HomeAlternative Trek Commentaries

Evolution

a conversation between Anon and Anon2, 12-Dec-2009
transcribed by Anon, 08-Jan-2010


Season 3 equals
improved effects!
Zap! Kapow! Splat!Picard isn't impressed
by Alan's ball(s).
The Enterprise's soda-stream
requires urgent maintenance.
(more images below)

Overview: Nanites escape Wesley's lab and form a collective intelligence, threatening an astrophysicist's only chance at performing a stellar experiment.
Writer: Michael Piller and Michael Wagner
Director: Winrich Kolbe


Anon: Episode 49, possibly episode 50. Evolution.

Anon2: Possibly it's out of sequence.

Anon: Yeah, we may have watched this one in the wrong order. The DVD's kinda fucked up in that rather than in a traditional DVD menu where the first episode would be in the top left, it's in the top right on this one.

Anon2: Can I just explain? I think we got a card each, but I stopped writing after a little while because food arrived that we'd waited over 2 hours for. Now, prior to that point I was digesting my internal organs from hunger. Anyway, we waited a fuckload of time for food.

Anon: 2 hours waiting for food! Fucking hell!

Anon2: I phoned them about a dozen times. I said, "Look - if this food isn't fucking here in a certain amount of time" - we set a timer in fact.

Anon: Yeah, we got 20% off.

Anon2: Yeah, we did. It wasn't enough though. We had prawn toast - it wasn't toast. It was soggy because it had been in some bag for 2 hours. Anyway, rant rant rant rant rant. Fuck it. Shit! (pause) Not the episode; the food. Right, where did we start?

Anon: Just to clarify, the food wasn't as bad as it would have been if we'd paid full price for it.

Anon2: Let's leave the food alone. We're not fucking getting anything from them again anyway.

Anon: Okay, Star Trek. So, we may have watched this episode out of sequence but there was still stuff in the episode about Beverly being back on the Enterprise.

Anon2: Yeah!

Anon: Welcome back, Bev! We'd fucking missed you with that crusty, craggy cunt, Pulaski.

Anon2: Yeah. There's a bit in this episode where she [Bev] thinks her son is gay.

Anon: Yeah, she did.

Anon2: She made some comment about how she wasn't sure about his sexuality. Frankly, we've been saying that for 2 whole seasons! And at the end of this episode, he was seen with a young, quite attractive bit of skirt. Actually, I'm fairly old now and might go to prison for saying that!

Anon: (laughs)

Anon2: Actually, he's 17. She's probably a similar age, so I wouldn't go to jail.

Anon: I believe you can still shag 17-year-olds in this country so long as you're not in a position of authority over them.

Anon2: Well, I don't even know the girl.

Anon: Yeah. I'm talking generally, dude. Plus it's not as if the actress would still be 17. Anyway, I don't know why I know these things. I just do. I think, like, a teacher isn't allowed to shag a 17-year-old student.

Anon2: Right. No fucking way, dude. They get beaten up if they do, and I know this from experience. (pause) Not that I was ever a teacher, but I know that when I was at school there was a particular girl that was a friend of my mum's daughter... (pause) I'm not going to say anymore, because if she ever reads this, it's kind of libel but [censored] fucked a guy at school who was a teacher and basically she was a total fucking embarrassment to the entire fucking village. And some guy at the end of this year, knocked this guy out. At the end of the day, fucking ridiculous! Now, I think we should delete the name [censored].

Anon: We'll make sure we do.

(And I did.)

Anon2: Yeah, we will. Don't transcribe that.

Anon: I won't.

Anon2: Good. You've got that on record that I probably would get my arse handed to me by my mum. And I'm quite scared of the other girl's mum too.

Anon: Her mum?

Anon2: Yeah. She lives around the corner. Good friend and everything, but unfortunately her daughter's a total fucking slut.

Anon: So, the only thing we've managed to gather from this is there's a bird that lives near your mum who's got a daughter that's a complete fucking slut.

Anon2: Yeah.

Anon: Right.

Anon2: That's pretty much it.

Anon: Right, Star Trek. Bev's back. New uniforms too.

Anon2: Yeah, very good. New effects too.

Anon: Right, new and better production value.

Anon2: New intro as well.

Anon: Yeah, extra stuff at the start of the title sequence.

Anon2: I mean, strangely enough, that's how I remember it. I remember this intro.

Anon: Here's a thought though. If that episode we just watched happened in another season, it would have been crap. But there was something about the production value here and the fact that we've somehow got onto season 3, that has made this good.

Anon2: Well, the quality of the visuals, the whole sci-fi about it, is a lot better. Oh, and Data got told to shut the fuck up. Cards, one-each. I might have said that already. I'm reiterating.

Anon: The guest star in this episode was a bloke called Dr. Alan Stubbs.

Anon2: Fucking great! (singing) "He's only got one ball!"

Anon: (laughs)

(Okay, it's Dr. Paul Stubbs. I realise this. Alan Stubbs is just more amusing.)

Anon2: The thing is, we were eating for half this episode, so I wrote fuck all down. I was fucking hungry. I think I would've paid more attention to how good or bad this was if I hadn't been fucking starving. I was paying more attention to my food. So, firstly we may have watched this out of sequence; secondly, I was barely paying attention whilst I was eating. My face was full of fucking chow mein. And thirdly, I don't know if we can grade this one, based on that. It was alright. The fact that Bev Crusher's back and not that cringey old fucking hag - oh dear!

Anon: Actually, Wesley was the first character that you see in this season.

Anon2: Well, if this was the first episode.

Anon: Let's just agree that for us, this was the beginning of the season.

Anon2: Yeah, okay. It is. If we look back on this after finding out that The Ensigns of Command is the first episode, then basically, we'll look really weird. It'll be like we've done a time-travelling thing and said, "Hey, welcome to the new season!" Like we've done some time-travelling shit. You think? That could work. It's sci-fi, isn't it?

Anon: This was a bit of a Wesley Crusher episode, wasn't it?

Anon2: And a Nanites episode, which was one of the cards.

Anon: Beverly describes Wesley when she's talking about him... she says that she's "missed about 2 inches of him."

Anon2: Now, that's...

Anon: ... a somewhat worrying thing to hear. Bev's got a new hairstyle too.

Anon2: Yeah, I think it changes. I hope so, anyway. It's in a bob.

Anon: Maybe one day we'll find out which of Bev's hairstyles it was that James liked so much.

Anon2: Something quite strange this - we've actually recognised that a woman has a different fucking haircut. Oh dear!

Anon: That's quite worrying. The next note I have here is, "Where's my Chinese?"

Anon2: (laughs) That came up quite a lot for about 2 hours!

Anon: They were also talking about memory storage at one stage and they said there was gigabytes of information. Oh wow! Like that would be a lot of data in the 24th Century. With the shit programming that Microsoft do, your Operating System would be a Gigabyte2, whatever that is. It would be crazy! Back in the 1980's, I had a ZX Spectrum with 48k of RAM. Before that, I had one with 16k of RAM.

Anon2: Wasn't it still bits as far as memory was distributed back then? Like, the memory and the processor?

Anon: Well, the processor would've been in megahertz.

Anon2: What was the bit then?

Anon: 8 bytes makes a bit.

Anon2: Ah. What's the k then?

Anon: 1k = 1,024 bytes.

Anon2: Oh right. You can tell that I'm only a biological scientist then, because I didn't know that. Well, I knew it but I didn't give a fuck about it.

Anon: Right. So, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes.

Anon2: Pardon?

Anon: 1,048,576.

Anon2: Wow, that's a lot, isn't it?

Anon: Yeah, 1,0242.

Anon2: Say that again.

Anon: 1,048,576.

Anon2: Fucking hell! Wow!

Anon: By the way, I used to have a password - used to, I should stress - which was 2209182119 15180518190405.

Anon2: Now, that means fuck all to me, but I guess it's something technical on the computer-side of things. Are you making these things up?

Anon: No, it was 2209182119 15180518190405.

Anon2: (laughs) Why? That still means nothing.

Anon: It's just numbers, dude. They float around my head.

Anon2: Why?

Anon: 'Cos I'm a fucking mentalist.

Anon2: Right, okay. You know lots of weird things. Like your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Latin. Give me a rendition.

Anon: Well, I can only do Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, but if for some reason you wanted to perform that in Latin...

Anon2: Yeah, that's what I want you to do now.

Anon: It would go: (singing) Testudines heroici adulescentes mutati! Duus cooperti! Vis adest! Sunt illi manus terribilis!

Anon2: (laughs) Okay. And how about Postman Pat in reverse? That's quite easy, isn't it?

Anon: Well, I think everyone can do that one.

Anon2: Okay. Nothing special, perhaps, but you can actually do it.

Anon: Well, if we ever create MP3's or WAV's of these, then other people can learn.

Anon2: Okay, I don't think we actually know where we are.

Anon: Right. We may actually be going back in time for the next episode.

Anon2: We may indeed. I think basically, we should send a little message to whoever it is that does the show. Who is it? Paramount?

Anon: Yeah.

Anon2: Paramount - we'll have to tell them that their episode selection screen on their DVD menu may be fucking wrong.

Anon: Right, let's do that next episode then.

Anon2: Okay, go on.

Anon: See ya later, dudes.

Anon2: Bye.

- Anon & Anon2, 12-Dec-2009

Bev's back!
And with short hair.
"Dear writing team,
Please give me a purpose.
With love from
Michael Dorn. xxx."
A Nurse. (Not the
one from Blackadder.)
Anon2's fave
17-year-old.
Who will keep a
straight face for
the longest?