:: Star Trek 1964 - Today ::

:: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 ::

Series 3: 055 Extinction

This episode involves Captain Archer, Lietenant Reed and T'Pol in a mutagenic trip to a world with a past, but of no use to the search for the Xindi. Archer found this Mutara class planet had been visited by the Xindi and therefore worth investigating. Unfortunately, in a lapse of judgement on Archers part, the expedition party, they didn't use envirenmental protection suites and promtly walked into a biological hazard, a virus which altered the humans to an alien life form called the Loque'eque. They didn't speak English, and it only minimally affected our Science Officer, T'Pol, "must be her green blood", Dr. McCoy would have said.

During the time I was growing up and learning most things, the 60's and early 70's in particular, it seemed that our DNA was fixed and unchangeable whilst in our bodies. We new that changes at conception (sometimes random) can cause deformities in babies, but usually, if you had a genetic disease, it was due to you being born with it, you inherited it from your parents. We also new that radiation from the nuclear bomb or exposure could cause cancer, which is the body going haywire, the normal controls in your genes not working. More recently we have found that virus's of a particular kind can alter the very double helix itself, within a cell and hide there, reperdusing itself when the cell divides, or even causing such a division. So it is plausable to extend the idea to some time in the future or some more advanced alien culture, able to produce a virus that can mutagenitally alter an alien creature (homo sapienn sapien in this case) to there own form in order to preserve the species.

The other thing that happens initially is a drive by the new Urquart, lead by a Captain Archer nevertheless, to find their city Urquart. Un undercround civilisation many centuries empty and abandoned. The unaffected and exceptionally logically T'Pol tries, without success, to convince her mutagenic friends, that Urquart is no more. Now this devolves down to the never proven genetic memory, do we, or any other species retain a memory from our parents. I personnally don't think so, neither do I believe a virus could hold such a thing, however it served as it does in Star Trek, in that suspension of unbelief worked for me whilst watching the episode.

To top off the other problems above our intrepid crew have to face, an alien force arrives determined to wipe them out to avoid a plague on there home planet, which had happened in the past, causing many deaths. Of course Dr Phlox comes to the rescue with an antigen that works, surprisingly fast, considering what had to be done, and the aliens setting a dead line!

AS the Enterprise NX-01 makes it's way through the Expanse, after the Xindi in it's endeavor to destroy the Earth before the Erath destroys their planet, we will see whether the great and galant crew we know so well, will be able to solve this problem, one the Vulcans can't. La Vat Buton directed this episode and the episode was written by Andre Bormania. Congratulations for a unique episode and an excellent acting from the crew as alien Loque'eque. For some transcrpts of interview with Andre co to An Interview With Andre Bormanian an excellent introduction to this man and his association with Star Trek.

:: Clifford 6:35 pm [+] ::
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