Genesis

I really don't care that the science is bad on this one. It's campy and fun. So bad it's good!

As if the writers run out of ideas in the second half of the 7th season.

The people who have problems with the science and plot-holes of this episode specifically (instead of the science and plot-holes of all of the other episodes) are the fans the Simpsons would make fun of, nudging their glasses up their nose and hoping someone got fired for their blunders.

This episode is a departure from anything philosophical or deep that the other episodes provide, and instead is just FUN. I always welcome these episodes to break up the season's tone and just do whatever they want.

Sure it's not realistic, sure it's got plot holes, but you know what it also has? A well-executed change of atmosphere, well directed build-up, and just a unique, Twilight Zone-esque journey through some space silliness that, at the very least, is a joy to watch the crew indulge in as its last crazy-hurrah of the season.

I do not envy anyone who can't voluntarily put aside their elitist fanboy-ism of a serie's tropes and universe and just take something at face value, for they probably don't get much entertainment from much else.

There are so many messed up evolutionary events in this offering that it slips into the ludicrous. People are already acting strangely before Picard and Data take off to chase a torpedo that his gone off course, flying into open space. While they are gone, the crew begins to "devolve." They turn into various incarnations of their individual evolutionary past. What is strange is that they seem to come from all kinds of different entities. Data's cat, Spot, retreats to being an iguana. Are cats supposedly the ancestral progeny of reptiles? Picard and Data must confront these things as the Captain begins to show symptoms of regression. Once again, they are facing something that is so utterly foreign to them it would take a group of researchers months to come up with an antidote, if they could even do such a thing. Other than the jump-out-at-you stuff as the ship is filled with combative critters, there's not much here if you have the ability to think. How did Patrick Steward keep a straight face.

While Captain Picard and Lt.Commander Data are off chasing an errant Floton torpedo, Sick bay is is busier than usual. Dr. Crusher does some genetic therapy on Ensign Barkley's equivalent of an alien common cold.

On 21st century earth she would be sued for malpractice. What happens is she creates a virus that spreads through the ship like a wild crown fire and the crew be it human or another race reverts to the primitive.

Some of the reversions are something else. Lt.Worf's and Commander Riker's are the most frightening.

Once again androids are handy to have around in these situations. Data is impervious to these biological ailments and he does work at super speed.

One of the more off the wall TNG stories.