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Star Trek - The Next Generation, Episode 33: Unnatural Selection
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List Price: $14.95
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Product Details
- Starring: LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden
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- Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
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- Binding: VHS Tape
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- Director: LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Gabrielle Beaumont, Robert Becker, Cliff Bole
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- EAN: 9786302897180
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- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
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- ISBN: 6302897181
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- Label: Paramount
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- Manufacturer: Paramount
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- Number of Items: 1
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- Product Group: Video
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- Publisher: Paramount
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- Release Date: 1995-05-31
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- Studio: Paramount
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- Theatrical Release Date: 1987-09-26
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- Title: Star Trek - The Next Generation, Episode 33: Unnatural Selection
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- UPC: 097360013337
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Avg Customer Rating: 
Product Description: This episode is devoted to giving background information and context for the acerbic new chief medical officer, Dr. Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). When the Enterprise answers a distress call from the Lantree, a supply ship, they discover the crew has died of a mysterious virus that caused them to age rapidly. They trace the ship back to the Darwin Research Station, where the disease is ravaging most of the population. The only ones it's not affecting are the children, who have been bred to resist all disease. Dr. Pulaski makes a leap of faith, believing the children are free of the disease, but Picard doesn't want to put his ship at risk, so Pulaski ends up examining the child on a shuttle. Well, she contracts the disease, and it has the effect of making her look more and more like former first lady Barbara Bush. It's up to the crew of the Enterprise to find a cure for this dreaded Barbara Bush disease. --Andy Spletzer
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Customer Reviews
A entertaining episode
Ok. This episode was purely a chance to highlight Diana Muldar's character Dr. Pulaski. Its standard scifi, certainly not an outstanding episode but fairly entertaining. If your looking for standard scifi, then this episode is for you.
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Genetic experimentation on children, I think not!
The Enterprise receives a distress signal from another Federation ship and when the Enterprise arrives, all the crew members are dead from old age. Given that many of the crew members were in their thirties, it is clear that an unusual disease broke out on the ship. The other Federation ship is placed in quarantine and the Enterprise proceeds to its last port of call, which is the Darwin Genetic Research Station. Upon arrival, the Enterprise crew learns that the adults at the station are also infected, but the children are uninfected. The children were the experimental subjects of the station, being created with hyperactive immune systems that render them invulnerable to the disease. However, they could be carriers, so one is beamed up encased in plastic so that Dr. Pulaski can examine him. Unfortunately, she cannot solve the problem without removing the plastic, which she is finally allowed to do aboard a shuttle. She catches the aging disease, but does find out that it is the immune system of the genetically altered children that causes the disease. Dr. Pulaski is ultimately saved by being taken through the transporter and regenerated by using her old transporter pattern records. This is a very weak episode, starting with the fact that genetic experimentation is being done on children. It seems impossible to believe that such experiments would be done on anyone, much less children. The "solution", restoring aged people back to their youth by taking them through the transporter is ridiculous and would render medicine obsolete. It also raises a logical impossibility. Since Dr. Pulaski is regenerated using an old pattern then her memories of the recent events would have been erased, as they could not have been in her personal transporter pattern. Of course they were not.
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playing God has some bad consequences
The Enterprise receives a distress call from the U.S.S. Lantree, a limited armament cargo ship with a compliment of 26 men and women aboard. Suddenly communication stops, but the comlink is still open. The Enterprise cannot get the Lantree to re-transmit, so they race to the coordinates at Warp 7 only to find no life signs on the Lantree. Not knowing what is over there, they use the computer to gain access to the Lantree's main viewer to look at the bridge - as they zoom in to the faces of the dead crew, they see that they all appear to be in their late 80s and 90s, perhaps even older.Dr. Polaski scans the bodies remotely to see that they have died of natural causes - old age. According to Starfleet records, the crew had just left a star base 3 weeks earlier, all in perfect health. One crew member was treated for a mild case of Thelusian flu, but otherwise, all were healthy. According to the ship's log, their last stop was Darwin Station, a space station where the scientists play God by manipulating the DNA of their "children" so that 12 year olds look like normal adults in their 20s, fully developed, and they have telepathic and telekenetic powers as well. As the Enterprise approaches, the doctor at Darwin Station asks for help, as everyone (except the "children") has been infected with some disease that ages them rapidly. They believe they were infected by the people on the cargo ship, but Polaski & Picard tend to think the opposite is true. Picard and Polaski get into a verbal war on regulations and policies as Polaski seeks to study one of the children and Picard maintains a deathgrip as the guardian of security for his ship. In a famous retort to Polaski, Picard states, "...and doctor, I never discourage input, but it would be nice if once in a while, you'd let me finish my sentences." Picard caves in and let's Polaski beam one of the "children" onto a space shuttle with Data as pilot. Things go well for about 20 minutes, then suddenly Polaski experiences accute arthritic pain - the initial symptom of the debilitating disease. The Enterprise is in a pickle - it looks like even though the children are not infected, they are carriers - but their caretakers (or "parents") will be dead of old age in a matter of 2 or 3 days, and his chief medical officer is now infected as well. With Data's help, Polaski finds the source of the illness, but is a cure in sight? Picard, Geordi and Data put their heads together with Chief O'Brien to come up with a scheme that just might save the day. O'Brien is now a more prominent character and Polaski gets less opinionated about Data's personhood. There are holes-a-plenty in the plot, but it is still enjoyable.
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Deadly Years Part 2
In this one a virus spreads among a colony that ages everyone. Pulaski was the only one who caught this virus that's a variation of the original series episode "The Deadly Years." While not the same plot; the result is the same. Everyone gets to age fifty years overnight.
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