In "Unnatural Selection" the Enterprise encounters a ship whose entire crew has experienced advance aging to the point that they've all died within days of exposure to whatever disease got them. This encounter leads to the Enterprise to a scientific research outpost dealing with genetics and eugenics where the scientists have also started to rapidly age. Here they have created a race of super-children whose immune system is so strong that it has attacked and mutated a harmless virus they were exposed to by the visiting freighter. The super-children's immune system has rewritten the DNA of all of these normal humans.
After Doc Pulaski is exposed and begins to age, the crew conceives of a way to reset her DNA using a hair sample and filtering her through the transporter. It works and the Enterprise is able to do it for all the scientists as well. They're experimental children however will have to be quarantined for their entire lives or at least until they're able to change their immune system. The Enterprise destroys the freighter full of the infected dead.
This is the most we've gotten of Dr. Pulaski and Transporter Chief O'Brien this far in the series. Both really take center stage at the expense of mostly Worf who doesn't have a lot to do during this one.
TOS has a rapid aging episode as well but this ep comes with the twist that it's not the main cast aging, it's a different group. There's a long of technobabble coming from the doctors and O'Brien in this one. I'm a sucker for some made up jargon though so I was all ears.
We don't get a real B plot here unless you count them mentioning they need to rendezvous with the Star-Station India. That's probably the biggest flaw of this script since it leaves us dealing with these old geezers and empathic teenagers the entire episode.
This episode is pretty middle of the road. Nothing about it really stands out to me but none of its too problematic either. It has a few plot holes and a eugenics station seems super against Federation regulations so I can't rate it much higher than a 6.
After Doc Pulaski is exposed and begins to age, the crew conceives of a way to reset her DNA using a hair sample and filtering her through the transporter. It works and the Enterprise is able to do it for all the scientists as well. They're experimental children however will have to be quarantined for their entire lives or at least until they're able to change their immune system. The Enterprise destroys the freighter full of the infected dead.
This is the most we've gotten of Dr. Pulaski and Transporter Chief O'Brien this far in the series. Both really take center stage at the expense of mostly Worf who doesn't have a lot to do during this one.
TOS has a rapid aging episode as well but this ep comes with the twist that it's not the main cast aging, it's a different group. There's a long of technobabble coming from the doctors and O'Brien in this one. I'm a sucker for some made up jargon though so I was all ears.
We don't get a real B plot here unless you count them mentioning they need to rendezvous with the Star-Station India. That's probably the biggest flaw of this script since it leaves us dealing with these old geezers and empathic teenagers the entire episode.
This episode is pretty middle of the road. Nothing about it really stands out to me but none of its too problematic either. It has a few plot holes and a eugenics station seems super against Federation regulations so I can't rate it much higher than a 6.