Stardate: 42494.8
Original Air Date: January 30, 1989
Writers: John Mason and Mike Gray
Director: Paul Lynch
“We can’t protect ourselves against the unknown.”
The Enterprise-D is bound for Star Station India to rendezvous with a Starfleet medical courier. The mission is described as “imperative” and Picard hopes it will allow him to assess the performance of the ship’s “new” chief medical officer, Dr. Pulaski. Picard explains to Deana Troi that he is concerned about her judgment. Suddenly, Data announces receipt of a faint distress signal, a voice-only transmission from the USS Lantree, a Class-6 Federation supply ship assigned to the Gamma 7 sector. The captain of the Lantree is L.I. Telaka.
As the Enterprise approaches, there are no life signs aboard the Lantree. Worf surprisingly suggests immediately boarding the Lantree, but instead Riker thinks the Enterprise should manually link into the ship’s viewing screen. Once accomplished, they are shocked to find that the crew of the Lantree have all died of old age while seated in their chairs on the bridge. Per the captain’s final recording, it only took a few hours for the whole crew to rapidly age and then die –and Captain Telaka was Riker’s same age. Apparently, there was a minor case of the Thelusian flu on the ship, a slightly “exotic” disease, but this was nowhere near severe enough to kill the entire crew. Per the ship’s records, the last port of call was the Darwin Genetic Research Station on Gragarin IV three days ago.
The Enterprise then orders the Lantree to be labeled under a strict Starfleet quarantine before heading off to Gragarin IV to investigate the station where the ship last visited. They speak with Dr. Kingsley who shares that the station is currently under a medical emergency –the sudden onset of geriatric phenomena. The first symptom of the disease is described as acute arthritic inflammation, and from there the aging process accelerates. Dr. Kingsley appears to be elderly even though she has just celebrated her 35th birthday. Her primary concern is for a group of children inside the station who were the result of genetic research and are currently under quarantine.
Despite hesitations, Dr. Pulaski convinces Picard to bring a child aboard the Enterprise in suspended animation and styrolite wrap so she can run a scan. Deanna Troi notes that the child beamed aboard the ship is unquestionably telepathic, and Dr. Pulaski declares that this child is one of the healthiest human beings in history –he has a highly advanced immune system. She is eager to inspect the child but Picard forbids it out of fear he could be infected and risk an outbreak on the Enterprise. So, Dr. Pulaski gets permission from Picard to study the boy aboard a shuttlecraft instead.
However, after about eighteen minutes with the boy, Dr. Pulaski begins experiencing severe arthritic inflammation –she has quickly contracted the disease. Data, who is piloting the shuttlecraft, heads for Darwin Station where Dr. Pulaski’s condition rapidly worsens.
Miles O’Brien suggests using the transporter trace for a biological filter in an effort to discover and isolate the cause of the disease in Dr. Pulaski since the transporter keeps a copy of the pattern for all beings who pass through it. However, Dr. Pulaski has refused to use the ship’s transporter so Picard contacts Dr. Pulaski’s last ship the USS Repulse under the command Captain Taggert via the subspace Captain’s Priority channel. Unfortunately, they do not keep patterns in their transporter for former crewmen, but Picard learns of Dr. Pulaski’s high admiration for him and her eagerness to join the Enterprise when an opportunity became available.
When Dr. Pulaski arrives at Darwin Station, she learns that the children’s advanced immune system caused the disease thanks to an antibody which affected all normal human beings in the vicinity. Dr. Pulaski explains the situation to the Enterprise and resigns herself to die at Darwin Station, and she recommends Gregarin IV be quarantined forever. But the crew scrambles feverishly to find a solution and Dr. Pulaski. The search for her skin cells in an effort to beam her aboard the ship using a highly risky maneuver involving a considerable amount of Star Trek technobabble and transporter theatrics. In the end, Dr. Pulaski is miraculously returned to her normal state of being and the Enterprise fires a photon torpedo to destroy the quarantined USS Lantree. All is returned to normal.
My Thoughts on “Unnatural Selection”
An episode about a rapidly aging disease, “Unnatural Selection” bears certain similarities to TOS episodes like “The Naked Time” and “The Deadly Years,” and it serves as a kind of redemption episode for Dr. Katherine Pulaski. In other episodes, Dr. Pulaski comes across as disgruntled and curmudgeonly, but in this episode, she is shown to be a more admirable character. At least she is not entirely disagreeable. Still, why did Picard decide to evaluate Dr. Pulaski in this episode? Wouldn’t he have done this much earlier in her tenure?
At any rate, unsurprisingly to anyone, the aging disease in this episode is highly volatile. We watch in frustration as Dr. Pulaski continually pushes Picard to bring potentially infected people in contact with the ship. Why does she even bring a child from Darwin Station aboard the ship? Earlier in the episode, wasn’t she able to scan the bridge of the USS Lantree? And then once aboard, why would she lower the force field? Also, why would she expose Data to the possibly infected child? How would she know she could not even carry the disease?
Anyway, “Unnatural Selection” starts off as a fairly good episode that unfortunately falls into the realm of the ridiculous as Dr. Pulaski is rescued due to a barely comprehensible transporter technicality. The aging disease outbreak on Darwin Station was an immensely compelling premise but the resolution in this episode only raises more questions and problems in the end.
Writer/Director
This episode was directed by Paul Lynch and the story was written by John Mason and Mike Gray.
Star Trek Trivia:
- Picard’s access code to manually operate the Lantree’s systems is “Omicron omicron alpha yellow daystar two seven. Enable.”
- Dr. Katherine Pulaski is the author of Linear Models of Viral Propagation.
- Dr. Pulaski is a bit of a luddite, she is fearful of using a ship’s transporter.
- This episode received an Emmy nomination in 1989 for hair styling done by Richard Sabre.
- The image of the USS Lantree in this episode was actually a redress of the USS Reliant model that was used for the 1982 feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- This episode faced heavy rewrites by head writer Maurice Hurley.
- This is the first episode in which we learned O’Brien’s name as far as I can tell (no first name yet though).
- Apparently, Diana Muldaur (Dr. Pulaski) made some infamous comments about never wanting to work in sci-fi again because of the aging prosthetic she needed to wear in this episode.
- Deanna Troi addresses Dr. Katherine Pulaski as “Kate” in this episode.
Great Books Guy 