Genesis

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Reg Barclay comes to sickbay for Terellian Death Syndrome, which he does not have, while Riker comes in for cactus butt, which he DOES have.

It seems there's a downside to the magical meds of 2370, and this time it's not Pulaski's fault. Barclay's life expectancy of merely another 80 years (and everyone else's too) is jeopardized when Dr. Moreau, sorry, I mean Crusher makes a tiny, unprecedented error with a synthetic T-Cell.

Data's Spot and Nurse Ogawa are pregnant, by different fathers, one assumes. At least, "Andrew Powell" doesn't sound like a Catian name...

Speaking of embarrassing screw-ups, Worf suffers from wandering torpedo syndrome. Leaving Spot in Barclay's care, Data and Picard chase down the wayward bomb.

Worf's eating like a pig and Troi's drinking like a fish, which turns out not to be an expression.

By the time Picard and Data get back with Slurpees for the whole gang, somebody has wrecked up the power transfer grid and left the ship drifting in darkness. And the answer to the question:
Are we not men? is A: We are Devo.

It's a blast from the past as obsolete DNA springs to life and mutates everyone into mindless creatures. (Pants were the first thing to go, so it's a darn good thing the ship cleans itself.) 1,011 individual life forms (if Data is not counting himself and Picard) may mean that the dead guy with the claw marks and broken spine is the only one. Maybe. (Shudder)

Spot's kittens were safe from the virus that turned her into an iguana. Yes, I know cats were never iguanas. Since when has Spot done anything normal?

Similarly, Monkey Ogawa's amniotic fluid contains the necessary cure. Data creates a retro virus while Picard (himself morphing towards lemurhood) lures a very literally Horny Worf away with the fishy pheromones of Frog Troi. I'm not making this up. I'm not sure how anyone DID! (Seek help, Brannon Braga, you magnificent bastard.)

Beverly (her face quickly reconstructed after a brush with Rock Lobster Worf's ACID VENOM CHEEKS) is in questionably high spirits.  It's a big 'laugh on the bridge' when Troi says she'll have to clear her schedule. Apparently nobody liked Dern. (You know, the redshirt Worf or maybe Riker ripped up. To shreds, you say?)

The ghoulish and multifarious make-up effects of "Genesis" still somehow lost their Emmy to a fairly standard episode of Babylon 5. But despite Star Trek Magazine's wild claim that this is the worst episode of the season, it sure works for me. Ever since I saw Disney's Pinocchio, where naughty boys are turned into donkeys, I had a terror of being turned into a beast. Which the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had only partly cured me of by the time I saw this in 1994. Very Scary. And yes, it's also silly. The lack of dignity is itself kind of horrible.