Legacy (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

"Legacy" is the 80th episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and the sixth installment of the show's fourth season. It was first broadcast on October 29 1990, and has an average rating of 3.2/5 on the official Star Trek website (as of July 30th, 2007).[1]

In this segment of the series, the officers of the Federation Starfleet starship USS Enterprise-D encounter Ishara Yar (played by Beth Toussaint), the sister of their late and much lamented shipmate Tasha Yar. While joyous at the opportunity to interact with someone who helps them reconnect with the memories of their former comrade, they soon discover that Ishara has ulterior motives.

Plot

As the episode begins, the Enterprise receives a distress call from the Federation freighter Arcos which has experienced engine troubles and assumed an emergency orbit around Turkana IV, the birthplace of the ship’s former chief of Security, Tasha Yar.

The Arcos suffers a warp core breach and is destroyed, however Lt. Commander Data, the ship's android Chief Operations officer, establishes that an escape pod carried some crewmembers to the planet below. When the Enterprise computer is queried for information concerning Turkana, some grim facts are revealed, including the revelation that fighting among the colonists has destroyed all the surface settlements relegating the survivors to a life underground. A warning is also discovered from the USS Potemkin, the last Federation ship to visit Turkana, which states that the colonists threatened to execute any trespassers.

Nevertheless, Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard sends an away team down to the outpost which quickly makes contact with the Coalition, one of two opposing cadres which control Turkana. Hayne, the leader of the Coalition, tells Enterprise First Officer Commander William Riker that the missing Arcos crewmen have been taken prisoner by the other faction, the Alliance. Hayne adds he will aid in the recovery of the Federation personnel in return for weapons.

Picard rejects Hayne’s offer, but the leader of the Coalition then contacts the Captain and offers the services of Ishara Yar, Tasha Yar’s sister, as a liaison between the Coalition and Federation. Intrigued, Picard accepts.

Data welcomes the young woman aboard and quickly learns that she does not respect her sister, as she believes Tasha was a coward for abandoning her and leaving her home planet to go off and join the Federation. Ishara offers to submit to genetic matching to prove her lineage as Tasha’s sister and gain the trust of the Enterprise crew. She also provides useful intelligence about the disposition and layout of the Alliance base facilities and is able to give the Federation officers the exact location of the captured escape pod.

The fate of the hostages takes on a new sense of urgency when a communication from the Alliance threatens their execution in 20 hours.

Ishara quickly becomes popular aboard the Enterprise, to the point where Picard sees that in effect she has virtually become a member of his crew. Data seems especially taken with her and tells her that although he has no emotions he “becomes familiar” with certain people and misses the “input” of their presence when absent, adding that this is the case with both herself and her sister Tasha.

Using the sensor instruments of the escape pod, Enterprise Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge is able to locate the hostages and a rescue operation is planned. Ishara’s experience and familiarity with the terrain would prove invaluable to the mission, but like all members of the cadres she was implanted with a proximity detector which sounds an alarm when she enters the territory of the opposing side. This problem is overcome when Data and the ship’s Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher design a surgical procedure which allows for the safe removal of the booby trapped device. Ishara gives the small crystalline object to Data, telling him that she wants him to have it.

An Enterprise security team is transported into the heart of Alliance territory and quickly achieves the freeing and rescue of the hostages. However Ishara slips away in the confusion.

Following her, Data finds her in the process of setting up an overload in the Alliance fusion generator. When he inquires as to what she is doing, she grimly tells him that the explosion of the generator will disable the Alliance security system, allowing a large waiting force of Coalition solders to overwhelm and defeat the Alliance once and for all. A betrayed Data now realizes that the Coalition has made use of the loyalty and fondness he and the rest of the Enterprise crew harbor toward their missing shipmate Tasha to deceive and manipulate them from the beginning. He attempts to intervene, but Ishara informs him that she is ready to kill him to accomplish her objective. Fortunately the arrival of Riker distracts her, and Data is able to stun her and disable the overload.

Back aboard the Enterprise, as Ishara is about to be repatriated to her Coalition comrades, she tells Data that if it means anything to him, he was the closest thing to a friend she ever had. The android beams her back to the planet.

Not long after, Data admits to Riker that his thoughts are still with Ishara. Seeing that his Operations officer is still trying to make sense of recent events, Riker comforts him by opining that while some risk is inherent in any act of trust, without it there would be no friendship, therefore those risks are worth taking. Leaving Riker's quarter, Data pauses to caress the crystal proximity detector Ishara gave him.

Production

• As the 80th episode of TNG this installment was noted as the one in which the episode count of Star Trek: The Next Generation surpassed Star Trek: The Original Series, which only had a total run of 79 episodes. At the beginning of the episode, it is mentioned that the Enterprise had passed the planet Camus II, which had been featured in Turnabout Intruder - the 79th and final episode of the original series.

References

• Star Trek The Next Generation DVD set, volume 4, disk 2, selection 2.

External links

• Legacy at Memory Alpha
• Template:StarTrek.com link