| The Next Generation | |
| 49 | |
| Evolution | |
| 43125.8 | |
Rock-a-bye Wesley, down on his luck, he's probably dreaming that he'll get a... rude awakening! Riker to Ensign Crusher, you're supposed to be on the bridge you smarmy little git.
This week's guest annoyance is yet another scientific type - Paul Stubbs. He's come on board to investigate the clockwork explosion of a binary star system. It happens only once every 196 years, and just as he's about to lay his carefully prepared egg...
...the Enterprise's inertial dampers fail, throwing everyone to the floor. Airbag technology still has a long way to go. Engineering's off line, and they are headed straight into the path of the stellar matter! Even an impressive power-slide can't get them out of it. Prepare for impact...
Why doesn't the computer ever work reliably? Anyone who thinks that Starfleet is a military organisation can think again, any defence contractor who produced work this shabby would be hung out to dry with Morton Thiocol. I would personally chuck it out and replace it with a used C64, at least they know when they've made a mistake!
It's not just engineering that's having problems though, all the systems are failing. Bev is welcomed back from a year in Coventry by the replicators overflowing, and Worf has to put on his brown trousers when the sensors show a Borg vessel approaching at high speed! It looks like it's time for a spot of reprogramming with a very large axe...
Geordi hotwires one of the affected computer cores, and what does he find? Continuing disintegration - something is actively taking it apart. Now what could be doing that?
One word - Weasely. Yes our acting Ensign has made yet another tremendous blunder and endangered the ship with his science experiment. He left two naughty little nanites together and before he knew it, they'd evolved and taken it into their collective little mind to go exploring the ship. "I think that everything that's been going wrong might be my fault" he moans. No shit!
Did he report it immediately, in the hope of maintaining some form of damage control? Nope. He set some traps and whinged to Guinan about it. I can smell a hanging! I don't know whether the enterprise has a yard arm, but I am sure the holodeck can manage a fair copy...
Does Picard assert his authority and have Wesley thrown into custody? Of course not! He's a complete whimp and refuses to destroy the nanites. He practically congratulates the Boy Blunder, as the creatures that are endangering his ship just might have a collective intelligence. If they do, it's almost certainly higher than that of a certain bridge crew!
But what about the mission? Stubbs is livid - he's dedicated his life to this project and to have it destroyed by a mechanical virus is more than he can cope with. He wanders down and "irradiates" one of the infected cores with a phaser. "Take that you nasty little bugs" he cries. Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, the bugs fight back by filling the bridge with toxic smoke. Touché!
Data posits that he might be able to communicate with the germs by modifying the universal translator. A bit of a misnomer, isn't it. He make some progress, but the bugs decide to remove their problem first, and zap Stubbs. Is this direct attack enough to provoke Picard to action? Yes! "Prepare to irradiate the cores" he says.
Wouldn't you know it, just in the nick of time Data establishes a communication link. He's going to act as the nanites mouthpiece, by letting them infect his neural pathways. Does anyone notice the security risks involved here? Worf does, but as usual he's voted down. Ready Mr Music...
It was just a misunderstanding, really. We didn't actually want to destroy you, but you were getting in the way... After Stubbs grovels for a sufficiently long time, the nanites agree to a peace treaty. They don't need any Federation assistance though, as they have evolved further in 40 minutes than mankind in 10,000 years. Graciously Starfleet gives them a planet. It's nice to know there are so many to spare.
Thanks to the nanites, the computer core is fixed, and the experiment can go ahead. They orbit 40Mkm out, and send the probe in, just as the detonation occurs. At the speed of light, the shockwave should have taken over two minutes to reach them, but interestingly enough it took a little under two seconds. Light obviously does funny things in the future.
I personally would not want to be in the same system as an exploding neutron star, but the Enterprise seems to be made of tougher things.
