Unnatural Selection

Pulaski - imagine what her minge looks like!	Another shrivelled-up crusty bint.	Pulaski's former Captain, probably glad to be rid of her.	Some naked prick.
(more images below)

Overview: The crew of the Enterprise encounters a supply ship where everyone has died from rapid aging. They must find the cause before scientists on a research colony suffer the same fate.
Writer: John Mason & Mike Gray
Director: Paul Lynch

Olav: I've turned it off several times before!

Anon²: Oh, that was the voice of Mr. Olav! Hello!

Olav: Hello. (pause) 'Eh!

Pie: (laughs)

Anon: Okay, so there wasn't a lot of pace in this episode, was there? It meandered along.

Anon²: Help the Aged.

Anon: Yeah, it was a Help the Aged episode. Quite appropriate actually, as it was a Pulaski episode. One of very few, if there were any others. Hopefully no more. Anyway, let's start passing it around and see what people have to add to this.

Anon²: As it happens, I bought a copy - the first version, in fact - of On The Origin Of The Species by Charles Darwin today. I didn't realise this episode was coming up and later on I'll have a few things to add to this. For now, I'll just say that Data got told to shut the fuck up three times. Geordi did fuck all and Wesley's still fucking gay. I'll pass it on and speak more in a sec.

Pie: Yeah, this was clearly the Pulaski episode. You see a couple of things here. First of all you can see that they were desparately trying to get everyone to like Pulaski which clearly didn't work. They were also trying to get a bit of conflict going on. Pulaski was in there having a bit of a dig at Picard. I think later in the series she has a dig at Data a lot of times. This worked better in later series but maybe not in this situation because no one liked Pulaski anyway.

Olav: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The things that I like about Pulaski can be written on the back of a Möbius strip. She just makes everyone around her worse. I like Data less when he's interacting with her. I like Picard less too. She is a cancer on this television series.

Anon: It's very true. Do you have any comments to make about her breathing at the end of every sentance.

Olav: Well, I kept up with this at the end of the episode. It's not every time, but it's often enough that it's offputting.

Anon²: It's a little wheeze, isn't it?

Olav: Yeah, it's a little wheeze which she uses to punctuate her sentances. Like "Dr. Kingsley, ahhhhhhhhh!" It's this little breath that makes me want to punch her... and I know that she's old.

Pie: My cat's like that.

Anon: That could have made an interesting B-plot to this episode - Spot drags in a mouse.

Olav: I think we definitely need to bring up the God thing. I think it's the only time I've heard God brought up in this series, other than in the "Q is a Space-God" sense.

Anon: Or, "We worship the Edo."

Olav: Or in The Apple.

Anon: Oh, The Apple in The Original Series? Terrible episode.

Olav: I love that episode because it's so terrible.

Anon: You like it because it's so terrible? Do you like Spock's Brain for the same reasons?

Olav: Oh, "Brain and brain; what is brain?" Absolutely!

Anon: Spock's Brain has to be one of the worst episodes in Trek history until Voyager came along.

Olav: Do you think?

Anon: Yeah, absolutely. Spock didn't even get his hair ruffled.

Olav: I know that I've seen worse in The Original Series. Like, Kirk and Spock fighting Dracula - that was a piss-poor episode. I don't recall what that's called, but Kirk and Spock vs. Dracula!

Anon²: It's like a B-movie, isn't it?

Olav: It is. And they made it!

Anon: In terms of references to God, there's a whole Next Gen episode about The Devil, but no episode specifically about God. Devil's Due, you remember that?

Anon²: There was a card of that, I think.

Pie: With a hologram icon.

Anon: Yeah, and Devil's Due was one of the highest rated episodes in the entire run of Next Gen.

Olav: Let's not forget the best movie?

Anon: Star Trek V: William Shatner's Search for Redemption?

Olav: Yeah, The Final Afront. That's what it was called, right?

Anon: The Final Frontier, technically.

Olav: How many ears does Spock have? 3 - the left ear, the right ear and the Final Frontier. I don't know where I heard that one.

Anon: Okay, joke time. So an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman enter a fancy dress contest. The Englishman is dressed up in a blue uniform with pointy ears. The Scotsman is dressed up in a red uniform and a kilt. Then the Irishman is dressed up as a tree trunk. So the MC says to the Englishman, "What have you come as?" and he goes, "I've come as Mr. Spock." Then they say to the Scotsman, "What have you come as?" and he goes, "I've come as Scotty." Then they go to the Irishman who's dressed as a tree trunk, "What have you come as?" and he goes, "Oh, I'm the Captain's Log."

Pie: That's a very geeky fancy-dress party. All the geeks arrived together!

Anon: So, one thing we were wondering, should the word be pronounced stasis or stassis?

Pie: Stasis.

Anon²: Stasis.

Olav: Stasis.

Anon: Exactly, it's stasis. We all know it's stasis, but they call it stassis.

Olav: I've never heard it called stassis other than by Troi in this episode.

Anon²: Yeah, and she's a fucking Spuds fan, too.

Pie: I have to say, when this episode was made, who would've actually have heard of stasis, other than in the science professions?

Anon: In Red Dwarf they had it by this stage. Red Dwarf in 1988; this episode in 1989.

Pie: But was Red Dwarf shown by this stage? I guess when they gave the actors the script, they just saw this weird word spelled S-T-A-S-I-S.

Olav: I don't recall. I think stasis has been part of the vernacular for some time now.

Anon: When I first saw Red Dwarf in 1988 - I remember watching the first episode when it was originally on - I remember understanding what stasis was.

Pie: When did we learn that word?

Anon: Well, I may have learnt it from Red Dwarf, but I still understood what it meant.

Anon²: It's actually a scientific word, like homeostasis. It's used to describe something that's reached an equilibrium. Oh, by the way! Shocking use of science fiction here! I'm going to pick - I've got to! In one of the scenes they say, "We can't sequence someone's genome - that's going to take months." Well, actually we've got 2 machines at work that can sequence the human genome in 9 days. Secondly, antibodies don't bind to DNA; they bind to proteins. Sorry to be picky.

Anon: Maybe they've lost track of the technology by the 24th century?

Anon²: What? How?

Pie: I can see this appearing in the transcript as "Technobabble."

Anon²: I'm here to disregard any technobabble they do, particularly if it's biological. Sorry! We had a lot more from O'Brien in this episode too. He seems to be developing a character. Early on, he had at least 3 sets of lines and he was even in the Senior Staff Meeting Room.

Olav: I think we saw more of him than Worf or Geordi.

Anon²: Geordi did fuck all again, by the way.

Olav: Wesley didn't have much to do.

Anon²: Wesley was in it at the beginning for about a minute and at the end for about a minute. Two minutes too long.

Anon: I think someone has had a go at Wesley's eyebrows, because they appear to be very neat.

Anon²: Yeah, he's having them plucked. Big fucking poof!

Anon: Let's bring up Diana Muldaur's acting ability, as it's been questioned in this. I'd like to bring up her appearance in LA Law, where she falls down an elevator shaft and how many years ago when I was in a Star Trek fan club, someone edited together Dr. Pulaski walking into a turbolift in Next Gen with her falling down the shaft in LA Law. Put together, it was a fitting end to the character, because she never got a death scene.

Anon²: She died the death a lot of times, but no actual death scene. Oh, card-counts: you went from -3 to 0. I guess you're not going to allow this.

Anon: Unlikely!

Pie: Let's just say we collectively got Hyper-Ageing.

Anon²: But he got it prematurely 3 times!

Anon: It's dangerous to do anything prematurely!

Anon²: I think we should set a new precedent that if you jump the gun you get docked a point.

Pie: I dunno. If it's something that you know is coming, then fair enough. But not always.

Anon²: Well, if it's spontaneous, then fair enough.

Anon: We'll see. Bowdy may struggle with this more than the rest of us.

Anon²: We're not going to tell him about this, because he'll be turning up in a few minutes.

Anon: He might still be debating half-points from a few commentaries ago.

Pie: (laughs)

Olav: I want to whinge about the fact that the Bridge Crew clearly do not know their own directives. It's been established time and time again that you don't genetically engineer humans because of the Clone Wars...

Pie: (laughs) Clone Wars!

Olav: Sorry, the Eugenics Wars. Here again, we have people mucking about with the human genome. Now, I don't care about this from a moral standpoint, but its consistancy within Star Trek. They established it within the first season of The Original Series that you do not tweak the human genome to create super-soldiers and yet they keep doing it.

Anon: Yep, way back in the episode Space Seed. True enough.

Anon²: I'm not going to say anything more about this. I could...

Anon: But you're officially non-commital.

Anon²: I make [something that he probably doesn't want to mention] so I'll shut the fuck up.

Olav: I'm pro-GM organisms actually, but in this episode, you shouldn't do it.

Anon: Are you pro-GM orgasms as well?

Pie: That's curious!

Anon²: I know what you're saying. They could make a G-spot that all men could find!

Pie: (laughs)

Anon: If only that were the day - and it wasn't up a fella's arsehole!

Pie: What?

Anon²: Well, let's put it this way. If there is such a thing as a God and he decided to put the male G-spot up an arse...

Anon: He'd have a good sense of humour, wouldn't he?

Anon²: And he obviously wouldn't mind gay people. I don't know what all this religious lot are talking about!

Olav: I've forgotten actually, how noticable the single camera is in Star Trek. The shows we watch today are filming with 2 cameras so they can switch back and forth and you get a better flow within a scene. But in this it's very clear that after one person says something, the camera has been moved and the second actor is not responding to what has just been said but just reciting a line. I think this really makes the show a little bit weaker.

Anon: This is a long time before shows came out that really played around with the camera, like This Life or NYPD Blue. Peep Show as well in later years. All shows that showed how they could play around with a scene.

Olav: Or The West Wing.

Anon: Yeah, The West Wing is awesome. And Q's in it too, briefly. Okay, so the next episode is A Matter of Honor. Everyone remember this one?

Olav: Isn't that the Klingon one? It's got "Honor" in the title.

Anon: It's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?

Olav: There's a quiz that you can take online called "Christian Metal Band or Star Trek Episode?"

Pie: (laughs uproariously)

Olav: It's really difficult to tell with titles like, "A Matter of Honor" or "Salvation." You have to think, "Is this a Christian Metal Band or is it a Star Trek episode?" I think I scored 2 out of 12. You can find it online and I heartily endorse it.

Anon: Okay, I'll remember that and try to link to it. We can all see how well we do. Time for another episode now. We'll be seeing you all in about 50 minutes.

(Here you go... Christian Metal Band or Star Trek Episode. I scored 12 out of 12, but I had to think about Deliverance!)

- Anon, Anon², Pie & Olav, 10-Oct-2009