Star Trek: TNG Season 1 – Home Soil

Link to StarTrek.com episode guide.

This is actually one of my favourite episodes.  It involves a scientific mystery and digs into the nature of life and sentience. 

The other really cool thing this episode deals with is terraforming science.  It’s something I find really interesting because the planets that are closest to us are also ones that aren’t really suited to human life.  But what if we could change that and change the planets so we could live there?  It opens up limitless possibilities for the expansion of humanity across the galaxy.  But, with a science that grand in scope, there will be all sorts of other issues as well.  How do you determine if there are no other life forms on the planet?  Are some life forms acceptable?  Where do you draw that line?  Who gets to decide how to design a planet?  You can just imagine all the different interest groups trying to influence things one way or another!  And then there’s also the thought that our planet got it right by some cosmic miracle.  Who are we to be ‘playing God’ on another planet and trying to shape it to our needs?  It’s one of those issues that I can’t really get onto one side or another about, I just continually debate and consider issues in my head.

Cool Science/Gadgets:

• terraforming

Favourite quote:

I am a gardener of Edens.