STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION: "THE CHASE"

I really dug Star Trek: The Next Generation. Granted, I haven't rewatched most of them since, which has been almost 20 yrs now since it ENDED (yeesh!), but look back on the tv show fondly. One of the later episodes that has stayed in my memory was the 1993 episode “The Chase”...

Picard’s former mentor (who he says was "like the father who understood me") visits and states that he has come across something in his travels which could be the most profound discovery of their time – he has found an embedded genetic pattern that is constant throughout many different species, and speculates that this was left by an early race that pre-dates all other known civilizations. This would ultimately explain why so many races are humanoid. He then dies, so Picard and  Crew travel to his planned next destination, a remote planet, in search of the answers.

There they find a hologram of a long-dead, bald alien humanoid who was part of  an ancient race called “PRESERVERS”. The only remaining evidence of  their culture were ancient artifacts and ruins that littered various humanoid worlds.  The Preserver hologram explains that its race is responsible for the presence of life in the Alpha Quadrant. When the alien race first explored the Alpha Quadrant there had been no humanoid-based life other than themselves, and so they seeded various planets with their DNA to create a legacy of their existence after they had gone. The Preservers' DNA was the building blocks of Humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians.

Of course the Romulans, Cardassians and Klingons flip out in anger at the notion they would be related to each other and quickly leave. Picard and Crew then bask in the glowing glowness of personal discovery.

*(My favorite episode is probably the 2-Part Borg epic "The Best of Both Worlds", where Picard becomes "Locutus of Borg").