Star Trek 525: Distant Origin

525. Distant Origin

FORMULA: The 37s + The Chase

WHY WE LIKE IT: The Voth POV.

WHY WE DON'T: The premise is stoopid.

REVIEW: An unusual episode in that is follows a crew other than Voyager's for the majority of the story (right down to the logs we hear), Distant Origin does quite a few things well. For one, the featured aliens, the Voth, are a very well realized saurian race. Not only is the make-up quite strong (though the hands are a bit goofy), but their biology, culture and technology are distinctly different from our own as well. Small details like a mite-attracting lamp for good eatin', or the deductions made about humans showing an alien bias, go a long way toward fleshing out the Voth.

The parallel between this story and Gallileo's, or closer to home, the debate between creationism and evolutionism, is obvious. As such, it's a good and worthy Star Trek story. Gegan is even asked to recant his controversial theory (and proof). Chakotay, not one for the Prime Directive (if he even thinks it applies), gives an impassioned speech on Gegan's behalf, and it's a good one. It shows how perception affects faith, how how man's heretical debunking of a miracle is another's even greater miracle. Of course, it doesn't make a lick of difference, nor should it. The matriarch is a politician above all, and no society turns around on a dime.

What DOESN'T work is the premise that another sentient race evolved on Earth from the dinosaurs, one that took for the stars 70 million years ago or whatever it is. It's a factoid idea of the worst sort. Think about it. Even if they all took off, there must have been entire generations that had come and gone. And why has there never been a fossil with an intermediate brain case? There should be quite a difference between the smartest known dinosaur and the Voth. Plus, if they took off to avoid the mass extinction, why did they settle 70 000 light years away and not in a closer system? If Star Trek has taught us anything, it's that there are plenty of M-class planets in the Alpha Quadrant. And finally, I have a hard time believing a culture could survive 20 million years or more as stated, doctrine or no.

And while I appreciate the sentiment at the end that one day every Voth will know the truth, etc., maybe we should be afraid of that day. Might they not want to return to stake their claim? They've already shown they could be dangerous, not only in attitude, but technologically. Truly, the episode might have been better without the Earth connection (because our little planet is starting to look much too important to the development of the Delta Quadrant), even if the initial scenes, where Gegan revisits Basics, Fair Trade and Macrocosm, would have been obviated.

LESSON: I am a monkey's nephew and a lizard's cousin.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Sadly, I am as skeptical of the Distant Origin theory as the Voth are. Too bad because I really did enjoy the Voth, their quest and their moral dilemmas.