But the various intelligent species in TREK didn’t evolve as independently. It’s canon that Terrans, Klingons, Vulcans/Romulans, and Cardassians all were manipulated in the primordial soup stage by a precursor species to resemble it and thus each other, and implicit that the same is true of most other bipedal intelligent peoples. That’s 1/3 of the reason I say that Trek “evolution” is actually Intelligent Design.
:dubious:
I’ve always thought that the way Star Trek handled medical issues and aging was the least realistic part of the whole milieu. We’ll have vastly extended lifespans and the ability to pretty much do anything we want with the genetic code long before we have faster than light travel and transporters.
I hope they have litters, because that seems to be the least effective combination of r and k strategies out there.
No, each couple mates for life, and they only ever have one child. Somehow the population remains stable.
This is the most implausible thing in all of Trek.
They did evolve independently. Each race incorporates genetic material* and a history of evolutionary pressures unique to its home world. Panspermia is not really intelligent design, at least not in the full sense.
- Thus the genetic commonality between Voth and humans, but not between Voth and other humanoids.
This is much more than a mere common origin. Even granting some level of evolutionary convergence, it’s extremely implausible that these species would end up so ridiculously similar. It can only be explained if we assume that someone either pre-programmed or guided the development of sentient life. Common origins might well make them biochemically compatible at a very basic level, but it won’t make them develop along similar lines.
There is unrelated life, and it’s radically different in form and biological function.
What’s the “primordial soup stage”?
Even if manipulated, it’s nearly inconceivable that species with such drastically different blood chemistry as Vulcans and humans (copper-based and iron-based respectively) or with their other physiological differences would be able to produce viable offspring. Among terrestrial organisms, this is a phylum-level difference, not species level. But again, this just indicates that Star Trek writers were not concerned with biological plausibility.
Sure, there has to be a “programming” element. The ancient humanoids were clearly adept at very fine genetic manipulation (including the embedding of fragments of the Message, presumably with some mechanism to protect them through eons of revisions to the active parts of the genome). But there is no suggestion of post-seeding guidance, and there are references to planet-specific evolution.
Horta hibernate.
Vague memory: There was a mention that Sarek and Amanda required extensive genetic engineering/manipulation (or maybe it was on the embryo or egg and sperm) to produce viable offspring. I don’t remember the source, novel or behind the scenes book.
That was one of the plot strands in Spock’s World.
However, some episodes have shown inter-species couples conceiving naturally.
I would have said the most stupid thing in Trek - who ever came up with that clearly failed biology 101.
They were taken care of by the Caretaker, tho. Likely that would change things in their favor. At least for a while.
For 500 generations. Before that, they had some sort of mental powers. So, there is some mystery surrounding exactly what gives with them.
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Memory Alpha also says twin and triplet births are not uncommon, but that appears to be a retcon in novels, never onscreen.
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