Shore Leave

Recently I saw the first part of "Shore Leave," the old Star Trek episode. I didn't watch the whole thing, because I've seen it several times. But it did make me consider how the teleplay would read if Richard Dawkins were the science officer instead of Spock.  

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[Planet surface]

SULU: Beautiful, beautiful. No animals, no people, no worries. Just what the doctor ordered. Right, Doctor?
MCCOY: I couldn't have prescribed better. We are one weary ship.
SULU: Do you think the Captain will authorize shore leave here?
MCCOY: Depending upon my report and that of the other scouting parties. You know, you have to see this place to believe it. It's like something out of Alice in Wonderland. The Captain has to come down.
SULU: He'd like it.
MCCOY: He needs it. You've got your problems, I've got mine. He's got ours, plus his, plus four hundred and thirty other people's. Where are you going?
SULU: To get some cell-structure records. A blade of grass, a bush, a tree, a flower petal. With these, we can tell the whole planet's biology.
(As Sulu crouches down behind some pampas grass, McCoy turns and looks straight at a white rabbit in a check jacket, yellow waistcoat, and looking at a gold pocket watch.)
RABBIT: Oh, my paws and whiskers! I'll be late.
(It heads off down a hole. Then a young girl comes running up, wearing a blue dress with a white apron.)
ALICE: Excuse me, sir. Have you seen a rather large white rabbit with a yellow waistcoat and white gloves here about?
(Wordlessly, McCoy points in the direction the rabbit went. The girl curtseys nicely)
ALICE: Thank you very much.
(She runs off after the rabbit)
MCCOY: Sulu!
SULU: What is it? What's the matter?
MCCOY: Did you see them?
SULU: See what? I don't see anything. What is it, Doc?

[Glade]

MCCOY: Captain, are you beaming down?

[Kirk's quarters]

KIRK: I hadn't planned to, Bones. Why?

[Glade]

MCCOY: Well, either our scouting probes and detectors are malfunctioning, and all us scouts careless and beauty-intoxicated, or I must report myself unfit for duty.

[Kirk's quarters]

KIRK: Explain.

[Glade]

MCCOY: On this supposedly uninhabited planet, I just saw a large rabbit pull a gold watch from his vest and claim that he was late.
KIRK: That's pretty good. I got one for you. The rabbit was followed by a little blonde girl, right?

[Glade]

MCCOY: As a matter of fact, yes.

[Planet surface]

(An establishing shot of a landscape)
DAWKINS: McCoy's giant, bipedal rabbit was obviously the product of natural selection operating on random mutation. 

MCCOY: A talking rabbit wearing a vest with a pocket watch?

DAWKINS: Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say ‘I don’t understand it so an intelligent designer did it.’ Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions–the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we’ve found a proper answer to the mystery, it’s perfectly ok simply to say ‘this is something we don’t yet understand–but we’re working on it’. It’s the only honest thing to do. Intelligent designers, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don’t confuse them with the truth.

KIRK: McCoy! McCoy!
MCCOY: Over here. Over here.
(They meet up by the lake)
KIRK: Bones, know any good rabbit jokes lately?
MCCOY: As a matter of fact, I do, but this is not one of them. Look at this. (a pair of large tracks in the soil) I saw what I saw, or maybe I hallucinated it, but I want you to take a look and tell me what you think about it.
KIRK: Footprints. Could be a rabbit. It would have to be an unusual creature to make this size tracks. What about Mister Sulu? Will he confirm what you saw?
MCCOY: Negative. He was examining the flora at the time.
KIRK: This is turning out to be one very unusual shore leave.
MCCOY: Well, it could have been worse.
KIRK: How?
MCCOY: You could have seen the rabbit.
KIRK: What's the matter, Bones, you getting a persecution complex?
MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked on, if that's what you mean.
KIRK: More tracks. Looks like your rabbit came from over there.
MCCOY: A girl's footprints. The young blonde girl I saw chasing it.
KIRK: Yes. You follow the rabbit. I'll backtrack the girl. I'll meet you around the other side of the hill.
MCCOY: Good. I've got a personal grudge against that rabbit, Jim. 

Captain's log. Stardate 3025.8. Investigation of this increasingly unusual planet continues, and we are seeing things that cannot possibly exist, yet they are undeniably real.

[Rocky outcrop]

(Sulu walks along by a cliff face, a hatch opens in the ground and out comes a Samurai warrior to attack him. 

KIRK: McCoy. McCoy, do you read me? Kirk to McCoy. Come in.
(Sulu comes running over the rocks towards him)
SULU: Captain, take cover! There's a Samurai warrior after me.
KIRK: A what?
SULU: I mean, there was. (no one is chasing him now) Captain, you've got to believe me.
KIRK; Then offhand I'd say our instruments are defective. There are indeed artificial life-forms on this planet.

DAWKINS: Don't jump to hasty conclusions. If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word design. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. Creative intelligence is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”

SULU: You'd better have a look at this, sir. (the Samurai is a plastic dummy) I don't understand.
KIRK: Neither do I, Mister Sulu, but before we leave this planet, I will.
SULU: It's like a dummy, Captain. It couldn't be alive.
KIRK: Tricorder?
SULU: Still operating, sir.
KIRK: Bones, what do you make of that?
MCCOY: This is not human skin tissue, Captain. It more closely resembles the cellular casting we use for wound repairs. Much finer, of course.
KIRK: I want an exact judgment, Bones.
MCCOY: This is definitely a mechanical contrivance. It has the same basic cell structure as the plants here, even the trees, the grass.
KIRK: Are you saying this is a plant?
MCCOY: I'm saying that these are all multicellular castings. The plants, the animals, the people. They're all being manufactured.
DAWKINS: Negative, doctor. It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. “It is possible that the Samurai warrior was made by alien engineers in a subterranean factory shielded from our scanning devices. Intelligent design can't be ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about hypothesis. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort. It is unparsimonious, demanding more than routinely weak evidence before we should believe it. If you hear hooves clip-clopping down a London street, it could be a zebra or even a unicorn, but, before we assume that it’s anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence. 

(There's a buzzing sound in the air, and a plane flies overhead)

[Woodland path]

TELLER: What is it?
RODRIGUEZ: Of all the crazy things. Remember what I was telling you a while ago, about the early wars and funny air vehicles they used? That's one of them.
DAWKINS: There must be some natural explanation. Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as the biological evolution of a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which intelligent design has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous. That's a science stopper!