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Bibliomancer
- Joined
- May 23, 2002
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That's an episode that was mostly salvaged by the Science Advisor. Originally it was going to be dust mites that had evolved to sentience somehow, and he told them that wouldn't work because dust mites don't have enough neurons, and evolution would take much longer than the brief period the ship had been in service. So they shifted it to the nano-bots on the grounds that they were already part-way to intelligence, and an argument could be made for them evolving sentience much faster.Yes there was a storyline about it in another ST episode where thousands of microscopic "nanobots" inadvertently infect the ships computer and systems, so a visiting scientist starts zapping them with rays to save the ship, but Picard goes into "wimp" mode and stops him by saying something like "We don't have the right to kill them if they're a race of living sentient beings".
Personally I'd have told the guy to keep zapping away til all the little buggers are dead.
PS- Picard's "solution" was to communicate with the things to point out the error of their ways which luckily made them see sense and saved the day.
Not ideal, but it could have been much, much worse.