I apologize for my overly "ambitious" rating. The episode doesn't really warrant 10 stars...but it IS the most important single episode of the the Star Trek mythos.
The first part of the question is: probability fails to explain why (virtually) all the aliens have great similarities to each other, and to standard homo sapiens. The second part of the question is trickier, tho':
How can all these humanoid sapients breed interbreed? Without an episode like this this to definitively give the only possible answer, SHARED GENETIC ANCESTRY, it would be impossible. Indeed, even with shared genes, inter-breeding is exceedingly unlikely without assistance. Humans are genetically closer to other terran apes, yet we cannot successfully breed with them (or so i am reliably informed).
This question was vaguely addressed in an episode of the original Star Trek, where a humanoid alien speculates that he may have been our (humanities') ancestor, but until recently, we have ALL agreed that a fact is better than a guess.
In fact, I would place the last 10 minutes of this episode as a preamble to anyone starting to experience Star Trek.
The first part of the question is: probability fails to explain why (virtually) all the aliens have great similarities to each other, and to standard homo sapiens. The second part of the question is trickier, tho':
How can all these humanoid sapients breed interbreed? Without an episode like this this to definitively give the only possible answer, SHARED GENETIC ANCESTRY, it would be impossible. Indeed, even with shared genes, inter-breeding is exceedingly unlikely without assistance. Humans are genetically closer to other terran apes, yet we cannot successfully breed with them (or so i am reliably informed).
This question was vaguely addressed in an episode of the original Star Trek, where a humanoid alien speculates that he may have been our (humanities') ancestor, but until recently, we have ALL agreed that a fact is better than a guess.
In fact, I would place the last 10 minutes of this episode as a preamble to anyone starting to experience Star Trek.