Plot
The Enterprise arrives at the planet Angel One, where its native population is run as an oligarchy, with women in the dominant position of power. The Enterprise seeks to find any survivors of the Odin, a freighter they had believed crashed on the planet seven years prior. An away team consisting of Commander Riker, Lt. Commander Data, Lt. Yar, and Counselor Troi attempt to negotiate with Beata, the leader of the native inhabitants, to let them search for the survivors, while the Enterprise deals with a potential threat at a Federation outpost near the Romulan Neutral Zone.
Beata reveals that they are aware of four male survivors of the Odin who have caused disruption in their society, and are considered fugitives. While Beata requests Riker stay with her, the others are able to track down the survivors' camp, and meet with its leader Ramsey. Ramsey and his men, having taken wives and started families during the seven years, refuse to leave nor can be ordered to leave under Federation directives. They find that one of Beata's assistants, Ariel, has become romantically involved with Ramsey. Riker learns from Beata that their society structure has already been collapsing, but Ramsey and his men have served to accelerate its decline. Meanwhile, a strange virus has been spreading about the Enterprise, incapacitating much of the crew. Dr. Crusher, ultimately left in charge of the ship as the highest-ranking senior crewmember, finds that the virus is a result of an airborne chemical that becomes viral when inside the human body, and races to find a cure for it while returning the ship to Angel One.
The away team returns attempting to explain to Beata the reason for Ramsey's refusal to leave. Beata and her council reject his reasoning, and capture the men and their families, threatening to execute them. The Enterprise arrives while Riker attempts to convince Ramsey to leave. Dr. Crusher refuses to allow anyone to beam aboard for fear of being infected, but allows Data, as an android, to return. Riker orders Data to deal with the Neutral Zone situation as quickly as possible. Data affirms that there is a 48-minute window for which Dr. Crusher has to find a cure, and for Riker to defuse the situation on the planet before the ship must leave to the Neutral Zone.
On the planet, Ramsey and his men are prepared to be executed by disintegration despite Ariel's pleas, while Dr. Crusher discovers an innoculant (inoculation) for the virus. Riker is prepared to have the away team and the Odin survivors beamed to the Enterprise, but Beata announces that she will stay the execution and banish Ramsey, his men, their families, and any others that support them to the far side of the planet; their banishment will not stop the fall of the oligarchy, but will slow it down enough that Beata will not be around to see its end. The away team return to the ship and Picard, already recovering from the virus, orders the ship to the Neutral Zone at high warp.
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“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)