MEDICAL LOGS

DISTANT ORIGIN
Season 3 : Episode 65

 

MEDICAL REPORT:

Two saurians, being two Voth scientists, transport onto Voyager, unnoticed thanks to their sophisticated personal cloaking technology. They are Professor Forra Gegen and his assistant Tova Veer, who have discovered Lieutenant Hogan's remains (ref.  [#43 Basics, Part 2]) and learned that the Voth share 47 genetic markers with humans and hundreds of other Earth species, dating back millions of years. They are on Voyager to seek evidence to support Gegen's Distant Origin theory which propounds that the Voth evolved in a distant part of the galaxy. The Distant Origin theory contradicts the doctrine of Minister Odala and the other powerful Voth elders, who insist the Voth were the first intelligent beings to evolve in the quadrant and were "the first race". The Voyager crew eventually detect Gegen and Veer. Frightened when ship's security guards arrive, Veer fires a tranquiliser dart at Chakotay but is incapacitated by a phaser blast. Gegen transports back to his vessel with the unconscious Chakotay. In Sickbay, Kes runs a molecular scan of Veer, and the Doctor asks her to begin a DNA scan as well. On being interrogated by Janeway, Veer's heart rate and body temperature drop, his metabolism almost completely shuts down and his autonomic nervous system is still fully functional - he goes into some sort of protective hibernation. The Doctor discovers evidence that Veer and his kind have evolved from Earth's dinosaurs. The closest link between them and humans can be found in Genus Eryops of the Devonian era. This creature lived over four hundred million years ago. The most highly evolved cold-blooded organism to develop from the eryops is genus Hadrosaur of the Cretaceous era. The hadrosaur vanished when a mass extinction occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period. Janeway and the Doctor believe that some of the hadrosaurs may have escaped Earth on starships when a land mass they lived on was destroyed.

computer hologram of extrapolated evolution - see DOCTOR'S QUOTE below

On the Voth ship, Chakotay and Gegen reach similar conclusions, reasoning that the Voth's ancestors survived extinction, developed spacefaring technology, and left Earth. But the Ministry of Elders hold Voyager hostage and Gegen retracts his theory to save them.

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

To Janeway: "That creature napping in Sickbay is a dinosaur."