The Preservers, Outside of TOS?

[Albertese]

Life long TOS fan here who is finally giving Voyager a chance. Almost finished with the run on Netflix. I was watching the episode "Natural Law" and the scenario of the primitive people living under a continent wide forcefield dome placed there by ancient aliens to protect them from their advanced neighbors who would otherwise steamroll them, struck me as familiar.

In "The Paradise Syndrome" Spock explains to McCoy that the Preservers went across the galaxy taking peoples from different worlds and seeding them elsewhere to protect them. McCoy then speculates that maybe they are why there are so many humanoid lifeforms around. Spock offers no objection to this so maybe there is an understanding that the Preservers have been operating for a very long time indeed.

Given the state of the American Indians we see in TPS, I would guess that they were taken from Earth in the 18th or 19th Century. This also lines up with the Voyager episode, as the guy claims that the aliens in question did their thing "hundreds of years ago."

Now, I concede that the modus operandi here is a bit different, since they are building a magic dome instead of relocating them, but otherwise, it seems like Preserver shenanigans to me. There could be any number of reasons why their procedure in this case was just a little different.

So, I here offer a few points for discussion:

1) Does anyone agree with me? Are the "Natural Law" ancient aliens the same as the Preservers from "The Paradise Syndrome?"

2) Is there any rumor that, behind-the-scenes, the writers or producers had hoped to quietly invoke the Preservers while making "Natural Law?"

3) What other examples might there be in any of the series of other Preserver doings?

I have one or two ideas for point 3, but I'll save it til you guys have a chance.


--Alex

 

[C57D]

I have always thought that the TNG episode " The Chase" was about the Preservers. Then again, my take on them is that they were around many hundreds of thousands of years ago and seeded planets galaxy wide, with potentially sentient humanoids.

 

[Forbin]

I got the feeling whoever wrote The Chase had never even heard of The Paradise Syndrome. Somebody didn't do their research.

 

[Timo]

I think any attempt to draw connections between the aliens of "Paradise Syndrome" and the aliens of "The Chase" is misplaced: the two sets have absolutely nothing in common.

"PS": Transplanted small groups in the very recent past to dangerous areas where their culture was assuredly destroyed by the forced relocation and cramming together of different abductees.

"TC": Ensured the creation of sapient humanoid life by meddling with fundamental biochemistry billions of years ago.

So there's definitely room for both in the Trek universe, and indeed no overlap, unless we deliberately wish to assume one. But stretching centuries to billions of years is, well, a stretch. OTOH, McCoy's "many humanoids around" could well refer to the great number of those mysterious, unviably small population groups of humanoids appearing where they clearly don't belong - and Vulcan might be one of those for all Spock knows ("Return to Tomorrow"). This doesn't mean stepping on "TC" toes.

The Preservers of "Paradise Syndrome" might be related to the Briori of VOY "The 37s" or the Skagarrans of ENT "North Star" - petty criminals who abduct small groups of primitive species for schemes generally involving servitude, such as toiling in mines. But the dome of "Natural Law" is a bit akin to the obelisk of "Paradise Syndrome", an oddly unnatural way to facilitate life where none should naturally exist. No idea whether there was an intent to make a connection. But again, the Preservers are peanuts, so there's room for competition, especially if we don't assume temporal overlap.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

IIRC, Ron Moore claimed The Chase was originally meant to be about the Preservers until somebody higher up the food chain forbade it for some reason.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Attempts to conflate "The Chase" aliens with the Preservers, who operated billions of years apart, remind me of the Scales of the Universe exhibit at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in NYC.

The 360-foot-long (110 m) ramp illustrates 13 billion years of cosmic history at a rate of about 36,111,111 years per foot (about 1,184,748 years per centimeter); a typical adult walking step length of approximately 28 inches (71 cm; 2.3 ft) covers about 84 million years.
[...]
The Cosmic Pathway concludes with the Age of Dinosaurs, which became extinct 66 million years ago, less than 2 feet (61 cm) from the end of the Pathway. The duration of recorded human history is portrayed, by contrast, as comparable to the thickness of a human hair.

 

[Shawnster]

Christopher is adamant the Preserves preserved the Native Americans from European genocide, which would fit with the 18th or 19th century abduction date. I always viewed PS as the Preserves preserving a group of humans from some potential extra terrestrial threat. The group just happened to be Native Americans. A fan fiction idea I have includes finding other human ethnic groups on other planets taken from about the same time by the Preserves.

Is the time frame limited to the 18th or 19th century? Is there room for maybe a century or two prior?

Why should aliens care so much about preserving this particular human ethnic group or human subculture ? What about other indigenous peoples threatened by colonial expansion? Why would aliens even notice one human ethnic group or culture exterminating another group? Even at such a slow rate of extermination? What makes this particular ethnic or cultural group special enough to warrant preservation?

Maybe the Preserves were not actually into preservation. Maybe they were abductors. Maybe the obelisk was only meant to preserve the aliens property or abductees or prisoners. Altruism was assumed from the start but, maybe the Preserves weren't as altruistic as we assumed.

Were the Preserves related to or connected in some way to the Sky Spirits from VOY ? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/SKY_SPIRIT Yes, the timing is off but that does not preclude some connection. After all, weren't humans from 43,000 BC related to or connected to humans in the 21st century or even the 24th?

 

[C57D]

Apologies for (maybe) lack of knowledge (and not having the episode to view), but is it ever stated that the PS peoples are genuine 18th/ 19th century North Americans?

Given the whole parallel development shtick in TOS could they not just be "North American native" look alikes so to speak?

And so potentially placed there millions of years ago??

 

[Timewalker]

Christopher is adamant the Preserves preserved the Native Americans from European genocide, which would fit with the 18th or 19th century abduction date. I always viewed PS as the Preserves preserving a group of humans from some potential extra terrestrial threat. The group just happened to be Native Americans. A fan fiction idea I have includes finding other human ethnic groups on other planets taken from about the same time by the Preserves.

Is the time frame limited to the 18th or 19th century? Is there room for maybe a century or two prior?

Why should aliens care so much about preserving this particular human ethnic group or human subculture ? What about other indigenous peoples threatened by colonial expansion? Why would aliens even notice one human ethnic group or culture exterminating another group? Even at such a slow rate of extermination? What makes this particular ethnic or cultural group special enough to warrant preservation?

Maybe the Preserves were not actually into preservation. Maybe they were abductors. Maybe the obelisk was only meant to preserve the aliens property or abductees or prisoners. Altruism was assumed from the start but, maybe the Preserves weren't as altruistic as we assumed.

Were the Preserves related to or connected in some way to the Sky Spirits from VOY ? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/SKY_SPIRIT Yes, the timing is off but that does not preclude some connection. After all, weren't humans from 43,000 BC related to or connected to humans in the 21st century or even the 24th?

May I recommend that you adjust your spell checker to allow "Preservers"?

Otherwise, I keep picturing cosmic jars of jam flying hither and yon, saving various planets' populations for unknown reasons.

 

[Timo]

Christopher is adamant the Preserves preserved the Native Americans from European genocide, which would fit with the 18th or 19th century abduction date.

We probably have to consider what is being preserved. It's not the way of life of these people - they had to give that up when forced together on an alien planet, so that Spock now identifies it as a hodgepodge of influences from peoples who should have had nothing to do with each other. So is it their lives? If so, what good does evacuating a few hundred or thousand people to a different planet do, when millions are left to die? Why not evacuate all the millions? If millions dying of changed circumstances is logistically unmanageable, why not at least evacuate those who were specifically massacred by USC, say?

I always viewed PS as the Preserves preserving a group of humans from some potential extra terrestrial threat. The group just happened to be Native Americans. A fan fiction idea I have includes finding other human ethnic groups on other planets taken from about the same time by the Preserves.

"About the same time" would involve primitive humans, i.e. easy pickings, nevertheless already existing in nicely exploitable dense population groups, and perhaps already possessing basic skills useful for slaves or extraterrestrial-conditions-survivalists, skills lacking from humans in earlier periods. So people like the Preservers or the Skagarrans should certainly be interested in this period specifically. (The period might be the last three thousand years, say.)

Is the time frame limited to the 18th or 19th century? Is there room for maybe a century or two prior?

If the aliens knew something bad was coming, they would have no reason to wait. So lead time is purely a question of the scope of their clairvoyance. If they knew early on that the Klingons were coming in 1935, they might have evacuated humans in 1395 already, based on their projections on the rate of expansion of the followers of Kahless. (They just calculated wrong, and the Vulcans stopped the Klingons or something.)

Why should aliens care so much about preserving this particular human ethnic group or human subculture?

And why would they do such a piss-poor job at it? Surely they could find a planet better matching the original conditions (the Paradise Planet ought to be almost but not quite completely unlike Earth, says Spock, if not for some mysterious meddling he cannot explain). And then arrange so that the transplantees don't have to do alien things such as worship an obelisk.

What about other indigenous peoples threatened by colonial expansion? Why would aliens even notice one human ethnic group or culture exterminating another group? Even at such a slow rate of extermination? What makes this particular ethnic or cultural group special enough to warrant preservation?

We don't need to assume this would be a big thing. A lone individual from a TNG-era culture could decide on a whim to save a group of aliens looking like her ex and his family, sadly lost in an avalanche, and borrow a space winnebago for the deed over a busy weekend. Space is full of planets suited for the purpose - but perhaps she chose this particularly unsuited one because she lacked the resources to do better?

Altruism was assumed from the start but, maybe the Preserves weren't as altruistic as we assumed.

Well, they spelled it out for us - they engraved "We are So Very Good" in a monument. Many a nation on Earth has monuments like that, usually right on top of piles of skulls...

Were the Preserves related to or connected in some way to the Sky Spirits from VOY ? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/SKY_SPIRIT Yes, the timing is off but that does not preclude some connection. After all, weren't humans from 43,000 BC related to or connected to humans in the 21st century or even the 24th?

This is certainly a manageable time difference, compared to the billions of years separating these antics from "The Chase".

Then again, a culture or a group following an ideology over tens of thousands of years is already a bit iffy. What ideology from 43,000 BC are we following today? Be fruitful and multiply?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

What ideology from 43,000 BC are we following today? Be fruitful and multiply?

Do you mean in the Old Testament sense (which wouldn't correlate at all to 43,000 BC) or in the evolutionary sense of "survive long enough to reproduce and whatever happens after that, happens"?

 

[Timo]

In either case, not all of us are following such an ideology. Indeed, a vast chunk of Earth is officially thinking that Be fruitless and decline is the way to go, either for reasons of longsighted sustainability or for reasons of nearterm competitiveness.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Attempts to conflate "The Chase" aliens with the Preservers, who operated billions of years apart, remind me of the Scales of the Universe exhibit at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in NYC.

Yeah, there's no conflict between the Preservers and the original humanoid aliens in "The Chase."

 

[Timo]

...In the same sense that there's no conflict between Julius Caesar and Benito Mussolini, because the former was long dead and dust when the latter reigned over the same piece of land?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Sargon's species is another player in Star Trek's "panspermia." No reason why it should be the same as the Preservers, or the aliens in "The Chase" for that matter.

 

[Timo]

And it's interesting that Vulcans appear to be recipients many times over: Sargon's folks move them around, Romulans spread the seed to another location entirely, they're all children of the Female Foundress, and here the Preserver language relates to the "offshoot" Vulcan one...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

My feeling is The Preservers were relatively recent, but may have been on Earth up to thousands of years ago (not just hundreds) and the Native Americans of various North American cultures could have been transplanted and evolving toward the peculiar mix of American Indian cultures Spock noted since. Not only the people, but the plants and animals, too, seem to have been put in a place that was relatively isolated and unwanted and protected from outsiders since it was a virtual shooting gallery for cosmic debris, and yet no meteor craters were on the planet (thanks to the foreshadowed deflector The Preservers installed). This group may have been operating in just this area (the Alpha quadrant), or maybe galaxy wide (or even beyond), and they could still be around, or gone.

I had even considered Gary 7's "people" (Assignment Earth) might be these guys, taking representative samples, and training them and sending them back to help the places they had transplanted cultures, or from where they got their original stock, since their wellbeing is important to them for some reason. But all that isn't the MO of the more god-like evolved beings so much as those still just incredibly advanced, so I don't think beings like the Organians or The Q continuum are doing this.

I'm not sure what "danger" the native Americans were in since the theory was they were transplanting cultures that were in danger of extinction, but then maybe any species with all its eggs in one basket is in such danger, even if they don't know it or appreciate it. OTOH, if they were more recent acquisitions, then the notion they needed insurance again European aggression and diseases to survive might be fine, though I think that shows incredible insight as to the Preserver's predictive abilities, or perhaps glimpses into the future with time travel tech, and an odd preference for one species or culture over another. Still, one needed preserving more than the other, so . . .

But even just this one galaxy is vast, so to assume everyone that is doing something like that has to be the same culture would be a little odd. It's not a bad idea, preserving interesting races or species or cultures, so dozens or hundreds of so-called advanced space faring cultures might think it's wise to spread desirable species and cultures across the galaxy's fertile planes. If "desirable" is "humanoid," like "us," or like "them," then that's what you get.

The ancient ones, the progenitors, or whoever the first race was that evolved in The Chase and found itself alone and lonely existed billions of years ago, and even were pretty sure they'd be long dead by the time anyone found their recording. I would say with a fair degree of certainty the progenitors and the preservers were not the same people, though the preservers may have been a product of the progenitors meddling, just as we were, if you believe that story.

However, I did not care for the foundational implications of The Chase since they were contrary to science, which is not the way science fiction normally works. Indeed, evolution by natural selection is apparently a lie, and evolution forces humanoid forms, so we are the "intended" product of evolution, the highest form of creation, if this story is to be believed. Why other non-humanoid creatures evolved on earth with that going on also becomes a minor mystery. And while one might code base pair genes to plant that puzzle (the good part of that story) I doubt one can go so deep as to plant those programs to drive evolution toward humanoid form, be self replicating, and have the ability to alter tricorder hardware to play so complex a message, and all that is encoded on even the simplest form of life everywhere since life began. It seems more magic than science - like writing on electrons.

Far better to just assume they seeded planets with DNA and let evolution take its natural course using that as its basis, and the message may not have been encoded in all life, but the puzzle might have been (that wasn't too terribly complex), and that would lead the chasers to any one of thousands of memory devices hidden across the galaxy so the progenitors could say hello and point out "we" all use DNA and have some common beginnings, we existed, and you are not alone. It is enough. But they went too far, seemed to ignore The Paradise Syndrome, and blew off evolutionary science all in one go, and for something they won't really use again in other stories. I didn't like it. YMMV.

As for humanoid commonality, it might just be a highly efficient form and would tend to crop up on its own. But species so close they could interbreed? That may be more a product of the recent work of The Preservers.

Then there are, of course, darker takes on the Preserver's motives, too, perhaps equally valid. Humans. Seriously, they're delicious. You've never eaten anything finer than slow roasted humans. It would be a shame if that species were wiped out of existence, so let's transplant them all over the place.

Either way, the motive seems to have been to serve Man.

Given the size of the galaxy, however, unless given more definite reasons to think otherwise, it's far more likely each advanced culture doing this, or something like it, are a different group and may have very different motives, than to assume only one group ran the galactic table. The Progenitors, at least, would have had no opposition and all the time they needed, so there is a reason to think they might have scattered DNA all over the place.

As for transplanting whole cultures, to avoid the culture shock, it might have been done similarly to how Worf's foster brother, Nikolai Rozhenko, managed it for the people of Boraal II in TNG, Homeward.

Unfortunately, without other source material to draw upon, writers tap the Earth's wells a few times too often. This place sounds like a regular port of call for many different space faring races these last few thousand years. Biblical angels, Olympian Gods, numerous time travel incursions, even a sentient species leaving earth before Humanity arose (another bad story, IMO), it's quite a mess. But then, how long does a visiting ship or group have to stick around to have a profound impact on a primitive world? Not longer than your average episode, I'd bet.

 

[Shawnster]

...In the same sense that there's no conflict between Julius Caesar and Benito Mussolini, because the former was long dead and dust when the latter reigned over the same piece of land?

Timo Saloniemi

They could have been family.

 

[Timo]

Random hipshots:

Not only the people, but the plants and animals, too, seem to have been put in a place that was relatively isolated and unwanted and protected from outsiders since it was a virtual shooting gallery for cosmic debris, and yet no meteor craters were on the planet (thanks to the foreshadowed deflector The Preservers installed).

This planet-that-cannot-be-like-Earth-but-is could be the work of the Preservers, or then merely something they made use of. Heaven knows the Trek galaxy is full of Earth flora, even if the fauna is a bit more diverse.

If the Preservers can terraform an inherently unsuitable planet, then they might create one where No Man Will Ever Go, just to keep their transplants secure. On the other hand, massively terraforming a planet might involve diverting hundreds of asteroids towards it for use as raw material - perhaps somebody powerful left such a process unfinished a few million years ago, and the best the weak Preservers could do was install the deflector?

But if the people doing the transplanting are powerful enough to create the not-Earth, then they might also be the ones responsible for diverting the Moon-sized rocks, and we might be back to the "petty crime" square, with the Injuns kidnapped for use in mineral extraction once the deflector brought suitable rocks down to the cheap shirtsleeves working environment. It's just that entire Moons aren't prime targets for illegal mining by such means! Perhaps the last thing the criminals did before fleeing was diverting the Moon rock down the same path their smaller platinum asteroids had gone previously, now with the intent of destroying all the evidence?

If "desirable" is "humanoid," like "us," or like "them," then that's what you get.

And conversely, if that's what you get, then "humanoid like us" becomes desirable, because that's what the next generation of doers will be like, thanks to the transplanting.

However, I did not care for the foundational implications of The Chase since they were contrary to science, which is not the way science fiction normally works. Indeed, evolution by natural selection is apparently a lie, and evolution forces humanoid forms, so we are the "intended" product of evolution, the highest form of creation, if this story is to be believed. Why other non-humanoid creatures evolved on earth with that going on also becomes a minor mystery.

The sheer diversity of humanoid forms despite this programming might suggest that natural evolution reigns supreme - until this programming kicks in and randomly selects one species to elevate into humanoidhood. Or sometimes two or more if one doesn't pan out (or does pan out and leaves, like the Voth on Earth). But usually not at the same time, although there may be mishaps (Menk/Valakians).

Essentially, sapient humanoids are just parasites feeding off this thing called life. And they need not be the end goal - the Ancients are apparently gone, but not necessarily dead, since several of their handiwork have further evolved into noncorporeal beings instead. That may be the ultimate goal, with our current status just a larval stage. Or then there's a lot beyond noncorporeal, too.

And while one might code base pair genes to plant that puzzle (the good part of that story) I doubt one can go so deep as to plant those programs to drive evolution toward humanoid form, be self replicating, and have the ability to alter tricorder hardware to play so complex a message, and all that is encoded on even the simplest form of life everywhere since life began. It seems more magic than science - like writing on electrons.

But even planting the puzzle so that it doesn't decay in the billenia takes much more than currently known science. Why not go the extra mile? It sounds eminently doable.

As for humanoid commonality, it might just be a highly efficient form and would tend to crop up on its own.

Out of baselines as different as those of Anticans and Antedeans? It sounds so forced to me that I'm happy accepting it is forced!

It would be a shame if that species were wiped out of existence, so let's transplant them all over the place.

....Larry Niven had it the other way around, although it wasn't spelled out in the Trek version of his universe: the Slavers seeded food all across the galaxy, and when they died and left all that food lying around, it ultimately evolved into humans!

Unfortunately, without other source material to draw upon, writers tap the Earth's wells a few times too often. This place sounds like a regular port of call for many different space faring races these last few thousand years.

...But is that bad, when we don't actually learn Earth would be special in that respect?

Biblical angels, Olympian Gods, numerous time travel incursions, even a sentient species leaving earth before Humanity arose (another bad story, IMO), it's quite a mess.

How could it not be, without some sort of a supreme interstellar power to stop all the meddling from happening? All it takes to have Olympian Gods is one corporate vacation gone awry. Time machines justly are not just all over the place but also all over the time as well. Trek is rife with means of travel, so travel happens a lot. And it probably happens a lot everywhere - do we really have a reason to think Greek or Roman myths are proprietary to Earth, or even to a single Earth-alien pairing?

But then, how long does a visiting ship or group have to stick around to have a profound impact on a primitive world? Not longer than your average episode, I'd bet.

The key there is having enough time for the primitives to forget how they were influenced. If aliens dressed in togas came down on Peloponnesos mere three and a half thousand years ago, we'd still know which way their hair was parted. But if they came down twenty thousand years ago, and their diluted memory then became the Greece of 1.5k BC, we're talking borderline plausible.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRTStarlight]

This planet-that-cannot-be-like-Earth-but-is could be the work of the Preservers, or then merely something they made use of. Heaven knows the Trek galaxy is full of Earth flora, even if the fauna is a bit more diverse.

True, but I got the impression McCoy and Kirk were describing smells of well-known things (honeysuckles and orange blossoms), looking at "pine trees" and not as like this or similar to that, but that, "exactly," as some olfactory memories told them, and Spock, IIRC, was impressed since it would be astronomically against the odds to have exact copies, which isn't something he's ever said simply because they also had trees and/or flowers. The galaxy is filthy with those and that doesn't impress Spock as astronomically improbable. Now go one step further – The Preserves transplanted the humanoid species, so why not transplant the flora and fauna they were used to and upon which their entire culture depended, too? It seemed likely. In that case, though, I think they'd do the plants and insects first, then other animals, and finally the humanoids. It would take time - maybe a lot of time.

If the Preservers can terraform an inherently unsuitable planet, then they might create one where No Man Will Ever Go, just to keep their transplants secure. On the other hand, massively terraforming a planet might involve diverting hundreds of asteroids towards it for use as raw material - perhaps somebody powerful left such a process unfinished a few million years ago, and the best the weak Preservers could do was install the deflector?

I don't think they'd put a larger rock together, but use one Ma nature provided. They might move it, or alter it a bit, but significantly altering its mass is so far beyond us it might take more god-like beings than I expect The Preservers are, or a much higher level of dedicated industrial engineering on such a massive scale that I'd expect an entire Empire to be left behind that we could detect – like the Tkon Empire (but that died out 600,000 years ago, and the Preservers came after that to gather up Native Americans). So I believe they are a much smaller operation or organization - a bunch of galactic do-gooders who can, via superior advanced tech rather than sheer size and power – Terra form a bit, transplant some "worthy" species, as they travel about the galaxy. It might almost be a hobby, or a special department of a larger, galactic but nomadic people. That way they don't leave traces of huge, planet-based civilizations behind – only their craft – their handiwork – their gardening, so to speak. They might still be around and on the move, but thousands of years moved on along the galactic periphery by now. Their descendants might one day return and cross the same space their ancestors did, and it might be desirable to see what had grown since their people were last through there, but it could take millions of years to make one circuit around the galaxy. Or maybe they stay put, relatively speaking for reasons of dimensional convenience, and let the galaxy rotate under them once every 230 million years. They terraform planets and stellar systems that come to them, and flip them – ha ha – transplant worthy species on to them.

But if the people doing the transplanting are powerful enough to create the not-Earth, then they might also be the ones responsible for diverting the Moon-sized rocks, and we might be back to the "petty crime" square, with the Injuns kidnapped for use in mineral extraction once the deflector brought suitable rocks down to the cheap shirtsleeves working environment. It's just that entire Moons aren't prime targets for illegal mining by such means! Perhaps the last thing the criminals did before fleeing was diverting the Moon rock down the same path their smaller platinum asteroids had gone previously, now with the intent of destroying all the evidence?

Anyone that advanced would find manual labor by animals (even humanoid ones) relatively inefficient compared to robotic labor, IMO, so slave labor seems a daft reason to me – far less plausible than raw ingredients, anyway. And anything the size of our moon would likely be spherical. It would have to be stronger than steel straight through to hold a non spherical shape if it's that big. And mining in space is likely to be cheaper than mining on a larger planet (particularly if you need to take the material back into space). Only if the planet is big and hot and has cooked the minerals a long time to help concentrate them would mining on a planet be better, and that paradise planet wasn't like that (too new).

Also, I doubt the same asteroid keeps returning. Why would it? It must be a new one each time. And since the skies darken ahead of time, long before the asteroid could be doing that, I think the obelisk does that to warn the natives something is coming and it's time to push the button. It's not fully automated, however, since only if the natives are sill there to push the button is there a point to deflect any asteroids, and if the natives are gone or couldn't be bothered to remember the Preservers and their gift, then the asteroids will take a natural course since the unworthy species will have died out or proven themselves unworthy.

The sheer diversity of humanoid forms despite this programming might suggest that natural evolution reigns supreme - until this programming kicks in and randomly selects one species to elevate into humanoidhood. Or sometimes two or more if one doesn't pan out (or does pan out and leaves, like the Voth on Earth). But usually not at the same time, although there may be mishaps (Menk/Valakians).

Yes, there is a way to explain why other species besides humanoids evolve, too, despite the preprogrammed goal of humanoid, if you so choose to write that into the story and have already accepted the premise. My problem is all that code has to be not just hidden in the vast complexities of advanced life, but it is supposed to even be on the smallest single cell life form. And it has to be self-replicating, too. I don't think that's possible by any known means, and like the quantum nature of the universe, you can't get small enough to write that vast code in so small a space. Sometimes the problem is the very nature of the universe and not a lack of technology. If the Progenitors left hidden machines around to more actively tweak life as it evolved to more "interesting" stages, that would be more believable, but to hide the puzzle, the awareness of surrounding species on the planet, to select one and drive it toward humanoid form, the ability to alter the hardware of some random device like a tricorder, and play a complex hologram, all written and hidden on the simplest life form is, IMO, impossible and ridiculous. So unless one imagines using higher dimensions to hide this code on the atomic level, it seems sort of like writing on electrons and making those words self replicating or transferable to new electrons than enter the system, and I don't see this happening. So in two ways, this "science" fiction breaks the rules of science fiction - the science is wrong on evolution and possibly wrong on quantum mechanics. It's no science - it's more fantasy and magic. This is fine for fantasy, but I don't really like it in science fiction.

Essentially, sapient humanoids are just parasites feeding off this thing called life. And they need not be the end goal - the Ancients are apparently gone, but not necessarily dead, since several of their handiwork have further evolved into noncorporeal beings instead. That may be the ultimate goal, with our current status just a larval stage. Or then there's a lot beyond noncorporeal, too.

Humanoid form was THE goal of the progenitors. They, themselves, had not yet apparently achieved a non-corporeal form when they did this. If the universe tends to favor noncorporeal life, that would happen without that code's assistance. Now maybe the Progenitors did evolve to noncorporeal life, but if so, it was after, and we have no evidence of that, or even that they would any longer care about what's happening down here on the old corporeal level.

But even planting the puzzle so that it doesn't decay in the billenia takes much more than currently known science. Why not go the extra mile? It sounds eminently doable.

The graininess of the universe makes it sound undoable. And I suspect since we have code that can test if it was transmitted properly (I'm not the tech guy to ask about this, but they have redundant bits and means to know if it is corrupt) it's not too far to go to think the puzzle code, at least on that level, could reject the flaws. "Flaws" or mutations in copying are, of course, what drives evolution in the first place, but the self correcting puzzle code could be immune to that problem, and if one believes this premise, it's already not using mutations to drive the species toward humanoid form anyway.

Out of baselines as different as those of Anticans and Antedeans? It sounds so forced to me that I'm happy accepting it is forced!

But it could be "forced" by a means other than ancient genetic manipulation. Opposable thumbs are useful. So they, or something similarly useful, will be forced on the species if they survive and will become tool users. Other things in the universe might "naturally" favor the humanoid shape for advanced, tool using, scientific, space faring species, and not having something similar naturally makes it far less likely (not impossible but less probable) to arise as an intelligent space faring species.

....Larry Niven had it the other way around, although it wasn't spelled out in the Trek version of his universe: the Slavers seeded food all across the galaxy, and when they died and left all that food lying around, it ultimately evolved into humans!

Did it evolve in the Pak race, or despite Niven's common origins, were the Slavers and the Pan Protectors two separate creations of his, or in the same fictional universe but separated by a great deal of time?

...But is that bad, when we don't actually learn Earth would be special in that respect?

It's only bad if something similar isn't happening everywhere else, lest you explain how Earth is somehow magically different and special amongst all other planets, materials, stars, or whatever in this universe. But it demonstrates more fully writers lack sufficient depth to write alien "Shakespearian" quotes or have scientific discoveries attributed to other alien scientists. Sure, it's quite human centric and earth centric, but I would hope to see more "quotes" and "discoveries" from other non-Earth cultures and non human species in the Federation.

How could it not be, without some sort of a supreme interstellar power to stop all the meddling from happening? All it takes to have Olympian Gods is one corporate vacation gone awry. Time machines justly are not just all over the place but also all over the time as well. Trek is rife with means of travel, so travel happens a lot. And it probably happens a lot everywhere - do we really have a reason to think Greek or Roman myths are proprietary to Earth, or even to a single Earth-alien pairing?

I don't know about "supreme" power, but the prime directive or similar beliefs might help isolate more primitive cultures, and the time cops (or whatever those Fed boys are who have the temporal directive) would help curtail messing around with time streams. But before that, it would be hard to stop alien visitation and interference with more primitive cultures. We hear of some of those, but too few of those from other planets. But then we hear too little of other Federation planets as it is. You would just expect, all other things being equal, the Andorians to have similar possible stories of Greek-like-god-like visitors, etc., and maybe they do, but we don't get to hear about them enough, so it makes earth look more unusual than it probably should.

The key there is having enough time for the primitives to forget how they were influenced. If aliens dressed in togas came down on Peloponnesos mere three and a half thousand years ago, we'd still know which way their hair was parted. But if they came down twenty thousand years ago, and their diluted memory then became the Greece of 1.5k BC, we're talking borderline plausible.

I do wonder how long Apollo was sitting on his arse waiting for his children. Was it just a few thousand years since the Greek were worshiping them, or Tens of thousands and the Greeks we know of were worshiping their memories and the stories of even their ancient ancestors? I'd have taken the time to gather a few laurel leaves just to learn that much.