Although Barkley turning into an arachnid was the worst offender, I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned that Spot turned into a lizard. Mammals did not evolve from modern lizards, we evolved from non-mammalian 'synapsids', or 'mammal-like reptiles'.
Lizards branched from another group, the 'sauropsids', which also includes birds, crocodilians and snakes. Also, how on Earth would one survive one's brain shrinking and then increasing again? Where did the information stored in that part of the brain go and how was it retrieved? I removed this background section, as it seems to be mostly nitpicking, rationalization and commentary not suitable or necessary for MA Data: "Each of these stages is another link in the evolutionary chain which stretches back to the origins of all life forms on Earth.
Because introns can include genetic material from many different species over millions of years of evolution it is possible that a wide variety of transformations are occuring among the crew.
Data: "All humanoid life has a similar genetic pattern, the virus should work on non-human crew members in the same way. Memory Alpha Explore. Christopher Pike Number One. James T. USS Protostar. Generations First Contact Insurrection Nemesis.
Memory Alpha. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Talk: Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome Back to page. View source. Everyone just de-evolved to different stages along their species evolution, going back to the aquatic stage! The gene wouldn't evne effect spots children because of how developed they are.
It might effect Ogaua's child though. However, that's different from "switching on" a gene, which is not evolution. If one of your genes were switched on, it would begin to be expressed and you may experience an effect depending on what that gene was.
The problem with this episode is that even if they were "switched on", introns would never cause "de-evolution" there's no such thing. These genes that are switched off only matter when you are born because that is when you develop your form. I agree that turning on these Introns wouldn't devolve the crew, but the only reason is, because it would only effect the next generation.
Human genomes or the genome of any other animal does not contain the genes from ancestral organisms. Those genes are either lost, fragmented, or simply changed in the course of evolution. Most introns are non-functional genes, which don't code for anything useful at all. Activating them would almost certainly cause death. But they would do so in the organism in which they are activated.
This may be in introns, and it may be in so-called "junk DNA" which current studies suggest may not really be junk. However, genes swap pieces, we pick up pieces via retrovirus, all kinds of things happen. It is impossible to activate some currently inactive portion of the code and turn someone into an ape, or a spider, or anything much besides a mass of dying flesh. DNA codes for proteins according to a specific pattern: three letter codons correspond to amino acids. Evolution is fictional, so it fits well in the fictional Star Trek universe.
Evolution is "fact" in the Star Trek universe, and that's fine. Warp speed and transporters are also facts. Having Barclay devolve into a spider shouldn't be a cause for concern. It's the writers' prerogative. It could also be a funny in-joke reference to his fear of spiders shown in an earlier episode Realm of Fear — NKCampbell. T'sSon - Evolution is fictional?
My best guess: at some point an innocent spider was on the transporter pad and accidentally got "fused" into Barclay's DNA when he used the transporter. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes.
The devolution virus didn't do something as simple as "make everyone into primates. They go on to make it more clear: Data : Each of these stages is another link in the evolutionary chain, stretching back to the origins of all lifeforms on Earth. Improve this answer.
Community Bot 1. I kinda felt like some days they wanted to get science more or less right albeit with loads of technobabble , some days they just want to churn another episode out and the latter type of days got more frequent as the years went on. If Star Trek writers let science get in the way of a good story, there probably wouldn't have been a show It's probably worth noting, given there seems to be procreative compatibility between several humanoid species in the series, that it might be possible Barclay has some alien DNA for instance, from a grandparent or great grandparent whose evolutionary chain did contain some spider-like ancestor.
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