“The Offspring”
Written by René Echevarria
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Season 3, Episode 16
Original air date: March 12, 1990
Star date: 43657.0
Mission summary
Data summons Wesley, La Forge, and Troi to his lab for some Really Big News. After a drumroll, he unveils… a thing! They’re not really sure what it is–it seems to be a Soong-type android in beta–until it calls Data “father” and Data explains that this is his child, Lal.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise”
Written by Ira Steven Behr, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, & Ronald D. Moore (story by Trent Christopher Ganino & Eric A. Stillwell)
Directed by David Carson
Season 3, Episode 15
Original air date: February 19, 1990
Star date: 43625.2
Mission summary
The Enterprise-D runs across an anomaly that may or may not be there. While they try to sort through their confusing, contradictory sensor readings, something emerges… As another ship crosses the threshold, everything and everyone shifts on the Enterprise-D: Their uniforms now have high collars, belts with phasers, and black cuffs. Nothing gets by Guinan; in the suddenly bustling Ten Forward, the wise and cryptic bartender notes, “This isn’t right. It’s changed.” The mystery deepens: On the now thematically darker Bridge, Worf has been replaced at tactical by an old face, Lt. Tasha Yar, who reports that the other vessel is a Federation starship, registry NCC-1701… C: U.S.S. Enterprise.
“A Matter of Perspective”
Written by Ed Zuckerman
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 3, Episode 14
Original air date: February 12, 1990
Star date: 43610.4
Mission summary
Data interrupts Picard’s art class to tell him that they’ve arrived at Tenuga IV and also that Picard couldn’t paint his way out of a Rothko. It seems Riker and La Forge conducted a survey of Dr. Apgar’s work on Krieger waves, which they hope will become a new energy source. La Forge says in so many words that Riker surveyed someone just a little too intimately and is in a rush to return. But as he beams back, Dr. Apgar’s science station explodes, and Riker barely makes it home intact.
But his luck isn’t meant to last, because an Inspector Krag beams aboard and arrests Riker… for murder.
“Déjà Q”
Written by Richard Danus
Directed by Les Landau
Season 3, Episode 13
Original air date: February 5, 1990
Star date: 43539.1
Mission summary
Enterprise is rendering assistance to Bre’el IV, which is about to say “goodnight, moon”— an asteroidal body on a decaying orbit will slam into the planet in twenty-nine hours unless they can devise a way to shove it back where it belongs. It’s just too damn big for the tractor beams to nudge it, which La Forge eloquently compares to “an ant pushing a tricycle.” To further complicate the situation, they’re paid an unexpected visit by an old adversary: Q literally drops in on the Bridge, in the buff. He smirks and greets them with, “Red alert.”
“The High Ground”
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Season 3, Episode 12
Original air date: January 29, 1990
Star date: 43510.7
Mission summary
The Enterprise has decided to give some medical supplies to Ireland Rutia IV, but it turns out terrorists have been bombing places so shore leave got canceled. Bummer. Dr. Crusher, Worf, and Data are sipping some tea in a cafe (for…work?) when a bomb goes off injuring civilians. Worf says they have to get out of there, but Crusher starts bandaging the wounded and refuses to beam back to the ship until the local medics arrive. Suddenly one of the Ansata–the space IRA–appears out of nowhere, kills a policeman, and abducts Crusher to the void from whence he came.
“The Hunted”
Written by Robin Bernheim
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 3, Episode 11
Original air date: January 8, 1990
Star date: 43489.2
Mission summary
Picard and company pay a visit to Angosia III to evaluate its people for exclusive membership in the Federation. Things seem to be going swimmingly; Picard and Zefram Cochrane Prime Minister Nayrok are bonding over their moral superiority, and it’s all but a done deal when they receive word that a prisoner has escaped from a maximum security penal colony on Lunar V and stolen a transport vessel. The Angosians are strangely ill-equipped to take care of their own, so Picard offers the services of Enterprise to recapture the escapee. It should be a simple matter, but the pilot is devious and somehow they lose track of him around an asteroid, to Picard’s utter shock and dismay.
“The Defector”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Robert Sheerer
Season 3, Episode 10
Original air date: January 1, 1990
Star date: 43462.5
Mission summary
Picard is giving Data lessons in humanity by way of Henry V on the holodeck, but their epiphanies are interrupted by a Romulan scout ship asking for help. Suddenly a warbird decloaks, fires some shots at the scout ship, and turns away as the Enterprise extends its deflector shields around the scout ship to protect it. As life support there fails, Picard has the ship’s only occupant beamed over: Romulan Sublieutenant Setal, bearing warnings that the Romulans are planning to start a war, beginning at Nelvana III.
“The Vengeance Factor”
Written by Sam Rolfe
Directed by Timothy Bond
Season 3, Episode 9
Original air date: November 20, 1989
Star date: 43421.9
Mission summary
After discovering a ransacked Starfleet research facility–evidence of encroaching raids from a group of Acamarians called the Gatherers–Picard decides to do something about this problem once and for all. Enterprise sets out for Acamar III, where he meets with the leader of the ruling group of Acamarians, Sovereign Marouk.
“The Price”
Written by Hannah Louise Shearer
Directed by Robert Sheerer
Season 3, Episode 8
Original air date: November 13, 1989
Star date: 43385.6
Mission summary
Troi has a fight with the replicator over chocolate, because she’s had an exhausting day or has her space period or whatever. But she can’t even enjoy it because Picard summons her to a diplomatic reception for a first look at a wormhole owned by the Barzans. The Barzan Premier, Bhavani, plans to auction off rights to the wormhole and so the Enterprise hosts delegates from several interested parties: the Federation, represented by Mendoza; the Caldonians, represented by Leyor; and the Chrysalians, represented by a humanoid named Devinoni Ral, with a sexy lady hanging off his arm. He and Troi lock eyes with the kind of vapid, sultry looks Calvin Klein models wear, making it really uncomfortable when Bhavani says “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the first and only stable wormhole known to exist. It’s yours, for the right price. ”
I hope she means the space anomaly.
“The Enemy”
Written by David Kemper and Michael Piller
Directed by David Carson
Season 3, Episode 7
Original air date: November 6, 1989
Star date: 43349.2
Mission summary
A distress signal leads Enterprise to a crappier-than-usual planet, Galorndon Core, where a small away team discovers the remnants of a Romulan shuttle–which was apparently destroyed after it crash-landed. Worf stumbles across an injured Romulan and promptly injures him some more to make him easier to rescue. Meanwhile, the hapless La Forge becomes the proverbial “boy in the well” when the ground crumbles beneath him and he plummets into a crevasse. Because of magnetic interference in the atmosphere that disrupts transporter beams, communications, and tricorders, Riker and Worf have to leave their friend behind, but no one really considers a surly Romulan on the verge of death a fair trade for their engineer.
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