“Genesis”
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Gates McFadden
Season 7, Episode 19
Production episode 40276-271
Original air date: March 21, 1994
Stardate: 47653.2
Captain’s Log: We open in sickbay. Ogawa is removing cactus needles from Riker’s back (a date in the arboretum gone horribly wrong) while Barclay is being the world’s worst patient. (At one point, Crusher tartly reminds Barclay that he promised not to look up things on WebMD, er, that is, Starfleet’s medical database before seeing her.) Barclay has a flu that his immune system’s having trouble with due to a dormant T-cell, so Crusher gives him an artificial T-cell to help fight it off. Data comes in with Spot, who is very pregnant—and Ogawa announces to Crusher and Data that she is also with child. (She already told Powell, the father.)
The Enterprise recently upgraded their tactical systems, and Worf is running tests on them. One of the new torpedoes misses its target and veers off into a dense asteroid field. They can’t go in after it with the big, glunky Enterprise, so Picard and Data take a shuttle to retrieve it. Since this might take a few days, Data leaves Spot with Barclay in case the cat gives birth. Barclay is the only person on the ship besides Data whom Spot likes.
Worf starts behaving irritably and crudely, even more so than usual, while Troi, who joins him for lunch, is very thirsty and in the mood for salty food. Worf tries to get some rest, but he can only sleep on the floor on the ripped-out stuffing of his bed.
In engineering, Barclay is moving and talking a mile a minute while Riker is getting forgetful and La Forge is getting tired very quickly. On the bridge, Troi is freezing cold and raises the temperature and humidity both. She runs to her quarters to run a bath, and doesn’t even bother to undress before climbing in. Worf—whose hair is coming out of its ponytail—comes after her and declares that he must be near her, going so far as to bite her. They both report to sickbay, where Troi just gets colder and colder (and thirstier), and Worf has gone nonverbal—but when he does open his mouth, he sprays acid onto Crusher’s face. Ogawa has to put the doctor in stasis before the venom paralyzes her. Worf escapes, and they can’t find him, but he’s spewing acid all over the ship, which is damaging several systems. Riker’s attempt to alert Starfleet Command fails due to his inability to remember his access code.
A couple of days later, Picard and Data return with the errant torpedo. The Enterprise is two light-years away from their intended position and adrift. Life signs are indeterminate. They dock the shuttle manually and discover that main power is offline. As they travel the darkened corridors of the ship, they hear animal noises. They find reptilian skin that has been shedded during molting—but it’s human shaped. They investigate Troi’s quarters, which are hot and humid, and they find her face down in her bath. Data’s scan determines that she’s turning into an amphibian—and she’s also been bitten by a Klingon.
When they reach the bridge, they find only the body of Ensign Dern at conn, who has been ripped apart by something with claws. Data finds 1011 life forms on board, all exhibiting the same DNA flux as Troi. They also find a Neanderthal Riker in the ready room, whom Data is forced to stun. Data’s examination of Riker’s DNA shows a synthetic T-cell that is rewriting the crew’s DNA—and Picard has been infected as well.
Since the ship’s computer is damaged, they go to Data’s quarters, where he has a computer with an independent power source. They find Spot, transformed into a lizard—but she has also given birth to perfectly normal kittens. It’s possible that amniotic fluid or something else in the placenta that provides immunity to a fetus also holds the key to stopping the virus. So they need to find a pregnant crew member, which they happen to have one of in Ogawa.
Before they can locate her, though, they need to fix the ship—a warp nacelle has malfunctioned. They go to engineering, where Barclay has transformed into an arachnid and covered engineering in webbing. Once that’s done, they locate Ogawa, who has turned into a simian, but whose embryo is unaffected. Data thinks he can use her amniotic fluid to synthesize a retrovirus. However, Worf—who is a massive proto-Klingon with an exoskeleton—is trying to break into sickbay to get at Troi. Picard distracts him by spraying amplified Troi-funk in the air to lure Worf away while Data works on the retrovirus. (I was going to add that you can’t make this up, but somebody actually did….)
Picard—who is transforming into a marmoset or lemur or some other itty bitty primate and who is therefore scared of pretty much everything—leads Worf on a merry chase through corridors and Jefferies tubes while Data works on the retrovirus.
Once everyone’s restored (except for poor Ensign Dern, whose death has been completely forgotten once Picard and Data leave the bridge), Crusher explains that Barclay has an anomalous genetic something-or-other that mutated the artificial T-cell into this virus. I just hate when that happens….
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: Apparently, introns contain the DNA sequence of life forms that are utterly unrelated genetically to humans. Go fig’.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi is transformed into an amphibian, which can possibly be explained by her Betazoid heritage (which goes strangely unmentioned, with Data going so far as to say she’s no longer human, when she was never entirely human anyhow).
If I Only Had a Brain…: Once again, the Enterprise would be doomed without an artificial life form on board, as Data is immune to the T-cell virus and is able to save the day by, basically, doing everything. (Okay, Picard gets to distract Worf, but aside from that…)
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf is the one we get to see transform in the most detailed manner, watching him bounce around his quarters like a crazed chimp, and then turning into a massive, nasty creature who may or may not have been responsible for killing poor Ensign Dern.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Troi and Worf have apparently started dating, since the transformed Worf’s mating instincts are directed at her, and nobody is particularly surprised by this. Also, they were planning to have lunch together in Ten-Forward, a date for which Troi dressed in civilian clothes.
Ogawa’s sex life with Powell is pretty healthy, given that she’s pregnant. The same can be said for Spot, though Data does not yet know which of the seventeen male cats on board is the father of her litter.
Riker also had a date in the arboretum that was turning quite romantic up until the part where he rolled over into a cactus. Oopsie.
In the Driver’s Seat: Ensign Dern gets a couple lines of dialogue, and then gets to be the only crew member who doesn’t transform by virtue of being killed (by Riker? by Worf? by someone else?) before he can change.
I Believe I Said That: “He transformed into a spider, and now he’s had a disease named after him.”
“I think I’d better clear my calendar for the next few weeks.”
Crusher and Troi on Barclay.
Welcome Aboard: The only main guests are the recurring roles of Patti Yasutake as Ogawa and Dwight Schultz, making his final TNG appearance as Barclay, though he will show up in Star Trek: First Contact and half a dozen episodes of Voyager. Carlos Ferro gets to be an honest-to-goodness redshirt as Dern.
Trivial Matters: Ogawa now has the pips of a junior-grade lieutenant, following Crusher recommending her for promotion in “Lower Decks.” It’s unclear if she and Powell have gotten married yet. Not that it matters, but TNG in particular has been almost embarrassingly traditional in its portrayal of familial relationships, so to even hint at having a child out of wedlock, as it were, is depressingly radical.
Crusher tells Barclay that it’s tradition to name a disease after the first person suffering from it, which is a tradition that obviously won’t start until some time in the next four hundred years, because medical tradition up until now has been to name diseases after the discoverer, not the victim.
Barclay is transformed into a spider in this episode; in “Realm of Fear,” he comments to O’Brien that he never minded spiders, which is probably a good thing, considering. That episode also introduced Barclay’s hypochondria, which is on display here in spades.
With this episode, Gates McFadden became the first female cast member to go behind the camera in Trek history—though not the last. Most notably, Roxann Dawson (Voyager’s B’Elanna Torres) has become a top television director after helming a dozen episodes of Voyager and Enterprise. However, this is, to date, McFadden’s only directorial credit (which is too bad).
Make it So: “My capillaries are shrinking!” This episode is a lot like “Sub Rosa.” It tackles a subgenre that TNG didn’t really do that often (then it was Gothic, now it’s horror), it’s generally considered one of the show’s worst episodes, and what redeeming features it has are due entirely to Gates McFadden. In “Sub Rosa,” it was her performance; here, it’s her directing.
I’d love to see what she could’ve done with, y’know, a good script, but she does superlative work. This is a very well-directed little horror piece. She does an amazing job with lighting and camera work, as there are a lot of distinctive visuals here that add to the atmosphere: amphibious Troi in the bathtub, Neanderthal Riker peering over his left shoulder after chowing down on Picard’s fish, the jump-in-your-seat moment when spider-Barclay (does whatever a spider-Barclay can!) leaps against the glass scaring the crap out of both Picard and viewer, and the fact that we never really get a good look at proto-Klingon Worf, just shadowed hints that make him all the scarier.
Sadly, all of this fine work by McFadden is mostly lipstick on a pig. Calling this script dumber than a box of hammers is being horrendously unfair to encased construction tools everywhere. This is another example of Brannon Braga’s love-hate relationship with evolutionary biology that we saw in “Identity Crisis” and will see again in Voyager’s “Threshold.” Introns don’t do what the script says they do, evolution doesn’t work the way the script says it does, and there’s no way that a “de-evolving virus” could possibly turn a person into a spider or a marmoset. (If it was really a “de-evolving virus,” all the humans would look like Riker or Ogawa.) This is a story that definitely puts the “fiction” in “science fiction,” ’cause there sure as heck ain’t no science here.
(This episode also continues with TNG’s recurring theme of “don’t leave Riker in charge of the Enterprise,” since that leads to things like the chief engineer being kidnapped by doofuses, the ship being taken over by a handful of Ferengi in two clapped-out Birds of Prey, utterly failing to rescue Picard and leading to Paul Winfield’s cool character getting killed, and now this. Though we should give him credit for rescuing Picard from the Borg…)
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido (who will be at Lunacon 56 this weekend) has two new books out, neither of which are actually SF/F: the novel Leverage: The Zoo Job, based on the TV series about criminals who help people, and the baseball book In the Dugout: Yankees 2013, which he co-edited with Cecilia M. Tan, all about New York’s American League baseball team.
Im sorry to all who disagree but i LOVE this episode. Genesis is up there as my most watched Trek episodes. I cant really explain my devotion to this episode beyond pure enjoyment every time i watch it.
I dont care that the science is looney. It’s great fun and to this day my mom and i joke about de evolving. Because it would really suck to de evolve as this episode lets us know.
Now perhaps i just tie this episode into my childhood- i grew up watching TNG on VHS in the late 90’s but regardless as to why i just have to defend Genesis.
Ah, Genesis. Perhaps the greatest guilty pleasure from TNG. Sure, it is dumb like you said, but it’s a very fun kind of dumb. And first seeing this as a 9-year-old horror fan, I can honestly tell you the creeptastic Worf Predator and Spidey Broccoli scared the living introns out of me–the only time Trek has managed to do that. Fond memories for sure.
I give it 5 grunts and a growl.
Oddly enough, I remember loving this episode when I first saw it. I mean, the genetic DNA drift thing never made any sense, but I had a great time watching it. I think that still holds true. Perhaps in a “popcorn movie” kind of way. Clearly not the best, but definitely fun. Then again, I put the “Drumhead” up there with the top 10 STTNG episodes ever, so some disagreement is allowed. I would have said a 5.
I was all set to make the point about why does everyone de-evolve into some other lifeform- shouldn’t all the members of the same species devolve into the same thing? Unfortunately Keith, you made it in your second to last paragraph. You get the impression though, that proto-Klingon’s were pretty bad ass, although it would be a very interesting choice if they had turned out to be pretty sedate and only later evolved into Klingons.
This goes into the pile of season 7 half baked ideas. “What if Lore lead the Borg?” “What if we do an environmental episode?” “What if we do a ghost story?” “What if Data had a mother?” It seemed like season 7 was just throwing things at a wall and seeing what stuck rather than building up to some really awesome end of show. There’s probably some way you could have done this episode (say an away team on a shuttle gets injected with different DNA which overwrites their own so its only a few people infected, not 1100) but this wasn’t it. And to go with the Deus Ex Machina ending– Data saves the ship again! was just redundant and lazy.
It was dumb. it was fun. It was dumb fun, and I don’t think it was ever meant to be anything else. Somebody hand me the popcorn.
I think everyone who saw this episode first between the ages of 6 and 12 must love it, in a creepy crawly oogie boogie way :-) I had extremely dim memories of seeing this in my childhood; many years later, engaging in a full TNG watch with an ex, I eagerly awaited this episode popping up. I almost gave up hope, not realizing how close to the end it was, but when it finally appeared, I was terrified and enthralled :-) Knowing that Gates McFadden directed it makes it all the better.
I’m in agreement with the other commenters in giving it a higher number. The science is bad, but after accepting the premise, the rest of the show is pretty good.
I experienced genuine dread when Ryker was standing there trying to remember the access codes and was pleased when Picard was showing real courage by fighting against his new instincts as he lured Worf away.
Mike,
Didn’t they go to the away-team-gets-their-DNA-overwritten well in Indentity Crisis?
I would rather watch this episode dozens of times in a row over a single viewing of Sub Rosa.
I have to agree that this episode may have worked better for the younger audience of TNG. It certainly did for me at 19 or so. I remember loving the creep-out factor. It doesn’t hold up so well now, true. The story isn’t that bad as long as you don’t scratch the surface too deeply. Who performed the reconstructive surgery that Crusher needed? Did the lizard Spot produce milk to keep those (in no way newborn) kittens alive? Is Deanna now completely human?
(I did have the stray thought that it would have been interesting to see what Dr. Selar turned into. We know of so few animals indigenous to Vulcan.)
Oh, and Keith, I believe Data identified Riker as Australopithecine, rather than Neanderthal. Nit-picky, I know, but… SCIENCE!
Count me as one of those who thought this was one of the low points of the series. Partially because the science was beyond horendously wrong, but also because there was no tension. Data was going to figure it out and the only question was whether he was going to get to punch out Worf or just outmaneuver him.
I didn’t see this as a kid during the first airing–I remember seeing the preview for it and FREAKING THE FRELL OUT when I saw a glimpse of Spider-Barclay (who as a kid I liked a lot). Spiders are right up there centipedes in my book and deserve to be given their own land far far away from me.
That said–why did Worf spew acid? Is that like meant to be something proto-Klingons DID once upon a time? Is that sort of thing you outgrow as you evolve? Are we sure they didn’t accidentally borrow an Alien from the Aliens set?
I always thought that Crusher purposefully lied about naming the disease just to yank Barclay’s chain, purely out of frustration (both Crusher’s and McFadden’s). However, count me among those who can re-watch this one and thoroughly enjoy it.
I agree this episode is dumber than a box of rocks but it is fun. I don’t find it scary but I was in college by season 7 . I just followed along with the weirdness and didn’t think about it too hard.
It always bothered me that one of the crew members died because of all of this, but they end the episode with chuckles about the incident.
I tend to be philosophical about this episode. I figure the idea behind it was “Let’s give Michael Westmore a chance to really show off.” It was basically an exercise in makeup transformations, kinda like an episode of Face Off. Everything else about it was really just in service to that.
@9: You’re right, he said Australopithecine, which has always annoyed me, because they were child-sized herbivores, not fierce, hulking brutes like Riker was portrayed. Maybe Gigantopithecus would’ve been a better choice.
I can’t stand the horror genre, and the science in this one is… atrocious. So yeah, this is one of the episodes I won’t watch again.
I’m not one of this episode’s defenders — I recall that my girlfriend at the time was a biology major, and she was scathing in her hatred of it. However, I think that “low point of the series” is going a bit far, and perhaps it suffers from being associated with “Threshhold,” which really does set the bar for poor science episodes.
The one thing I really want to know, though — why wasn’t Spot spayed? I suppose it’s possible that Data didn’t quite understand the importance, since he didn’t seem to know his cat’s gender. Or there’s the classic “Spot is a shapeshifter” argument that has plenty of evidence for it throughout the series. Those aside, it would seem to me that pet population control would be of major importance on a starship that allows pets, and Data really should have been more responsible.
Stone me, I liked it. I always liked it, because Braga is my favorite script writer. To hell with Trek science, it is technobabble anyway. Great horror story and Barclay, Barclay, Braclay….
If there were an award for most deeply stupid TNG episode, this one would be the winner.
At least, as far as I can recall the competition from some 175 shows and some of the films at this remove. Though there is the one with the ‘railroad workers’ and the Enterprise becoming sentient somewhere in this season, isn’t there?
From 15: ChristopherLBennett
“…kinda like an episode of Face Off.”
So this is where reality TV started…
Another reason not to like this episode. :)
When he wrote Crusher’s line about naming a disease after the first patient, Braga probably had in mind illnesses like Lou Gherig’s Disease (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and Legionaires Diseease (Legionellosis), both of which have common names derived if not from patient zero, then the most widely known victims.
The story leaves a lot to be desired, but there were some good moments in the protrayals, as has been noted.
I’m also a little curious as to how Riker got all his memories back if his brain shrunk by 20%.
On the “introns” point: to be fair, we’ve learned a lot about the non-coding regions of our DNA in the past twenty years (though we still have a long way to go) making this perhaps seem more absurd now than it did at the time. I think the idea that introns represented “leftover” DNA from our early ancestors was not too far fetched back when this episode was written. Barclay turning into a spider, though, there’s no defense for that.
@14,
Yeah, I noticed that too. There were a number of Next Gen episodes that were pretty bad about remembering the Red Shirts killed along the way.
Slightly off-topic, but: if we’re listing Riker command disasters, we must include crashing the Enterprise D in Generations and getting the E shot up in Insurrection.
Just have to say, when I watched this for the first time as a 13-year-old Trek fan, it was AWESOME. I know the science is completely looney…heck, I probably knew it even at the time…but I still have a soft spot in my heart for this ep. Nostalgia factor, if anything. :-D
Apparently this episode is a lot like “The Royale,” which is to say critically panned but secretly loved by most viewers. Count me among those who really like this episode despite the fact that it is, indeed, wildly dumb. For an episode with this much fun factor, and which is phenomenally well executed, I think it’s unfair to attack it on the grounds that the science is all wrong. The science is often wrong on Trek (and in loads of other sci-fi). But the story is one of the most memorable in the whole Trek canon.
I always loved this episode. And it seems that the majority of the commentors feel the same way. If you were to judge all of TNG based on the “science” almost all of them would fail. This was just plain fun. And I always rewatch it hoping to get a better look at proto-Worf. I love me some proto-Klingons!
Come on, forgetting redshirts has been a Trek tradition since at least “…And The Children Shall Lead”.
@28- it’s a joke in TOS, but I tend to hold TNG to a higher standard. And this death is different. Worf killed him, someone I’d think he knew pretty well since he was another bridge officer. Shouldn’t this one have an effect on them? It just really rubbed me the wrong way.
First, I will say a few good things: they did a good job setting the tone. It’s definitely scary and creepy. The costumes and makeup are also really good. Oh, and yay Spot!!! Barclay is pretty adorkable, too. When he’s not a spider.
That being said, I have been waiting a long time for this.
I HAAAAAAAATE this episode! Even more than Q-Pid! THIS is my Sub-Rosa. Way back when I started the re-watch and was watching people make comments about Sub Rosa, all I could think was, ‘It can’t be worse than Genesis’. Genesis was actually one of the first Star Trek episodes I ever saw too, and I think my first Barclay episode. Before I was very familiar with Star Trek I always thought it was closer to the hard side of the hard/soft sci fi scale – now, I know that really isn’t the case, even with their astrophysics but THIS is the episode that roughly disabused me of that notion! I know it is a little hypocritical of me to get so up in arms about it because Star Trek seems to play fast and loose with a lot of kinds of science. But before I left grad school and got my current job, I was on a PhD track in microbiology, specifically focusing on genomics. So this kind of thing was my life.
I mean, as soon as I heard the dreaded phrase ‘the T-cells in your DNA’ I just…lost it ;) Anyway, I will save you all the rant on the true nature of introns, evolution, the phylogenetic history of humans, the differences between phenotypes/genotypes and gene expression. UGH UGH UGH. And where did the rest of Riker’s brain go, and how does his reverting back to ‘human’ bring back the changes wrought by experience? Almost every part of this episode grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard, making it pretty impossible for me to enjoy it objectively.
Also, moment of silence for Ensign Dern :(
Ahh, that felt good, I’ve been waiting for a long time for that :)
Edited to add – I will say that, on rewatch, I did enjoy it quite a bit more, simply because I knew to just ignore the science and just focus on the creepy horror aspects. But I still feel obligated to say I hate it! My inner biologist just won’t let it pass!
@23: I believe you’re right about introns — I think the idea that they were leftover bits of DNA from earlier in our evolution was a leading hypothesis at the time. According to the TNG Companion, in fact, Braga had the “devolving” idea as far back as season 4, but Berman wouldn’t go for it until they figured out a “plausible” scientific explanation for it!
One of the ultimate “X DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY” episodes, but I still love the atmosphere, the staging, and the makeup effects. “Guilty pleasure” is pretty apt for this one.
This one seems like an episode where TNG finally had a decent budget for effects, but had run out of ideas for scripts. It was memorable, though. When I read recently about the newer theories on what they used to call “junk DNA,” my first thought was “maybe Barclay won’t turn into a spider after all.”
This is the episode that puts the ‘oo’ in ‘stoopid’. Greatest contribution to scientific ignorance made by a TNG episode.
Btw, you know the ep where the guy can only talk in literary allusions? That is to linguistics what this is to evolutionary biology.
I forgot to mention that my favorite part is when Riker turns around and drags his finger across the glass, so it looks like he’s flicking off the captain.
“it’s generally considered one of the show’s worst episodes”
According to you maybe. It’s one of my favorites.
It may be awful, but it did lead to a reviewer saying
which I am totally going to steal.
@33: “Finally had a decent budget for effects?” On the contrary — from the start, TNG had a very high budget for television and employed state-of-the-art visual and makeup effects by the standards of its day. Paramount recognized that Star Trek was their most profitable franchise — they called it their “crown jewel” — and thus made TNG as classy and prestigious a production as they could. If its earlier effects look crude compared to later seasons, that’s only because the state of the art for television VFX advanced so much during its run. Other TV shows from the same era have considerably less sophisticated effects. (I recently rewatched season 1 of War of the Worlds: The Series, which premiered a year after TNG, was part of the same Paramount syndication package, and was produced by veterans of TNG’s first season, and it was astonishing how cheap and inept its visual effects looked compared to TNG’s.)
And the show’s makeup effects were always top-notch, except for some early growing pains with old-age makeup in “Encounter at Farpoint” and “Too Short a Season.” I’m not sure why you’d think Westmore’s department was budgetarily shortchanged before this. If it’s because we rarely saw such elaborate creature makeups, that was more a function of the producers’ preference for alien characters to have identifiably humanlike attributes for the most part.
Ah the Riker left-in-command record. Don’t forget: Getting kidnapped on an away mission [Gambit pt.1] after spending three seasons lecturing Picard on where the Captain’s responsibility lies; Getting bushwacked on a rescue mission [Timescape] and let’s not start on the: Show a clean pair of nacelles to the enemy whilst retreating & intermittently firing tactic, brilliantly executed in Generations.
He gets a pass for an act of outright treason (well one not also endorsed by Picard), as that was his alternative reality self [Parallels]. And along with the Borg rescue he did have the solution, on his lonesome, to saving the ship in Cause and Effect, although it took everyone else 17 groundhog days to catch up – which seems fair enough as I’d take Data’s advice anyday over Will’s record! :)
@39: What’s the act of treason in “Parallels”?
@40 The alternative Captain Riker in command of the Enterprise from the successful borg invasion reality, opened fire on Worf’s shuttle to avoid being sent back, when they attempted to restore the leaking realities. Opening fire on a fellow fleet asset, conducting a legal mission is treasonous; although as I said he gets a pass as I’m sure even Starfleet JAG doesn’t have charge for prosecuting across alternative realities!
When I saw this episode for the first time (which was only a couple of years ago), the first thing I thought of when they were talking about T-cells was “Oh my god, it’s the Umbrella Corporation!!!!” With that bouncing around in my head, the rest of the episode was much more believable.
@41: Oh…THAT Riker! I was trying to rack my brain over all the non-crazy Rikers. Well, that’s a weird case anyways…the JAG doesn’t even exist in his own reality so I doubt anything would happen to him back in his universe.
Spider-barclay scared me the first time i saw it when i was 7.i wish they had showed a few crewmembers cocooned in engineering it would been cool
It was sort of stunning that more of the crew didn’t kill and eat each other. Ugh, and think of having to live with that after reverting back to normal.
“He transformed into a spider, and now he’s had a disease named after him.”
“I think I’d better clear my calendar for the next few weeks.”
Crusher and Troi on Barclay.
I would think the entire ship’s complement of 1011 would need some serious therapy after this incident, not just Barcley…
As I understand it, a good fraction of introns is thought to be leftover bits of retroviruses that infected our ancestors.
Maybe there were viruses at one time that infected many species and carried bits of DNA with them that got written into the germ line. Every human might have genes from many species, and it might have been down to chance which got activated in a particular individual.
There, not very plausible, but it probably brings it up to the rigour of many a Star Trek episode…
Besides the bad evolutionary biology, did anyone else why wonder why it’s the CAPTAIN and SECOND OFFICER who are flying off to retrieve a stray torpedo?
Nor’easter: That was actually addressed in the episode. Picard invoked captain’s privilege to go flying in a shuttle for a couple of days rather than stay and supervise tactical upgrades. Although the episode did not explain why Data was going along, since it would take several days in a shuttle chasing a torpedo through asteroids, having someone along who doesn’t require sleep would be handy.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad, I haven’t seen the episode in a while, so I must have forgotten that explanation. Thanks.
Gerry__Quinn, it’s at least as likely as the ridiculous retcons used to justify the crap in “Darmok.” But every dumbass thinks they know all about how language works.
I have to also disagree KRAD, this is one of my favourite episodes.
I didn’t notice Gates directed it though so thank you for pointing that out!
I dated someone who was living overseas when this episode first aired, and literally did not believe me when I described its premise. I had to play my VHS tape of “Genesis” just to prove it was real.
Having said that, I think the multiple references to “Darmok” in previous comments are a good example of how strict plausibility is less important than a well-told story.
This is a horrible episode I will never watch again (and have only watched it once, way back when). I can understand enjoying an episode even if the science is horrible, but this one violates every aspect of how evolution works, including the “everything eventually evolves into humanoids” nonsense as if our form is some preferred “design” or something. (OMG, did I use the word “design”? Cringe.)
@54: At least “The Chase” gave a reason why humanoids are so common. Whatever the plausibility problems of the idea from a genetic and evolutionary standpoint, at least it made it clear that the humanoid form is not automatically preferred by evolution, but is favored in the Trek universe due to artificial intervention.
@47,
The idea that introns represent DNA leftover from viruses was a common theory, but I don’t think it’s accepted as much anymore. From what I’ve heard, the idea of “junk DNA” has pretty much fallen by the wayside, and modern biology believes that much if not all of our non-coding DNA serves a function. But like I said earlier, it’s not really fair to blame Brannon Braga for not being up on the cutting edge science 20 years after the episode.
@55 That was also alluded to in “Return to Tomorrow” in the original series. I did enjoy “The Chase” but somehow it was more about the mystery of solving the puzzle and I was glad to see that “science” was the question that was being answered (and the Klingons’ reaction to it) even if the idea was absurd). It could be that I thought The Chase was just better done while Genesis just appeared hokey throughout.
@57: No, what was mentioned in “Return to Tomorrow” was completely different. That episode claimed that a humanoid race living 600,000-500,000 years ago may have colonized various worlds and been the direct ancestors of various humanoids — not humans, but possibly Vulcans. “The Chase” established that a humanoid race living 4 billion years ago — thousands of times further in the past — seeded the primordial soup of uninhabited worlds with DNA nanotechnology (essentially) programmed to promote the eventual evolution of humanoid forms. They were both attempts to explain the preponderance of humanoids in Trek — along with the Preservers in “The Paradise Syndrome” — but all three explanations are completely incompatible in their specifics and it’s a mistake, though sadly a common one, to conflate them with one another. (The Preservers operated no more than a few centuries ago and merely relocated existing endangered populations to other planets. Personally I suspect they’re really the Vians from “The Empath,” since they were doing the same thing.)
As I see it, the “Chase” humanoids explain all humanoid aliens, even the more exotic ones like Cardassians, Ferengi, and Hirogen; Sargon’s people from “Return to Tomorrow” are the source of Vulcanoids and perhaps more humanlike aliens such as Argelians, Elasians, Deltans, Betazoids, and Bajorans; and the Preservers just explain Earth-duplicate cultures that can’t be explained another way, like Miramanee’s people and maybe the “Bread and Circuses” Roman planet (because “Hodgkins’s Law of Parallel Planet Development” is a load of twaddle).
I agree the folks who suggested that the younger the age at which the viewer first watches this episode the more likely they are to enjoy it. I was in high school when it first aired and liked it. Since catching it on BBC America few weeks ago I better understand the criticism, but it is still a guilty pleasure for me.
What I am dreading is that ‘Emergence’ will soon be upon us. I truly can’t stand that one; it is my TNG ‘El Guapo’.
@54, I find it most interesting that in your closing parenthetical, you’d express discomfort in invoking “design”, presumably due to a dislike of a Creator… yet you use an acronym that most commonly refers to said Creator. I’m not trying to be snarky, I just find the linguistic usage very curious. It harkens back to Darmok, in a way, and what we’re seeing in this episode. Certain terms and ideas have mutating meanings.
The lighting and makeup for this episode was fabulous (though I think the unjustly maligned DS9 _Distant Voices_ is better on both fronts), and it’s clear that the science is so far past rubber that you need scientific notation to denote its elastic limit. That wasn’t what had me yelling and throwing foam balls at the screen. It’s the sheer anatomical implausibility problems that got me. Lizard Spot gave birth. How? From where? Lizards don’t *have* a birth canal! Barclay has devolved into a spider, which is a neat trick given that he’s managed to devolve into an organism that never existed, a giant spider which could not possibly support its own weight nor breathe. They also leave a huge question-mark over the question of just how the flaming heck anyone can ‘un-devolve’ a devolved brain. Where do the memories come back from? I can’t believe they have mind-state backups, not without a hint of on-screen evidence. (I also can’t resist wondering what would happen if a member of the crew who kept stick insects turned into a stick insect, and then they turned the wrong one back.)
It’s also most convenient that all these humans are turned into animals that can live in the environment of the Enterprise. Three billion years we spent in the oceans, but we see only one amphibian and not a single marine mammal, let alone a fish. No bacteria (not photogenic enough, and they’d probably try to make a giant one). No fungi (too Quatermass), no oak trees, no Vulcan or Betazoid organisms. With the exception of the bizarre acid-spewing Worf (an unlikely defence unless his skin was acid-resistant: perhaps he was just having really bad digestive problems?), I’m not sure we see a single alien organism, unless one could define giant spiders as alien on the grounds that none have ever existed nor ever could exist.
This is a superb episode to poke fun at. It’s like shooting a devolved Enterprise crewman in a barrel. (Maybe that explains the absence of fish). It’s hard to believe that the same guy who wrote _Cause and Effect_ wrote this.
@61: I don’t think the idea was that they literally could turn into any organism including plants and bacteria, but that the intron fragments from other species would activate and combine with their human attributes to create hybrid forms, part human(oid) and part something else. So nobody would turn into a stick insect; at most they’d turn into a human with stick-insect attributes.
As for how the restoration (or for that matter the original transformation) is even possible, this is one of those episodes that makes me think the Trek universe would make more sense if we assume that nanotechnology is far more ubiquitous than it’s been portrayed to be — that everyone’s body is pervaded with advanced, DNA-based nanotech which is capable of restructuring their bodies on a cellular level. That could account for the massive, rapid physical transformations and restorations seen throughout the series, and could explain where the memories in the devolved brains were stored (distributed throughout the collective data network of the organic nanites). It could also explain how a medical device could emit a beam of light and cause an injury to heal almost instantly — the beam is broadcast power to kick the nanites into high gear so they can reassemble damaged tissue much faster than they otherwise could.
Unfortunately, there are too many episodes where this would have to be mentioned if it were true, so it doesn’t really work. But it would certainly help make sense of episodes like this one.
Unwatchable.
But thanks for writing out the “don’t leave Riker in charge of the Enterprise” list.
@62: I agree with you about the hybrid interpretation, but it still begs the question as to why the introns seemed to superscede the active DNA in every case…from watching the episode, it seems that we can presume that not a single entity onboard retained humanoid-level intelligence.
I LOVE this episode. I am with that devoted minority. So what the science is stupid? I forgot that Star Trek is a paragon of scientific truth. Seriously, the ONLY critisicms of this episode is the science. Even Keith praises everything else.
I wonder what your critisicm of Spock dying, than growing really fast to the exact same age , and Sarek just happens to remember an Ancient ritual that every vulcan does, yet is at the same time never done “Since time of old”? I mean, if “science” is really the reason this episode is bad, I really think you all should stop watching Star Trek.
Just got to say. This episodes script was embarrasing and it really showed how little the writer knew about evolution. I mean, it was CRAP. De-evolving… wtf? I looked up de-evolving in wikipedia and the only people who use this term today are creationists. Is the writer a creationist?? This kind if episode just makes the public dumber and gives fuel to creationists. The writer should have his arse fired for his stupidity. I’m now worried what other stuff hes done.
@66: No, of course Braga wasn’t a creationist, or he wouldn’t have written about evolution at all. He was a writer of fiction using an imaginary concept to tell an imaginary story. At no point was he trying to deceive anyone into believing his premise was true; he was just using it as the basis for a work of entertainment.
Beyond Star Trek, Braga has had executive producer gigs on Threshold, 24, FlashForward, and Terra Nova. That last one was a show set 85 million years in the past, in the age of dinosaurs. Obviously not the work of a creationist. He’s currently an executive producer on the upcoming new version of Cosmos that Neil deGrasse Tyson is hosting. I’m sure Tyson would not work with anyone who had any desire to actively mislead people into false scientific beliefs; therefore it’s safe to assume that Braga knows the difference between fiction, where unreal, made-up science is allowable if it serves the story, and nonfiction, where it isn’t.
They should’ve done an episode where Picard gives Riker command, followed immediately by audible gasps and groans by all crewmembers within earshot. Even Data could pipe in with one of his put-on silly accents “Let’s hope there aren’t any Ferengi in the vicinity!”
Count me in with those who enjoyed this one. Yes the script is bad and the science doofy, but as someone who keeps horror movies at arms length, I really enjoyed the scary mystery, and all the nice touches Gates McFadden threw in like the animal growls add nicely to the atmosphere. It may not be among TNG’s best, but I can enjoy this one again and again. Seeing Barclay is always a nice bonus, and he got to be Spider-Barclay! What’s not to love?
Late commenter: considering that Brannon Braga also wrote the Voyager script “Threshold”, where crew members evolve millions of years in a day (spoilers: to become lizards), I think I can see that Braga has some kind of obsession with the concept of de-evolution. In the comments on that Voyager episode, he said he toyed with the idea of showing that evolution sometimes doesn’t always lead to better life forms, that it could regress. That episode is waaaaay dumber than this one (since the crew member becomes unable to breathe in the current ship’s atmosphere, a clear sign of not adapting to the environment), but it shows that Braga simply doesn’t know how evolution works. He has a neat concept in his head that makes for nice horror story (humans becoming animals and stuff that’s even more scary than that), but he doesn’t know how to put a scientific reason behind it. He should’ve (both in here and in Threshold) forgotten about the evolution / de-evolution side of it and just made a horror story with far advanced alien technology being behind it (in other words, magic).
I’m surprised that Crusher is carrying on with Barclay at the end of the episode all smiles, when she admits the error was hers, and she’s pretty much responsible for a crewmember’s violent death. Not surprising, though. As I recall, in a previous episode she willfully disobeyed Picard’s orders on an away mission, allowing herself to be captured by a terrorist and causing more deaths in that episode too – no remorse at all in that heartless woman. (Only half-joking. Honestly, I think Crusher is a self-centered menace most of the time.)
My biggest complaint is the uber-Reset button we get. Crusher is going to need reconstructive surgery (which Ogawa is heartbroken about), but no biggie. Riker’s brain has shrunk to the point that he can no longer understand language, but no biggie. Everything will be completely back to normal at the end.
Picard: “Can we reverse the process?”
Data: “If you’re asking if the whole ordeal is pointless because no matter what happens we will be able to simply wave a magic wand and fix everything (except the dead ensign), then the answer is yes.”
I was honestly rooting for some sort of time travel copout in order for it to at least be remotely plausible.
I agree about the directing, though.
I don’t know why this episode is so disliked, it is one of my personal favorites. They do a good job of making the situation creepy, especially with Worf. Ryker I’ll admit was pretty funny. I hate spiders so Barkley would of creeped me out lol. Love this episode though. It was different, that’s for sure…
My favorite part about the stupidity of the writing is that Picard has to risk his life to lure proto-Warf away from sickbay when Data is about to use the ship’s life support systems to pump the antidote into the air. Couldn’t he have just sprayed a whiff of Troi’s musk somewhere really far away from sickbay? And Picard not going back to get his phaser while he’s being chased by a huge beast is just stupid. The things have a kill setting, don’t they? And why can’t Data beat the crap out of Warf and subdue him? He’s a basically indestructible android with superhuman strength.
I didn’t have a problem with the episode (saw it once maybe a month ago). Seems some of you are just overthinking things instead of simply enjoying the show. It’s like watching a movie with military implications with a veteran, only to have him/her tell us every 30 seconds how this and that is out place, or why wouldn’t do this or that.
That said, the ‘scariest’ part for me was just watching the Enterprise drift aloof in open space. It’s like they were on the ‘edge’ of the universe. I don’t remember seeing any stars in the distant. Really freaky.
@75/three60: Yes, there are times when “turning off your brain” is a valid way to enjoy a story, but Star Trek at its best is smarter than that. As a franchise, it’s often tried to be more plausible than the run of the SFTV mill, and at times, it’s succeeded. So it’s entirely fair to criticize those occasions when it lowers its standards.
The thing to remember is that it’s called willing suspension of disbelief, not compulsory. We’re not required to absorb fiction passively and uncritically. As viewers or readers, we choose whether or not we’re willing to play along with the unreal conceits of a story, and it’s the responsibility of a storyteller to earn that willing suspension, whether by making the impossible feel plausible (as the saying goes, “The key is sincerity — if you can fake that, you’ve got it made”) or by being entertaining enough that the audience is willing to play along. Many people feel, and are entitled to feel, that this episode fails on both counts. If you feel differently, that’s your personal choice, your willingness to suspend disbelief. But that willingness, by definition, is up to each individual to decide for themselves.
Crusher got her face melted off but seems pretty cool about the whole situation in the last scene.
The atmosphere of the Enterprise when Picard and Data come back to it is just great. Creepy as hell, even if it might not make too much sense that the doors are all screwed up.
I don’t care that the story is nonsense but I do care that it’s sluggish; why does it take until halfway through to get to the real meat? It lingers way too long on everyone acting weird before getting to the point. Worf attacking Crusher is a pretty good climax to start off the horror proper but it fiddles about a bit more after that. A lot of episodes in this season seem unpolished.
We never got to see what Goerdi was turning into that made him so tired? A sloth?
Nice touch; Picard quizzically examines what looks like a huge spider’s thread on the bridge a while before the encounter with spider-Barclay. Horror-style foreshadowing.
Hilarious touch: As Ogawa leaves the meeting in the observation lounge she knuckle-walks on the table a bit because she’s turning into an ape.
Obviously the science here is a lot of old pants, but I do have a couple of points. Firstly, Data doesn’t say Picard will turn into a marmoset, he says he will turn into a primate similar to a marmoset or lemur, which is not necessarily a bad description of a human ancestor. Secondly, regarding Barclay turning into a spider, do we know that Barclay is 100% human? The previously episode had a character who was a quarter betazoid and looked perfectly human, maybe Barclay has a distant ancestor who had a bit of spider DNA?
That said, they would have been better off glossing over the science here. If this had a been a TOS episode (or even a season 1 TNG episode) it would probably have been a weird alien looking like a swirly energy blob or a polystyrene rock “de-evolving” the crew for a laugh. They should have either invented an alien virus or a temporal anomaly or something. It’s a case of trying to make something more scientifically plausible making it less.
But I still enjoy the episode. It has bags or atmosphere and I’m willing to forgive a great deal for a sight or venom-spitting cave-Worf.
I know that Data had to save the ship and crew (again)… but wouldn’t it have been cool if he also de-evolved into a prehistoric version of himself, say one of those giant, old-fashioned mainframe computers…
@79/Jenny-poo: I was going to say it’d be preposterous for the virus to affect a mechanism the same way it affected biological organisms… but then I realized it wouldn’t have been any more preposterous than the rest of the episode. :D
Jenny-poo: THAT WOULD’VE BEEN AWESOME!!!!!!!!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yes, the script is stupid beyond believe, but I still liked the episode. We get to see some superb make up and some funny scenes too (Barkley prancing around the meeting room for example).
Also, I cannot be the only one to be reminded of the Resident Evil video game series? A T-Virus?! Come on!
Crusher isn’t exactly right about diseases named after the patuents, though. It should be named Crusher’s disease, just like Crohns disease, Bechterev’s disease, or about any other disease that has been named after the doctor’s who first described a disease, not after the patient.
Last but not least, seeing Riker as a “cave man” had another level of humor for me. There’s a fan made dub of a few Enterprise episodes in german. The name translates to ‘Senseless in space’. In that dub, Riker is depicted as a dimwit, who has trouble understanding even the simplest things. So seeing him like this reminded me of that fan dub.
82, it can go either way, Crusher is likely just flattering Barkely.
@83: It’s far more common for doctors to give a disease their own name. But on the other hand, Crusher never came accross as overly ambitious (she’s already chief medical officer on the flagship of Starfleet, can’t hardly get any better than that?), so maybe she’s just not after the fame anymore. :D
84, it may be more frequent now, but perhaps in the future, the trend has changed. Nonetheless, autoeponyms are hardly unknown even today. And maybe Crusher just didn’t want her mistake to haunt her, after all, she did make the action that lead to the events. It’s all about concealing her malpractice! |P
What, eighty-five comments, and no one complains about the T-cell that acts like a virus? Okay, I guess comment #30 does, by complaining about all the nonsensical biology in one single rant.
This is just as bad as “Threshold”. And just like “Threshold”, it’s somewhat luddite. Beware of gene therapy – it may turn you into a spider!
When Data suggested that Picard might turn into a marmoset, my daughter commented: “So the French are descended from marmosets?”
Jana: THAT EXPLAINS SO MUCH ABOUT THE FRENCH!!!!!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, kidding, probably
This is one that I swear I must have seen over a dozen times as a kid, and actually, I still have fun watching it. Yes, it’s dumb, but at least it’s entertainingly dumb.
For some reason, the thing that bothers me the most even with the complete lack of understanding of DNA and evolution is Crusher’s comment early on about humans having over 100,000 genes, when actually we have less than 20,000–but hey, they hadn’t finished mapping the human genome back when this episode was produced! I think that’s part of the reason I’m so forgiving of the bad science in this episode, because our understanding of genetics has come a long way in the past twenty odd years, and there’s a lot of information we have now that the writers couldn’t have known back then.
@88/Denise L.: Oh, believe me, it was just as nonsensical when it first came out, even given what was known about genetics at the time. I mean, we knew that changing an organism’s genes wouldn’t immediately alter their entire gross anatomy, any more than redrawing a building’s blueprints would magically transform the entire building. We knew that Australopithecines were small, gracile herbivores, not hulking, savage ape-men. And so forth.
A running gag that I immensely enjoyed is how the slowly de-evolving Riker is desperately trying to still act like a competent officer when in reality, he is at a complete loss as to what is going on and what people are talking about.
That one scene with LaForge is priceless:
GEORDI Commander — I have seven security teams hunting for Worf, but for some reason sensors are having trouble locking onto him. I’ve called a Level Two Security Alert — do you think we should go to a Level One?
Riker hesitates.
RIKER I… don’t know. What do you think?
GEORDI I think we should.
RIKER Okay… sounds good… then you’ll take care of that… security thing, won’t you?
I was laughing like hell because at my workplace, there is a superior (thank God not mine) who is exactly like that. He is more or less oblivious to all modern technical developments in our business and is simply faking his way towards retirement. We get dialogues like that all the time with him.
I want to add some minor bad science. I had a 2001: A Space Odyssey felling at the moment Data and Captain Picard tried to reenter the Enterprise. Picard to Data: “Adjust the axial stabilizers to match the attitude and rotation rate of the Enterprise.” That maneuver would have worked for the Pan Am clipper to adjust it to the wheel like Space Station 5 but the Enterprise was “adrift” and tumbling through space as seen on the long range sensors. Right after Picard gave his command the Enterprise was just rotating around its roll axis. Enterprise D is much longer than wide so rotation would be rather around yaw or pitch axis.
A random rotation not aligned to the axis with the biggest angular momentum will cause the Enterprise to make movements called precession and nutation.
It would be very unlikely for the Enterprise D to rotate around its hangar bay. In fact as seen it was rotating around the main impulse engines and the hangar bays above rotating. This still would be a hell of a maneuver for Data to perform. Why not just beam over and play The Blue Danube?
Similar to others, I found the science and other nonesense in this episode to be laughable (literally – I was laughing at certain scenes). But at the same time, it was quite entertaining and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it.
@48- Nor’easter: That really bothered me too, at least until all the other pseudoscience and plot inconsistencies made me forget about it. There’s no way the Captain of the Enterprise and one of the other highest-ranking officers would both go on the shuttlecraft to chase the torpedo. Even if Picard was bored with the prospect of weapons tests, that would be highly irresponsible.
@68- Love it! When you think about it, it’s amazing that Riker is A) Still alive, and B) Wasn’t demoted and/or run out of Starfleet long ago.
best…episode…ever
when drunk and shouting SCIENCE! at every explanation if the B
I feel cheated that I didn’t get to see Sir Patrick Stewart be a lemur.
Sorry in advance for my English.
I have been following these rewatch for a long time but it is the first time that I write.
I have been watching Star Trek TNG for a long time and I was lucky to see every episode with
my children, and for them it has been the one they have enjoyed the most, especially because they
solved it thanks to Spot.
The one episode of any Star Trek series I will never ever watch for any reason whatsoever. Next!
@95 – Saul: Re-watching TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT with my son as he was watching them for the first time was an awesome experience. And now, we’re watching all the new trek shows together.
I guess this opinion is underrepresented so I’ll say it: This episode is unwatchably terrible. I do appreciate Gates McFadden’s direction a lot. She’s also a dancer/choreographer so it makes sense to give her one with a lot of unusual movement. But I just watched it for the first time as an adult, and as a not-at-all horror fan (though I do love Buffy), and … no.
The only thing that could have saved it is if it felt like it had actual stakes, like these changes were going to be hard or impossible to reverse. Like it’s going to take a whole lot of medicine, surgery, and transporter technology. And massive therapy. We don’t even know for sure that anyone remembers what happened. But in the last scene, everyone looks like whew! Let me mop my brow with a kerchief, now I’m fine.
No, no, no. Five minutes of retooling and I wouldn’t have hated it. Make it an alien that has effed up transporter tech for silly games. Make it ten minutes of a Q episode. Make it a dream sequence that Data is stuck in which turns out to be based on an ancient Navajo myth which was embedded in his dream matrix by Dr Soong, which explains a bit of what Data’s mission is in terms of serving humankind.
There, that didn’t even take five minutes.
rewtch geness
Lockdown rewatch. A few episodes back regarding “Masks” I said it was high on the “what the hell were they thinking” chart…. well this one is off the scale of that chart. Dwight Schultz and his scene with Data regarding Spot is the only redeeming feature. This was a very disappointing final TNG episode for the great Barclay I suppose one of the redeeming features for Voyager was at least Barclay got some more episodes and this wasn’t his swansong. A score of 1 only for the Barclay and Spot scene.
@99/chadefallstar: I’ve always assumed that what they were thinking on “Genesis” was, “Gee, Michael Westmore has done great work creating prosthetic makeup for us these past seven years, so let’s give him one last chance to really show off what he can do.”
@100/ChristopherLBennett: I always wondered what the cast must have thought when they first got the script read through for this. I wonder if a few checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t the 1st of April.
At least it had kittens in it.
Yay kittens… Otherwise, yuck.
The budget may have been good but they probably didn’t spend an equal amount of money each week, does this look expensive? If it’s all done with the sets and actors used every week, that’s usually a no. With unlimited money I’d have made Worf an authentic stegosaurus or something. Doctor Who may have produced The Myrka but we also got Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, much later I admit.
The Original Series erased Uhura’s mind and she got educated better… not their proudest moment maybe. I think of it more like re-learning to think or move after, uh, temporary brain damage? In real life your brain shrinks during pregnancy (if you’re the mom). Or grows afterwards, I forget which. Maybe it just dries out a bit or something, rehydrates when you start drinking again. Oh, that time Star Trek got the dead guy back. It was Scotty. I think they were out some more redshirts though.
The Kenneth Horne 1960s radio shows used the joke, twice – years apart but closer in recent re-runs – that you can save yourself from catching MacWhirter’s Disease by keeping a good distance from MacWhirter. I might be mistaken in the impression that life-affecting medical conditions being named after smartass doctors is resented lately by people suffering the disease, but U.S. terminology apparently officially dropped the apostrophe from Down syndrome in the 1970s, after renaming it in the 1960s from what Dr Down had called it. I wonder if his name being a direction in space is a problem.
This was a solid episode. After his initial appearance, I think Barclay works better as a secondary character, rather than having Barclay episodes that focus primarily on him. One thing missing from season 7 is that a lot of the semi-regular characters are gone. Guinan is gone. O’Brien and Keiko are gone. Ro has basically been gone since season 5, at least until her final episode later on.
Great directing job by Gates McFadden. They got the horror atmosphere down and Michael Westmore did a great job with all the makeup. And the actors put in good subtle touches as they were de-evolving: Ogawa movies with her fists and Picard gets very skittish.
We also get another callout to Dr. Selar, who appeared onscreen once in season 2. I wonder why they didn’t bring Susie Plakson back as Selar for a few guest spots.
Obviously everyone has a different sense of what breaks the suspension of disbelief, and what factors can prop up an otherwise bad or silly story and make it enjoyable. I definitely understand that “Genesis” goes too far in the stupid science and wacky idea directions for a lot of people.
That said, I love this one. It was so memorable when I saw it as a kid, and it wasn’t until I grew up that I even knew it had such an awful reputation. I rewatched it on Halloween actually, for the first time in many years, because it’s probably the closest TNG ever got to a horror episode. It so totally holds up in all the ways that matter to me.
It’s amazing that this was Gates McFadden’s first directorial effort, just really impressive work. The atmosphere, which I’ve come to understand is one of the most important elements in film and TV for me, is excellent. It’s seriously creepy, the one major jump scare is great, the sense of dread is real as Picard and Data unravel what is happening. The progression in the crew as they begin to change is built well, with Worf losing his shit and Riker going blank-eyed.
There is no defending the science, it’s complete bunk from every angle but while that would be a fatal flaw in a lesser episode (see: “Threshold”) it’s easily ignored when I can just enjoy the craziness and the creepy-crawlies and Riker being a gorilla and MegaWorf chasing Picard through the dark. I just love this one wholeheartedly.
Quoth erictheread: “it’s probably the closest TNG ever got to a horror episode.”
Not hardly: “Schisms,” “Night Terrors,” “Sub Rosa,” and “Frame of Mind” all qualify as horror.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Huh, I could have sworn I had commented on this particular episode rewatch before but it looks like I haven’t. Anyway, this definitely isn’t a great episode or scientifically plausible in the slightest but it’s just too damn fun to be skippable. Great direction by McFadden making the atmosphere aboard the Enterprise creepy and everything obscured in shadows and the jump moment by spider-Barclay was scary. Oh, and the moment Beverly is sprayed by Worf’s venom is horrifying. Excellent make-up designs by Westmore. Lots of great character moments like Troi and Worf sniping at each other and Riker dumbing down and Barclay getting all hyper. The ending is such a jarring shift in tone though to overly jolly after an officer has been butchered and cosmetically reconstructed Beverly shows no signs of trauma nor lasting scars from her encounter with proto-Klingon Worf. Still, a guilty pleasure. I can imagine the cast having a blast acting all out of sorts and as monster-versions of themselves
@105/erictheread: Yes, this definitely fell into the horror genre for TNG and maybe it’s at the top of the list but I feel a number of other episodes in the series’ run could qualify as horror: “Night Terrors”, “Schisms”, “Conspiracy”, “Phantasms” and “Where Silence Has Lease” to name the ones that most come to mind.
Not that I was a fan of the Alexander Rozhenko character but I can’t help but wonder what he was up to during the events of this episode. Like was he trying to avoid being eaten by his dad? Or did he turn into a mini-proto-Klingon himself and go about the ship mauling others like papa.
106 & 107
Well I did say it’s the closest TNG got to horror. The others y’all brought up have horror elements but “Genesis” I think is the only one I might qualify as horrifying. I mean I love the creepiness of “Schisms” and the psychological tension of “Frame of Mind” and the weirdness of “Phantasms,” but in my opinion at least they are “Trek horror” as opposed to “real horror.” As in, they aren’t actually very scary. Atmospheric, but not scary. “Genesis” comes pretty close to real scares a handful of times which is more than the others did for me.
But maybe I’m not the person to say. There are only two movies that actually scare me: “The Thing” and “The Shining.” I’ve seen plenty of great horror movies that I loved but didn’t actually frighten me, so I guess the horror genre probably doesn’t need to cause real fear in order to count as such.
Genesis is, for me, in the “so bad it’s good” category. The plot is ridiculous and the performances are hilarious. The makeup is awesome and the direction is pretty good, so it’s possible for me to enjoy it simply on the level of dopey stupid awful fun.
I don’t science much, so I enjoyed the hell out of this for the weird over the top pseudo-scary show that it was. Someone earlier commented that it took too long to get going as everyone was just acting weird at the beginning. Actually that’s the part I liked best, watching each of the crew that we know slowly transforming. And I think one of the most terrifying moments of the entire series was when Picard pulls Troi-frog out of that bathtub.
I don’t know shit about T cells and evolutionary biology, yada yada but I’ll tell you this. When Data and Picard return and see the Enterprise spinning around and they confirm there are life signs aboard but they can’t figure out what kind, what in the holy hell is wrong with them that they didn’t put Picard into a hazmat suit before he goes on board? I mean he’s wandering around just in his regular uniform, smearing his finger all over slimy things on doorways not caring at all what he might be infecting himself with. No effing seatbelts anywhere in the Enterprise, no environmental suits no fire extinguishers ….come on. Screw the T-cells, just make the Enterprise as safe as your ordinary late-model Dodge Caravan.
Somewhere out there, there’s another world where Gates McFadden became a kick-ass Indy Horror director. Beyond that, the only thing that I have to say about this episode is that appreciate that it commits to its own ridiculous premise by having Picard’s lion fish turn into a jellyfish.
Just a minor nitpick; I noticed a common grammatical error at the beginning of the episode. When Data enlists Barclay to look after his cat, he says: “It is possible that it will take several days for Captain Picard and me to complete our mission. I would prefer to have a human present to supervise the birthing process.“
The whole contraction thing has always been contrived, but in the case of this nitpick, I think it’s unlikely that Data’s ever formal way of speaking would fail to avoid that error and not say “Picard and I.“
@113/Thierafhal: That is not an error. The commonplace error is assuming that it’s always “He and I” regardless of sentence placement. In fact, it’s the same as if the pronoun is by itself — it’s “I” as a subject and “me” as an object. You would never say “It will take several days for I to complete my mission.” That’s obviously wrong. You’d say “It will take several days for me to complete my mission.” And the same applies whether the pronoun is by itself or in combination. Therefore, Data’s line is a rare instance of someone actually getting it right.
https://www.stevehendersonfineart.com/blog/26486/grammar-despair-do-i-say-him-and-me-or-he-and-i
This is an example of overcorrection — assuming a correction applies in all cases rather than just some. When children would say things like “Him and me are going to the candy store,” their parents would correct them by saying “No, it’s ‘he and I,'” but they wouldn’t clarify that that’s only because it’s the subject, because you should say “I am going” instead of “me am going.” So kids grow up mistakenly believing it’s invariably “he and I,” when in fact the pronoun depends on subject/object the same as it does by itself.
Obviously the “science” in this episode is a nonstarter, but one thing I have to ask: Are spiders hyperactive the way Barclay behaves during his transformation? Maybe it was the only way anyone could think to make Barclay “act” like a spider before his prosthetics were applied. After doing a quick bit of research on spiders, I couldn’t find anything that clearly explains Barclay’s behavior.
Also, another nitpick: Where was the torpedo Data and Picard retrieved? You can clearly see the back of the shuttle is empty as they disembark. We’ve seen the size of torpedoes in Trek many times, they’re roughly the size of a small bed. There’s no other place in the shuttle it could be stored. I guess ‘retrieve’ doesn’t have to mean bring back and they in fact destroyed it when they found it. Although it could have been something else about the torpedo that malfunctioned, not the guidance system. Bringing it back to the ship for further analysis might have made more sense. In any case, I guess that’s a pretty insignificant nitpick considering how absurd the premise of this episode is, but just something I noticed
The episode could have upped the horror quotient by having had Spider-Barclay cocooning some paralyzed humanoid prey that he had bitten and Picard and Data coming across these cocooned bodies. Kind of like in the Alien franchise films. But a scene like that might cause pacing issues not to mention the budget involved. Would still have been cool and scary though.
I like how at the end Picard is huddled in the Jeffries tube, an unconscious, de-evolved Worf only inches away, and the shadow of the grille over Patrick Stewart sells even more that Picard looks just like a trapped animal.
I first saw this one when I was six years old and it gave me recurring nightmares for years afterwards. Honestly, it seems so incongruent with the rest of the series in terms of both tone and content that, if I didn’t know for a fact that it was a real episode, I would have assumed that I’d just dreamt it. It certainly seems like something that could have come from the mind of a six year old.
It’s a good thing Data never listened to Bob Barker or the ship might’ve been a goner.
“poor Ensign Dern, whose death has been completely forgotten once Picard and Data leave the bridge”
He can’t have been the only crewmember killed during all that.
@119/arben: What’s the Bob Barker reference?
Quoth Arben: “He can’t have been the only crewmember killed during all that.”
Um, so what? That actually makes it worse that nobody seems to give a shit…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“Bob Barker here reminding you to help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered. Goodbye, everybody!”
–the end of every Price is Right
Ah! I watched the Price is Right growing up but I guess didn’t always make it to the end of the show or I just forgot that part. Very good public message though!
123.
What? You didn’t watch every single Showcase Showdown and the credits with everyone walking over and looking at the fabulous prizes? The outrage!
To be fair, I have no idea how long Bob Barker was doing that. I only remember it from when I watched it in the 90s, usually during a sick day or a snow day. Good times.
@121. krad — That makes it much worse. I was just springboarding off your observation, [edit:] not criticizing you but the show. The episode either implies by lack of explicit reference that nobody else died, which is ridiculous, or doesn’t even give additional fatalities that definitely happened a mention.
Yes, Spike got it. This was clearly one of my more oblique or opaque comments.
@62. ChristopherLBennett — I quite like that idea about nanotechnology. Maybe it can dovetail with my theory on doors opening for people only when they intend to go through them because some wavelength has been discovered allowing physical apparatuses to interface with the minor, generally latent or negligible telepathic abilities common to most or all peoples. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” revealed that ESPer ratings are a thing in TOS’s era, however seldom referenced, and recently rewatched TNGs have discussed observable, quantifiable chemical and biological aspects of superhumanly telepathic races.
@126/Arben: There’s no need to postulate a magical technology like telepathy when the ability to detect someone’s intent to pass through a door can be easily explained by a technology that already exists in real life, eye tracking, as well as analysis of their gait and body language. It’s probably already possible today for a computer to tell the difference between a person intending to head past a door and a person intending to pass through it. It would certainly be easy enough for a computer centuries from now.
Indeed, a lot of the way charlatans trick people into believing in mind-reading is by being good at reading their gaze and body language to tell what they’re thinking of.
@127. ChristopherLBennett — Once again, I was not precise enough in my comment. I meant doors knowing, say, when someone’s having second thoughts about going through and when their resolution sticks during all those pauses at the proverbial threshold that became a Trek trope unto themselves. Which may not change your response any, but I stand by my headcanon.
@128/Arben: That’s exactly what I’m saying. You don’t need telepathy to know a person’s intentions. What you’re talking about can be detected through computer analysis of gaze direction and body movement. The belief that such things require extra-sensory perception arises from an inadequate understanding of what sufficiently keen sensory perception can discern. Like the way some people believe animals are psychic. They aren’t; they just have keener senses than humans and can perceive things we can’t. A computer can have “extra-sensory” perception in the same way, by using conventional detection methods that are more acute and perceptive than what the average human can discern. There is no need to resort to imaginary things like telepathy to explain something that is perfectly doable through realistic methods. As Sherlock Holmes said once or twice (to paraphrase), one should exhaust all possible natural explanations before considering a supernatural one.
I don’t think what I’m suggesting is as out there as, like, some universal telepathic field that causes different species to resonate with each other and innovate the same ideas around the same times… 8^)
Seriously-ish, however: Telepathy is not supernatural in Star Trek. Maybe it’s superhuman, broadly speaking, as I said above, yet even then we have Gary Mitchell’s heightened ESPer ratings and people learning to become / evolving into whatever Travelers are. I understand you’re arguing that we don’t need to resort to flights of fancy like “psychic doors” but in context these are simply competing technological paradigms.
@130/Arben: No, telepathy is not supernatural in Trek, but we’ve never seen Federation computers or sensors portrayed as having literal psionic ability. So it would still be a conjecture beyond the evidence, and an unnecessarily overcomplicated explanation for something that can be explained far more simply.
Granted, TOS did portray computers as capable of veritable mind-reading through measurement of brain waves, with the lie-detector chair they used a couple of times, but that only worked if a person’s hand was on the sensor plate. There was no indication that it could operate remotely, as far as I recall. And as I’ve been saying, it wouldn’t need to, because something like the intention to go through a doorway can be extrapolated from external cues like eye movement and gait analysis.
Quoth Christopher: “we’ve never seen Federation computers or sensors portrayed as having literal psionic ability.”
Not entirely: Remember Kirk’s description of the universal translator in “Metamorphosis”: “This device instantaneously compares the frequency of brainwave patterns, selects those ideas and concepts it recognizes, and then provides the necessary grammar.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@132/krad: But that’s remote neurotelemetry, not psionics. Brainwaves are electromagnetic emissions detectable with conventional sensors (though not at a distance in real life). Psionics/telepathy is a fictitious phenomenon based on forces unknown to modern science. Yes, some works of fiction have attempted to handwave telepathy as an electromagnetic phenomenon, but Trek has explicitly attributed it to some imaginary “psionic energy,” so it’s not the same thing.
Granted, though, the Universal Translator does provide an example of remote reading of brain activity, so I was wrong about that. But I stand by the point that it’s unnecessary to use the reading of brain activity to explain something that could be done purely with external observation of gaze and body language.
Some examples of odd door behavior:
The Naked Time – Spock falls back against a door that he had just walked through.
Journey to Babel – Amanda exits Spock’s quarters, and Spock puts his hand on the closed door.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield – a half-open door allows Spock to eavesdrop, and doesn’t move while he’s near it.
The Terratin Incident – Shrunken crew use a toothpick to trigger the turbolift door’s electric eye.
@134/BeeGee: “The Naked Time – Spock falls back against a door that he had just walked through.”
Which is not at all unrealistic. Try lingering in a store’s automatic sliding doors sometime (if there aren’t people behind you to annoy), and they’ll try to close shut on you because you’re not in view of their sensors. Naturally, the sensors point a few feet ahead of the door on either side so they open while you’re still approaching. So if you’re too close to the doors to trigger the sensors, they won’t open.
In all fairness re: disease naming: if diseases in the 24th century were named after the doctor who discovered them, there would be approximately two dozen Crusher’s Diseases, Bashir’s Diseases, and EMH’s Diseases each. Can’t blame the poor doc for not wanting her name attached to yet another!