I am thoroughly convinced that this episode was written solely for the purpose of having Brent Spiner emotionlessly deliver the words "pygmy marmoset".
Consider this; What if the writing staff had used up everything they could on their "idea blackboard", that week. So, they just wrote this out in one sitting? There is not much creativity in how they resolved the problem, and little details like Spot having kittens and Barclay's hypochondria being real could be details they brainstormed out, to make the plot stick together to the end. 🤷🏼♂️
@@TheNoiseySpectator I think they did cause otherwise every human on board would have been a neandertal or some primate of some kind Barkley being a spiderman and spot being a lizard makes thing much more interesting that way even if it's more fantasy like but yeah the solution was not what they obviously cared about it was the devolution that they cared about which is why they focused so much on it
@@thomaswilliams2273 I was refering to the specific character that uses that acronym as a name because I was too lazy to look up the official name of the species before my previous post. He's from the planet Melmac, so "Melmacian" is more like "Earthling" than a species name. In any case, I guess you don't need to be from Melmac to think cats are a delicious delicacy... oh, I'm not sure why I never noticed the obvious common etymology between those two words before.
and it still fits! I love these older episodes. With all the mysteries, some great acting. It really had a power to immerse the viewers into forgoing their sense of disbelief. Star trek seemed so real.
Agreed. The absurdities in combination with the tone make it supremely camp, but still fun. This is in contrast to dumb, melodromatic, AND immature, which just makes it insufferable (see DIS & PIC)
I've seen this episode many times for some reason unknown to me. It's a good show but a mystery to me aside to say to always question things. As a kid I thought this show was boring but it's actually very interesting
If you suspend your disbelief a little and say "that wasn't an iguana but a primitive reptile-like creature" (and where would they get an actual primitive reptile-like creature for that shot? An iguana was close enough) then that actually fits pretty well because the common ancestor of mammals and reptiles was just one evolutionary step before actual reptiles (the first animals who didn't have an amphibian larval stage but instead had fetal development in an egg filled with amniotic fluid on dry land). Humans and spiders meanwhile have nothing to do with each other, their last common ancestor lived over 200 million years before any animal you could even with a lot of fantasy and bad eyesight call "a spider."
@@TheNoiseySpectator Oh, they'd believe it happened. Shit like this happens on a weekly basis on Federation ships. The problem is convincing them to care. This is a slow tuesday for Starfleet.
I was just thinking about this - how you had to find your way to entertaining some ideas but not others to truly enjoy this show and get the value of it.
@@HenshinFanatic there was nothing wrong with the TOS episode Spock’s Brain. Try not to repeat things you’ve heard just because you think they make you sound cool.
Meanwhile, Season 2 Worf goes feral, grunting and screeching while struggling to open bridge doors with brute force. It's lovely to see how far they've come.
Gates McFadden (who directed this episode) mentioned in an interview that the jars in Sickbay that contained the red and blue liquid never really had a purpose on the show. She made it a point to incorporate their usage into the scene. (0:42)
This is one of the episodes where I kept thinking “why are they so close to each other?” I know in this case Picard is steadily becoming more anxious so he is staying close to Data for safety.
Yeah, I mean the biology in this episode is absurd, but at least they played it somewhat logically with how Picard behaves. This devolution nonsense means he is slowly transforming; into a prey species. So he is increasingly uneasy out in the open, fearful of predators (like Worf) & wishes to travel in a group for safety. Now he can act against these instincts because his human mind is still there, but the instincts are colouring his behaviour.
It makes sense as in this episode Picard mentioned he was feeling increasingly levels of panic, and Data mentioned it was his Devolution Instincts warning him of danger.
@@johnw2026 Well, Star Trek was always about leftist politics. It's just that the left used to know how to write a good story and be respectful of history and culture. Woke doesn't know how to do that.
@Koulnis It was always progressive, yes, but never in your face about it. The plot never hinged on anything like DEI, and the characters were not defined by what they were, but who they were and what they were capable of. Dax was a perfect example, because her Symbiote gave her the memories and experiences of previous hosts, including Curzon, who was a man, and an acquaintance of Ben Sisko. And Sisko treated her as the totality of the Dax symbiote's experiences, not as a part. Although he _would_ frequently refer to her as 'Old Man.' In today's society, this would be termed a 'misgendering.' To them, it was an inside joke.
True....but I gotta think that when Picard, 25 years later, remembered this time on the Enterprise D, and compared it to Data right after having the emotion chip installed, he was probably thinking, "Boy am I glad he didn't have that chip in his head when the whole crew was de-evolving into previous forms of their species, he would've got scared out of his positronic net and got himself killed, and I'd be a pygmy marmoset!" 😂
I had a feeling something would jump at Picard, though I don't remember that specific episode. Even so, my stomach dropped to my knees when it happened, watching this.
Same. You can imagine my excitement seeing that it's on here now. I was only like 4 or 5 when this aired but this episode stuck with me more than any other. It's so cool if not a bit outrageous (even by TNG standards 🤣)
@@diamondjim7560 The basic concept in that Voyager episode wasn't bad. It was the execution. Voyager was a little too reserved to pull that off. Farscape would've rocked this. In fact they did. Micheal Crichton was split in three: himself, a caveman, and a super evolved human. Two of them had to die or they all died. Great episode.
@@benmaharaj6854 Spot on that was more Farscape. The Voyager series just needed to stick with the Lost in Space concept, picking up enemies and allies along the way. There were a number of two or three arc story lines that were well done. But the one about the lizards and their “offspring” was off-putting and offensive. Even Kate McGrew agreed that was one of the worst. TNG had a couple of those silly versions. The one where a landing party become alien and we’re light aversive. Then there was the one where the entire crew de-evolved into other species was flat out stupid. My opinion is DS9 was the finest of any of the later series. All in all, the best story lines came from the original series, futuristic but not far fetched.
While this episode was one of the goofier ones, the suspense , mystery element was great. When Barclay hit the glass I jumped back in my seat with Picard! Made ME jump! and the lizard with the pink collar was just a hoot! Poor kittens!
I love that even in the stupidest, silliest TNG episodes, everyone acts like a professional and they attach the appropriate amount of gravity to the situation - there's no obnoxious, baseless characters like Tilly or Agnes or Ortega cracking 21st century one-liners constantly pulling the viewer out of the premise. Writers have forgotten the art of balance - TNG is the perfect blend of serious and silly, dramatic and funny, hard sci-fi and fun science-fantasy.
Did Tom Paris ever make any 20th century jokes? I know he liked 20th century history and entertainment ( mostly public domain stuff for obvious reasons) I remember him using 20th century turn a phrase a few times, but I don't think it was ever too distracting.
the fact Barclay was made into a spider just to remind us how creepy he was in his introductory episode where he had the whole crew play parts in his hologram fantasies lol
'87 to '04 was the golden age of sci-fi in my opinion. X-Files, 4 of the best Star Trek franchises, Star-Gate SG-1 and Atlantis, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Space Above and Beyond, Lexx, hell even the mediocre shows like Andromeda were tolerable. In the 20 years since we've had Dark Matter and then the Expanse and that's about it. Oh, and Fringe, Fringe was great. Don't get me started on the new Star Treks...
Fun fact. Look closely at the kittens. The kittens they used to film this scene are around 2 weeks old. Definitely not less than 24 hours old. This can easily be confirme by watching any kitten rescue channel that streams newborn kittens.
Should they have used newborn kittens and left them without their mother to film? They are kittens, they fulfill their purpose (being cute), end of story.
@@givmi_more_w9251 No, not at all. Using older kittens was more or less a necessary evil. Same reason whenever babies are shown they use one several months old.
@@StormsparkPegasushow is it a “necessary evil” it’s just a normal production practicality. Did you know they were on earth the whole time they filmed this too? And Brent spiner is actually not a robot?
@@phartferd5738 Yes, that's what necessary evil means. It wasn't realistic, because there was no way for them to practically use newborn kittens in a humane way on set.
@@StormsparkPegasus I understand the want for dramatic flair, but using the term in this case does have what seems to be unintended consequences. something positive That implies the opposite of the stated necessary evil, is something positive that stalls progress. As not to be excessively depressing, it's like saying having to destroy wrapping paper to open a gift is a necessary evil. that imples that leaving the gift wrapped would be positive but stall progress, which it is, and does. in this case, the opposite would be secluding newborn kittens from their mother to film light entertainment. Which we've already agreed is not a good thing, Another implication is that the person who made the statement is also saying the animal abuse of that action is a good thing, Which I cannot imagine is what you were originally saying.
@@bill_lumbergh this is why I love star trek, cause saying that sounds ridiculous. But there's no way you could disprove it and it's well within the realm of technology for star trek to be able to do that. You can basically argue anything. It's awesome. (Also that was clever, I was thinking maybe the collar was a "futuristic auto-adjusting" one would be the best explanation. But I like this better 😝
Or, the collar could have been made of some kind of super elastic. But,I think that Spot would have moved her head around that collar would have fallen off by then. Cats just hate to wear collars, and doubtless Spot would have retained that memory after her transformation.
Every single time Star Trek dabbled in evolution as part of its plot, it showed that the writers didn't understand a damn thing about evolution. Why, of COURSE cats evolved from iguanas and humans from spiders. Why wouldn't you think that?
Aizen, I assume you are being sarcastic. At this time in history, December 2022, we do not have a very good understanding of evolution and how it affects species over time. In fact, I would have preferred if they had used this episode to discuss how our theory of evolution had changed, in four hundred years. It _is_ a fact that in the human genome there are genes for traits we do not have (technically the term is "express"). What about questions like "What are some other reasons we could have them?" Or "Why do these genes not get expressed?". Or, if humans or cats or other animals lived in completely different environments for several generations, would some of these recessive traits become dominant? For example, if a large population of humans crashed on a "water world" with no dry land, would their descendants eventually begin to re - express gills as well as lungs, or even wings, which our progenitors never had, but the genes for them may still be there and dormant, anyway?
@Seraphina Aizen you’re completely correct. Please take it from me, someone who has an Anthropology minor, including human evolution courses, and made A’s in every Anthro class but one, we actually do know for a fact that humans did indeed evolve from a form of lower ape and not anything else. The pygmy marmoset Data mentions is also spot on to the creature we’re believed to have evolved from, well before Australopithecine. We were never spiders or anything closely resembling any arachnid. As for your comment about the writers, I think they just wanted to make the episode more interesting, like some on here have already stated. Like in the way they have that jump scare with Barkley. A group of peaceful, cute, and docile, perhaps frightened apes running around the ship would’ve been boring I think.
As much I liked ST:TNG, some of the episodes were bonkers with pseudo-science and magic BS. This was one of them. This is, though, a prime example of the actors' superb workmanship. How they kept their composure in these scenes is beyond normal human abilities.
Well I think macroevolution is also ridiculous. Not only is the missing link still missing, but so is any fossil evidence of a link between many species that are supposedly related. And mutations in DNA aren't normally a positive thing that help a species improve, and if a species isn't able to survive at all in the first place it can't evolve that ability lol.
It was a silly premise, but it managed to overcome that. It was still fun to watch. Suspension of disbelief. Sometimes when the premise is so stupid that actually makes it easier. It’s like you can’t watch the movie Face/Off without this; although, that was intentionally silly, so maybe not the best example. With a show like STTNG they had lots of different writers and it’s hard to expect continuity of style. This was a ridiculous episode, but I still thought it was fun.
Who is Earnest? I saw no different characters in this.... Or was Earnest that one person who's random dormant genes were activated, but they did not change him at all? Wouldn't that be humiliating 😞
My brother and I were watching this together, our mom was in the other room. When Barclay does that jumpscare, we both screamed like little girls 🤣 Our mom called in to make sure everything was okay, and we busted ourselves laughing.
“...has an independent...” also Picard could easily have had the replicator make some milk for those kittens while they where talking in Data’s quarters.
Unfortunately, that system was offline, much like most of the ship. The replicator system pulls data from the ship's main computer cores. "Error, the molecular pattern for milk is unavailable; please make another selection."
Ah yes....early 90s where ppl were still stuck in that even then so terribly antiquated Linnaean Classification system and all the misconceptions it pushed to the genetic studies. Still as trippy as this episode was, it was still fun to watch
In real life, Jean-Luc would have these intense feelings of fear and panic earlier, when Data told him that he would be transformed again against his choice.
This reminds me of one of those movies where the parents leave for the weekend and by the time they get back the house has been completely destroyed by a party that their teenager had…except that the house is the series franchise and the parents are the owners of the license to produce content. This plot has COMPLETELY lost the plot…..
Some of the lines Data would use to get people into his quarters, "the computer in my quarters is independent" yeah right Data, that's a good one, I'm not falling for that!
"I have this intense feeling of fear and panic..." Perhaps PIcard should have remembered this when he scolded Data for having similar feelings in Generations.
I feel so sorry for Spot's kittens when they sound hungry and the only reason she's not caring for them is because she's been transformed into an iguana
As soon as I saw those huge spider webs in Engineering I leaned forward in my seat waiting for what we all knew was coming. Hit he ceiling anyway. Good job Barkley.
Could they not have found a less recognisable reptile than a bloody iguana to play Spot? That scene would be much less jarring with a different type of lizard like a Tegu or a Skink. It's a silly idea anyway, because mammals didn't directly evolve from reptiles. But at least give the audience a chance to suspend disbelief.
@@seraphinaaizen6278 Oh but Picard devolving into a lemur, or rather a lemur being our ancestor (without actual fossil evidence btw) makes perfect sense.
@@sarahberkner Lemurs are actually have a lot of of features that we would expect to see in a basal primate. So Data's speculation about Picard turning into something lemur like wasn't completely unreasonable. He would not have turned into an ACTUAL lemur. But may have turned into something recognizably similar to a lemur.
Probably didn’t have the budget to make a convincing prop of a basal amniote, so they just used an iguana and hoped the audience wouldn’t question it too much.
I like how you can continue to hear the kittens meowing throughout this scene. though the cat-person in me is like: "stop what you're doing and feed the damn kittens! I don't care if you're about to transform into a lemur!
There is now a huge debate throughout the world about artificial intelligence. However, in a terrifying scenario like this one, I would be very happy to have someone of Data’s intelligence and strength by my side to help defend me. Moreover, if I saw a human sized spider, then you better believe that I too would have intense feelings of fear and panic!
DATA devolved into an 8086 Computer running DOS 6.3. Rumour has it he wrote gorilla.bas in memory of Picard. Those exploding bananas were photon torpedoes.
The fact he was able to run DOS 6.3 on an 8086 was a technical feat the likes of which has not been seen since the writer of that particular episode retired.
@@TehButterflyEffect "Hardware Requirements: PC DOS 6.3 will operate on all Intel-based personal computers (processors 8088, 286, 386, and higher)." Sorry, I just had to look it up :) Did you know someone got Linux running on an 8-bit microcontroller? He wrote an ARM emulator for it, so it met the requirements of being 32-bit and having an MMU. It reminds me of something Wheatley said in Portal 2: "They do feel pain. Of a sort. All simulated. But real enough for them I suppose."
