After being scanned by an unknown alien ship, Enterprise crew members discover both their own and their computer’s memories have been selectively wiped out.
Though they can’t remember their names or their functions, they’ve all retained the knowledge necessary to operate the ship. They grope their way to some kind of structure: Worf assumes command; Data decides he’s the bartender in Ten-Forward; and Ro feels attracted to Riker, Troi even more so. Finally the ship’s computer is able to provide them with name, rank, and serial number; among the bridge crew is Commander Kieran MacDuff, listed as first officer.
The computer also reveals their mission: the Enterprise is part of a fleet fighting a decades-old war with the Lysians. Their current assignment, to be conducted under radio silence, is to destroy the aliens’ Central Command.
Picard grows concerned, though, when the Lysian vessels they meet prove no match for his ship. His conscience finally forces him to call off the attack. Angered, MacDuff tries to assume control of the ship. Worf stuns him, and the phaser blast reveals that MacDuff is actually an alien.
Dr. Crusher soon restores the crew’s memories, whereupon they identify MacDuff as a Sartaaran, a race that’s been at war with the Lysians for decades. Despite their skill with computers and memory suppression, his race’s weak weapons technology forced their thwarted hijacking of the Enterprise.
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One of several amnesia stories from season four, this episode was put on hold for a year and then developed into this script, which Michael Piller felt didn’t quite do justice to the original and fascinating tale of drafting soldiers by rewriting their memories. Staff and fans alike, though, loved the Riker-Troi-Ro triangle that emerged here, especially the fact that all three retained the memory of their past “interactions.”
In his cabin, Riker plays few notes of “The Nearness of You,” the song he played for Minuet on the holodeck in “11001001”, and looks over his horgah’n from Risa, first seen in “Captain’s Holiday”.
Curiously, while the ships of the two warring sides were not new staff designs, the Lysian command center miniature dates all the way back to season one, when it was hazily photographed as the Edolord over Rubicum III in “Justice”.
