Stardate: 43125.8
Original Air Date: September 25, 1989
Writer: Michael Piller & Michael Wagner, Teleplay by : Michael Piller
Director: Winrich Kolbe
“The fact of the matter is we are dealing with the potential breakdown of the main computer.”
Ensign Wesley Crusher is falling asleep at his laboratory desk before being urgently summoned by Riker (Wesley says he forgot to set his alarm). Wesley leaves behind his half-finished project. Meanwhile, the Enterprise has entered a “spectacular binary star system” in the Kavis Alpha Sector on a most critical mission of astrophysical research. They are carrying a guest, Dr. Paul Stubbs (played by Ken Jenkins) who is studying the decay of neutronium expelled at relativistic speeds. The phenomenon is scheduled to occur in a matter of hours. We learn that in this situation, the little star sucks up material from red giant until it explodes, and it only occurs once every 196 years like clockwork. Now it is a mere 18 hours away, like an “the interstellar counterpart to earth’s old faithful.”
Dr. Stubbs builds and launches an “egg” in the service of his investigation, but something quickly goes awry and the ship’s computer starts malfunctioning. Has the Enterprise been sucked into the energy beam? Is someone sabotaging the scientific mission? The computer (voiced again by Majel Barrett) has recorded no control malfunction, even as the “food slot” in Sickbay stops working, the computer starts spouting off chess moves, and various red alerts sound off and the shields stop responding. Geordi discovers there is some sort of disintegration happening on the ship, it seems almost as if someone climbed inside the hardware and started taking it apart. And Doctor Stubbs is deeply concerned, he would rather die than miss this stellar event (he is briefly injured in the crisis). He reminds Picard that if the Enterprise fails now in this mission, another chance won’t come around in two centuries.
Meanwhile, Dr. Beverly Crusher (freshly returned from a year away) is worried about her son Wesley. She fears he has taken on too many responsibilities while she has been gone and he is not living the life of a normal boy his age. At the same time, Wesley starts investigating and poking around the ship in an unusual manner before he runs into Guinan and confesses that he may have started this crisis. He has been working on his final school project focused on nanotechnology, but now two Nanites are missing. The Nanites are tiny microscopic machines that have actually evolved and become sentient using collective intelligence. He is worried they are causing the problems, confesses this to Guinan, Nanites are tiny machines that have evolved, using collective intelligence.
Once this comes to light with the crew, Picard and crew attempt to isolate the Nanites, but Dr. Stubbs acts erratically by firing a burst of gamma radiation from his phaser intended to kill the Nanites. But this leads to a gaseous smell, including toxic levels of nitrogen oxide, released in the ship and Riker switches to manual control of the air-handling system. The Nanites respond to Dr. Stubb’s firing by interfering with life-support systems. Now, extermination with the Nanites may be the only option while Dr. Stubb’s is confined to quarters. Something goes awry and then he is electrocuted by the computer (at the behest of the Nanites).
In the end, Data manages to establish contact with the Nanites using the universal translator, and he offers his own neural network as a mediator with the Nanites so they may communicate. They agree and crawl inside Data and amusingly speak through him, saying they were merely seeking raw materials and exploration, much like the Enterprise. After briefly confronting Dr. Stubbs, the Nanites agree to make peace, they vacate Data’s neural network, and Dr. Stubbs pledges to help the Nanites relocate their evolving civilization to the planet Kavis Alpha IV.
In the end, the ship’s computer core gets fixed in time for Dr. Stubbs’s experiment and the episode concludes with Dr. Crusher seeking parenting guidance from Guinan as they watches Wesley from across the lounge in Ten Forward where a young girl is looking at him affectionately.
My Thoughts on “Evolution”
The third season opens with… a Wesley Crusher episode? This is an interesting choice, and it’s a bit silly that the whole dilemma aboard the Enterprise is accidentally caused by Wesley’s Nanite experiment (does the ship really have no safeguards against microscopic organisms?), but I really liked this fairly straight-forward, simple episode of TNG. In it, we see the long-awaited return of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher, who has been away for a year (and curiously none of the characters even mention the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Katherine Pulaski who replaced Dr. Crusher during the run of Season 2). Dr. Crusher’s reintroduction to the series feels like a smooth transition, a return to form. It’s almost as if you can feel TNG has finally hit its stride.
“Evolution” sets up a nice little mystery aboard the ship –who or what is tampering with the ship? Could the computer malfunction be caused by the nearby stellar phenomenon? Or is Dr. Stubbs sabotaging the ship? Could it be Q? The evolving Nanite twist winds up being a fascinating microscopic species for the Enterprise to confront, truly an example of “new life and new civilizations” not unlike other non-humanoid species, such as the Horta in the TOS episode “Devil in the Dark.” This episode is a solid start to Season 3!
Credits:
- Director: Winrich Kolbe
- Writer: Michael Piller and Michael Wagner (teleplay by Michael Piller)
- “Evolution” was the fist episode written by Michael Piller (1948-2005), a critically important scriptwriter for TNG. He wrote many popular episodes and later became the show-runner for both TNG and DS9 and he wrote the script for the TNG film Star Trek: Insurrection (1998).
- Cinematography: Marvin Rush
- Guest Cast:
- Ken Jenkins…..Dr. Paul Stubbs
- Ken Jenkins (1940-present) has appeared in many television shows like The X-Files, Babylon 5, Beverly Hills, 90210, but his most recognizable role is as Dr. Bob Kelso on the show Scrubs. He has also appeared in feature films like The Abyss, Gone in 60 Seconds, I Am Sam, The Sum Of All Fears, and others.
- Ken Jenkins…..Dr. Paul Stubbs
Star Trek Trivia:
- The title of this episode is a reference to the “evolution” of the Nanites.
- There is a new opening credits sequence that begins in this episode.
- This episode debuts the new TNG uniforms.
- Gates McFadden returns as Dr. Beverly Crusher as does Majel Barrett as the voice of the ship’s computer.
- “Evolution” features the first appearance of the new two-piece Starfleet uniforms; several cast members had complained about the previous spandex uniforms which led to their replacement with the new Mandarin-collared two-piece wool uniforms.
- In this episode, chief engineer Geordi LaForge has apparently been promoted to rank of Lt. Commander. And Worf has also been promoted to full lieutenant from his previous rank of lieutenant junior grade.
- Wesley Crusher says most of his time is taken up with his studies (like his final project on nanotechnology) since he’s trying to get into Starfleet Academy. He earns credit while aboard the Enterprise. He is 17-years-old in this episode.
- Data says: there has not been a systems-wide technical failure in a starship in 79 years (even though there have been technical failures aboard the Enterprise in the past two seasons of TNG). This was apparently a reference to to the systems-wide technological failure that occurred on the Enterprise-A at the beginning of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which would have taken place canonically in 2287.
- The Egg device is a re-use of the viral containment unit from the episode “The Child.”
- Guinan says she has “husbands.” She says she has a lot of children.
- Wesley Crusher says he “always gets an A” to which Guinan responds, “So did Doctor Frankenstein.”
- During the many malfunctions, the Enterprise randomly starts blasting “Stars and Stripes Forever” written by composer John Philip Sousa.
- Dr. Stubbs says Nanites are made in a plant in Dakar, Senegal.
- Picard references the story of Gulliver being overpowered by little Lilliputians.
- Scott Grimes has a minor uncredited role as one of Wesley Crusher’s friends in this episode. He later had a starring role in Seth MacFarlane’s satirical Star Trek homage series, The Orville.
- Dr. Stubbs claims that when all of this is over, he will show Counselor Troy “New Manhattan” on Beth Delta I like she has never seen it before.