Identity Crisis: Some Questions

[josborn]

So I've been binging TNG during lockdown and just watched S04E18 "Identity Crisis". When I first saw it as a kid I thought it was really frightening and to be fair to it the episode has retained its creepiness even after all these years. It's got a really good performance from LeVar Burton and it's nice that we get an insight into what life was like for him before he was posted to the Enterprise.

While I still enjoyed rewatching it, several aspects of the plot don't really stack up for me. Maybe I've missed something but there are a few questions that bug me, largely down to Brannon Braga's teleplay

1. The Tarchannen III aliens' reproductive cycle - the species apparently reproduces by implanting a parasite into a humanoid host that gradually transforms its DNA over the course of several years. This strikes me as a really implausible means of reproduction. For the species to continue to exist, there would have to be a continuous supply of uninfected hosts on the planet otherwise they would simply die out. But it's pretty obvious that there are no other sentient forms of life on Tarchannen III. How would they perpetuate their DNA without a breeding population? Then there's the fact that it takes up to five years between the date of implantation and transformation, which again strikes me as completely unrealistic. Five years is an awfully long time and anything could happen to the host in that period. From an evolutionary point of view, how is it useful?
2. The infection vector - I don't think it's ever stated in the episode exactly how the members of the USS Victory away team or how the original 49 colonists were infected with the parasites. Susan speculates that it could have been something in the air or the result of touching the plants or the sand. But if that's the case then how come Riker and Worf weren't infected? I think we're meant to believe that the aliens themselves deliberately infected the hosts in some way. But how? Okay, they might be invisible but surely the away team and the colonists would have felt something. Physical contact or close contact is the only way I could imagine being able to implant a parasite into a host and that's not the sort of thing that would go unnoticed.
3. The ramifications of the alien presence - near the end of the episode Picard mentions that Starfleet will quarantine the planet by placing a beacon in orbit signalling the dangers of going down to the surface. But what if that beacon malfunctions? Secondly, now that the rest of the quadrant knows about this species, wouldn't certain parties (namely the Romulans) be interested in exploiting them for use as a biological weapon? Think about it: a natural cloaking device, the ability to infect enemies and override their own immune systems... these are things that enemies of the Federation would love to get their hands on. All that would be needed would be for one cloaked warbird to warp into the system, beam down in hazard suits, round up a couple of the aliens and then head back to Romulus to begin study. Then there's the matter of the families of the Starfleet personnel who were transformed into these aliens. How would they react to the knowledge that their loved ones still exist in some form but no longer as humans? Would they seek compensation from Starfleet for putting them in harm's way, however unintentionally?

 

[Oddish]

It does seem like an inefficient method of reproduction... and you're right. A species like that would be of great interest for the Romulans, who would undoubtedly want an edge over the Jem'Hadar. Or the Founders, who might want to improve on their recipe.

 

[dupersuper]

So I've been binging TNG during lockdown and just watched S04E18 "Identity Crisis". When I first saw it as a kid I thought it was really frightening and to be fair to it the episode has retained its creepiness even after all these years. It's got a really good performance from LeVar Burton and it's nice that we get an insight into what life was like for him before he was posted to the Enterprise.

While I still enjoyed rewatching it, several aspects of the plot don't really stack up for me. Maybe I've missed something but there are a few questions that bug me, largely down to Brannon Braga's teleplay

1. The Tarchannen III aliens' reproductive cycle - the species apparently reproduces by implanting a parasite into a humanoid host that gradually transforms its DNA over the course of several years. This strikes me as a really implausible means of reproduction. For the species to continue to exist, there would have to be a continuous supply of uninfected hosts on the planet otherwise they would simply die out. But it's pretty obvious that there are no other sentient forms of life on Tarchannen III. How would they perpetuate their DNA without a breeding population? Then there's the fact that it takes up to five years between the date of implantation and transformation, which again strikes me as completely unrealistic. Five years is an awfully long time and anything could happen to the host in that period. From an evolutionary point of view, how is it useful?
2. The infection vector - I don't think it's ever stated in the episode exactly how the members of the USS Victory away team or how the original 49 colonists were infected with the parasites. Susan speculates that it could have been something in the air or the result of touching the plants or the sand. But if that's the case then how come Riker and Worf weren't infected? I think we're meant to believe that the aliens themselves deliberately infected the hosts in some way. But how? Okay, they might be invisible but surely the away team and the colonists would have felt something. Physical contact or close contact is the only way I could imagine being able to implant a parasite into a host and that's not the sort of thing that would go unnoticed.
3. The ramifications of the alien presence - near the end of the episode Picard mentions that Starfleet will quarantine the planet by placing a beacon in orbit signalling the dangers of going down to the surface. But what if that beacon malfunctions? Secondly, now that the rest of the quadrant knows about this species, wouldn't certain parties (namely the Romulans) be interested in exploiting them for use as a biological weapon? Think about it: a natural cloaking device, the ability to infect enemies and override their own immune systems... these are things that enemies of the Federation would love to get their hands on. All that would be needed would be for one cloaked warbird to warp into the system, beam down in hazard suits, round up a couple of the aliens and then head back to Romulus to begin study. Then there's the matter of the families of the Starfleet personnel who were transformed into these aliens. How would they react to the knowledge that their loved ones still exist in some form but no longer as humans? Would they seek compensation from Starfleet for putting them in harm's way, however unintentionally?

1. Did they say they had to infect humanoids specifically? Their DNA overwrites the hosts. In a universe of warp 10 salamanders they could certainly be infecting local wildlife.

2. It could just feel like a bug bite; nothing to worry about in the age of biofilters. I don't know why the biofilters didn't pick it up, or why it lies dormant for years...

3. It was a world well within Federation space, and I don't know how much of why it was quarantined would be known.

 

[Timo]

3b. Kirk was always writing dodgy reports about how members of his crew perished in the line of duty, even when the reality did not involve any duty and might not even have involved perishing. Next-of-kin probably aren't legally entitled to knowing what happens to people in Starfleet employ, and will always get a suitably comforting version of the story.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Oddish]

An interesting question... by placing the warning beacon, is the Federation effectively committing genocide? After all, with no new hosts, this organism dies off.

 

[Mojochi]

1. I don't recall anything in the episode that suggests that the species only reproduces by means of this infection process, but even if it does, it seems unlikely that a planet would depend on alien life showing up to infect. There must be some internal means of homeostasis, or how could it have propagated to begin with? So what happened to the victims seems like an unintentional event, like being exposed to any alien organism that infects them. They were susceptible like whatever organisms already on the planet are, & the maturation rate might be reasonable given how much the species has at its disposable for incubating in.

2. Maybe Riker & Worf were infected, but now they know how to catch it, or like you say, the organism is selective in some way, but as for detecting it when infection occurs... There's currently parasites on you right now, that you aren't detecting.

3. I think they're in Federation space... Otherwise, why would there be a Federation outpost there?

 

[dupersuper]

An interesting question... by placing the warning beacon, is the Federation effectively committing genocide? After all, with no new hosts, this organism dies off.

There are surely life forms on the planet they can infect: there's no way they evolved to infect random warp capable visitors.

 

[amp]

But if that's the case then how come Riker and Worf weren't infected?

Riker and Worf may have been infected. But with the long gestation period Dr. Crusher could remove the parasite once they returned to the ship.

I think we're meant to believe that the aliens themselves deliberately infected the hosts in some way. But how? Okay, they might be invisible but surely the away team and the colonists would have felt something. Physical contact or close contact is the only way I could imagine being able to implant a parasite into a host and that's not the sort of thing that would go unnoticed.

Geordi noticed the alien shadow when he was in the holodeck so the creature did apparently come very close to the away team.

There are surely life forms on the planet they can infect: there's no way they evolved to infect random warp capable visitors.

Agreed. The local life form doesn't even have to be a humanoid, it may just be some kind of rodent-like creature.

 

[Timo]

We only ever saw bipeds, and in Trek, those tend to be sapients perverted out of local evolutionary paths by the tampering of the Ancients ("The Chase").

Then again, we only saw Starfleeters. Save for the initial shadow-caster, that is. There might be a whole ecosystem down there where infected rodents concentrate on infecting further rodents, and infected bipeds are so high up the food chain that they can spend the time and effort to figure out how to lure in further bipeds. But the bipeds also have other options available, due to their versatility (aka long legs and a pair of thumbs). Figure that, Nature coping with times of scarcity by switching species and eco-niches altogether!

This is one of the few times Trek has done Vampire stories. And those are always about genocide, with two (or more) types of sapient existence that simply are utterly incompatible philosophically, even if also interdependent biologically. (Of course, the Borg are also vampires, but making them totally extinct is a job orders of magnitude bigger than getting rid of the relatives of Dracula or these guys or the salt-sucker, so it doesn't work quite the same way.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

LaForge's holodeck program shadow creature was more than likely one of the missing 49 colonists the Victory was originally sent to investigate the disappearance of.

There's no reason to assume it was indigenous. More likely it was a humanoid colonist, who went through the same thing Geordi did. Hell, the thing that infected his away team and the colonists, & likely Worf & Riker eventually too, could be anything, animalia, plant spores, even microbial

 

[Timo]

The thing is, the lifeform should be competing with itself a lot on that planet, trying to convert a space possum to a space banana but then again convert that space banana to a space seagull, endlessly and frantically. Since there is no evidence that it would*, the logical conclusion is that it could not. So a mechanism of infection that takes significant effort is our preferred interpretation here. At the very least, infection should be by prolonged physical contact - say, two seconds of tentacle time on exposed skin or even inner mucous tissue.

Most of the planet would then be free of this "niche predator", just like most of planet Trill apparently isn't bugged by variants of the symbiont species. But the typical host species might well be assumed to be a highly mobile and versatile one in both cases, to facilitate the demanding lifestyle of procreation/proliferation. And to target those of its own sort or, if possible, to aim for an upgrade.

Timo Saloniemi

* that is, most of the flora and fauna is not invisible, as far as we or the heroes can tell!

 

[josborn]

2. It could just feel like a bug bite; nothing to worry about in the age of biofilters. I don't know why the biofilters didn't pick it up, or why it lies dormant for years...

But in a situation like that, where 49+ people have disappeared without explanation, you'd surely be on alert for anything out of the ordinary. So even if the infection felt like a bug bite surely someone would have said something: "Hey, something just bit me!"

Whatever about the initial away missions, surely the incidents prove to Starfleet that it's unsafe to send people down to the surface of a planet without space suits

 

[josborn]

I think the episode missed out on a potentially really creepy moment where we would have seen from the perspective of one of the Tarchannen aliens as they snook up on one of the Starfleet personnel and infected them. That would have added a whole new layer of fear

 

[Mojochi]

I think the episode missed out on a potentially really creepy moment where we would have seen from the perspective of one of the Tarchannen aliens as they snook up on one of the Starfleet personnel and infected them. That would have added a whole new layer of fear

But the thing is, there may be no "aliens" at all. All we ever see is an invisible creature that casts a humanoid shaped shadow, & the invisible creature Geordi himself became, implying that the former & the latter are likely the same phenomenon, & that the invisible "alien" was nothing more than a transformed missing colonist.

It wasn't necessarily infecting anyone. It was probably just a victim like Geordi. I feel like the story implied that they were just infected in some habitat way, like Shades of Gray, or The Naked Now/Naked Time, or Spock in This Side of Paradise etc...

But I agree, Starfleet is pretty loosey goosey about unprotected away teams on uncharted worlds lol

 

[JirinPanthosa]

We've seen lots of infections in the Star Trek universe that escape biofilters. A lot of real parasites suppress immune response or blend in well with normal tissue.

 

[josborn]

I get what you're saying and there's definite merit in it. I'm just basing my assumptions on what Geordi says at the end of the episode "They operate on instinct alone", which I took to mean "the humanoid aliens". If the root of everything was just a parasite that infected and transformed different hosts then he'd probably have said something like "It isn't a sentient lifeform".

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I'd be surprised if the Trill didn't send a science team out there after the Enterprise departed. The parasites sound like they would be fascinating to the Trill. They could probably use them to research ways to support the symbiont-host bonding.

 

[dupersuper]

I'd be surprised if the Trill didn't send a science team out there after the Enterprise departed. The parasites sound like they would be fascinating to the Trill. They could probably use them to research ways to support the symbiont-host bonding.

You may want to check out the post DS9 novels...

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Tarchannen III doesn't appear to have any native humanoid species so there's no reason to believe that the parasite is limited to needing a humanoid to survive, it could've been passed around to any native fauna after going through millennia of mutations, so when the original 49-person survey team arrived they were exposed to it and the transformation process began (perhaps being in the native environment for a prolonged period sped it up considerably) until they were completely changed into new humanoid carriers, who in turn infected Leijten, La Forge and the others.

Just a thought.