Evolution (Episode)

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Evolution
"Evolution" (TNG 150)

"Evolution" (TNG 150)
Series Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 3
Episode 1
Production Number 150
Release Date 25 Sep 1989
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Stardate 43125.8: Wesley Crusher's science experiment threatens the Enterprise

What starts out as a science project in genetics for Wesley Crusher almost dooms not only scientist Paul Stubbs' lifelong project, but the ship itself. Stubbs has come aboard with a specially-designed probe, set to be launched to study the once-in-a-lifetime stellar explosion of a neutron-supergiant binary system. The project is threatened, though, by malfunctions in the Enterprise's main computer core. The reason for those malfunctions is revealed to be Crusher's science project, in which he allowed two medical microbiotic nanites to interact, but they bred and escaped into the ship's computer core, which they are now eating. Attempts to placate or communicate with the nanites are thwarted when an obsessed, impatient Stubbs sterilizes part of the core, killing some of the nanites with a gamma radiation burst.

But the nanites respond by shutting down the ship's life support systems, which convinces even Stubbs that they are intelligent, and he apologizes to them after Data volunteers himself as a face-to-face communications conduit. Satisfied with the goodwill shown to them, the nanites want only to keep exploring and ask for an uninhabited world to colonize. They even help to reconstruct the ship's computer in time to make Stubbs' project a success.

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