The Biology of Star Trek
I originally posted this brief essay on Decipher's Everything Else board in a slightly different form. Thanks go to the individual, whose name I failed to record, who suggested several important changes. After reading a discussion on the Gameplay BBS about the DNA and the way information is carried in DNA according to modern science, I got to thinking, and one thing became pretty clear. In the world of Star Trek, there has been a revolution in biology, overthrowing some basic principles of twentieth/twenty-first century genetics.
Modern science contends evolution is a random process - natural selection will fill an ecological niche with whatever form will do the job. Genes don't direct that form, at least not in the sense of having one or more "destinations" programmed into them. Additionally, DNA has an imperfect memory - it remembers only as much as hasn't been weeded out by later, random mutations.
But it doesn't work that way in Star Trek. According to the new paradigm, DNA (and, presumably, it's unknown-to-current-science counterpart, RVN, as seen in "Rascals") contains, and always has contained, a pathway for evolution. Thus, in "The Chase," the ancient seeding race could seed thousands of worlds with their DNA, and that data would survive over billions of years and lead to humanoid forms on most of those worlds, forms not only similar in appearance, but actually capable of interbreeding, something humans can't do even with their closest Earthly relatives. Even the dinosaur-descended Voth of "Distant Origin," despite being from a completely different branch of Earthly life, still developed into a humanoid form.
What's more, we see in that paragon of scientific excellence, "Threshold," that the path isn't done yet. This predestined evolutionary voyage will eventually lead the humanoid lifeforms toward an amphibious salamander-like entity. One can even see in "The Chase" that the protohumanoid race seems to have advanced somewhat toward that form itself, having lost most distinguishing features like ears.
Another difference between current science and Trek science is, in Trek, genes have very good memories, "remembering" things and forms today's science tells us it simply cannot do. In "Genesis," we see such remembered forms being called forth, as dormant introns are reactivated by Barclay's Protomorphosis Disease to de-evolve the entire crew into ancient ancestral forms (in a related note, the spiderlike introns in Reg seem to prove he has at least one nonhuman ancestor). In a similar but less dramatic situation, in "Rascals," we see that having certain RVN codes made unreadable will cause a transporter to reassemble someone in a prepubescent state.
In Star Trek, we're willing to accept that the subspace revolution of physics has led to warp drive, and such related technologies as subspace radio, shields, tractor beams, artificial gravity, and transporters (all of which have been mentioned as having technologies making use of subspace at some point). Is it completely unrealistic to imagine our current biology might face a similar revolution?
(Note to self: Write a similar investigation of Trek Geology. Turning Los Angeles into a 300-meter deep coral reef entails a revolution in that science, too. Not to mention the countless highly stable transuranic elements of Trek Chemistry . . . )