I’ve never hated Dr. Pulaski as much as many Trekkies seem to, and I do not wish to imply that one ought to dislike her. I can sort of understand the antipathy many feel, as she replaced Dr. Crusher, who had chemistry of sorts with Picard, and in the first part of the season at least her main topic of interest is in discussing how Data is only an Android. Furthermore her distrust of transporters and frontier gruffness is reminiscent of Dr. McCoy.
“Unnatural Selection” seems like an opportunity to give her an episode, her own story.
In short: the Enterprise comes across a ship in distress, all of its crew have died of old age, even though at their last inspection everyone was young and in good health. The Enterprise is led to a research station that the other ship had visited, and, guess what? All the scientists at the research station are aging. Said scientists want the Enterprise to save their seemingly unaffected “children,” genetically-modified super offspring not unlike the Midwich Cuckoos, but Pulaski says “hold your horses … you’re under quarantine until I can guarantee the safety of the situation.” Not in so many or so few words, mind you. They beam up one of the children in a stasis field to see whether it is infected, etc., Pulaski concludes that she needs a naked specimen, not something hidden away behind an inch of gooey looking plastic, and ends up on a shuttlecraft with Data and the “12 year old” (wink wink, nod nod), who turns out to be telepathic. All seems well, until Pulaski starts aging … and rapidly. Eventually she goes to the planet, the cause of the “disease” is determined (the children’s hyper-immune-systems sought out a virus from a sick member of the visiting ship, mutation happened, and now the children’s immune systems attack “regular” humans, mutating and aging them), and a way to undo the damage is found … the transporters! But they need a saved “pattern” or “trace” as an “original” and, alas, Pulaski hates transporters and try as they might, a Pulaski trace cannot be found. In the nick of time, however, one of Pulaski’s hairs is found, DNA is extracted, and O’Brien concocts a doodle-ma-jig-whizzle-bang that transports and rejuvenates Pulaski. It can be applied to the scientists on the planet below, too, though their children will have to remain in permanent quarantine lest the human race be aged to extinction. Finally they blow up the previously quarantined ship from the beginning of the episode.
The frame here comes across as a meta-level “give her a chance” device, as Picard is giving her a performance review. He discusses her with other crew members. She is given the opportunity to demonstrate her dedication as well as stubbornness. She and Picard lock horns. Picard has to talk with her previous captain to gain information. As such a character-driven plot it works relatively well for me, even though it’s obvious.
What works a bit less well is the plot itself. The isolation of the shuttle is obvious enough that it should have been thought of earlier. And if they only needed to put the “child” on the shuttle so Pulaski could observe him out of stasis (not see whether or not he was infectious), they could have just sent data on that “mission” and had him perform experiments for the good doctor; if, on the other hand, the goal was to see whether the child was contagious, we have Pulaski using herself as a human lab rat, which does require her, but raises ethics issues. And that we can’t find a transporter trace of her anywhere? A convenient problem that allows them to spout more technobabble … entirely unconvincing. And what technology did Pulaski or the Enterprise actually bring to the situation (the research station) that the effected/infected scientists did not have on their own? Why did we need Pulaski?
On the other hand, there is strength to this episode, as there often is when there is, more or less, only one story (or when ‘A’ and ‘B’ are just aspects of the same plot). It is nicely wrapped up: the ship they encountered at the beginning they return to at the end.
This is a mere outline of a good story, one that has too many plot holes and convenient situations to make it credible. But I think that it could have been better, it could have worked. Forget the transporter technobabble, this episode needed to highlight some personality trait Pulaski possessed that those on the surface did not; the episode, however, does not. The further ‘commentary’ about these ‘children’ who, in a way, are deadly to their ‘parents’ is too unexplored. The one boy’s telepathic conversation seems like an easy way out of giving lines to somebody. We only see one of them anyway. No real ethical dilemma appears, the hard sci-fi is not there, and the conceptual sci-fi (engineering perfect children) is not really explored, and is really only there as background, even if plotwise it’s the most interesting aspect. And why is it that no previous minor infection had caused the same catastrophic immune response?
Super Children … that reminds me of Khan, but Khan at least returned in a movie. Children, progeny? It’s a theme that seems to be appearing in the series, especially season 2 (episode 1, “The Child,” pregnancy in episode 4, “The Outrageous Okano,” ‘created’ children and Data’s personhood in episode 6, “The Schizoid Man” and, coming up next, “The Measure of a Man,” as well as the various Wesley-centric stories), yet more than any, these potentially interesting children are cast aside.
Other Notes:
- Bad, bad “aging” makeup …
- Is there any reason to give us 20-somethings playing “12 year olds”? Even to indicate that they mature quicker than normal humans?
- Pulaski was transported back and rejuvenated, her memories intact, and only the genetic damage of the “disease” undone … so I guess this means that as long as there is a “transporter trace” of a person when they are young, any genetics-based aging (see also: telomere shortening) can be reversed … right, Enterprise? You’ll return to this, right?
Links:
- Unnatural Selection (Wikipedia)
- Unnatural Selection (Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki)
- Unnatural Selection, et. al. (A.V. Club)
