The Enterprise is relaying reports to back up Angosia III’s application to join the Federation when it stumbles across an ugly skeleton in the planet’s closet: the treatment of its war veterans.
A tenaciously cunning escapee from a lunar prison colony turns out to be Roga Danar, one of the top soldiers for the victorious planet in the Tarsian War. Now branded a murderer by the Angosians, he turns out to be a patriot who was turned into a killing machine by his government through biochemical and mind control.
Warned to shy away from this internal affair, Picard learns from Prime Minister Nayrok that the prison was constructed as a colony for those super-soldiers who could not re-adapt to peacetime civilian life.
Picard’s hands are tied, and he is about to hand Danar over to the Angosians when the soldier escapes from a transporter beam, beginning a chase that ends when he commandeers a police vessel.
From there Danar attacks the prison, setting his fellow veterans free to march on Nayrok’s government and demand treatment. Held at gunpoint, the dour Nayrok now asks for help but is shocked when Picard beams up, “agreeing” that the debate is an internal matter.
If Nayrok’s rule survives, Picard says, Angosia will be a welcome addition to the UFP.
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This analogy to ignored Vietnam veterans was to have hit even closer to home with a planned Rambo-style eruption when the soldiers stormed the capital, but time limits and a budget crunch would again play a part in reducing an episode directed by Cliff Bole. The result is a bit anticlimactic but funny, too, as the Prime Directive for once provides both a pretext for a fast getaway and an opportunity for local action.
On the trivia side, the “Jefferies tubes” crawlways mentioned here are another homage to original Trek. That show’s circuitry-access area carried the name of Matt Jefferies, art director and designer of the original Enterprise. The actual set for the twenty-fourth-century version, though, would have to wait another season, until “Galaxy’s Child”. In another first for the series, the daring Danar breaks free of a transporter beam ­ supposedly because a chemical interferes with the signal ­ and powers up a transporter with a phaser’s power pack. Also, the security section cell in its now familiar layout is first seen here, after debuting as a humbler set in its first and only prior appearance (“Heart of Glory”).
