I think you’re wrong about that, because the Star Trek universe is not one in which our Theory of Evolution holds. What they call evolution is what we would call Intelligent Design (albeit a genuinely non-theistic variation). I don’t think speciation takes nearly as long in the Trekverse as we’d expect it here.
Ignoring the stupidity of that episode’s concept and instead focusing on ID vs Evolution itself, the Progenitors seeded the planets with the base genetic material that eventually became the various sentient species of the Trek universe and did have bipedal sentience as the desired end result but that’s still not really intelligent design.
Or maybe not. I just read this on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki:
Ronald D. Moore commented: “Trek […] accepts evolution as a believable and valid theory. Gene himself felt this very strongly and although we do try to embrace many points of view and many beliefs, there are some matters on which we do make our feelings known. That said, I also think that anyone within the Trek universe who espoused a “creationist” or similar view as to the origins of life would find their beliefs respected – “respected” being fundamentally different than “believed.””
Interestingly, perhaps ironically, TNG: “The Chase” strongly implies that most, if not all humanoid life in the Galaxy had been intelligently designed–albeit by another alien species.
I still hold that Romulans and Vulcans are mostly the same and, at most, like wolves and dogs.
How is it not? The Progenitors–an intelligent and vastly powerful species far predating Humans, Vulcans,and so forth–deliberately intervened in the course of nature so that bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, ten-figured intelligent species would be the norm rather than the exception in the Milky Way, designing the forms of these creatures would echo their own. This was done to such a degree that species you’d think would be entirely genetically incompatible (Humans & Vulcans, Cardassaians & Bajorans, Humans and Klingons) would be interfertile. It was done in such a way that a given species’ development over time would be telelogical (remember Distant Origin the Voyager episode in which Janeway & Company met the reptilian race and the Doctor was able to extrapolate what descendents of hadrosaurs would look like, without knowing the conditions in which they’d evolved?)
Star Trek is an Intelligent Design Universe.
I’ll grant that Trek is MEANT to be a universe where the ToE is true. However, what is described in the shows is much closer to ID. I’m happy to grant that this is unintentional, stemming from dramatic necessity (needing human actors) and scientific illiteracy; nevertheless, Trekverse biology is as different from Darwin as Trekverse physics is from Einstein.