Reviewing Star Trek TNG - S2E7 "Unnatural Selection"
^ I assure you this isn't the start of a questionable porno.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Also, this review took me a strangely long time to write for some reason.
THE PREMISE
The Enterprise receives a distress call from the USS Lantree, and finds it adrift at its last known location. They tap into the Lantree’s viewscreen, and finds that the entire crew appear to have died of old age, even though many of them were as young as the Enterprise crew. The only evidence of any disease was a harmless case of Thelusian flu in one of the ship’s officers.
They decide to head for the Lantree’s last port of call, the Darwin Genetic Research Station on Gagarin IV. But as they near the planet, they receive a distress call from the station’s researchers, who believe they were infected by the Lantree.
MY REVIEW
This episode was a bit of a challenge to summarise, since it takes a while to get to the actual hook.
Long story short, the Enterprise agrees to beam aboard one of the station's unaffected children, Data and Pulaski take a shuttlecraft so they can examine the child without risking contaminating the ship, but then Pulaski becomes infected and begins to age rapidly. The rest of the episode is a race against time to discover the cause of the disease and develop a cure in time to save the lives of Pulaski and everyone on the station.
Data and Pulaski spend a lot of time together in this episode, but unfortunately nothing all that interesting happens character-wise between them. At least there are some nice interactions between Pulaski and Picard.
Pulaski’s accelerated ageing is depicted through growing layers of old-age makeup, which (aside from its final stage) is rather convincing, at least more so than Admiral Jameson in “Too Short a Season.” But maybe that was because Diana Muldaur was a bit older.
The episode is kept moving by the rather interesting mystery of what exactly caused the disease. It’s revealed that the children have been engineered with aggressive immune system which fights pathogens by genetically altering them. The children's immune systems' reaction to the virus creates antibodies which alter the DNA of the humanoids around them, causing the accelerated ageing. It's maybe a bit convoluted, but certainly more intriguing than a regular virus.
Anyway, this knowledge allows the crew to develop a solution - by using a template of Pulaski's original bio-pattern (provided by a strand of hair from her hairbrush), the transporter's bio-filter can remove the antibodies and recode her DNA back to normal. You know, bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish, standard technobabble. And of course it works.
The episode ends with Pulaski's Chief Medical Officer's log, which explains that the adults on Gagarin IV (possibly named after Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space?) have been cured by the same method, and will continue their research in hopes of one day rejoining their children and reintegrating them into normal society. Obviously these episodes aren't always going to have a completely happy ending, but this still kind of rubs me the wrong way.
5.5/10 - A strange mix of interesting and meh. You probably won't miss anything if you skip it.
दीर्घायु डॉक्टर ने सर्कैडियन लय को अनुकूलित करने का तरीका बताया: 'आपकी बॉडी क्लॉक आपके जीवनकाल को नियंत्रित करती है'
सर्कैडियन लय शरीर की प्राकृतिक 24 घंटे की आंतरिक घड़ी है जो नींद चक्र, हार्मोन उत्पादन और चयापचय जैसे सभी आवश्यक कार्यों को नियंत्रित करती है। कॉर्नेल यूनिवर्सिटी में प्रशिक्षित दीर्घायु विशेषज्ञ और लॉन्गविटी हेल्थ के सह-संस्थापक और मुख्य चिकित्सा अधिकारी डॉ. वासिली एलियोपोलोस के अनुसार, यह यह भी निर्धारित करता है कि हम कितनी तेजी से बूढ़े होते हैं।
डॉ. वास कहते हैं, सर्कैडियन लय को अनुकूलित…
Research suggests that accelerated aging is linked to higher rates of early-onset cancers. Longevity researchers say they want to slow biolo
People born in or after 1965 might be experiencing accelerated aging in their cells. This trend could be contributing to the rise in early-onset cancers among people younger than 55, according to new research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting.
“There are people that age more rapidly for a variety of different reasons, and their biological age tends to exceed their chronological age,” said Douglas E. Vaughan, MD, director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
Researchers estimate that genetics only accounts for 25% of the variability in human longevity. Younger generations may experience accelerated aging because of early exposure to risk factors like stress and environmental influences.
Some scientists want to slow biological aging as a way to prevent early-onset cancer and a number of other chronic diseases, like dementia and heart disease.
“If you slow down aging, maybe just a little bit, we might be able to push back the onset of aging-related diseases and give people a longer health span as opposed to a longer lifespan,” Vaughn said.
continue reading
How many new chemicals have been introduced since 1965? How breathing and drinking micro- and nanoplastics, and PFAS contribute to this accelerated ageing?
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