctuation might have made it
   go off course, but combine that with the very convenient "it's not
   accepting an abort  command"  with  the  also  convenient  *with a
   different cause* "the  Enterprise  can't  go  get  it  because the
   asteroids are too plentiful"  and  you  have  something that yells
   "let's go get the plot device underway".  Ugh.

-- Despite the fact that  Picard  and  Data  had  major problems with
   Riker, and that many of  the  creatures  in the arboretum probably
   were in a state similar  to  his,  the  two  of them manage to get
   Ogawa with precisely zero fuss.  That's stretching plausibility as
   well, and that's one that's trivial  to  fix (i.e. don't say she's
   there in the first place!).

So much for the plot.  However, I didn't feel that any element really
managed to draw me in,  plot  aside.   Barclay  was, as usual, fairly
entertaining to watch when  we  got  to  see  him,  and Ogawa had her
moments (including one excellently subtle movement, the final time we
see her before Picard and Ogawa  return:   when she gets up to leave,
she braces herself on her knuckles. Nice foreshadowing.).  However, I
really felt that not a  single  one  of the regulars was particularly
into the show here.  Stewart did a  decent  job with what he had, but
"decent" is a step down for  him.   As  for everyone else... the less
said, the better, particularly Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn. Sigh.

(I'd also like to note that  after  the huge buildup for how menacing
Worf must have been after his transformation, we never, *ever*, got a
good look at him. Given how  unimpressed  I  was with the rest of the
transformations, I'm not exactly  shedding  tears,  but it seems like
pretty teasing behavior on the part of whoever made that decision.)

Then, we come to the science.   I'll  start by saying that everyone I
know reacted to the show in one of two ways:

1) laughing hysterically at  virtually  every  line, particularly the
   alleged explanations of what was happening;

or

2) sitting there, wide-eyed and  virtually  open-mouthed, in shock at
   just how badly any  and  all  attempts  at explanations were being
   abused.

Everyone.  Even  my  seventh-grade  students  who  are  regular  Trek
watchers came to me saying "oh, come ON" after "Genesis" aired.  That
should say something.

Not being a biologist myself,  and  not  being  able to get reactions
beyond "oh, no, I want my  mommy"  out  of Lisa after she'd seen this
show :-), I'll keep  my  science-related statements relatively brief.
Others can handle the heavy lifting here.

First of all, the idea that  immediately  changing DNA can change you
into something else is simply wrong.  If my cells start mutating into
those similar to cows, I'm not going to start mooing (or appearing in
Gary Larson cartoons) -- I  am  going  to  *DIE*.  When my cells stop
producing those things crucial to my survival, I will quit surviving.
Period.  DNA is not  magic.  The  idea  of  DNA changes causing weird
offspring... now that you might  be  able  to  get  away with; but it
cannot change the individual that is already formed.

Second, the idea that the  kittens  might  have initially been spared
the virus due to protection in the womb is fine -- but the insistence
that therefore amniotic  fluid  carried  natural  antibodies is dumb.
Think about it, folks: if  the  fluid  had those antibodies, it would
mean that the mother (i.e. Spot-the-Iguana,  the newest game from the
creators of "Where's  Waldo?")  would  also  have  them  and  thus be
immune.  Somehow, that doesn't seem  to  have  been the case.  Or, if
you'd rather look at it another way, the fact that you were protected
from getting measles while you  were  a  fetus doesn't mean you don't
need inoculations after you're born.   Wrong,  and wrong in ways that
aren't technical.

Third, those kittens were  hardly  a  day  old.   That's not really a
science goof, but as a cat lover and cat owner I felt it necessary to
point out.

Those are the basic,  absurd-even-to-the-layman  objections that make
"Genesis" pretty weak on the plausibility  scale.  There are at least
a good dozen objections to wording that  could be made (such as Bev's
note that Barclay has  high  "electrophoretic  activity", which makes
about as much sense as telling him  he needs a new carburetor, or the
idea that DNA can have cells *in*  it),  but I'll leave those for the
biologists.

The one major absurdity that's  more  technical  was that of introns.
Yes, they're evolutionary holdovers and  currently serve no function.
However, that also means they're not selected for or against in terms
of evolutionary mutations.  (In  fact,  I'm  told  that's  one of the
reasons theorized for their existence:   they might be "junk strings"
that can be mutated without endangering  the animal.)  One thing that
means is that, even if you  could  "activate" the introns and somehow
have it create a change,  there's  not  going to be anything coherent
left after  millions  of  years.   There  won't  be  enough  concrete
sections left to cause a change *into* anything.

In a nutshell, then, "Genesis" took a godawfully implausible plot and
turned it into  a  disorganized  mishmash  of  an  episode.  The only
_attempted_ justification was on the  scientific side of the episode,
and it failed miserably.

"Genesis" isn't the worst thing TNG has  ever done -- but it's close.
It's just shy of my bottom-five  list (though based on her reactions,
I think  it  *is*  on  Lisa's,  in  case  you're  curious),  and it's
definitely the worst  thing  I've  seen  from  a  generally worrisome
season anyway.  If this is going to be typical of "Voyager", count me
out.

So, some shorter takes:

-- "De-evolving?"  Yeesh.   There's  already  a  word  for  what  was
   happening here (aside  from  implausible):   "devolving".   But, I
   suppose we needed the extra  syllable,  just  so  it would be Even
   More Obvious what was happening.

-- One of the things that saves  this  show from an even lower rating
   than it gets is Barclay's scene  with  Spot.  Bravo!  I knew there
   was a reason I liked him.  :-)

-- It is painfully obvious that this  is  another show that will have
   no ramifications whatsoever.  Bev was hit point-blank by some very
   corrosive venom, yet  apparently  reconstructive  surgery has left
   her  perfect  as  ever.  And,  of  course,  the  families  of  the
   crewmembers who were killed  won't  ever  blame  Bev's mistake for
   their relatives' death.  Bah.

-- I trust I wasn't the only one  inserting the line "fire BAD!" into
   Riker's dialogue once he started changing.  :-)

-- The final line of the show was  also  a help.  "I think I'd better
   clear my calendar for the next few weeks," indeed.

So, to wrap up:

Plot:  Implausible on the one hand, disorganized on the other.
Plot Handling: Gates had a few  nice  shots,  but  this was the wrong
               show to give to her as  a  debut.  I'm not sure anyone
               could have saved it.
Characterization: Sure...  growling   and   whining   are   wonderful
                  characterization.  Forget it  --  Barclay, yes, but
                  that's about it.

OVERALL:  2.  Extremely bad -- unless you're a completist, avoid it.



Copyright 1994, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free
to ask...